"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction."
- Blaise Pascal

101 Things you didn't know about Rock and Roll

#33. Smoke On The Water" refers to a Frank Zappa show in Montreux in 1971, where someone lit a flaregun and "burned the place to the ground". This song is also being learned by 750 guitarists as you are reading this (just kidding but...hey have you ever met a guitarist who didn't know it?).

At our company-wide Global Communication meeting yesterday, our CEO Anne Mulcahy (6th most powerful woman in the world) was emphasizing great customer experiences, a theme within our company this year. She went through a couple of letters she'd received, and then proceeded to play the video from one of our customers, which included myself and one of my co-workers, Matt. I was on a plane during this and I hadn't been watching the web simulcast. I got back to my e-mail, having received a bunch of notes mocking me for having my mug up on the screen during the telecast. I've now gone global. Time to start referring to myself in third person. The.Dave.

I bought the latest David Crowder Band CD, A Collision, on iTunes yesterday. I've listened to it a couple times so far and I really like it. Very different from anything else they've done, musically it's a lot more complex then their previous albums. I think the lyrics have some amazing layers to them, some great, deep stuff.

Cool thing with getting this thing on iTunes - it included the video for the CD as well, which iTunes can now manage, all along with the booklet for the CD.

Jon, Beth and Libby came over for dinner before they go back to Memphis later this week. The kids dug seeing Jon and Beth, and had fun with Baby Libby, or as Emily calls her "Baby Liver".

Beth continually referred to herself in third person as Madeline and I did this, telling us "Aunt Bethie is scared that you're going to hurt yourself." Not sure if this is a doctor thing, or what.

Fashion Fauxpas

Ever accidently wear the same outfit as someone else to an event? Ok, this was on purpose.

Park Golf Outing

I just got back from Kansas where I had a chance to particpate in Park University's Golf Outing, which my company was the lead sponsor of. The event was at The National, a Tom Watson golf course and the greatest course I've ever played. The picture above is taken on a hole that's about 150 feet above the fairway below, with water on the right. In the outing, we had the option to pay the Club Pro $20 to hit it on our behalf. We were doing badly enough already that we figured we'd do it. I stepped up and hit the best shot of my life. Almost 300 yards into the wind.

The course was ridiculously wet. This was on the hole in one competition, a par 3 with water on the right. I hit a beautiful shot right at the tee, and the ball didn't bounce at all, instead it suck 2/3rds of the way into the ground. Overall, the weather was perfect, we laughed a lot, and lost a ton of golf balls. You can check out the pictures here.

Pitch Your Tents

Raitz sent me the audio for this, Noel video for this. Seems like the kind of mistake I'd make. Like saying I'm a big Ron Jeremy fan up on stage at camp last summer.

I'm probably the last person to discover this, but Yahoo's People Search engine is pretty amazing. Put in a name and it gives their name, address and phone number. Easy with great results. It's at people.yahoo.com

My brother Jon loves his dogs. A lot. To the point that it's a little uncomfortable for the rest of the family and his wife Beth. Jon also is a member of the Willie Wonka fan club because he loves the Oompa-Loompas. Check out the costume he's created for his dog for holloween. He sent pictures to Johnny Depp and Tim Burton:

Not quite sure what Jon is pointing at here.

Yesterday, Emily and I went up to the store to return a bunch of cans and bottles. In order to put a bottle in the machine, you have to turn it horizontal and feed it onto a conveyor belt. The first bottle she put in had about a quarter inch of very, very stale beer in it. As she tilted it back to put it on the belt, the beer spilled over onto her face. Her response was "I smell like throw-up". I leaned down, smelled her and had to agree. She did in fact smell like puke. As we walked through the store to get our bottle-return slips cashed, she held her nose. She got a bath when she got home.

Gabe's 5 Year Birthday Party

We headed to Lansing on Sunday to Susan and Kevin's house for Gabe's 5th birthday. My brother Jon and his wife Beth were up from Memphis, so the kids and I got to see my tiny new niece Libby for the first time. You'll notice that she's wearing mittens, which my brother Jon convinced Emily were because she was born with lobster claws for hands.


Ever since marrying my sister, my brother-in-law Kevin has been trying to bond with my dad. I think it finally worked. Kevin figured that by wearing old man shorts, similar to my dad's, the two of them would grow even closer. I think it worked.


We were all trying to figure this out. Jon was digging underneath Kevin and Susan's bed and came across this little "toy". Not sure where you put the batteries. You can click here to see the rest of the pictures from Gabe's 5 year old party. They're pretty much pictures of everyone holding Libby. Nothing real interesting there.

Kasey's 21st Suprise Party

We hosted a suprise party for Kasey, an extended member of our family, on Saturday night. She came over thinking we were going to barbecue for her birthday and instead was greeted with 30 of her closest friends and family. Click here to see Kasey's 21's Birthday Pictures

My baby sister Susan (aka Ursula, Boom, Parade, etc.) now has a blog. Dan's the only sibling without one.

I took Nate and his buddy Austin to the South Lyon Football game last night. Great game. SL lost in the last minute. I came back and Cathei and I watched the movie Crash. What a movie. Totally unpredictable and it really made me think hard throughout the movie about my own predjudices.

I watched MSU destroy Illinois this afternoon with some astounding offense. Cathie was out running errands for our party tonight so I was left to do Emily's hair and take her to a friend's birthday party. I should have taken a picture of her hair. You'd think with two of my three kids being girls I'd have a clue how to do hair. Typically, I rely on Madeline or one of the kids in my youth group to do her hair. I got out a brush, a head band and some water and wallah! She thought it was great.

I'm back into the book Searching for God Know's What. One of the big themes that's resonated with me in this book is how I tend to validate and redeem myself by comparing and stack-ranking myself with others based on what I have, what I can do, what I look like, etc. He puts it pretty weel in this piece, even using the metaphor of monkeys, which I can really connect with - (especially a monkey dressed up in armor trained to fight you):

It feels like we all have these little acts, these stupid things we do that we all hang our hats on. The Fall has made monkeys of us, for crying out loud. Some of us are athletes and others of us are physicists, and some of us are good-looking and some of us are rich, and we all are running around, in a way, trying to get a bunch of people to clap for us, trying to get a bunch of people to say we are normal, we are healthy, we are good. And there is nothing wrong with being beautiful or being athletic or being smart, but those are some of the pleasures of life, not life's redemption.

The thing about being a monkey is that it affects all our relationships. One writer said that what we commonly think of as love is really the desire to be loved. I know that is true for me, and it has been true for years, that often when I want somebody to like me, I am really wanting them to say that I am redeemed, that I am not a loser, that I can stay in the boat, stay in the circus, that my act redeems me.

After posting below on this article, i sent the author a note and got a response. I'm now actually dumber than I was before thanks to her response:

To: cmickels@wavecable.com
Subject: Youth Specialties

Cathy,
I've gotta tell this in the nicest way possible, but I'm dumber for having read the Youth Ministry Update around Youth Specialties. It is ill informed, ignorant and full of half truths. I encourage you to take a real look at Youth Specialties and actually attend one of the conference instead of bad mouthing it. Talk to youth pastors who leverage YS's great resources, training and encouragement and see if your opinions hold true.

Thanks,
Dave

Cathy Mickels wrote:

Dave,

Are you saying that you are willing to overlook error and false teachings such as yoga, contemplative prayer, and labyrinth walks introduced to the Body of Christ?

These spiritual practices are all contrary to the Word of God and they are rooted in eastern religions. Have you read the articles written in Youth Specialties material endorsing many of these eastern spiritual practices?

See for more information: http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/index.html

Out of love for the brethren and God's word, believers have a responsibility to warn others.

English preacher, J.C. Ryle, wrote in the 1800's, "...controversy in religion is a hateful thing...But there is one thing which is even worse that controversy and that is false doctrine tolerated, allowed and permitted without protest or molestation...I believe to maintain pure truth in the church men should be ready to make any sacrifice, to hazard peace, to risk dissension, and run the chance of division. They should no more tolerate false doctrine than they would tolerate sin."

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth...but you be watchful in all things..." 2 Tim.4

In Christ,

Cathy

Cathy,

Thanks for your note. Have you ever seen Christian Writers who bash movies, music and books which they've never actually seen? When I see it happen, I feel embarssed for how that person is ignorantly representing our faith to the world around us, fufilling a lot of the stereotypes that people have about Christians. I would encourage you to actually check out a Youth Specialties conference and talk to some of the people involved, like their president, Mark Ostreicher.

On a side note, I'd love to hear your explain how things like Yoga, Contemplative Prayer and Labyrinth Walks are contrary to the word of God. Are you familiar with some of the ancient practices of our faith like Lectio Divina?

I hope as you dig deeper into these things, you'll clarify some of your misconceptions.

Thanks,
Dave

I'm probably the last person to do this, but I finally installed Skype on my system. If you're not familiar with Skype, it's a PC based voice conferencing system. It works like an instant messaging client, but it lets you talk live with one or more people instead of typing. A trained monkey can set it up. Will and i were messing around with it tonight and the quality is amazing. I've installed Google Talk, which has an excellent voice client, but limits you to one conversation at a time. If you install the client, my user name is dave_kurt. Check it out. It seems pretty cool.

Yesterday morning I was at the gym lifting, doing standing curls, when I felt something pop in my upper back. It hurt badly. I couldn't turn my head in any direction without pain. I figured I'd strained a muscle. I iced it all day and then finally called Kirk at Triad. He told me to come in and he'd take a look at it. He laid me down on a table and cranked on my back, torquing me around in some pretty painful ways until he did something and all of the sudden it was back, about 90% better.

He then proceeded to ream me out for all of the things that he's been telling me all along that I'm doing wrong with my workout - too much upper body focused on my shoulders, chest and traps, not enough lower back, not enough range of motion stuff, too many heavy weights. He's got me on one of his funky workout routines with bands and some other stuff. I've learned that he knows best. Best I can figure it's the equivalent of someone bringing me a computer full of viruses after I've been telling them all along to install a firewall and anti-virus software. If Kirk's advice is good enough for the Red Wings when he was their trainer, I guess it's good enough for me.

I am dumber for having read this "alert" on Youth Specialties. If you're not familiar with YS, it's an organization devoted to helping youth pastor's love kids by providing them with encouragement, training and resources. As the Post Modern movement has moved through the Church, YS has introduced some cool stuff that dates back centuries from the early church and monks in terms of meditation and prayer labyrinths. YS has had a huge impact on me and most of the youth pastors I know. Apparently, they're evil.

I finally got my roof-mounted HDTV antenna installed today. I had someone come do it to make sure some of the grounding was done right. I was using a TV mounted antenna which was rally inconsistent in terms of the quality of the signal. This antenna is getting me channels all the way to Lansing.

Emily and I took Nate to basketball practice tonight and struck up a conversation with one of the other Dad's who it turns out is a cop. He looked nothing like a copy, more like a skater - tatoos and piercings, about my age, with four little kids. He works undercover with drug cases and SWAT and was a great guy and fascinating to talk to. It turns out he's the brother-in-law of one of our babysitters, Xtina.

Nate and I came home and made a big 'ol fire in the chimena and figure we needed to take some pictures for posterity's sake. We then went out to lay on the lawn together and look up at the stars and talk. As we talked, we noticed all of the bats flying overhead, one in particular that kept going back and forth over us. It seemed to keep getting lower and lower until it it actually came right on top of us and actually ran into Nate. We both screamed and headed inside.

These Napoleon Dynamite State Fair commercials are hilarious.

The vast majority of you are probably wondering just how I'm doing in my fantasy football league. You were all very excited when I destroyed Eli two weeks ago and are probably all curious as to how I did against big Ted. I crushed him this past weekend. I'm number two in our league in overall points, playing Bradly this coming weekend.

Watch this video from a recent Microsoft developer's conference. It's Napoleon Dynamite and Bill Gates acting together. Funny.

G-Luv Me Glasses

When Cathie, Kris and Susan went down to visit my brother Jon, they repossesed a set of family heirlooms that Jon had stolen from the family. We're now sharing these throughout the family. You can read the whole story here on Jon's blog.

The Joy's of a 4 Year Old

We should keep having kids just so I don't run out of people to take pictures of. Emily's recently learned how to apply her make-up and sparkles which is always applied judiciously.

Very interesting article around the randomization of MP3 playlists.

New TV

Have you ever slowed down to watch a car-wreck? Then you'll like the new VH1 show Breaking Bonaduce. It's a 30 minute reality show about a guy who's dysfunction makes me feel pretty good about my life. He's got a more addictive personality than Brad, which is impressive in and of itself.

Other good TV shows I'm investing in:
Prison Break - 24 meets McGyver.
My name is Earl - Jason Lee. Need I say more?
The Office - I work in a virtual office, this is all the office culture I get.
Best Week Ever - Back after a break. Almost as funny a show as Scrubs.
Survivor Guatemala - Haven't missed a season, don't plan on missing one now.
Nip/Tuck - The new season starts soon. We'll figure out who the guy in the mask is soon - like by the end of the season.

Shows I'm done with:
Criss Angel Mindfreak - Criss Angel is a little too into Criss Angel for my liking. His stuff is creepy and he sings his own theme song about himself.

After I put the kids to bed I lit a fire in my chiminea thing-a-ma-bob and was reading. Emily saw this as an opportunity to open her window and have a conversation with me. I finally told Emily to stay in bed and not talk out her window. She complied... Kinda. She has this fire engine that allows you to record your voice into it and play it back. She then held this up to the window and played her message for me, sticking to the letter of the law. I was just impressed at the loophole she found in things. Hope she doesn't grow up to be a lawyer (Sorry Stacy).

After hearing about how we'd forked Joe's lawn on Friday night, Jes Shinn (J's wife) decided that she and a few girls would toilet paper Joe's house and blame it on the guys. Good strategy. Poor Execution. The neighbors ended up calling the cops, the girls got caught by the police, they took down all of Jess's information and made the girls clean it all up. I laughed really hard when I heard this, imaginging Jess, one of the most moral people I know, getting written up by the fuzz.

After doing my MSU victory dance I went back over to the guy's retreat about 6ish and we grilled out some big 'ol steaks for the ten of us. The ten of us played some backyard football as the sun set. As it got dark, you couldn't see the ball until it was right in front of your face. We had a great time. We went back in and had our third session around character and integrity. We talked about King David and his balance of ability and integrity. The kids were brutally honest about how they saw themselves as people of integrity and we talked about where Jesus plays into the transformation in their lives. We then headed out to get some ice cream, found DQ closed so we headed up to the store to load up on stuff to eat. We went back and watched the movie The Transporter and I headed back around midnight since I was doing load-up this morning.

Will turned me on to this site called The Snowsuit Effect. It's an amazing collection of pictures and stories of homeless people in Detroit. The photographer captures amazing detail in the faces and clips of the conversations that make them more than just faces.

We're working hard this year to try and include more work with the poor and hurting in what we do with Fusion. It's a tough thing to try and instill in others, when I don't make it a priority in my own life. We have a woman at our church who is down in Detroit every weekend bring coats, school supplies, food and all sorts of stuff to the people on the street. She's got a huge heart for it. I want that kind of heart, at least part of me does.

Nate and I watched the MSU vs. Notre Dame football game this afternoon and had a big smile on face. My smile was independent of how State did. The game was in High Definition and I just sat there loving the picture, trying to explain to Emily why the picture is so good. Nate explained to me today that he's willing to root for Michigan State as long as they're not playing Michigan. When that happens, he's a Wolverine. This is what happens when we let him hang out too much with his Uncle Ed.

Nothing uniquely soothing about it....

I've never found gum blogworth... Until now. I bought Wrigley Eclipse Gum, thinking it sounded good - not thinking that I wanted to have the taste of cherry cloraseptic throat medicine in my mouth. I ate one piece and then kept it in my pocket the rest of the time trying to get other people to try this and see how bad it is. I have no idea if it gives you powerful fresh breath because I didn't keep it in my mouth long enough to try. They should have a footnote next to the "Uniquely Soothing" part of the label, reading "Even crap has soothing qualities".

I wouldn't want this woman as a stalker. She's rather creepy.

McKenna Grace

Our friends Dana and Eli had their baby on Thursday. Sadly enough for Eli, it's a girl, making him outnumbered four to one. Ouch. Not sure why everyone's so interested in the baby's weight, but it seems like one of those important stats to throw out there, so here it is: 6lbs 11ozs. In empathy to women, I guess if I'd passed a large object out of a bodily orifice, I'd want to understand the size of object's that everyone else passed out of theirs.

High School Guys Retreat

We began our high school guys retreat last night. We're doing a few of these throughout the year, taking 7 or 8 guys (Jess is doing a similar thing with the girls) for a weekend. Throughout the weekend, we do multiple hour-long devotionals, centered around the idea of what it means to be men and followers of Jesus. A cool part of this for me is that these 8 guys have been a part of our youth group since 6th grade, all of them are now in High School.

We started off at 6, went grocery shopping en-mass, picking up all kinds of junk food for the weekend. We picked up pizza and headed out to Brad's cottage just in time to catch an amazing sunset. We started off watching parts of the movie Gladiator ("Do you like Gladiator movies, son?") and then we started off looking at King David and what made him the man that he was. We focused a lot on how we see ourselves, how we think others see us and how God looks at us as men. The first night a retreat like this can be a tough one to get their attention with something like this for a lot of reasons, but during the hour and a half we went through this stuff they were engaged, vulnerable and went deep, really laying some stuff out there that suprised me. A good chunk of the time was spent journaling on the questions and then talking about what we put down.

Enough serious stuff, we decided we need to go on a mission - from God? At about midnight, we headed out to the store and bought about 1,000 forks. The woman at Kroger's had no idea why, and you may not either. Here's why:

We headed over to our Pastor's house and proceeded to cover his entire front lawn with all of these forks. It looked great, only wish we had more. Since I'd been traveling all week, I wanted to head home to hang with the family. I'm heading back later this evening to finish things out.

We were supposed to go to the Renissance Festival today, but Nate and Maddie are sick, and Emily's on her way to being sick. The kids were up early, Cath let me sleep in. We've been hanging out, having a lazy Saturday morning today.

Chuck Norris??

I was flipping through channels in my hotel room tonight trying to find Survivor when I came across Chuck Norris on TV... Not just TV, but TBN - Trinity Broadcasting Network - some of the cheeziest televangelist crap out there. Chuck and his wife (mostly his wife) were on there talking about raising kids. They flashed his web site on there (www.chucknorris.com), which I went to. It actually has a "Christian Area" section on it, which I found funny. Apparently the rest of the site is going to hell. In his defense, he was not a total wanker on the show, but the interviewer was.

Scaling a Church

andy stanley, the senior pastor of a mega-church in suburban atlanta (north point community church), is an interesting guy. Interesting comment he made in responding to a discussion on church sizing:

Our theory is that a church should be allowed or encouraged to grow large enough to sustain a viable high school and middle school ministry. A successful student ministriy requires critical mass in order to capture and keep the attention of their target audience. So the question becomes, how many aduilts are required to generate critical mass for a student ministry? That depends upon the demographic of a community.

If you are a twenty six year old seminary student with a couple of kids in diapers that may not sound like a great answer. But if you are a church planter with 150 people and one of your elders just informed you that her family is leaving because you don’t have anything for her thirteen year old, it makes painful sense.

What a great youth-ministry centric additude on church growth.

Fantasy Football

Let the world know that I beat Eli in week 1 of fantasy football in our league. This is like Luke Skywalker whooping Yoda in a lightsaber duel. Bob Rays and Family, Eli Schultz, Brad Jeffrey, Ted, Matt Gielow, Jim Jeffrey and Mark Niemi are in the league.

Thought this picture of my niece and nephew was cute. Ben on the left is roughly 3 months old and Libby on the right is a few weeks old. Cathie keeps trying to tell me how small she is, guess this picture puts it into perspective.

Not sure exactly what this means, but Emiliy told Cathie today that she wishes I was a girl. That way she could sit on Cathie's lap all day and I could go out and do the "girl stuff" like going to the store and working on the computer. Go figure.

Yesterday was Emily's first day of her second year of pre-school. She couldn't wait to start. We've had all three kids go through the same co-op pre-school in town with the same teachers.

What I want for Christmas

Someone please get me a tambourine with my image painted along side a portrait of Stevie Nicks. That would be the gift that keeps on giving. (You've gotta check out the link to see all of the other tambourines portraits).

I took Madeline and her friend Madelyn to their first cheerleading class last night where they met up with their other friend Madeline. The three of them are great friends, but when the three of them are together, they create an un-holy trinity of energy. There are 35 girls in this class and one teacher, a 20 year woman. Amazingly enough, she keeps them all in line and focused. I amused myself by counting the 43 times that Ms. Christine referred to Ms. Christine in third person (Ms. Christine likes this, Ms. Christine wants to see smiles and spirit fingers!).

As you know, the Lions didn't only win, but embarssed the Green Bay Offense and Brett Favre. Throughout the game, we saw some weird Packers fans. I don't claim to understand why they do what they do, especially their love for cheese. I guess I can kind of understand the "Cheesehead" thing they do, but this? No clue. Nice of them to pose with Brad for a picture.

Lions Game

Brad, Eli, Jim and I went to the Lions game today, thanks to Bob Rays season tickets. We had $1 bets on just about everything in the game: from the kids race in the pre-game show, individual play calls and the coin toss. It's half time, we're up 7 to 3, lions. Apparently, Eli hates all Lions fans. Odd.

What you're looking at here is the new van of J and Jess Shinn, our Youth Pastor and wife at Crossroads. A bunch of people in the church kicked in to get them a new ride after Jess's car died, and they just couldn't fit enough kids in their Ford Focus. We proceeded to break it in by trying to see how many kids we could fit in it. We got to 25 before we were worried about the tires popping. Check out how low the suspension is to the ground in the picture. It was cool to see the people of our church come around a need like this (disclaimer: In saying that my church is good at something, I am in no way saying we are the only church that is good at something, or saying that all other churches are bad at things, or that my church is perfect in any way.)

Airshow

What a beautiful day! The kids and I grabbed Slurpees and went to the model air show at Island Lake Park. The plane in the picture was a seven foot float plane that crashed and got totaled. One this big runs about $5k.

Cathie, Susan (my sister) and Kris (my sister-in-law) flew down last night to Memphis to see my brother Jon, my sister-in-law Beth and the new baby Libby (Lulu). Cathie's Mom came up last night to hang out with the kids until I got home from Kansas City this morning. I got up about 4something for the airport after waking up around 2 to a strange knocking noise. In a daze, I tried to figure out what the noise was until I figured out that it was coming from the room right next to mine, the bed knocking against the wall on the other side. It was followed up by some other noises which I tried to sleep through. Apparently the couple next door didn't have to get to catch an early flight. The kids, their friends, Will and I went to the park tonight with their friends and grabbed some ice cream afterwards. Will and I hung out, talked for a while and then watched our favorite Bruce Campbell movie, Army of Darkness. I'm going to the Lions game on Sunday with some friends, thanks to my friend Bob.

Parachuting

I finally got the video and some of the pics from the tandem jump I did last weekend.


Video coming shortly....

Google Talk

The new Google Talk is nothing special as an Instant Messaging client, but as a voice conferencing system is phenomenal. Out of the box with my laptop it worked great, no echo, perfect sounds, no latency at all while talking with a co-worker in Kansas City. To sign up for Google Talk, you need a Google Mail ID, download the Google Talk client and start by adding me via davejkurt at gmail.com

Wow, came across this in a friend's e-mail signature line today. I've felt the same way lately

"All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mecenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love--a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin."

C.S. Lewis

Come Thou Fount

Listening to David Crowder's version of this song this morning and these lyrics really struck me:

O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above
Come Thou Fount, David Crowder

This is an exerpt from an e-mail from a friend and co-worker down in New Orleans:

Bill (her husband) was able to get to our street, but had to park and wade in. Our house sustained minimal damage from the hurricane itself, however the flood that occurred when the levee broke is the biggest issue for us and most of the city. Our neighborhood is like a lake. The water is full of unspeakable things. The stench is overwhelming, and the moisture is causing mold and fungus...my sister and I took my Mom down yesterday (9 hour trip - 18 inches of water in her house), and the mold and fungus is already 4 feet up the wall. Jefferson Parish (where we live) is closing today for 3 weeks- so we are unclear what will be salvageable after that time. Insurance typically does not cover mold, so we can't predict what the outcome will be. Bill was able to get into his building in downtown New Orleans because Entergy is his tenant. We still do not know if he has a job, so I better step up my game!! He said it is unbelievable to see areas that did not even get water, and others that have water to the roof. Still very confusing, but moving forward. Please pray about our housing situation- that is my most pressing challenge, and the one that is the most important for my girls to get back to normalcy.

I read the following expert the past couple of days from the book Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller, and it's really stuck with me, enough so that I keep going back to it.

Galatians 5:19-21 (The Message)
19It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; ²⁰trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; ²¹the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.

One of the big themes that I've taken from this book is around the idea of where we get our identidy from: Who really tells us who we are in this world. He uses this lifeboat metaphor as an example of how we line people up on either side of us to figure out where we stand in line. I'm faaar from perfect, and can be the epitomy of what Paul's talking about in Galatians 5 above in terms of getting my own way. Every now and then, more and more frequently over the past 12 years, I get glimpses of who I am in God's eyes, and short-term it changes me, and leaves a mark long term, bringing me closer and closer to where I want to be.

The author, Donald Miller, goes on to add:

Imagine how a man's life would be changed if he trusted that he was loved by God? He could interact with the poor and now show partiality, he could love his wife easily and not expect her to redeem him, he would be slow to anger because redemption was no longer at stake, he could be wise and giving with his money ecause money no longer represented points, he could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual to-do list was a worthless pursuit, he would have confidence and the ability to laugh at himself, and he could love people without expecting anything in return. It would be quite beautiful, really.

Today's Nate and Maddie's first day of school. They were both pretty excited about it. Madeline had her clothes all laid out on the floor, in the order you'd wear them. My brother Jon and I used to do the same thing on the first day. Maddie's had her outfit picked out for weeks, Nate not so much. Emily starts her second year of pre-school next week.

My brother Dan turned me onto this cool site called seatguru.com. The site shows all of the different airplanes for the various airlines and gives you the pros and cons of the different seat options. Because Northwest flys DC-9's mostly in the US, most of the things on here are pretty well known. This is nice when you have to fly the one-off airline, or Northwest suddenly switches up planes on you.

Labor Day Picnic

We had our billionth annual Kurt Labor day picnic at Kevin and Susan's today. Everyone was there except Jon and Beth and little Lulu (official new nickname for Libby which Madeline came up with). It was a beautiful day, so we hung out outside, barbecued and celebrated Dan, Kris, Cathie and my birthday (yes, my birthday was in April). Kevin has a riding lawn mower with a cart attachment, so we took turns driving the kids around the yard as fast as possible. Dan made allie cry when he took off too quickly and caused her to hit her head. Jon did not make anyone cry this year, but then again, he wasn't there. It was noticed again that with Jon's absence came a strange sense of harmony among the family: Very little of kids crying and family members being picked on by each other. Harmony is overrated - Jon keeps things interesting.

Will brought a friend to the picnic, his "good friend" Kate. Apparently the two of them have been spending quite a bit of time together, and a good source tells me they've been sitting together in church.

You can see all of the pictures here.

Our friend and very frequent baby-sitter Kasey left for school today. She came by to say goodbye to the kids on her way to Spring Arbor to start her junior year. Kasey was one of the first kids in my youth group back when she was in sixth grade, now she's getting ready to turn 21 and has become a good friend of ours. She's like family now.

Just read this interesting article on apologetics in a post-modern culture.

Bob Rays truly is Chauncy Billups. If you Google images on his name, you come up with Bob's picture as the number two image:

I went over to Bob Ray's house this morning to help clean up after the bash. I got there around 10 when most of the Ray's boys were still sleeping. Bob's youngest son Joe and I ran around with a megaphone waking up the rest of the boys. Made my morning.

Cathie's Suprise Birthday Party

I can't believe I actually pulled it off! I (along with a ton of help from Bob and Ann Rays) put on a suprise party for Cathie to celebrate her 35th birthday. I'd wanted to do this for a long time, and got things going about 5 or 6 weeks ago. Bob and Ann let us use their beautiful house, which has a huge pool and party cabana, helped by the fact that Bob really knows how to throw a big party. Bob also looks just like the infamous Deteroit Piston, Chauncy Billups, as seen below.

Cathie and I talk about everything, so there must have been about 400 times where I almost mentioned that I'd gotten an e-mail, phone call, etc related to the party over the past month. I even waited until the day of the party to let Nate and Madeline in on the secret. Cathie and I had a date setup for her birthday to go out to P.F. Changs with a 7:45 reservation. Right before we left, Bob called me and told me about some tickets he'd scored for me. I explained to Cathie that she and I had front row seats to the Green Day concert on Tuesday as part of her birthday present, so we needed to stop by Bob's to pick them up, which happened to be right on the way. We stopped in, went to the back, and that's when everyone let loose with the big "Suprise!" Cathie had no clue what was going on. I explained to her that it was a suprise party and her response was "For who?". I reminded her that her birthday had been Thursday and explained that it was for her. Jen and Lori ran up and gave her a big hug and presented her with the first part of their gift to her. On the invite, I gave people the option of either wearing something Hawiian or a T-shirt with a picture of Cathie on it. Two of Cathie's closest friends, Jen and Lori, chose the latter.

Jen and Lori got Cathie a whole "old lady" gift set, complete with a purple hat (part of the whole purple hat society thing that many women of Cathie's old age are a part of), huge granny underwear, a nice mumu, dentures cleaners and depends, each with a little note attached to it explaining how it would help her through her old age. The hat made it's rounds throughout the evening, making it on just about everyone. The party started out with three distinct groups of people: Church people, Neighbors and Family. It didn't take long for the groups to mingle and have a great time. The party went most of the night, with us leaving around 2A.M.



You can view some of the pictures here.

This is funny... Just found out from my friend Lori that the cool swing at the park I mentioned earlier was actually a swing for the handicapped. Either way, it's a cool swing. Just glad there are no pictures of me swinging in it.

Katie the Catapillar

We have a bunch of tentworm nests in our trees, resulting in a ton of 'catapillars'. Emily keeps collecting them and putting them in this jar with leaves and grass for them to eat. They last about a day before they die. She came down last night crying because of how sad she'd be when they turn into butterflies.

Parent of the Year Award

Cathie and Emily were hanging out when Emily discovered a bug outside. Normally not blogworthy, except for this. She said, "Mom, look at the f**king bug run!" Cathie wasn't sure she'd heard correctly so she asked her again, and Emily repeated it. Apparently she thought the word meant "fast". Cathie explained that the word wasn't a very nice word (somehow she was able to explain which word without dropping the F-Bomb) and asked Emily where she'd heard it. (Here's where I lose my nomination for parent of the year) Emily responded, "Daddy said it once." Nice throwing me under the bus Emily.

Parachuting

My friend Mark and I went skydiving today and it was amazing! We were supposed to go yesterday but couldn't because of the high winds. We got to the drop zone around 9:30AM filled out about 10 pages of liability disclaimers and went through our orientation, which involved mostly watching another disclaimer telling us we didn't have to do this, there's no such thing as a perfect parachute, pilot or instructor, etc.

We went out side, went through a five minute instruction on what was going to happen, and then suited up. We met our tandem jump instructor, suited up and got ready to jump. Mark and I, our tandem partners and the cameraman loaded up along with 15 other jumpers. From 13,500 feet, we could see the Cedar Point amusement park about 3 hours away. When the time came, we were all hooked up and we waddled towards the opening after everyone in line in front of us jumped, all within about 20 seconds. We kneeled on the door frame as I looked down over 2 miles. Next thing I knew we were out the door, flipping over and over until we stablized. Our camera person was right there in front of us as we got into our freefall position. We did some spins, waved to the camera and continued falling as it sunk in just how high I was in the air, how fast I was falling. You're barely concious of the fact that you're attached to someone else. At about 5,000 feet he popped the chute and continued going down. It went from being loud and fast to totally quiet and slow. We did some spins in the air and we had a nice landing. This got me thinking that I want to go back and continue pursuing my parachuting license, which I'd begun about 7 or 8 years ago when Noel, Matt Gielow and I went for the first time. I'd done a bunch of jumps since then, but never went after year. I'll post the video as soon as I get it.

I was supposed to go parachuting today out at Tecumseh today with my friend Mark, but it ended up being too windy. I've jumped static line 7 or 8 times, but never tried a tandem freefall. They take up you up to 10,000 feet and you jump, freefall and land. We're going to try again tomorrow morning.

This evening, Nate and I went out and got some ice cream and took it over to the Park. We hung out on top of the bill hill at McAttie Park and talked about life, and after eating our ice cream tried out this new giant swing they've got there. This thing is very cool. It's a big plastic chair and you pull a harness over you. This thing lets you launch up about 20 feet in the air pretty securely. We came back and watched the Lions pre-season game. Nate starts flag football in a few weeks, so he wanted to see how it's done... And really... Who better to teach him than the Lions?

This is funny. New reporter down in Columbia filming a segment on soldiers burning drugs as he progressively gets more and more stoned.

I'd like to meet the guy who has a He-Man action figure and a Jesus action figure and decides he needs to create a photo story-line about the two of them rolling a joint together. He's gotta be interesting. Weird, going to hell, but interesting.

Today is Cathie's birthday. I called her this morning from the airport and she shared with me that Madeline had woken her up with breakfast in bed - a bowl of ice cream. What more could you ask for?