I'm sitting in the airport with Bill on my way to Rochester. I just got the body cavity search through security. I was carrying a tube of A & D ointment in my pocket (to keep my new tattoo lubed up), and the tube apparently has a metal liner. As I emptied my pockets, my "friend" and coworker Bill yelled from across the airport asking why I carried a tube of KY in my pocket, as the crowd turned and stared. The security guy looked at me, walked it back through to the metal detector, ran it through with a crowd watching and handed it back to me. Kinda akward.

In line with the quote below from Alice Cooper, Carole sent me this article on Celebrities who love the GOP:

The sad truth is, the real difference between Democrats and Republicans is that their celebrities are, like, actually famous and ours are, well, singing weirdly erotic songs about Our Savior. Metaphorically, anyway. It's not so much that Republican celebrities are all Christian rockers, it's that they all pretty much adhere to the Christian Rock Principle—it sounds like rock, for about one second you think it's rock, but it isn't quite. Something's off. The performers and celebrities who will appear at the RNC certainly sound famous—they have Grammys and awards and huge followings, apparently—but they aren't, quite. At least when compared to Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the rest of the famous crowd that swanned around Boston during the Democratic National Convention.

I've been thinking a lot about where I'm at politically over the past few days. Economically and Socially, I'm a conservative. I believe that Abortion is wrong, I believe that the government is not the best care-taker of the people. I believe that President George W. Bush is a good president. Unlike a lot of conservative christians, I believe that you can be a christian and a democrat. I'm a republican. I'll vote for Bush. I believe that if Jesus were walking around today, he would probably be considered a liberal by many. I remember how taken aback I was at camp one year when teaching a class on the changing church. I asked kids to tell me about their church and one of my students described my church, Crossroads, as a liberal church. I asked her to describe what she meant by liberal and her response was "We're not picky about who we love." That really helped me get my hands around understanding what kind of liberal Jesus would be.

On the recent proliferation of Rock Stars playing for John Kerry:
"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal." --Alice Cooper

In a previous post I complained about the way some people choose to share their thoughts in less than loving way. I had a friend call me and share with me their thoughts on something I'd written earlier. The thing that struck me even more than what they shared was how they shared it. They approached me in such a kind and humble way, not as if their thoughts were capital-T truth, but just something for me to chew on. It was a great example for me of what it looks like to lovingly share my thoughts with others. Back to that whole idea of being Salt and Light to the world around me. She was a great example of that to me.

This is an interesting site called BlogPulse that looks at blogging trends based on blog content and links.

Jason, Will and I went to Chili's for lunch and Jason happened to be dressed exactly like all of the Chilis wait staff. At one point one of the waiters came up and chewed Jason out for sitting down on the job. I was nominated to pray for lunch but quickly lost the job when I stated the condition that the three of us to hold hands publiclly as we pray. Go figure.

Apparently, I'm a model. If you're picutre show's up on a web site advertising someone's services, that's a model by my definition. You can see more pictures of equally handsome families at www.portraitsetc.com

On Friday night, I had a bunch of guys over to play poker. I had a few guys from my neighborhood, my brother-in-law Kevin some buddies from church and a couple of new guys from church that haven't really connected with anyone yet. We don't play for big stakes - most of the reason behind it is to get together and hang out. We started at 8 and finished up about 2. I ended up ahead in the end. I provided the drinks and told the guys to bring snacks, "like chips and salsa or something". What do you think this imaginative bunch brought? Chips and Salsa. We had a table full of 10 bags of tortilla chips.


On Saturady we had Steven's birthday party. Standard Kurt party where we sat around, told stories about when we were kids, and laughed. Only person missing was Will (Who by the way went on a big date last night, be sure and ask him about it). My sister-in-law's brother owns a Quizno's in Ohio, hence the van. He started telling me about how they got this, and it turns out, I could have my mini-van covered in a large picture of me, saying something funny. Check this site out: autowraps.com for mroe info.

On Saturday night, I went to a party at Bob Ray's house. Bob just got a new pool and he had a pool party to celebrate. Unforunately, the weather sucked. Brad, Will and I were sitting around, trying to figure out a way to liven things up a little bit. My theory that "Betting on something always makes it more fun" was itching to be applied. Bob's pool had this automated robot cleaner that would cruise around the bottom of the pool in no particular pattern sucking up gunk. We got a bunch of pennies and put a buck into the pot for each penny. We then stood around around the pool cheering for the robot to suck our penny up first. A lot of people got into this, and pretty soon we had a big crowd involved, all standing around the pool cheering for this robot. It was like being at a horse race watching people scream as the cleaner would get close to there penny.

This might seem nerdy to some, but I just got an app that let's me submit blog entries from my phone. Like this one.

Here's my favorite line that I heard from a recent visitng missionary:
"Those twelve muslims that came to know Jesus are twelve muslims that won't be flying planes into buildings or spreading anthrax."

I'm getting stuff with my new Treo phone straightened out. All of my contacts and calendar entries in outlook (hundreds of them) were corrupted and I was pulling my hair out for a while. I ended up moving to a different contact synchronization software package. If you're considering this phone, here are some random thoughts on it:
- Mediocre battery life, and no external battery to swap out
- E-mail being pushed out to it is awesome
- You almost have to use a headset with this thing, because it fits so awkwardly on your ear.
- There's some great software out there for it, but most of it just helps get the phone's interface and functionality to where Microsoft's Smartphone's interface and functionality are already at.
- The syncronization is painfully slow, plus it's not an automated thing. You have to hit a button, instead of having it sync as you make changes, as the Smartphone does.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Microsoft fan. The best of both worlds would be the Treo 600 hardware running on the Smartphone OS. I have an old laptop connected to my company VPN that does nothing but sync my Outlook with Verizon's server, which in turn pushes and pulls things back out to my phone. Seems to be working well so far.

Here's a list of the search criteria that people have ended up at my site with:

Resital isreal
Girls with tounges sticking out pictures
Wild mind dave austin
chopper pictuersburning man attire photo
kids fun mud picsgalyans airsoft guns
pantsing storiespoop stain underwear pics
dave matthews wife picture
dodgeball the movieborder cantina northville
jeb mcgruder
how to do the robot dance

I love this idea of being okay with who God has called your church to be wether or not people jump on board or not.

The Relevant Church: A New Vision for Communities of Faith:
Churches need to remember one of the basic phenomena of human attraction: The least likable kid on the playground was always the one trying hardest to be liked. The cool kids, on the other hand, were popular partly because they didn't seem to care if they were liked; they were doing their thing whether or not you were watching. Those were the kids the rest of us openly (or secretly) admired (or envied). The theological version of this grade-school truism is that the Church will be most provocative and alluring when it is being itself, being who God has constituted it to be, that is, being a mini-society that proclaims the person and work of Christ, and imitates His sacrificial service. The Church will be least relevant when it is caught in the act of reinventing itself to gain more friends.

At some point during this whole debacle at our church, Cathie and I and a number of families had to come to the conclusion that they were comitted to our church, whether we're doing that with 5 other families or 500. I watch as some families leave because they've found something or somone that they disagree with in the church. Interestingly enough, many of these same families are on their third or fourth church in ten years. I'm hoping that down the road, they look back and figure out that maybe it wasn't the about the churches. (Warning: self righteous discord approaching) Cathie and I have been at Crossroads for ten years and I see huge value in sticking it out no matter what. I could no more bail on this church than I could on my family. I'll admit that my universe can take on a dave-centered orbit more often that most, but I'm just glad that in moments of clarity that I see beyond myself and see the larger story of what it means to stick it out a band of believers that are comitted to the same core values. If it's not evident from my blog, I'm annoyed by the people that have jumped ship, or even threatened to jump ship if they don't get their own way. They can bite me.

We had a fun weekend. On Friday, Cathie and I went out on date for our anniversary. Nothing fancy. We went out for dinner, and to see Collateral (more on that later). We spent a lot of time reflecting on everything we've gone through and accomplished in our first twelve years of marriage. Collateral was a decent movie, but an odd crowd. People were laughing at really strange times, like big killing scenes.

On Saturday, we had a block party, and a friend of mine from work, Newton, was in town from Louisiana joined us there as well. You could throw this guy into a crowd of any type of people and he could make friends. He's a great guy. There was one akward moment when one of my neighbors was telling Newton a racist joke - figuring a guy from the deep south must be a racist. Newton and I stood there as he nudged me, telling me not to say anything. Newton's wife is black. He was gracious enough not to want to embaress the guy in a large crowd, and we got a laugh about the whole thing later.

Sunday, we hung out and did a whole lot of nothing during the day. In the evening, Cathie and I went out to dinner before a church meeting that we had that evening. It was a meeting to get some closure on things and move on. Overall, it was a good meeting.

I've been listening to this 10 CD teaching on Leadership and Spirituality by Dallas Willard that I got from Brad; and I ran out of gas. These two things are related.

First, let me say that Dallas is one of the smartest guys I've ever read or seen. He's a philosopher of the C.S. Lewis quality. A lot of what he says I have to listen to many times before I get it. One thing that I did get out of this was the simple concept of how we as Christians are to be both Salt and Light to the world around us. I figured this was worth pounding in my brain, so I wrote it on a scrap of paper and put it on my dash. The great thing about this is everytime I get in my car, I see it, and I've been forced to think about the situation I'm either going into or returning from and how I did or am going to do at being Salt and Light in that situation. It's been great at getting me to reflect at how I act.

I was driving back from Kalamazoo today and in the middle of nowhere, I ran out of gas. Why didn't I notice my "Low Fuel" light? My "Salt and Light" scrap of paper was covering the warning light.

I got my new Treo 600 phone. It's good, not great. The main benefit to this phone is the thumb-keyboard on it, coupled with the ability for e-mail/calendars to be pushed to the phone, and for it's instant messaging capabilities. The interface is the Palm OS, and compared to my old Samsung i600 Smartphone, it blows. The Smartphone has far superior syncing abilities, a much better interface and graphics quality. The only reason I'd buy the Treo vs. the Smartphone is for the internet capabilities. The smartphone had them, but they were pretty cumbersome. Verizon just recently upgraded their mobile syncing capabilities on both sides with Intellisync's mobile sync product, and it works pretty well. Word to the wise: Back up your contacts and calendar before installing this thing. I didn't, and hosed up my calendar and contacts badly, both of which are sacred to me.

Suprisingly enough, my new phone did not complete my being or provide me the neverending joy that I was sure it would. I am still an incomplete human being, in spite of having a new toy. I know I'll find the perfect gadget out there that will meet my expectations and bring me life to the fullest. Or maybe not.

I get annoyed when I hear people talk about looking for a church "where they can be fed". It strikes me as such a self-centered concept of church. I agree that "being fed" is one part of church, but from what I've read about the biblical concept of church (i.e. Acts 2:42-47), church also involves worship, service and celebration. There's this consumer mentality to sit there and say "feed me, feed me" and when you're not just being fed the way you want to be, or if you hit a bump in the road, you bail and find another church. It's an easy out. No need to go deep, no need to be authentic. Just move on. No need to stay with it - if you disagree with something, or someone ticks you off - bail. For some reason, it feels good to get mad at people who are doing this. Nothing like good, self-righteous anger to soothe the soul.

I'm sure most of the people who read my blog know that we've had some pretty challenging times going on at my church. With my wife as one of the elders of our church, I've had a unique perspective and have sat back and watched the way people have interacted with my wife and the other elders as they've gone through this. I can understand people being upset about what's going on, and knowing that the elders of our church are learning how to process something like this as they go. There are certain people in our church who have been downright condescending and mean in how they deal with the leadership of our church. I'm sure they believe they have their reasons, but it's like they lose sight of the fact that the elder team is made up of real people - people who deserve to be treated with love, grace and respect. It's amazing how people like to "give advice" in a nice "Christian" way, when what they're really trying to say is "you don't lead as well as I would, you don't pray as much as I do, listen to God like I do, or love Jesus like I do". I would love to have the elders post the e-mails they've received on a bulletin board for the world to see. I know that in any group there's always going to be one or two, but I guess I thought my church was different. I'm not saying I didn't think the church was full of broken people just like me, I just thought we loved each other differently, and that was our hallmark. I heard a good definition of love: "Taking a hit and returning a hug." I'd like to poke some of them in the eye. I'm not sure that's covered in 1 Corinthians 13. I'm amazed at how well the elders of our church love people, even after they continue to be complete butt-monkeys to them. It's these people who complain the loudest who've been the first to leave when things haven't gone their way. Don't let the door hit you in the butt.

I'm sure this would piss a lot of Christians off:
Religious leaders and experts attended a Texas Faith Network conference in Austin on Tuesday to weigh a question: How would Jesus vote? Author James C. Moore offered his view to the moderate to left-leaning crowd of 250: "If ever there were a bleeding-heart liberal, it was Jesus Christ. I think the carpenter from Galilee was the original Democrat" ...

Joe has a T-Shirt he likes to wear that says "Jesus was a liberal".

There's a big boxing competition going on in Kansas City. Apparently there are over 1,500 boxers in town, and they all want waffles. I went out to breakfast this morning with one of sales guys and one of my employees at the Waffle House. It was packed (with Boxers) and we were waiting for a table. Four bix boxers came in and sat down at the table we were waiting for. I explained that it was our table and the sales guy makes a sarcastic crack about how we were just standing around waiting, not really wanting to eat. These guys didn't get it and wanted to throw down right there. Lesson: Never make sarcastic jokes with people who enjoy getting hit in the head and can in turn hit you in the head very hard.

I was out a customer site in Kansas City, and one of our customers and I were dressed exactly alike - from the pants and shirt, down to the belt buckle and facial hair. How akward. And lucky for him.

Found this on gizmodo.com

The dDrive is a concept from industrial design firm Creganna that would be designed to store medical records, security clearances, etc., and while I don't have a huge problem with that in and of itself, I don't think I'll be giving up one of my teeth just for something that's going to be obsolete in a year. At least not just for storage - get a Bluetooth-enabled cellphone headset in there and we'll talk about it.
Read - A Blue Tooth Implant

Flying from Traverse City to Kansas City yesterday, I saw a guy who gets the "Tool of the week" award. He boarded the plane with his wife and two children. He sends his wife and kids back to coach while he plops down in first class. I had a buddy of mine do the same thing on his way to Hawaii, so we now call this doing a "Kandra". Last time Cathie and I traveled together, a long flight to Palm Springs, I gave her my first class seat and got stuck next to a crying baby in coach for 4 1/2 hours.

I had a work-team retreat up north with some of the guys I work with. We'd throughout the day and head out in the evening to do some wakeboarding. Bill's got an amazing boat - a Mastercraft X10 Wakeboard Edition and does some pretty amazing stuff behind it. We're in the middle of nowhere, with sketchy cell phone coverage and a wireless network setup - and still being able to be productive. Gotta love working virtual.

I got an e-mail today that really suprised me from a guy at church I was joking with throughout the service. Go figure - God can actually use my immaturity, inappropriateness and humor in a good way.

dave,i am not sure this past sunday if you were joking around with me because i just happened to be someone you were acquainted with who was sitting behind you OR if by some chance, you were "lead" to converse with me or "picked up on something," but i just wanted to say -- your humor was most appreciated (i mean that seriously).sunday was not a great day, and i really had no desire to be at crossroads sunday morning. God & i had a rather heated discussion earlier that morning (i did all the talking -- hard to believe i know). to be honest, lately it seems that "my walk" is always up hill and there seems to be a lot of poo along the walkway. your humor this past sunday helped & for that i am grateful.

Four musicians whose music I can't stand:

1. Eddie Money
2. John Cougar Melloncamp
3. Tom Petty
4. Richard Marx (Honorable Mention)
   

This is my mantra today:
To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal
Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle.

Cathie, Jen and Lori went to Michigan Adventure on their way back from Manistee. Their sole purpose was to go on the ripcord ride. This is a ride that puts you and your two closest friends side by side in a harnass while you're pulled up 200 feet in the air. When you pull your ripcord, you fly down and forward, like a pendulum. They bought the video, but I haven't seen it yet.

My brothers and I (Dan, Me, Kevin and Jon) went to the Lions pre-season opener against Pittsburgh last night at Ford Field. Notice that between the four of us, we're dressed a little different. There's a reason. Dan had gotten the tickets from work and we had great seats at the club level, which equates to first-class in flying. As we were leaving our family picnic, Dan made sure to tell me there was a dress attire for the club level, including dress pants and a collared shirt. Made sense to me. We all met at Dan's house in Plymouth and whaddaya know? I was the only one dressed up. I though this was hilarious, and of course, my brothers did also. Before we piled into Dan's SUV, Jon grabbed the movie Austin Power's Goldmember. Here you have three guys sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with big 'ol infrared earphones on, watching a movie while laughing hysterically - all while the front seat is empty, and our big brother dan is driving.

We stayed for the first half of the game, and the Lions looked pretty good. Charles Rogers caught some big passes and the Lions ended up winning the game.

If you looks closely at the picture, my brother-in-law Kevin has his head stuck in there, hat pulled low and a big goofy smile - kinda looks like the retarded brother from Something about Mary.

The whole family (except Beth & Cathie) went to Island Lake today for a picnic. We hung out, went canoeing, barbecued and did a whole lot of nothing during one of the first mildly nice days we've had in a while. More Pictures here.

Gabe (my nephew) reminds me a lot of my son Nate. I can't remember exactly what he'd done to deserve a bein spun around repeatedly, but I'm sure it was something worthwhile.


Yes, this is my brother Jon open mouth kissing his dog. He keeps claiming that a dogs mouth is cleaner that a humans. Go figure.

Cathie left this morning to go up to Manistee, MI for a few days with her friends, Lori and Jen. The kids and I have big plans this weekend. Tomorrow, we're meeting up with everyone in my family to go to Island Lake State Park for the day. Tomorrow night, I'm going to the Lions game with my brothers Dan, Jon and Kevin. Sunday afternoon, I'm heading up North for a few days for a team meeting and then out to Kansas City, back Thursday.

I finally picked up an 802.11G router, a D-Link 524, to be specific. My price point had been about $35, and I picked it up at CompUSA for $35 after rebates. I got the thing upgraded, installed, and so far, so good. It's got some cool features for to make the configuration of virtual servers and all sorts of new types of encryption.

I've applied Windows XP Service Pack 2 on all three of my computers with no problems so far. The noticable stuff includes: Pop-up Blocking in Internet Explorer, New Wireless Networking interface and a single interface to tell you the status of your system in terms of updates, firewall state and anti-virus.

I listen to an MP3 player when I'm working out or traveling. I've been eyeing and iPod for quite a while, but can't justify the $400 yet, based on how well my current Mp3 works.

Here are the songs I've had loaded up for the past 30 days:

• Asia - Don't Cry
• Survivor - Eye of the Tiger
• Vanilla Ice - Ice, Ice Baby
• Motley Crue - Dr. Feelgood
• Sir Mix Alot - Baby got Back
• Eminem - Sing for the Moment
• Tenacious D - Dio
• Tenacious D - Flash Gordon/Wonderboy
• Delirious - My Glorious
• Delirious - Awaken the Dawn
• Delirious - God's Romance
• Waterdeep - My God has come to save me
• Michael W Smith - Rockettown
• Jesus Christ Superstar - What's the Buzz
• Jesus Christ Superstar - Superstar
• Kid Rock - Only God Knows Why
• Dave Matthews - Space Between
• Audio Adrenaline - Gloria (U2 Cover)
• Nichole Nordman - Grace (U2 Cover)
• Starfield - 40 (U2 Cover)

I'm in LAX, waiting for my flight to leave. I just read this interesting article on Scott Stapp, ex-lead singer of Creed regarding his faith, which has gotten way more press than it deserves. Interesting article none-the-less:
Scott Stapp, 08/04 - Interviews - Christian Music Today

I'm flying home tomorrow. I got upgraded to first class. Whoohoo! That makes my day.

I just got into my hotel in L.A. At 10:00 PM PST it was like rush hour traffic anywhere else. It took a half hour to go 2 blocks form the airport to my hotel.

It was a hectic drive just getting to the airport this afternoon. After church, Cathie and I went to Lansing to pick up the kids form Cathie's parents. We hung out there for a while, swam and then left around 4. We hit a traffic jam on the way home at the 96/23 overpass that really sucked. We finally made it home around 6, I packed and got on the road and made it to the airport by 7 and my gate at the airport just as they were boarding. While I waited to board, they called my name and handed me a first class ticket. First class on a 4 1/2 hour flight makes all the difference in the world - food, cocktails and space. The guy I sat next to worked as a consultant to car dealerships. I learned everything there is to know about how dealerships are placed where they're at, the differences between U.S. and European dealerships, etc. I spent the rest of the flight getting caught up on e-mails. I got my mailbox down to 50 e-mails, but sent 30, which comes back to bite me the next morning when I think I'm caught up.

I'm in training for the next 3 days, back Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

Cathie and I went to two weddings today. The first was for Mike Dicurcci and the second was for Scot Lewis (and their wives, of course.) Mike's wedding was at 11:00 AM and Scott's was at 5:30PM. Cath's parents were nice enough to take the kids for the whole weekend for us. We had a great day. We hung mostly with Jay and Jess at Mike's wedding and with a big group of our friends at Scotty's wedding (Andy & Laurie, Mark & Jen, Justin & Laurie, Andy & Brenda, Brad and Joanne, Matt& Maria). You can check out more pictures from Scott's wedding here.

Good article on Commentaries: What Is a Good Christian Movie, Anyway? (Part 1) - Christianity Today Movies:
Now this might look like a simplistic question. But it is important to know not only what a thing is, but what it is not. Succinctly put, a movie is the art of storytelling by way of motion pictures. A movie is not a sermon. A common mistake in the Christian community is to confuse sermonizing for storytelling. Desperate to convince the prodigal son, the Christian producer employs the instruments of film in the service of propaganda: the propositional persuasion of the viewer toward an idea.

I got a voice mail that made my week. It was from one of the kids who grew up in my youth group and went through some tough times in High School trying to figure out what God had to do with her life. She's in college now working this summer at a Christian Camp.

Here was her voice mail.
I don't know if you remember this or not, but when I was in High School, I was asking you all these questions about God and really confused and upset that everyone seemed to be following the Christian Faith without knowing why or having answers to their questions. The whole time I was asking you questions, you were just sitting their smiling and I could not figure out why you were so happy. You couldn't answer any of my questions and I didn't understand why you were so happy. I totally had the experience and I wanted to thank you for being so patient with me. I don't know, it is cool . My campers always ask me these insane questions that I can never answer and it just makes me so happy and it's totally weird and I don't know why, but I thought of you and I wanted to thank you for being patient with me for the longest time.

This kinda stuff makes it all worth while. Junior High youth ministry is about long term investment. I remember these conversations really vividly and how excited I was that she was really making her faith her own by stretching it on her own. She got really mad during some of these talks, asking great questions that I'd asked myself.

My friend Ken Buck and I were going to ride to Mike's bachelor party together, but Ken was late. If you know Ken, that's typical. At least he had a good reason. Ken and his wife Kathy were dropping their dog off at a friend's house while they were going to be out of town. These friends had just gotten a new bird. They took the bird out of the cage to look at it and the dog jumps up in the air, grabs the bird and bites it. Ken described it as the bird's head was facing the opposite direction of it's body. Needless to say, it was dead.

I got in about 3:30 this morning from Mike Dicurci's bachelor party. I was the old man of the crowd, complete with a minivan. Most of the guys had come from Cedarville University, the world's most conservative christian school in the world - no drinking, dancing, gambling or prostitution allowed. We stripped Mike down, blind folded him, and made him pick out an outfit from a pile of really ugly clothes, including a set of underwear that looked like an elephant, complete with a trunk. We headed out to Xochimilco's in Mexican Town in downtown Detroit, had great mexican food and margaritas and then headed over to the Windso casino. The idea was to start the night off by each of us gambing $10 for 30 minutes and give Mike the winnings at the end. Mind you, this is a group of guys from Cedarville who had, most of who had never gambled. We sat at the table for about thirty minutes and walked away with $700 for Mike. Amazing. I won about $400, Ken Buck about $130 and other guys with a hundred each. The look was great on Mike's face (not sure if it was the tequila or having that much money handed to him). We played some more and then headed back across the border, getting stuck in a long line at customs. We hit the duty free shop (What's duty, anwways) on the way back and stocked up. (The duty free shop had the phrase "Hors Taxes" on top of it. Anyone know what that means?) The customs lady was susicious of the fact that we were at a bachelor party in Windsor yet hadn't gone to the strip clubs. We shared some comments that we felt were humerous, including volunteering Mike for a body cavity search and made it through.

I'm just now getting caught up from my vacation. Best I can figure, it takes me about a half day to get caught up for every day that I'm off.

I've got a friend of mine's bachlor party on Thursday night and Cathie's Mom and Dad are watching the kids this weekend while Cathie and I go to a couple of weddings. I'm flying out Sunday evening to Los Angeles for training, back on the red-eye Wednesday night. I'm gone every week in August for at least a few days. I had a pretty good July in terms of travel, though.

I started reading a Vince Flynn's new book Memorial Day. I think his stuff is as good as Clancy's was during Clancy's hey-day and far better than the crap Clancy's been turning out lately. I also started reading the book The Jesus I never Knew again.

Amazon constantly amazes me the way they adapt to the world of ecommerce. They've got a new offering that they call Plogs that presents to you your interactions with them in a story form:Amazon.com: What is a Plog?: "Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things."

I've been looking at two new pieces of technology lately:

1. Treo 600 Cell Phone - The idea of e-mail and calendaring and always on instant messaging appeals to me. Verizon just came out with this model, prior to which my Samsung SCHi600 was the best option available. Downsides to the phone are the palm interface and slighly larger size.

   

2. DirecTV HD Receiver/DVR with Tivo - I've had an HDTV for a while, and the only way I've been able to really appreciate the picture was through XBOX and DVDs - neither of which really take advantage of it's resolution. I've been waiting for a while for this to come out, waiting on getting an HDTV receiver because I wanted the TIVO functionality for it as well. This box will record 200 hours of normal TV or 30 hours of HD programming.

I'm back from vacation. We finished up last week by heading out to the west side of the state with the Niemi's. They've got three kids almost the same age as ours, and the six of them play really well together.

We started things off by heading to Michigan Adventure in Muskegon. I went in with low expectations and I was suprisingly pleased. The place was great for our age kids - It's got both an amusement park and a water park, and most of the rides are geared towards younger kids. Nate got a chance to go on his first big roller coaster (Shivering Timbers) and I saw the true definition of fear when I looked over at him on the first big drop. At the end, he said it was scary, but fun. This thing beat the living crap out of you and just kept going and going. I heard somewhere that it was one of the longest wooden roller coasters in America. It was actually featured on a special on the discovery channel, which I found funny for such a small park. We closed the park out, leaving about 8:30 PM. The kids were beat and we headed to our hotel near Silver Lake.

The next day started off with a nasty forecast, so we headed north and hung out in Ludington to try and beat the rain. We hung out on Lake Michigan, where Emily found a pet fish and named it Blue. She wanted to bring it home so it could live in our hot tub. From there we headed down to Silver Lake and hung at the sand dunes. I couldn't believe that the kids climbed as much as they did. We were beat by the end, but not so much so that we couldn't hit the go-karts. We took the kids on the regular karts, and then Mark and I took a ride on the slick track karts. These karts go in an oval, and it's more about finesse riding, something I apparently have no idea about. You need to find just the ride speed, positioning and counter-steering to drive the track, and I found none of them. I must have spun-out about 20 times.

On Saturday, we headed to the Rainbow Ranch to go horse-back riding. The highlight of my vacation was having Emily sit with me on my horse during the ride. She talked non-stop - to the horse, to the other horses, asking questions, commenting on the scenery around her. I got to see a horse-back ride through the wonderous eyes of a 3 year old and it was so much fun! She would tell the horse (Honda) to watch out for the other horses poop in front of her, tell the horse that she wanted to go "Too Fast" again (trotting). We rode on this giant draft horse that could care less what I was telling it to do. It just followed the other horses. On our way back, we stopped off to see Will's Mom and have lunch with her, and then stopped by to see my brother Jon and his wife Beth (and their new puppy Zoe). Great vacation, wouldn't have changed a thing.

I just came across Hanlon's Razor which states “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” This puts a lot of people's actions (including my own) into perspective.