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?

I drove home from Gaylord, stopped home for an hour and headed to the airport to fly out to Conneticut. I got to the airport, printed my ticket and noticed the dreaded "S" next to my name, meaning I'm getting the bonus treatment from security. They went through my crap, felt me up and I took off to the gate. I went to check e-mail and noticed they'd never given me my laptop back. I scrambled back to security and found that they'd given my laptop to the police, who they had to contact to retrieve it. I got on the plane and fell asleep for about an hour. When I woke up, I'd noticed that we hadn't even taken off yet. I went back to sleep and watched Season 2 of Scrubs the rest of the flight.

Jerky

On our way down out of Northern Michigan we had to stop and get some jerky. Just the place for me.

I really would like to own a monkey that I could dress in armor and fight with when I get home from work.

I'm up in Gaylord meeting with a group of guys from work, getting some wakeboarding and golf in on the side. This is a picture of Big Air Bill flying through the air. I went after Bill, not having done gone wakeboarding all year. Once I got my legs back under me I caught more air than I had in the past, but it was pretty puny compared to Bill's jumping.


We did a crawfish boil tonight with crawfish, scallops, shrimp, potatos, corn and onions. Excellent. In a food coma, we hung out by the camp fire and then played some cards.

Cathie and I watched the movie Million Dollar Baby last night. Didn't realize it was going to be such a bummer. Almost as cheery as the movie The Champ with Ricky Schroder.

I'm heading up north tomorrow with a bunch of guys from work for a couple days of boating, work, meetings and golf. We've done it for the past 4 years and it's been a blast. We grill out, hang out, and work in between all that stuff. From there I'm flying out into Rhode Island for some meetings in Connecticut, and then back on Thursday.

I just put Emily, my 4 year old to bed. I noticed she was wearing 2 shirts. Further inspection revealed that she had her jeans and shirt on under her pajamas, "Because I want to wear this outfit tomorrow."

We had our annual youth group paintball game today. We opened it up to anyone in the church who wanted to play, and we had a blast. This nice quarter size welt came from my friend Bruce, who nailed me from about 10 feet out as we were storming their base. One of the other guys in my squad got the flag and won it for us while Bruce was busy lighting me up. The weather was beautiful, and it was a blast. I'm no expert paintballer. When I started out playing years ago, I'd wear 3 layers of clothes to avoid getting hurt. I'm old enough and dumb enough now that I figure it only hurts for a second, and just go with shorts and a t-shirt. We teamed up the adults vs. the students (including Jason and I) and we smoked 'em pretty much every game.

Beth had the baby!!!! Libby Danielle Kurt was born at 8:26 a.m. weighing 6 lbs 1oz and 19 inches long. Beth and Libby are doing great! More pictures on Jon's blog.

Neil Diamond Video

This Neil Diamond/Will Farrell Story Tellers Video is hilarious. It's a mock on the VH1 Storytellers series. Here's the transcript.

Zach's Truck

I've heard people say they don't like leaving their cars at Park and Go carpooling places, but never understood why. I also never got why people back their cars into spaces at these places.....Until now. Zach left his car there the other day, came back to find they'd stolen his grill, foglights and turn signals. It happened to be a couple blocks away from the rehab facility where Eminem is at. Coincidence?

On my way back from biking with Bill at Island Lake today, I drove by the rehab center down the street from me where Eminem is at. Apparently enough people have been trying to get in to see him they've now setup a cop at the entrance of the place. On the news they reported on a guy who got drunk and tried to admit himself, so he could see Eminem.

I've been thinking a lot about this issue lately, trying to dig a little deeper into the idea of what it means to turn your back on a relationship with God. I have a friend who's life is mired in sin but seems to be moving closer and closer to God as they wrestle with this sin in their life. What amazes me is the fact that others have spent time trying to figure out if this preson has "lost their salvation". I find it fascinating when people are willing to decide on behalf of another whether or not someone fits into the bucked of being "Saved" or not. I see people take scripture out of context to build their case and justify those conversations, but I'm really not sure to what end. Does it make them feel more secure about your own position with God or that maybe he loves them more than the other sinner? Does it change how much you should love the person at that point? My guess is that God has a pretty good handle on it already.

I stole this Marty Luther quote from Noel's blog. From A Cognizant Discourse:

God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God's glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.

-Martin Luther

I read an interesting quote from Napoelon (Bonaparte the general, not Dynamite the movie character)

I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of people would die for Him.

Couldn't get a baby-sitter last night, so we hung out at home and watched the movie The Notebook last night with Cathie (comon, it was my anniversary... it's a romantic movie, you figure it out). I thought it'd be a pretty girly flick, but I liked it. Good way to get in the "anniversary mood" if you know what I mean.

My company posted this video online, a success story for a customer I've worked at. It's akward enough hearing your own voice, let alone having to see yourself in a video, complete with make-up and editing. It's a customer I've been involved with over the past 3 years and I'm very proud of it, but the video's a little strange to see.

Check out this stick figure remake of the Fatboy Slim video for Weapon of Choice with Christopher Walken.

Stephen's Birthday Pics

I put all of the pictures from Stephen's party online, but thought I needed to point out some highlights and explain them:


My Mom was kind enough to deliver this nice plate and cup set for Dan and I. In this picture, we're renacting the picture that's on the plate itself. One of me sitting on my big brother's lap, labeled "Danny and David Kurt". The plate is not nearly as weird as the cup.

My sister Susan is waaay to open about nursing her children in front of her brothers. She just whips it out whenever and wherever and feeds little Bender. Apparently, she's okay with showing people her sexy nursing bra as well. No idea how this made it on her head.


At every family get together, nap are a tradition. I've learned to at least go find a place, hide and take a nap. I've slept under beds, behind couches - wherever I won't be found and disturbed. Not Kevin.

Not sure if Kevin is trying some kind of sympathy thing with his wife or just decided to wear a manzere.

13 Years of Bliss

Today is our 13 year wedding anniversary! 13 years and three kids later. Wow. I'm more in love with my wife than ever before, I think she's more beautiful, more sexy than ever and she's my best friend in the whole world. Through my wife I've come to understand what it means to have a soul mate. When I experience something new, it's not all that it can be unless my wife is with me to share in the experience. We both have parents who've modeled what strong comitted, loving marriages look like to us and that's a gift we want to pass down to our kids. I know this is a little cheezy, but give me one day of cheese.... It's my anniversary.

iPod Question

Hopefully someone out there has had the same issue and figured out a way to resolve this:
About 80% of my iPod is full of music, the rest is full of Audiobooks, Podcasts and Church Messages. The only time this is an issue when I go to Shuffle Songs on my iPod. I get a mix of all the above. Has anyone figured out a way to use the Audiobooks top-level category on your iPod or the Podcasts category at the top level? I suppose I could group everything into very narrow genre categories and just shuffle according to the genre, but I'd rather not have to. Any ideas?

Update:
I think I've fixed the iPod portion of my issue above. I nuked my iPod, reloaded the firmware and reloaded my music. I had updated my firmware before updating iTunes before, so the two seemed to be out of sync. This has moved all of my Podcasts into under one of the top categories. Still not sure how to use the Audiobooks section.

Update #2:
I figured out how to use the Audiobooks section on my iPod. You have to first convert the files into apple's AAC format and then rename the file extension in order to take advantage of the embedded bookmarking in the file, per this article. Secondly, you need to set the category to Audiobook, per this article.

Got this from Kathy: A guy is driving along while leaving a voice mail message for a friend when suddenly the guy witnesses a car accident (very minor, nothing in any way tragic). The guy's entire reaction to the accident was captured on his friend's voice mail account. Southwestern Bell and a Texas TV station were kind enough to post it on the Internet for one and all. You MUST listen to this. It is simply hysterical. (What cracks me up most is the sound of the guy's laugh.)

Ninja Bender

We went over to Dan and Kris's yesterday for Stephen's birthday. We got him a cool set of giant boxing gloves. By Giant I mean each glove was about 3 feet long, along with a big punching bag. Stephen also got this teenage mutant ninja turtle outfit, which someone proceeded to dress Ben in while he slept. We topped it off with the guys having a wood-splitting contest. Kevin smoked all of us. Stinkin farm boys.

I had a customer meeting yesterday in Lansing along with a friend of mine at work, Bill. Bill and I have worked together over the past 12 years in different capacities, but have been on different teams for the past 3 and haven't had a chance to go on a sales call for a while. We used to be a great team, so it was fun being back, doing the same thing again. We got to talking with the customer we were meeting with and it turns out they go to Riverview Church. I mentioned that Bill and I had a friend of ours who happens to be one of the pastors there and that we were meeting him later in the day to go biking. The customer responded that Noel often talked about what an agressive biker he is, even going so far to do a message on the topic, entitled Mountain Biking with Mike. We told Noel we'd remind him of that fact as we rode with him. I picked Noel up and we headed over to meet Bill at Burchfield Park, meanwhile Noel tried to find the exact point in his message where he explained his lack of prowess at biking (I've heard that he will only let people listen to his messages when he rides in the car with them.)
It was a fun trail, pretty technical with good speed. We had a great time riding. I ate it once pretty hard trying to hit a jump while not knowing there were big rocks and stumps on the other side of it. It had these crazy ramps all througout it, including a ramp with a crazy teeter-totter thing at the end. Noel egged me on a bunch of times to try to make it over the big teeter-totter thing at the park. You ride up the six inch wide ramp about 4 feet in the air until the weight of your bike I tried it about ten times, severely racking myself 4 of them, never making it over the thing. The trick is that you have to find the perfect speed to hit it, going fast enough that you don't lose your balance going up it, but slow enough that the teeter-totter has time change directions at the top. Some of the stuff they had at the park was crazy enough that I felt the need to at least try it, but wasn't real successful on much of it.

Last night we had Will's going away party at BW3's and went to see The Fourty Year Old Virgin afterwards with Will and Mark. Funny movie, Steve Carrel is hilarious. Probably could have waited to see it on video.

Forget running biomedical devices - I want one of these pee powered batteries for my cell phone. Dropping my phone in the toilet would then become a good thing as would not washing my hands afterwards.

I just saw that Rob Bell (pastor of Mars Hill church in Grand Rapids) has a new book out called Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith while reading this weird, disjointed interview: Find the Big Jesus: An Interview with Rob Bell.

Bull Finch pub

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name....

Old Ironsides

I got into Boston bright and early, had my meetings and then headed out to the North End for dinner. The North End is renound for it's traditional Italian cuisine and culture. It's a very cool area right out of the Sopranos. We headed over to see The USS Constitution (aka Old Ironsides), the oldest active boat in the US Navy.

Vacation Video

Here are some video I took on vacation:

• I took this footage of a paraflight takeoff.
  
• I took this footage while flying over the Silver Lake Sand Dunes.
• At Michigan's Adventure amusement park, Nate and I rode the Cork Screw and I held the camera shot on his face to catch his expressions in this footage.
  

Family Vacation Pictures

We made it back tonight. By the time we got home, close to 11, all of the kids had crashed in the car and I carried them up. Carrying Nate up, I can't believe how big he's gotten. He's 4'2" and becoming a big guy right before my eyes. Anyways, before I leave tomorrow morning I thought I'd get the pictures online, so here they are. There's a ton of them, and I haven't really gone through them, but this way Cathie and the kids will be able to see them before I get back. I still need to post some cool video I took on vacation between the paraflight stuff and the roller coasters.

Anyways, you can see the pictures here.

Michigan Adventure Amusement Park

We're on our way home after a great day at the park. Michigan Adventure is a collection of carnival rides, 4 decent roller coasters (including the largest wood roller coaster in the U.S.) and a great water park. We got here when it opened and pretty much closed it out. Nate and I hit all of the roller coasters, Maddie hit the medium ones and even Emily went on some pretty scary stuff. It was a perfect day, overcast until we hit the water park and then bright and sunny. Nate and I went on the new the new ride called the Funnel of Fear in the water park, which was fun. It was a good vacation. I have to leave for Boston at 5am tomorrow morning. Nice.

Paraflight

This rocked. I took this picture at 1200 feet on my paraflight out to the Silver Lake Dunes. We flew about 40 mph, as low as 20' feet at times out over Lake Michigan and the dunes. Scary enough, you need no FCC license to fly one of these. My pilot was a retired commercial airline pilot whose been doing this for 8 years. I made the mistake of asking what happens when the engine dies, so he showed me. The flight is scary for the first 5 minutes when I kept wondering how quickly we'd die if the chute ripped off. It's a little bumpy flying this thing, but fun and pretty easy.

Trail Ride

We slept in this morning and then went to the Rainbow Ranch to ride horses. We went on an hour long ride. Emily rode with me and talked non-stop the whole way, giving commentary, talking to the horse and filling me whenever one of the horses stopped to go to the bathroom. The kids loved it when they'd let the horses run. The ride took us through a beautiful areaam and the weather was great.



We're heading to the beach this afternoon and I'm going paraflying tonight at the nearby Shelby paraflight school. Should be fun.

Will's Mom's Cottage

We went from the Double J ranch to Will's mom's cottage up near New Era, North of Muskegon. It's a beautiful place, in the woods with access to Lake Michigan. We spent a few hours at the beach, burying each other in the sand and swimming. Lake Michigan was suprisingly warm. We roasted hot dogs over the camp fire and are making s'mores later tonight. The kids and I have jad fun hiking in the woods behind the house, up a giant hill. It's so peaceful here, I love it.

Wild West Show

We went to the Western Stars Wild West show at the ranch tonight. They wrangled cows, cracked whips and like any good wild west show had dancing girls in tight outfits. The kids loved it.(The horses, not the girls)

Double J Ranch

We got to the Double J Ranch around 2, checked in and toured around the place. It's a dude ranch with horse back riding, fishing, water slides, petting zoos and kids crafts. We're staying in this cabin, which has a cool loft for the kids and a huge jacuzzi and king size bed for Cathie and I. There was a cowboy stunt show this afternoon and a big western show tonight after the pig roast.

A friend of mine, Erik, turned me onto the fact that the show Wife Swap on ABC is looking for a technology-savvy family to do a swap with. I sent them an e-mail telling them we're willing. Never really checked with Cathie, but I figured I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I've only seen the show a couple of times, and it mostly consists of being stuck with people who are exactly the opposite of you. The opposite of me... that'd be someone who can't dance, can't sing and isn't funny, I guess. One odd thing on the web site: "Schedule a wife swap party..." Not sure they understand the double-entendre here.

Emily (she's four) is the only one of our kids that have been big into imaginary friends. One of her most prominent friends is Shaina and her lesser friend, the imaginary monkey. There was another imaginary friend that died on the swing in the back yard. Anyways, we were cleaning up her room today, putting her CD's back in the cases and she told us to stop. She explained to us that she likes to keep them mixed up in the cases because otherwise Shaina will find them and break them. We're either dealing with a very active imagination or poltergeist style demon posession. I'm hoping it's the former.

So Cathie sent me out to the store to pick up some groceries, and I was impressed. When Cathie gives me a grocery list, she actually puts the items on the list in the order they are in the aisles as I go through the store. I guess I'm easily impressed.

We (read: mostly Cathie) have been working to get ready for vacation tomorrow. Cathie's got a strange vacation preparation routine which involves staying up all night the night before getting ready. Doesn't matter how far in advance she starts, she always stays up all night. To top things off, we're getting the house cleaned up for one final open house before we take the house of the market. We don't want the kids to change schools mid-year, so we've decided to take it off the market until next spring. We're heading out to the West side of the state, staying at the Double J ranch tomorrow night and then staying at Will's Mom's cottage on Lake Michigan for a couple of days until we head out to Michigan Adventure Amusement Park on Tuesday. I head out to Boston on Wednesday and Thursday and then back all of the following week. Jon was going to go to the park with us but because of the latest with Beth's pregnancy, he's heading back to Memphis early.

I talked to my brother Jon tonight and apparently him and his wife Beth had quite a day. They went into the Doctor's office for a check-up on the baby as her due date approaches. Apparently the baby hadn't grown much since the last visit so they were concerned about things. They talked to them about doing a C-section immediately, but instead they went to a specialist who confirmed that the baby was a little smaller than it should be, but still doing fine. They've got a C-section scheduled for August 25th, two days after Beth takes her board exams. She's been studying for these things for 9 months and didn't want to have to wait another year to get them completed. It's a two part test, the first part being two days long, and the next part taking place at the end of October. I've taken tests in college hung-over, but never taken one two days away from giving brith.

I was laughing hard reading some of the T-Shirts at bustedtees.com

My sister Susan sent me this image she grabbed from the lego web site. Wouldn't you too like to help protect and preserve their brand. While you're at it, please don't say "Making a Xerox." Please say it making a photocopy.

Not sure why you'd get this tattoo. Not sure why my brother Jon would get it.

I had breakfast with a friend of mine Andy who I hadn't seen in a long time. We've been friends over 10 years and I think the last place I'd seen him was at a wedding he played guitar at. It was good catching up, and eating at the Cracker Barrel, which is full of country goodness.

The whole family went to see Charlie and the Choclate Factory tonight during $2 tuesdays at the South Lyon cinema. The good news: It's only $2. The bad news, it's packed, the seats are horribly uncomfortable, but hey, it's $2. Once I got over beeing creeped out by Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka character, i liked the movie. As much as Tim Burton has bad-mouthed the original movie, he seemed to have pimped a lot of the visuals from it. His story line is more true to the original book, and I liked the fact that Willy Wonka doesn't do any weird songs, I liked the explanation on why Willy is the way he is, and the better ending with the elevator. At least Gene Wilder didn't remind me so much of Michael Jackson when he played Wonka.

Peerflix.com

I've been using Peerflix.com for a couple weeks, per my previous post on the site. Peerflix is a peer-to-peer mail-based physical DVD trading service. You list your DVD's on the site and people can request them. When they do, you get an e-mail and a link to print a mailing label. You print the label, stick it in one of the envelopes they send you and send it to the person. As you do this, you accumulate credits which you can in turn request DVD's from the person. I've sent out a bunch and gotten a bunch so far. You pay $.99 for the transaction to Peerflix. Not a bad way to go.

This is an interesting article on A Day in the Life of a Nigerian Internet Scammer. A while back I thought it would be funny to correspond with one of these guys to see how far it would go. It stopped being funny when I must have been added to some kind of mass-sucker list that caused me to receive a bunch of these things, most of which weren't caught by my spam-engine.

I've got a day filled with eight hours worth of conference calls, which can be painful. Thanks to my Plantronics Wireless Office Headset and my wireless connection, i can sit on my deck and work all morning. I love working virtually.