Ann arbor

Ted and I spent a lot of time concincing people we weren't a couple. Ted had been whining for a while that he hadn't gotten fair mention in my blog, so I guess he can consider hanging out with me "blog-worthy" (reference to Seinfeld "Spongeworthy").

This street performer was out doing a tribute to Michael Jackson, break dancing like nothing you've ever seen....from a crack head. Who really wants to impersonate Michael Jackson these days? It's up there with impersonating O.J. Simpson.

Apparently Richard Marx was in Ann Arbor as well, complete with his curly mullett.

We went to Ann Arbor tonight with Ted and Sherry for dinner and ran into Kenny G, sans saxaphone. We ate at a pretty good Tex-Mex resturant called the Prickly Pear on Main Street. We hung out after that at a sidewalk bar and people-watched. Amazing the kind of celebrities you see out there.

Had a bunch of guys over to play cards last night, in the ususal spot - the garage, for the cigars. Joe, Bob, Terry, Eli, Dan and Mark and myself played. Will was in Honolulu, Brad decided that he's not very good and shouldn't play any more and Ted was having his tenth going away party somewhere. We all had our sunglasses on, trying to be Chris Moneymaker at the poker table, I guess. It was a true South Lyon style poker party - played in a garage, with Guns and Roses blaring from the Stereo as we ate pork rinds (okay, we didn't eat pork rinds). We wrapped up late, around 1:30 after I'd won almost nothing all night. At one point when I was down to nothing and there was a huge pot, I had a suited Jack Queen and went all in. I caught the seven I needed on the river and was gathering up the chips as Joe was kind enough to point out that the dealer hadn't burned a card prior to flopping the river. I was out, Bob had a huge pile. Bob was the big winner that night, which usually happens - between him and Eli typically winning.

I worked today from Cathie's parents house in Dewitt - the beauty of a virtual office. The kids swam while I worked and took breaks in the pool. It rained on and off during the day, but the kids swam anyways. Got a bunch of guys coming over tonight to play cards. Should be fun.

Updated: Check out this video of me tossing Madeline in the air. There were a couple of times where she did 1 and a half flips, which resulted in a face first belly smacker. In hindsight, it looks kind of dangerous. Madeline wanted to keep doing it over and over until we got it right. I explained to her that it would probably end with her getting hurt, and she was okay with that. So we kept going.

My boss Anne Mulcahy made the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world at #6. She deserves it. Good to see Carly Fiona no longer eclipsing her. I'm nowhere on the list. Probably cause I'm a dude. That seems like discrimination to me.

I spent this afternoon in a fairly akward situation. A friend of mine who's had a chain of horrible circumstances in his life had things topped off by having to have hemroid surgery today. I drove him there and was there in the recovery room when he woke up from the anestesia. When he woke up, I asked him how he was and his first words were "I'd rather be in Philidelphia", which were Reagan's first words when he came out of surgery after he was shot. He was pretty drugged up he was hilarious. He was asking the nurse if they'd taken any before and after pictures of the whole thing. We were dying laughing joking about this stuff. The nurses were pretty sure my friend and I were a couple, which wasn't helped by the fact that he was staying at my house during his recovery and that I was responsible for him during the whole thing. I was squirming as the surgeon came in and described the procedure and what he'd found. The guy was British and really liked to use the term anus, pronounced "Enis" by him. The nurse was then describing to me the care and maintenance of "the wound" and I tried to make it very clear that I was taking no part in any part of the "wound maintenance" and that he was really on his own there. The whole discussion of the pros and cons of whether wearing maxi-pads or cotton would work best to catch the drainage was a lot of fun to hear.

Reason #134 I love my Treo Phone:
A friend of mine is having outpatient surgery today and needed transportation and a place to crash afterwards, so I'm sitting here in the hospital with my laptop, able to work online through my laptop, connecting online for free via PDANet and my Treo phone.

Cool new Treo app called KMap that allows you to lookup and view google maps on your phone.

Mack turned me on to a great podcast - TWiT - This week in Tech. It's the guys from TechTV - Leo LaPorte, Patrick Norton, John Dvorak and others sitting around a table talking about the latest in technology. These guys are the best of the best in this area and it's pretty interesting banter.

Good article from Dvorak on how Google is beating out Microsoft in terms of innovation and leadership.

After writing my previous self-righteous rant about church shopping this morning, I sat down and happened to be reading Romans and stumbled across this in Romans 2:

Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. ²But God isn't so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you've done.

³You didn't think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? ⁴Or did you think that because he's such a nice God, he'd let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he's not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.

Always amazed at how God humbles me in this kind of stuff.

This is an interesting article that I can relate to on why younger generations (I'm lumping myself into this group) are becoming disenfranchised with the mega-churches that are out there. I just have no desire to be a part of a church of 20,000 people, like the one in our town. Something that size, that shiny on the outside, that over-produced holds nothing for me. Half of it is the size of the show (which they're damn good at putting on) that turns me off, half of it is the lack of depth in community. I think I'd rather be deeply connected. On the flip side, I know people go to mega-churches, love it and are flourishing. Good for them.

I continue to watch people "check out" other churches and have a tough time getting my hands around this. The whole church shopping deal amazes me. Some people migrate to the "mega-churches" out there looking for something that can entertain and look healthy on the surface, others to hop from church to church looking for one that "feeds" them with dynamic teaching or "great music". In and of themselves, I guess they're all good things. I'm just not sure how heavily to weigh them in the overall definition of what a church should be and how to "shop" for one. How can you really know a church, it's heart, it's people without digging in and sticking with it for 6 months? I hear people say, "I've found a great church, the teaching is awesome and the worship band was great." Ok, what about their heart towards the poor and hurting, the unlovable? How do they align with the community described in Acts 2:42-47 or the love described in 1 Corinthians 13?

We've got lots of big churches in our area that look just like part of their community - the rich, white and upper class part. That's just not for me. I love the fact that my church looks like where I live. South Lyon is full of mobile home parks, single moms and broken families along with upper class families as well. We've got a church that looks that looks like our community and I dig that. If you were church shopping and you came to my church for the first time, I'm just not sure what you'd see. The music is ok most of the time, our teaching goes from great to mediocre and the people at our church love others really well ("sometimes too well, we've had two past affairs" - quote from one of our jr. high kids at camp during one of the sessions). You've got a group of people doing the best they can with what they have, but the show doesn't compete with the mega-church down the road. Should we just sit that as consumers, relying on a church to fill us up and entertain us? If it doesn't fill me on a given Sunday or a given month even, do I high tail it out of there and move on to the next one? How do I weight my connectedness to the church in there? How important is how they love each other? Do I walk out on my famliy when they don't entertain me or teach me at a family get together and go find a new one? How about when you have too many crazy uncles in the family, do you go find a new family?

Monkeys flipping people off are always funny to me.

My brother Jon is blogging. Will and I created the blog originally as a joke, but now Jon has taken it on and is updating it. We'll see how long it lasts.

Check out these pictures of the new Motorola Q vs. the Treo 650.

A friend of mine, Mark Hamilton, took this picture at a recent church picnic and tweaked it to create this very cool layered effect.

One of things that sucks about working out of my home is the lack of office supplies, and the lack of co-workers to shoot pencils through. Check out this site for creating weapons out of office supplies - OfficeGuns.

My iPod's working again. Apparently it wasn't related to me dropping it, but more of a firmware bug. Once the battery wore down it reset and I was able to recharge it, update the firmware and it's working fine.

I'm home all week, going to Calgary and Kansas City next week.

Last movie seen in the theatre: Wedding Crashers
Last movie rented: Team America
Last CD's purchased: Coldplay - X&Y, Foo Fighters - In Your Honor
Current razor: Gilette Mach 3
Current online photo service: Snapfish
Last book finished: Hollywood Tough, Steven Cannell
Last kind of beer drank: Bell's Oberon
Last wing's eaten: BW3's
Last video game played: Fantastic Four - GameCube

You?

Reality Shows not worth watching:

• Being Bobby Brown
• Hogan Knows Best
• Brat Camp
• The 70's House
  

If you don't watch the show Best Week Ever, you're missing out on the funniest half hour of television out there. Other than that, not much on this summer. A few other shows we watch regularly that have new episodes right now:

• Real World (Jury's still out on this season, but it's decent so far)
• Daily Show with John Stewart
• Family Guy (I'm still not sold on this show, but my brother Jon keeps telling me it's genius. There are some hilarious parts in it and great obscure references that keep me coming back. I never watched it but all the press about it being brought back forced me to take another look at it. It's a lot raunchier than The Simpsons and almost always crosses the line. Kinda like hanging out with Brad).
  
• Punk'd/Made/True Life (Quality MTv stuff)
• Random HD Net Concerts (I don't care who the band is, it looks so good in HD)
• I Want a Famous Face (Messed up people who obsess after famous people and get plastic surgery to look like them)
  

Here's a parenting dilemma: My 8 year old son purposely goes up and rips one in his sister's face. She hits him, hard. We have a standing punishment in our family if you hit someone, but frankly, I'd of done the same think in her shoes. Probably a bad parenting move, but I explained to her that sometime's whacking your brother is worth the consequences you face. Maybe a little too honest. I'm sure it'll come back to bite me someday.

Emily decided to give herself a make over. Just not sure what to think of this picture - Cute or Scary?

After church, the kids had friends over. Maddie and her friend Sam dressed up exactly alike, because they're girls, and that's what they do, I guess. Nate and his friend Brian and did guy stuff, like build a fort back in the woods, shoot his BB gun and play basketball. I'm ready for a nap.

Friday was a rough day. I stayed up all night and all day in order to readjust my clock. I worked most of the day half-concious and then hung out with Cathie and the kids the rest of the day. Friday night I went over to Ted's house for his 4th going away party to spend a little while with Mark, Brad, Ted, Eli and Will.

Saturday was moving day for Mom and Dad. I went to bed around 11:30 and got up around 7, feeling pretty rested. Nate and I went to my parents for move number 2. We'd already moved hundreds of boxes out, so most of what was left was furniture. We had all of the furniture loaded up and ready to go by 10:30 and were on our way. Moving is a big deal in my family, so everyone was there, including our extended family of Will, Mike, big Nate. Last night Cathie, myself and my brothers Jon, Dan, Will and I went to go see Wedding Crashers. I laughed so hard I almost wet myself. As Will said, everything that comes out of Vince Vaughn's mouth is genius. Jon stayed over and left early this morning back to Memphis.

I posted my Honolulu pictures online here. Nothing real interesting - mostly just scenic stuff and friends drinking mai-tais.

Good article on how being ultraconnected contributes to our CPA (Continual Partial Attention):

The result, says Carl Honore, journalist and author of "In Praise of Slowness," is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished.

Honore, who cited the estimate of an interruption every three minutes, acknowledges that he would not part with his laptop or phone. But he adds that "it's possible to get too much of a good thing. As a society, that's where we are at the moment."

I got in this morning around 6am on a pretty uneventful flight. I finished reading Harry Potter and watching the Scrubs Season 1 episodes. As a side note, Scrubs has got to be one of the funniest, smartest shows ever written. I'm not a big sitcom fan - I can't think of any that I watch, except this show. Anyways, I couldn't sleep on the plane, so I figured I'll try and stay up all day, go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight and hopefully have my internal clock back in sync tomorrow. My parents are finally moving from their home tomorrow so Will, Kevin's brother-in-law Nate, my brothers and Mike will all be there. Moving is a big family event for us and this will be no exception. Dan will be the master packer, as usual.

Flying into Seattle I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ever behind Mt Ranier. Throughout the entire flight the guy next to me picked at a blister on his big toe while reading Japanese porn.

Cool new service I signed up for called Peerflix.com. I read about it in this article from engadget. The gist of it is this:

It can be described on a basic level as eBay meets Netflix. Peerflix resembles many online DVD stores, but it neither rents nor sells DVDs. Rather, it depends on a community of users willing to trade DVDs they have for DVDs they want. There are no subscription fees. Peerflix charges a 99-cent transaction fee and senders are responsible for the postage charge of 37 cents for the mailers that the company distributes. Behold the $1.36 DVD.

Packing up all my crap I came to the realization that my life is connected to rechargable crap. When I travel, I carry chargers for:

• My Laptop
• My Digital Camera
• My Bluetooth headset
• My Cell Phone
• My iPod

My iPod's broke. It dropped onto the carpet from about 2 feet and then stopped working. I guess I never realized how often I use this thing. I have my speakers in my hotel room, not doing me any good. I have no music with me at all and I'm going nuts.

Best Headline Ever.

A movie review for Charlie and the Choclate factory was titled "Depp's "Choclate Factory" Has Tasty Opening".

The time change is catching up to me. I started my day at 4am on con calls and was in meetings until about 6 when I finally hit a wall. I'm out having Sushi tonight right on the beach at Sansei, a place Will turned me on to. Some of the best Sushi I've ever had - lots of specialty rolls. We saw a great sunset tonight, but again, seeing a sunset without Cathie being there to experience it with me is bittersweet.

I got up at 6AM local time (12PM EST) and headed up to the North Shore with a friend of mine from work Greg, and his wife, Kerry. Greg and I have become good friends over the past 6 years we've worked together over the past 7 years and Cathie and I hung out with both of them the quite a bit at President's Club. On our way to the North Shore (where all of the big surfing competitions take place with the big 50 foot waves), we stopped at the Dole Pinapple Plantation which Will had reccomended to me. It was worth about 15 minutes to see where pinapples come from, but I don't need to spend $15 on a Dole Pinapple shirt, shoes, knife or slippers.

We headed up around the Island and stopped at some of the beaches on the way and saw some amazing stuff, watching kids do some awesome stuff on boogies boards. The scenery was breathtaking the whole way with mountains on one side and this amazing blue water on the other. I came back and hung out at the beach for a while while another friend of mine, Bill and his family showed up. Greg, Kerry, Shawn and Bill and his kids hung out in the ocean for a while, running into a guy who looked just like the American Idol William Hung.

I know you may have heard from others how hard it is to work in Hawaii. I guess I'm just not there yet. Sure the 6 hour time difference is tough to adjust to and communicate with the outside world but it's an opportunity that few people ever have and I'm enjoying every second of it. The one thing that sucks is not having my wife here with me. When you have someone whose soul is connected to yours, it makes it tough to enjoy a new experience without that person at your side to experience it with you. In the back of mind, there's always this thought of "Wow, I wish Cathie were here to experience this with me". I just don't enjoy stuff in the same way without Cathie by my side. I think that's part of what being married to your soulmate is all about and I wouldn't change it for the world.

This is a cool site that will do free document to PDF conversion for you online. You can upload an office document and receive a PDF back. The site is PDFOnline.com

At breakfast this morning they offer spam as part of the buffett. Apparently, Hawaii is the leading consumer of Spam in the world. They serve it at McDonalds and even offer spam rolls at the sushi places here. My wife, a big consumer of spam as a kid, would be right at home here.

I made it past 10PM/4AM. We grabbed dinner at the hotel and then Newton and I walked up and down the main strip and grabbed some Mai Tai's at one of the local places we'd heard about. There were street performers all up and down the street, everything from guys painted silver andpeople dressing up their dogs. On our way back we ran into a group of guys free-style rapping on the street. Now Newton comes from souther Alabama and back about 20 years ago, he had a billboard top single song called "Country is Cool" and based on the success of it he toured with a band called Run D.M.C. for a while. Anyways, we run into this freestyle rap group and Newton gets into the mix asking if an "Alabama boy can give it a try." They let him in and he lets loose while the crowd goes wild. Imagine this country boy with a heavy accent going to town - it was great. I'm heading up to the North Shore tomorrow.

I was up at about 4:45 this morning to leave for Hawaii on a business trip. I boarded the plane for the second leg of the trip in Minneapolis and was greeted with Mai-tai's - for an eight hour flight, that's either a good or a bad way to start. I used my miles to upgrade to first class and it turned out to be a great call. The plane was a widebody DC10-30 and the first class section was huge and had the fully reclinable seats with personal tv's - way different than Northwest's so-so first class seating.

I got in around 12:30PM, checked in, spent some time at the beach and met up with one of the guys on my team, Newton, who's down here for a different project. My Hilton Honors status paid off and I ended up with a great room at the hotel, overlooking the ocean, with the above view. Will has been spending a fair amount of time out here on a project and his advice to acclimate to the 6 hour time change was to stay up until 10PM (4AM EST) the first night. I can barely make it to midnight on a good day at home, so this should be interesting. I'm getting ready to head out to dinner, so we'll see how tonight goes.

I got my copy of the new Harry Potter book today. I'm 1/4 of the way through it and it's great so far. $29.95 for a billion of these things being sold. What a racket.

I saw this bumper sticker on a car: Tatoos aren't just for sailors and whores anymore.

I snapped these pictures last night of a frog on my window. I'm constantly amazed at the quality and features my Sony DSC-T1 has. I used the close-up mode and took these from about 3 inches away.

Cathie and I went on a date last night to dinner and a movie. Our plan was originally to go to the Mongolian Barbecue in Novi for dinner and then head to a movie. When we got to dinner, we stumbled upon a private vodka tasting party that was going on at the resturant and we got ourselves invited in. They were preimeiring a new Mongolian Vodka and had it there to drink in every way, shape and form - from chilled shots, to martinis and mixed drinks. It's a good Vodka - up there with Absolut, but not quite Grey Goose quality. They had a whole round of appetizers as well, so we hung out, had some drinks, downed some appetizers and scrapped our original dinner plans.

We then went to see War of the Worlds. I was considering not seeing it just because Tom Cruise has seemed so annoying lately that I figured it would sour the enjoyment of the movie. People talked a lot about the special effects blowing them away, but that really didn't strike me. What struck me was that I was on the edge of my seat the whole movie. It was a good movie, not great. The special effects were good, but nothing groundbreaking or earth-shattering. After movies like Star Wars I think it's tough to be amazed anymore. The last movie with effects that amazed me were some animated flicks where you could see each individual hair moving in an individual, realistic way. I contrast that with my four year old Emily who will scream with amazement when we're on a walk and she sees a bird or a bug. You'd think she'd just spotted a dinosaur walking down the street. She gets so excited about the little things. Probably not a bad place to be in life, to still find wonder like that in the world around you.

I worked out with Kirk today at his gym. As usual, he took me through a crazy workout which we worked some healthy competition into, the loser doing extra push-ups. We competed in everything: First person to miss at jump roping, lats person back on the bear-crawl/crab-walks and person who did the most pull-ups. Things degraded into boxing, which is great, except Kirk's an ex-boxer. We put gloves on and he proceeded to pound me as he taught me how to box. I thought I knew, but I had no idea. Great workout, but exhausting.

Last night during Jason's going away party Madeline and Emily came up with the idea to switch rooms, which is no big deal in and of itself. They took it to the next level by wanting to look like each other so that we wouldn't know the difference when we came in to check on them. How might they do this you ask? By cutting their hair to look alike. The story came out in pieces after we found chunks of hair in the bathroom this morning. Emily explained that she got the idea from her imaginary friend because her one imaginary friend cut her other imaginary friend's hair, but he cut it all off. She knew that she shouldn't cut off all of her hair because she knew that'd be wrong. Who says you can't learn anything from the voices inside your head?

During the punishment phase of the whole deal, Madeline angrily said "I wish Adam and Eve had never done bad things, because then I wouldn't have done bad things and gotten a punishment." I was too busy laughing to explain the theological issues with her argument.

I was interviewed today for a profile in our company newsletter. During it, I was asked a few questions that made me think:
1. "What is the most significant thing you've ever done at our company?"
2. "How would your friends describe you?"
3. "What's one word you'd use to describe yourself?"

In the big picture, I'm not sure I've done much that's truly significant other than hiring a bunch of good people. How would my friends describe me? Probably can't list most of those words. How would I describe myself in one word? Right-Handed.

We got back from Iowa and our air conditioning wasn't working and I had no idea why. I looked near the blower and the pipes were covered with ice. I cracked open my "How to fix it yourself" book and followed the troubleshooting stuff in it and I think I actually got it working again! I cancelled my call to the repair-guy and I'm waiting to see if I was right.

Unfortunately, it wasn't fixed in time for Jason Monstrola's going away party last night. Jason is a friend of mine who has quit his job to go and follow his dream to be a bible translator in some far-away country. He's going back to school for linguistics first for 2 1/2 years before he goes out in the field. I see a strange pattern here. Will and Jason both have computer science degrees and have both recently quit their jobs to go back to school and follow the desires of their heart. My degree is in computer science as well. Hmmmm.

My sister doesn't wear much makeup. I'm not sure she wears any, but I never really noticed. My cousin Jodie is a Mary Kay consultant and convinced Susan to do a makeover. The girls headed into the bathroom and dolled my sister up like a $2 hooker. I'm sure my sister will appreciate me posting these pictures.
BEFORE:

On Sunday we hung out at the hotel in the morning and went swimming. The water park in the hotel was fantastic. It had this giant contraption that you had to traverse in order to get to the water slide at the top. Along the way there were probably a hundred different booby traps that would soak people down below. At the very top was this 1000 gallon bucket that would dump every 10 minutes on the kids below, which they loved. It had three water slides all together along with a zero entry pool with a slide that Emily played in most of the day. They had great life guards all over the place that they kept on their toes. They had these plastic babies that the supervisors would carry around and suddenly chuck these things in the water to test the life guards response time. Jon and I followed thse guys around watching this for a while, laughing our heads off at how strange this was and how seriously they took it. Jon and I had my cousin Kurt grab one of the babies and chuck it in the water slide and sat back and watched the fireworks. Lots of fun.

After the pool, we went to a family mass at the church in town. From there we took the kids on a tour around town. We hung out at the Kramer farm and went for a long hayride around the farms and through the country side. From there we went to Connie and Jim's place so the kids could ride horses. They have 30+ horses and a bunch of steers their kids use for competitive team roping. Emily was cautioned about touching the electric fence, so what does she do? She touches the fence. She learned the hard way. We went back that night, swam some more and then the fellas hit the casino before calling it a night.

The next morning we got up, swam (someone pooped in the pool, so we had to clear out), packed and headed out around 11ish. We got back from Iowa late Monday night around 10:30. It was a long, long drive. We made it out in about 8.5 hours, back in 10.5.

I've posted all of the pictures of the trip here.

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Today was the Kurt family reunion. There were four generations of Kurt's out at the Kramer farm, where I used to visit as a kid. We went for a hayride, drank Busch Light beer and hung out and traded some great stories. I learned about how my Uncle Oscar drank a little too much and got lost in a corn field and how my late Grandpa Kurt used to ride a motorcycle. I saw couins I hadn't seen in a lot of years and got to tell my kids stories about the time my I spent in Bellevue as kids.

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That yellow spot on Susan's shirt isn't mustard. Little Bender let loose on Susan during the latest picnic stop.

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We pulled into Iowa about 2p, CST after missing our 5:30am alarms and getting up at 7 instead. We caughr up with the rest of the family caravan outside of Rockford, IL. We stopped a while later to picnic before we got the Great Wolf Lodge. The kids were good for the 9 hour drive.

I went in today to Triad to have Kirk take a look at my rotator cuff and see what I'd done to it. It's nothing too bad and he gave me some exercises to work on it. On a whim, I thought I'd have do a Body Mass Index (BMI) reading on me, since I'd dropped weight recently. In the spirit of Will's full disclosure, I normally hover right around 203 and I've been eating like crap over the last 8 weeks. Recently, I've dropped down to 201, so I figured I was doing something right. I'm at a BMI of about 25 right now. When I'm working out hard and eating right, I'm normally around 17, with my lowest ever being 12.5.

We went to Island Lake State Park last night for a picnic and brought Riley with us. There's a lake off the beaten path that you have to hike out to, which we did, picnic lunch and all. The kids and dog played in the water for a while chasing minnows, having a great time. There were these beautiful, huge clouds rolling in from the distance that eventually turned into a big thunderstorm, but were awesome to watch in the distance.

Check out this elvis mosaic someone did using sticky notes on flickr.com

Check out these these pictures of my Beth's sister's house after a tree went through it. Ouch. Right through the middle of the bed.

Madeline's is having her brithday party tonight, having 4 of her 7 year old friends over for a sleep-over. Cathie started the party at 2:00 this afternoon because they thought they'd be at the beach all day. It rained. Instead they Cathie took the girls to the Hand's On Museum in Ann Arbor and then a couple of our babysitters came over and did makeovers on the girls. The girls are just settling into a movie - I'm sure it'll be a late night. They're getting picked up at 10AM tomorrow. I manage Nate's birthday parties, Cathie manages Madeline and Emily's birthday parties. Seems like a fair deal to me.

Check out this list of American Film Institute's list of top 100 quotes from U.S. movies. It's a pretty exahaustive list across all movies from 1900's on.

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Everytime we go to 7-11 for slurpees, we pass by this granite ststue company with these huge, gaudy statues out front. The kids tell us how badly they want one for our front yard and we laugh. This time, we stopped. For $3,000 you too can have your own lion statue for your house. What a deal!

This is one of the coolest flash games I've seen out there.

I listened to a great message from Mars Hill church by Rob Bell today entitled "The Theology of the Clicks" It's an interesting message where he talks very openly on behalf of the church about their driving forces and their finances. He discusses Mars Hill's philosphy on giving and how for the longest time his belief was that the topic of giving should be avoided because of people's baggage from other churches. Their belief was that as people are transformed by following Jesus, people would just naturally give. He then shares some pretty ugly numbers in terms of giving in West Michigna. Based on the 14 largest churches in the area, the average giving is around $1,500/per person. Mars Hill is at about $500/person. Interesting. The rest of the message deals with what it looks like to be transformed as you follow Jesus, click by click.

You can download MP3 here: Money Sunday: A Theology of the Clicks or click here to listen to it online. You can see a list of all of the messages here.

We had our annual Kurt Family July 4th party at my parents yesterday. It was a little sad without Jon and Beth there, but we had fun none-the-less. My mom dressed the grandkids for their annual grandkid picture - you can see the newest edition, little bender, on the end of the picture, belted in place so he doesn't fall out. The best part of these pictures is my mom standing in the background, making the craziest faces and sounds to get the kids to pay attention long enough to snap the picture. The weather went between sun and rain for a while, finishing off with a big thunderstorm. My Dad had just come back from a conference and gave each of the grandkids these all-purpose tools that had a siren, flashlight, alarm clock and radio all-in-one. One common denominator was the naps that all of the guys were able to take at one time or another. The key is finding a good spot to hide - under a bed, behind a couch - regardless of how comfortable it is, just so one of the other siblings or my dad can't find you and send the kids after you. I didn't hide well enough, and my Dad sent all of the kids into the room with the dumb all-in-one tools on siren mode to wake me up. It poured for a while in the evening, and we figured the township fireworks were going to be cancelled and left around 8.

You can see the pictures for the Kurt Family July 4th Picnic here.

When I got back from camp, I was whupped. Cath suggested I nap for a while and I woke up rearing to go. Nate and his buddy Austin thought we should get the potato cannon out. The cannon is about 6 feet long with a chamber about 18 inches of that, the rest being the barrel. You shove a potato down the barrel and you fill the chamber up with hairspray, close it and ignite it. It shoots a potato almost a quarter mile.


On Sunday we woke up and went to a church picnic at Island Lake Recreation area. Being the weekend of the 4th, I figured no one would show. We had a big group there, all ages. Jason and Jess brought their dog Indiana, and Emiliy spent most of her time hanging with them. We had a big game of intergenerational dodge-ball, which was fun. We had everyone from little kids all the way up to some of the older folk playing. Even though a lot of my closest either aren't at the church anymore or didn't make it, it still had this overwhelming feeling of family. It was good to see all of the kids from camp again, even though I'd just gotten done spending a week with them.

You can see the pictures of the Crossroads July 3rd Picnic here.



Right afterwards, we headed over to Brad's cottage for a going away party for Ted and Sheri Haase. Ted took a new role in his company and is moving back out to California. It was a beautiful day and we grilled out and went tubing. Brad got these giant new tubes to go with his giant new boat. Last year when he tried to pull all of the big-boys, the boat wanted nothing to do with it. His new boat did it without hestitating. Brad took the little kids tubing and managed to submerge the tube and the little kids, which went over huge. I dove in and between Eli and I, we had kids strapped to us as brad towed the raft back into shore. As they swam in, my kids declared it was the scarying thing in the world and vowed never to do it again. Another scarring from uncle Brad. When the fellas went out, king of the mountain started right away. We beat the crap out of each other. No-holds-barred - whatever it took to get the guy off the boat. There was one point where I had Ted's head hanging off the raft, pushing it in the water and letting him back up, until I dumped him. Seemed like something out of a mafia movie. One of the last times out, we started talking trash and Brad went all out. I landed in the water, not really being able to feel my left arm from the shoulder down. I thought, "that's bad". I got a message from Brad the next day explaining that the number was 18. 18? 18 unexplained bruises.

You can see the Hasse Going Away Praty pictures here.


We played hard until about 8 and then took off to our next party at the Kohne's. We hung out there for a few hours while the kids played, the adults had a few drinks and then we shot off a bunch of fireworks. I'd stopped in Ohio on the way from camp and picked up some mortars, and the other guys had made a run to Ohio and picked up a bunch of these $100 bricks of rockets that went on forever. It was a pretty impressive display. We headed home and I was beat, pretty much 'peopled' out.

Day 6 - Saturday

I went to bed at 2:30 and got up at 7AM to get things ready. The kids were great about packing up, cleaning up and loading up. I think we all just wanted to get home. I'm home now. I was greeted hugs and kisses. I'm a dad and husband again, and I'm rady to collapse.

I posted the Day 6 Pictures here and some additional, random video here. I somehow lost the video of James Raitz ralphing up the gallon of milk. I'll get it back and post it shortly.

Day 5 - Friday

The last day of camp. On Monday it feels like Friday will never come and the kids won't get it and before you know it, we're almost at the end. Everyone was dragging this morning, but I feel like I'm doing alright so far today, especially for averaging less than 6 hours of sleep a night and being on the go non-stop from 7 - 1 every day.

We had breakfast and session this morning at camp, and then John, Mark and I met with the school to discuss next year's contract. Kenyon College treats us great, and the guy in charge, Fred really values our attendance from a business and a spiritual perspective. It's another super-muggy day, every second the sun is out, you instantly sweat. After the team games, Bob and Anne Rays had setup a barbecue and grilled out for Crossroads, the band and some of the other leaders at camp. One of the urinals in the guys bathroom next to my room got a paper towel stuck in it, flooded over and kept running. The drain was the high point in the room so all of the water ran into one of the guy's rooms and then down into a couple of rooms below. Oops. Nothing malicious, just a combination of a dumb action, a broken toilet and a bad drain.

The Battle of Helms Deep is an annual event that is tough to desribe. The kids are divided into two teams of about 80 and 320, the 80 person team at the top of a hill and the larger team at the bottom. Each team is equipped with a a ton of cut-in-half water noodles ,a few thousand water balloons and flour bombs, a piece of pantyhose with flour in it, tied at the end - roughly the size of a baseball. The teams at the bottom of his huge hill try and attack the team at the top and take their flag. Kids love it, wacking people with the water noodles (they don't really hurt), hurling water ballons and tossing these flour bombs. If you get out, you go back to your base. The water and the flour combine into a nasty paste on your skin that dries into a nasty mess. You end up with flour boogers for a week. Add a little yeast and some heat, and you've got yourself a nice little bread booger. Tasty.

Some of the guys came up with an ingenius contraption, taking their mattresses (very slippery) and laying them all the way down the steps and then sliding down on top of them on another mattress, with a big pad at the end to crash into. Safe? More-so than you'd think.

People are pretty low on energy and done most of the stuff once, so it's lot's of hanging out and talking, which is great with me. A bunch of guys and I hung out and went down to get some ice cream in town and picked up a gallon of milk. Why a gallon of milk you may ask? It's a little known fact that you cannot drink a gallon of milk within an hour and hold it down. The milk curdles in your stomach and expands, giving you projectile vomiting to the tune of the exocist - literally about 15 feet. I told James Raitz (Guitaurist in the 311 Worship Band) that if he could do it, I'd give him $50. He had 1:15 left in the hour and about 1/5 of the think left to drink when he blew chunks. I got it all on video and almost ralphed myself watching him do this. There was a huge crowd gathered around him cheering him on.

I had a proud moment today when hanging out with our guys. One of the guys in our group made an inappropriate remark about one of the girls in our group, trying to be funny. It got quiet. I said nothing, waiting to see how the other guys would respond. The guys in the group explained to him that by making a remark about our girls was like saying that about my sister, and that I'm very protective of my sisters. The guy apologized and learned a good lesson.

I went to the session that Jess Shinn taught about prayer. It was mostly our kids and we had a great discussion and we all learned some good stuff. I like the way Jess's brain processes stuff. She's a pure intellect and she's really learned how to bring it down to my level.

We closed up tonight with and an afro contest followed by worship and sessions. I'm so going to miss all of these people at this camp. I'm going to be at meetings in the next few weeks and not know quite how to act. Someone's going to make a quick movement and I'm going to immediately cover up my crotch, assuming someone's going to try and tip me. I loved doing the announcements this week in front of all 400+ people, getting to know so many different types of leaders and kids, hanging with our leaders and kids, and hanging with Shinn for long periods of time, which we don't get to do as often as I'd like. I'm so proud of how he leads this youth group, how he is such a great leader within the Evangelical Youth Fellowship Group, and what a great teacher and youth pastor he's become.

I finished up the evening hanging out with Shawn and Brad, going through my iPod, listening to tunes and talking about music. I was pulling out some old stuff, The Clash, The Who's Quadrophenia, Jethro Tull, and they knew it. Good to see that good rock is not dead. I then had a great conversation with a guy about where he's at in life and where he stands with Jesus. We talked for about an hour on what it means to trust him, where's he at in the process and what he's going to do to make sure that he doesn't walk away from camp forgetting where he's at right now. Another guy came in right after and shared with me some of the decisions he'd made this week about his girlfriend and in life. He's going to start coming to a breakfast small group that another guy and I have been doing, going through the book Wild at Heart together.

I'm going to be sad leaving all this, but I can't wait to see Cathie and the kids. When I let myself think about it, I miss them like crazy. It's always a tough transition from camp to Dad and husband, much tougher than from business traveler to Dad and husband.

We leave tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM. I can't wait.

You can see the Day 5 Velocity Pictures here.

Day 4 - Thursday
Wear the same shirt once, and it's a funny accident. Wear the same shirt on the next day accidentally and people start looking at you funny.

The whole thing I said yesterday about having lots of energy. That's done. I woke up this morning still pretty tired. I attended the Middle School session and was amazed when the speaker, Jason Raitz, was able to name all 150 kids by name in the session and continue to call on them during some of the interactive parts by name. We had 5 kids oversleep and ended up about 45 minutes late for session, so they ended up getting the chance to clean up one of the buses. Lucky them. After session, we hung out at the inflatable jousting event and I told them if any of our guys could beat me, I'd revoke their punishment. None did. One of them did get a lucky shot off right through the open spot in the helmet that cracked me hard enough in the head to see stars. After that some of the guys and I headed out to get some pictures around some of the odd statues on campus. We then went to the dollar store and got caught in another torrential downpour, returning to a tornado warning. We hung out in the basement for a while until it was over, and then played with all of the crap we bought from the dollar store (and oh, what crap it was). The guy's bought a bunch of plastic ninja swords and amused themselves for hours.

We had a huge group go help out at the Ronald McDonald home today. The guys cleaned and the girls did some administrative work to help out. The group was mostly Crossroads people, which I was very proud of. It was excellent to see such a selfless group from our church go. We need to teach service as a higher value to our kids and this was a great start.

I went to Jason's session today and again, he had a huge crowd. It's cool to see how he's grown as a teacher and how he tackles some of the most complex issues in a simple way. I watched him answer a one-on-one question that was posed to him about why as Christians we need to get out of our own little "Christian Worlds" with a simple object lesson. He took out a lighter and lit it, asking the kid how visible it was to the other people in the room. Not very, he replied. Jason then asked him how visible it would be to everyone if we turned off the lights and it was the only light source in the room. The kid got it. I can imagine Jesus answering the question the same way.

Bob Rays came down with Anne and Joey, hanging out with the kids in a way he does so well. He brought a bunch of barbecue stuff so that we can grill out tomorrow afternoon. I introduced Bob at the session tonight as Chauncy Billups and lots of kids were convinced it was him, or something close.

The worship band did a great acoustic set tonight for about 45 minutes that was awesome. After session all of our group went bowling, which was fun. Shinn came up with ways to bowl on each frame - backwards, laying down, wrong-handed, etc. and the kids had a blast.

It's fun for me to look out over these kids and remember back to when a lot of them were my kids back in 6th, 7th and 8th grade and to see where they're at now. Almost all of our leaders were my kids in 6th grade, and they've either already graduated or are just now graduating from High School and coming back to help at the same camp they went to for years. Kasey, Matt, Zach, Bobby, Drew and Jeff have done an awesome job this year, taking the whole experience to the next level for our church.

I talked to Cathie tonight and the kids are doing great. Having been gone since Saturday, it sucks to be away like this on top of all of the travel I do for work. I have to shut down that side of me to a degree and focus on stuff here at camp, otherwise it's almost too much of a bummer to deal with. I can't wait to see them on Saturday.

You can see the pictures from Day 4 here.

For some reason, the song The Beautiful Letdown by Switchfoot has been stuck in my brain this week. I keep coming back to the words in the song as I think about life, church and friendships - but in a good way - not resentful, but resigned to a degree that life isn't perfect and I'm blessed and content to a degree right where I'm at, disappointments and all. Kinda goes back to the brilliant words of my sage friend Brad who once said, "Expectations are resentments waiting to happen."

It was a beautiful letdown
When You found me here
Yeah, for once in a rare blue moon
I see everything clear
I'll be a beautiful letdown
That's what I'll forever be
And though it may cost my soul
I'll sing for free

We are a beautiful letdown
Painfully uncool
The church of the dropouts
The losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools
What a beautiful letdown
Are we salt in the wound
Hey, let us sing one true tune