along the journey

Well, here I am, living on Movable Type. It’s a nice full-featured product, of which I’ll probably never use more than 3 features.

It’s Good Friday. As I think of it, all Fridays are Good, especially if you don’t have to work on the weekend. I took some pictures of my trip to work via train for my friend Jim in Mason. The train station was especially empty and the train showed that it wasn’t just my station. I very seldom have an empty seat next to me, but I did today, almost all the way.

The parking spots between Union Station and the Russel Building were mostly empty too. Everyone’s here in our office though. But the tickets we have open for state offices, most of them are closed today! Argh! Haven’t had one call open for me today. Oh well. Guess it’s just a set back and relax kind of day.

Amy already wrote about it, but we’ll be able to wrap the balance of my delinquent student loan into the loan ammount for our mortgage, so we’re pretty psyched about that. We’re supposed to close before the 15th.

It’s been really great for both of us having her stay at home. Having a clean house and a happy baby and clean laundry I take for granted so frequently. Even more so I take for granted having a hot meal on the table when I get home or shortly after. Amy does a great job. I’m consistently impressed with the things that she’s able to accomplish during the day, and the ideas and things she comes up with for dinner and entertaining Caleb. I knew I married her for a reason.

Welcome to Moveable Type. Sure wish I could configure this on my home server! Bah! well Thanks evolt.

As I walk in the door, after a long day at work, I’ve been greeted lately by a smiling baby. It’s such a great feeling. He’s got to the point where he’s able to cuddle. He’ll climb up in your lap, tuck his head just below your chin and lay there for a bit, before he’s distracted by something or someone else. I’ve been wearing him down at night, we’ll sit in front of the tv and he’ll sit in my lap, facing away from me, watching tv with me. He doesn’t much care what we watch, he just relaxes and drifts to sleep. I’ve done this regularly for several weeks. It’s our time together! Amy feels bad that I do that so often, but it’s time I cherish so much.

I start to think about how long it can last- probably no more than 10-12 years. And I think of how affectionate I am with my dad. I certainly miss being around to give him a bear hug when he gets home from work. Or going over to visit them after going out for ice cream, sitting on my parents bed as we talk about our day and what we’re up to. Funny, that’s a place where we ended up frequently. Talking to my parents while they are in bed, frequently sitting on the bed with them. We lived in Amys mothers house for 3 or 4 months, I never once went into their bedroom, except maybe to help Mary with some maintenance or something. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s the lack of a TV in the their room, or maybe it’s some off limits area. I do know one thing. I know how I want our room to be, accessible by our children whenever they need to be there, whether their 3 or 30.

Is this odd?

This is one of my favorite pics from the bunch that I worked on last night.

So this evening I took some time to upload some pictures…. so without further adieu, There are pics from last weeks Servefest, Amy took some pictures, the week Amy had her surgery we went to the park, and yesterday we went to the Kite Festival. Enjoy the pictures!

Tomorrow, the family is heading out to the kite festival on the mall at the Smithsonian. We’re planning on meeting up with Jennifer and her husband. If anyone else is interested in meeting up with us, we’ll be on the south side of the Washington Monument around Noon. I hope to be flying a small red diamond kite, depends on the wind, but it may have a tail. It might be easier to look for the cutest baby in the area though, cause he’ll be with us, and there’s no way there could be one cuter!

This evening Amy and I adventured out to a Thai restaurant for the first time. Well, the first time together. I had some Pad Thai the day she had her surgery downtown. I really wanted some again. We went to this place called Thai Heaven. It’s really just a hole in the wall place, very few tables. The lady who waited on us was an excellent hostess and very kind. The wonton soup that Amy had was delicious, at least the broth was as I didn’t taste the wontons, and the egg rolls were awesome. I enjoyed the Shrimp Pad Thai. I’m still not sure what I think of Pad Thai. I really like the combination of tastes, peanutty, sprouty, noodlly- but I’m just not sure how they fit together. It’s probably a lot like Skyline Chili, everytime you have it, it just gets better.

Speaking of Skyline Chili, we attempted a crock pot recipe of it the other night. It simmered all day yesterday in the pot and it smelled sort of like Cincinnati-style chili, but not exactly. And that’s about how it tasted. It was pretty bland and kind of thin. It was edible, but that’s about it. Needless to say, I didn’t have it for leftovers today.

Looks like there’s going to be a Christian Rave in Baltimore in May, but there’s another one in Greenbelt in April. I’m hoping to be able to get out and go to at least one of these, if not both. Got to either get a babysitter, or permission from the wife. I’d like to think she’d go with me, but I know better.

I got a free issue of StruckMute. A good old fashioned paper zine. I was looking for lists of other ones online, but of course they’ve only got lists of e-zines! It’s nice to actually have a piece of paper in your hands as you read something that you know someone has put lots of work into. It’s not the old cut and paste job though, probably put together using something like Publisher. It looks good, lots of reviews of albums I’ve not been exposed to and really want to purchase. Especially the Pigeon John is clueless. Pigeon John is one of my favorite hip-hop artists.

Looks like Amy and I are going to PurpleDoor. I know I wrote about this several weeks ago, not sure when. But that’s in August! We’re going to camp on a lake about a mile away from the venu. It’s two days of unadulterated christian rock! Woo Hoo! I remember going to the first purple door. It was so much fun. I just wish that Bryan and Darin could be here to go. I’m tryign to recruit others from our life group to come with us. I’m excited!

This saturday Amy and I will be going into DC for the Kite Festival. I’m pumped about that too!

Got a call today from the mortgage company. She informed me that because of my student loan that I haven’t sent a payment since July, that we’d be unable to get an FHA loan, at least until it’s current. I wish that she would’ve told me about this back in December when we started this whole mess. It really frustrates me. In the words of one of my idols, Forrest Gump, “that’s just one more thang.”

It’s 7:35 on a Saturday morning. I’ve been up for almost an hour. I didn’t go to bed until well after 1:30. Such is the life of a father! I can’t wait until Caleb is old enough to get himself out of bed and crawl up on the couch and watch cartoons, but until he is…. I’ll get him out of bed and crawl up on the couch and watch cartoons. As long as he’ll sit there that is. We sat there this morning for about 15 minutes while he received his nebulizer treatment, but then he was raring to go. He’s climed up on the outside of his suacer and is now climbing up the front of the computer desk. He’s tall enough to be able to grab the top of the desk, but at that point he can’t use his hands to balance. It’s actually a pretty precarious situation. I snapped this picture with my webcam.

Today is a big ServeFest. One in which our church sponsors with several other churches and goes out and essentially blitzes the community, with sodas, free stamps, armorall packets, free gas coupons, cleaning toilets, delivering candy to workers in local shops. I’m pretty excited about it. We went last night and helped get stuff together. Amy filled trash cans with soda and juice, while I carried the cases up to them. We had fun just doing that. While we were getting ready to go I had a discussion with one of my friends regarding some of the things that God has placed a desire for in me. Namely, a time of worship and serving for College-agers, graduating High school seniors up to 30 or so. One of the things that Cincy Vineyard did was after their College agers meetings, would go out to the local bars and hand out gum and water to the people waiting in lines to get in. They’ve also sponsored water-giveaways at raves and such. One thing that my generation desires is relationships and that’s what this whole serving thing is about. Creating and growing relationships that aren’t based on a fear that people are going to go to hell, but on a fact that God loves people just the way they are - NO STRINGS ATTACHED. Sorta like this guy.

The weblogs-social-baltimore list is listed on Weblog Madness.

I added some pictures- New Baby pictures are here as well as added some pictures for the Into The Woods rehearsals, and our trip to Buckeye Lake. These pictures are just sitting on my hard drive waiting to be uploaded. Not sure if I ever linked to them or not but there are christmas pictures. I still have lots to upload. Waiting for when it’s about time to leave.