The Shape of Things

Took less then an hour on Craigslist…

Gotta love craigslist.

Alright folks… if you live in the Seattle area and you want a Wii (you know you do) here is one to buy:

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/ele/347417585.html

Tonight Kelly and I watched our wedding video for the first time. Kelly Cone and her boyfriend Fritz were kind enough to record and edit the video for us. Thanks you guys!!

As we were watching the video Kelly cried more then a few times… I think she really misses her friends and family. We now live about 800 miles from those close friends and it has been hard on her. What I didn’t realize is that I really miss my buddies too. I don’t know what has happened between my friend Tom and I. We were tight… he moved to Seattle and we had a hard time adjusting for some reason. I am going to make a huge effort to pursue him as he is one of the greatest men I have ever met.

As for Aaron (da chef) he was my co-worker at HCC and turns out he also got a job where I work now. I received a call from him a couple weeks ago that shook me up. He called me out on our friendship. He asked me point blank why we were drifting apart. I felt like a total hypocrite… I always thought of myself as the guy that would bring up stuff like that. Aaron — thank you and I will certainly work harder at our friendship.

Steve — stud at seminary (demanding the big stage) haha… j/k kidding Steve-o. When watching the wedding video tonight we came upon the best man speech and Steve was talking about the early days of our friendship (talking computers, football) and then he had to pause… almost to catch himself from crying (I know I was close), he started talking about our days in a small group at MVC. Those were days of growth and relationships that I doubt I will ever reach again. I miss Steve like crazy. He is certainly the brother I never had.

Friendship is so hard… why is that? People come in and out of your life so my advice to all of you out there is to really truly enjoy your current relationships. Relish each moment because time flies and they won’t always be there.

This past weekend the church that Kelly and I attend merged with another church called Interbay.

I find this is be quite interesting due to the fact that you really don’t see a lot of churches in the inner city. Typically churches will close down there doors, sell the property to a developer that will want to build condos and then move the congregation out to the ‘burbs.

Not Quest and Interbay. They are going to continue to spread the love and grace of Christ to Seattleites.

A couple posts on the merger from Pastor Eugene:
an incredible legacy
we are one

It was also covered by one of the local papers:
2 very different Seattle churches decide to unite

First of all I will admit that I am a huge baseball fan and in particular I am a fan of the history of baseball. One of the great things about following baseball are the statistics. I can still remember when I was a kid going through my massive collection of baseball cards memorizing league leaders in HRs, RBI’s, BA, etc…

There are a few numbers that were burned into my mind:

61
755
714
56

For all you true baseball fans, those numbers are as easy to remember as your cell number, home address, and birth date.

My favorite player when I was growing up was Ken Griffey Jr. He was drafted #1 overall by the Seattle Mariners in 1987. He made his major league debut in 1989 right about the time I was starting to follow baseball. I was 10 years old and was filling my head with stats, stats, and more stats. I also remember reading an article talking about how special the 500 home run club was. I wondered… would I see someone get to that milestone.

As of May 22, Bonds is at 745 HRs. 11 HRs from breaking the all-time home run record. Now that I have a chance to see someone not only reach the 500 HR plateau, but actually break the record I don’t know how to feel. Obviously the record is tainted… I really do feel cheated. I feel like that little starry-eyed 10 year old Shane is seeing all the stats he loved just blown up into little pieces.

I am not blaming Bonds for taking this special occasion away from me. I truly blame the owners of the baseball teams. That’s right I said the owners. You see when the MLB players decided to strike in the fall of 1994 it had a huge impact on baseball. Fans were fed up with the greedy owners and players. When baseball resumed in the spring of 1995, attendance dropped to all-time lows. The owners were losing money with all those empty seats. So did they really question things when all of the sudden people like Sammy Sosa were hitting 60+ HRs in 3 out of 4 years when it had only been done twice previous to that?

Look right at me… I want you to understand this:

Baseball didn’t even have a policy on Steroid use until 2002

Before 2002, Major League Baseball had no official policy on steroid use among players. As part of a collective bargaining agreement, players and owners agree to hold survey testing in 2003. If more than 5% of results from the anonymous tests are positive, formal testing and penalties will be put into place the next year.

What do you all think about the record? Are you ok with it? Leave your comments folks!

Ok, I am a total computer geek that needs to be on bleeding edge of everything tech-wise. After work I upgraded my blog from wordpress 2.13 to 2.2

Alright… I really can’t tell a difference, but it is supposed to be a little faster. We’ll see…

I guess the more important thing is that my first upgrade to my website on a linux server went smoothly. John Savel would be proud!! I signed the deployment tech section of the project docs…

Get it while its hot!!

http://wordpress.org/development/2007/05/wordpress-22/

The last 10 days my wife and I have had quite a few visitors in our home. Last weekend we had the honor of having my mom fly out from Minnesota to visit us. She has been going through some hard times with the illnesses of her mother and sister-in-law so we thought it would be nice to have her out for a relaxing weekend.

Then Tuesday night we had our “C Group” over from church. We host this group on a weekly basis. Typically there are around 8 - 10 that show up. We have dinner together, share stories, and pray for each other.

Wednesday night we had our next door neighbors over for dinner. I have to say my wife Kelly has become quite the cook. We had cashew chicken and it was excellent! It was really nice to get to know our neighbors a little bit better. They are currently engaged (to be married next spring) so maybe we can be hopefully help them out in the next few stressful months as we went through the same thing a year ago.

Finally tonight we hosted two of my co-workers and close friends, Dale and Aaron. Kelly cooked chicken curry and we watched the Golden State - Utah basketball game. It was a great night… even though Derek Fisher absolutely killed the warriors in the 4th quarter with 14 points!!

I guess what I am getting at in this post is that God has decided to bless us enough financially to purchase a home and we feel so grateful to be able to share that with family and friends. Community is a strange and funny thing. It is so hard to get to a point where you are truly living in community - and often if you do get there, people move away or you drift apart somehow. I am happy to say that I think we are getting to know lots of people here in Seattle and that we aren’t just “talking” about community, but we are actively pursuing it.

I want to thank Joe and David for commenting on my post regarding Religious Pluralism. However, I do want to clarify my thoughts…

I fully support the separation of Church and State, and also the first amendment. My question was a theological one, not a political one. Let me restate it:

By saying that we live in a Pluralist society are you saying that the Gods of Hinduism, Islam, etc… exist? And if so, by acknowledging their existence are you negating your faith in God?

I’ll leave you with two quotes:

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

A.W. Tozer in the Knowledge of the Holy

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

I have to take the I-90 bridge to work… I thought that was bad.

Check out what happened down in SF:

Tanker fire destroys part of MacArthur Maze

The Gov. Schwarzenegger of California has already announced free mass transit at least for Monday. I can’t imagine that it will be fixed in one day… we’ll have to see how they manage the situation.