along the journey

In the spring I tend to get lazy. complacent. I feel guilty for it, but no matter how hard I try, things just don’t get easier. Getting out of bed for instance. Updating my blog for another instance. Updating www.knowtheatre.com for even another instance. And at the same time God is moving us onwards and upwards, bigger and better, ore exciting things. The Journey is a new church plant that our church has spear-headed. We’re going to be helping them out on Saturday evenings for their group celebrations. It’s pretty neat stuff. We picked up 2 JHU students for church on Sunday. It was their first time visiting Cornerstone. We had some excellet conversation and am looking forward to continuing the dialogue we started.

I’m testing this new thirdparty plug-in- not sure exactly what it’s supposed to be doing though. But it looks like it’s working.

Luke Hutteman’s Sharp Reader is an excellent program. I’ve tried some of the other news readers available, and this is the only one that I’ve tested that works through my works proxy servers. Some comments on his page complain about how un-intuitive it is, however I have that complaint about most other aggregators. This one I just dragged the bookmarks from my mozilla sidebar over to the tree view and it attempted auto-discovery. Most of the time it found the feed, if it doesn’t find the feed I just have to drag the xml icon.

I love my family. I miss them greatly. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to have spent the weekend with them. It was wonderful to spend some time with my big brother and his wife and daughter. I hadn’t spent any time with them in several years, the last time I saw them was when our sister got married, and then it was so busy with everything that there was little time for anything.

This past weekend we spent a lot of time together, we went to dinner, breakfast, spent a few hours at the mall. We had our pictures taken- all of us- ended up being 19 of us in one picture. We were there for a few hours, but the wait was all worth it. I’ll have the pictures scanned and put up here eventually.

Caleb’s shouts of Me-Maw, and Grand dad, and Meeko (my sisters dog), serenaded us on the way home. Even this morning on the way to work, haven’t seen them in over 24hrs, he was still shouting Meeko. It’s adorable and sad. We’ve got pictures to keep his memory fresh, but they’re always at least 8 hours away.

Occasionally when you forget to pay your bills, sometimes they cut off your service, as they did this weekend with my internet. I apologize for the interruption. I promise to pay the bill on time next month.

Bitter Journey: The way of the cross is a representation of the Stations of the Cross. Another one that I saw today is over at rejesus. “In the week leading up to Easter, we are looking at the seven last sayings spoken by Jesus as he died on the cross.”

I’m fimiliar with the stations as a result of the two years I spent in Catholic school. Viewing these presentations definately helps to focus on the events that a lot of us celebrate during our Easter Celebration.

The Stations of the Cross, for those who may not know, is a ceremony during which various scenes leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion are highlighted. Ceremony is something I miss in church today…. this week at church Pastor Bruce led us in communion, for the third week in a row!! This is something that is just outside what I’m used to in church. I’m used to taking communion maybe once a month. Where the deacons and elders pass the tray with the tiny cup of juice and the tiny wafers, where the pastor walks the congregation through sipping and eating at the same time. Over the past 3 weeks there have been different challenges/tasks that Pastor Bruce has associated with communion. This past week we were instructed to write a particular sin/habit/obstacle in our lives, preventing us from growing. When we get to the communion table we were to take the paper and hold it over the flame and watch it be consumed in the fire. Communion at Cornerstone is different- they have tables set up in the back, after we’re invited to partake you walk to the table, pour yourself the juice into a dixie cup, and break from large pieces of unleavened bread, a piece for you to take. Then it’s up to you. I love this opportunity.

This week I didn’t partake. I sat in my chair as the worship team played Boast No More. Pondering lifes rituals and sin and growth. Little bursts of light filled the sanctuary as peoples sins were burned to invisible ash. It was one of the most intense worship experiences I’ve had.

I sent my pastor an email thanking him for being our pastor, and daring to be different.

No More My God, I boast no more
Of all the duties I have done
I quit the hopes I held before,
To trust the merits of They Son

No more my God
No more my God
No more my God
I boast no more.

Now, for the loss I bear his name,
What was my gain I count my loss
My former pride I call my shame
And nail my glory to His cross

Yes, and I must, I will esteem
All things but loss for Jesus’ sake
O may my soul be found in Him
And of His righteousness partake
Amen, amen

The best obedience of my hands
Dares not appear before Thy throne
But faith can answer Thy demands
By pleading what my Lord has done

Written by: music by Sandra McCracken, words by Isaac Watts
-Caedmons Call

My head and scalp go sunburnned this weekend. What an beautiful weekend it was too. Amy and Caleb and I went and helped out ALC with their Servefest. We were assigned to give out soda’s at a stop light. It’s a beautiful thing this serving people. It’s so completely unexpected, most people don’t want anything to do with you giving them something while they’re at a light. The act like the window is a wall and they can’t see or hear you. Um. Yes, I can see you. Looking away doesn’t make me disappear. Goodness, I’m not even asking for donations, just trying to give away a coke. One guy said something to me, I asked him to repeat it, “I already go to church.” I know I didn’t say anything about church, in fact if anything all I said was, “I’ve got free drinks, Would you like a free pepsi sir?” Perhaps it was a little cool for a soda give-away, but it didn’t prevent me from getting sunburned.

We spent the rest of Saturday working outside, cleaning the car, washed it, vacuumed. We mowed the lawn and played.

Sunday after church and a long nap, I went outside and swept our long driveway, clearing it of a years worth of leaves and dirt. Caleb played out in the driveway then we went for a long walk. Caleb walked the whole way. It surprised me. He still didn’t want to go in. I evened out the sunburn on Sunday.

Spent most of yesterday evening struggling with getting my cd player installed in our car. The first part of the evening had me cooking salmon and chicken on the grill…… standing outside, on the porch, in the sun. I think I got a little more sun. When will I learn.

Well I’m posting this from my new laptop. Well new, like our car was new, new to us. I pieced it together out of several different unused shells we had lying around the office. It’s a pretty nice configuration too. I installed Mandrake Linux 9.0 onto it. It went without a hitch, out of the box. I had to change nothing. I’m pretty excited too. So it’s here at home, all hooked up on the internet, chillin! I’m excited to get the chance to have a machine that I can work on a regular basis running linux, let my wife get used to it, and then BAM! kick it up a notch, dual boot my home machine. Of course, can’t do that until I get this stinking apache configuration working properly.

Well here’s the new layout, if it’s a little too orange/yellow for you, you can view the other layout here. Leave a comment let me know if you like it. Majority vote wins. Polls are open until Friday at 5.

Feeling better today. Slept in, got to work late, but I feel better. Pretty restful evening last night. Played some more Zelda, I just beat this big old bird and am continuing up the tower of the Forbidden Fortress, where I expect I meet Ganon. So far none of the bosses havent’ been real difficult. I don’t know what’s next of course, or how close to the end of the game I am, but I hope that I’m not more than a quarter finished.

Had lots of time to surf the web lately at work. I’ve been adding 3 or 4 bookmarks a day to my blogs I read list. Perhaps I’ll export to html so you can have a look at them….my biggest issue is not remembering where I’ve bookmarked things, at home or work. I’m still on the lookout for a bookmark app that will let me share between computers and run just on the web port and not on some other port- can’t get to many ports through the companies firewall. 21 and 80 are about it.

Anyone out there good with linux willing to lend me a hand setting up my webserver? I foobar’ed the httpd.conf file pretty bad, and my normal expert Rob has been pretty busy. I can set you up an account and give you the information or if you want to come by, just email me, beer and pizza on me.

Talked to my dad a bit yesterday. I’m getting all emotional for some reason lately. I called and talked to my mom for about an hour on Friday. I guess I’m just missing them and am eager to visit them. At the same time there’s so many things we want to do while in Ohio, that I’m worried we’ll not spend much time with them. I hate these short trips!!

I’m prepping for a new layout. Watch this space for more….

I’m at work today, we can’t afford for me to miss too many days of work, actually any, but I have to sometimes. Once I get hired on I may be able to actually be sick at home. I figured I’d share the plaque with my office today. I hope they’re greatful!

We’ll be travelling to Ohio next Wednesday night- 8 days away. We’re really excited. I can’t wait. Last time we were there was in July. We’re leaving after work on Wednesday.

Don’t have much more to say…. not sure…. guess I’ll just hi that save button.