Get up a get, get get down

Yesterday my wife went to get groceries and left me with our son. He was being really cute. We have a sunken living room, and he's able to get up the one step no problem now. Getting down is another thing completely. He's taken a few face plants, but yesterday I could see the wheels turning in his little head trying to figure out to get down with the minimum of trauma. He went sort of sideways and plopped down on his bottom on the living room floor. Voila. He did it again later, much less gracefully though. I'm always in awe seeing this little human being learning things and growing and just thinking how amazing the whole thing is. Wow...

Sontag Morgen

Yesterday we helped my brother-in-law and his wife move into their new townhome. Boy it's big. Twice as big as our place. It sure would be nice to live somewhere that we could afford a place of our own, but alas, it's not to be. It's hard not to be jealous. Well, jealous isn't the right word really. I'm super glad for them and enjoyed helping. The longing for a place has little to do with what others have, it's something that I (we) have desired for a while. In any event, there's the open house today, so we'll have to make ourselves scarce for a while. We may go to missions fest or something.

Boring

Yeah, there's not that much always going on in my life. There is and there isn't, you know what I mean. Actually, today we're going to pick up my wife's youngest brother from the airport. He's moving out here temporarily. That leaves Gramma and Grampa with an empty nest now. My own brother is on his way to Afghanistan soon. Apparently he has a new girlfriend too. Amazing what you miss when you don't talk to someone for a month.
On a frustration note, the projector at the church stops working. I think the bulb burnt out. I don't think we have a replacement, and I don't think we have a ladder that reaches that high anymore. It's mounted way up there. It seems the more technoreliant we get, the more problems we have. We'll have to go back to the overheads I guess. I wonder if anyone still knows how to work those things? Or maybe we'll bust out the hymn books...

Looky, looky.

The house is listed on the internet now. Click here. It feels a little odd that on Sunday complete strangers will be going through our home without us there. Still no news or where we are going to end up, but we're still looking.
On a different note, our son was able to climb from hands and knees to being on his feet last night. It's always so amazing to see him develop in these little ways. It means he's learning and exploring and starting to grasp some of life. It's pretty cool. I wonder what's next...

Temptation

Every time I log in to blog, there is a little add on the side of my blogger dashborad enticing me to sign up for the google adsense program. I'm not entirely sure how it works and such, or even if my meager blog would make any money, but it's always there tempting me. On the one hand, the prospect of earning money for nothing essentially is always appealling, but I also don't like the idea of exploiting my friends for an extra buck.
I actually don't mind having ads on sites and stuff if it means that I don't have to pay for something. Like my first email account with good old Juno. I believe it had adds if I remember correctly, but I also had a free email account, which was great.
On the other hand, I really appreciate sites like www.homestarrunner.com because they could totally have ads and make a tonne of money and it wouldn't bother me, but the fact that they don't makes them even more dear to my heart.
I don't think I'll be signing up for adsense, but I'm sure the ad will remain there, waving it's imaginary pixellated dollar signs in front of my eyes...

It's happening

The realtors came by yesterday to measure the house. Today, someone's taking pictures for a virtual tour (I'll post a link if I find one). The open house is on Sunday. The realtors said the house should sell quickly, so time is running out for us to find a new place before our current landlords are gone. We're not sure what to do. We'd like God to speak from heaven and give us a sign, but I don't think that's gonna happen. So in the mean time we're still looking and hoping...

I've got 2 words for ya

CHILI COOK-OFF
At no time should one combine 12 varieties of chili in one stomach...

Busy but not complaining

It's been a busy weekend, and the week ahead looks even worse. I don't mind being busy, but I wish it would space itself out more. It's the rushing around I think that wears me out. Ideally it would be nice to have something every other day I think. That way there's always time in between to rest and to anticipate what's coming next. Of course in a perfect world we wouldn't have to work and we could just hang out playing games or talking or street hockey or whatever instead. Then we could be as busy as we want to be and not worry about work getting in the way. That's be great...

Whaddya think?

One of my many goals is to learn a little something about html and webpages and such, just for my own interest. My only outlet for this so far is this blog. I figured out how to change the colours and am working on making it look... um, different. I never was really happy with that green colour. In any event, if you have any suggestions or ideas as to what I should do with it, don't hesitate to comment. And have a good weekend. Ours shall be quite busy and I'll not have a moment to updateth thee on mine meanderings and such.

Slide, slide whoa the mudslide

There are news crews littered along the road I use to get to and from, well just about anywhere. There's a mudslide not too far from our house. We only heard about it because Carolyn's parents phoned to see if we were alright. It's funny how information passes. We don't watch TV. I listen to the news radio and read the local paper. But as far as the mass influx of information goes, the majority of it is interesting but mostly irrelevant and in some ways not worth my time. Like the mudslide. Interesting. It does cause me a bit of a delay because a lane is closed due to a water main break and everyone slows down to look at the news trucks. But even though there's a national news event happening just down the street, the most impact it has on me is people talking to me about it, telling me things about it that I wouldn't have know otherwise.
Information is the great commodity of our time. The news channels tout having helicopters so you can know what's going on immediately. Why do I need to know what's going on at all? Granted, there are some things that I probably should pay attention to, but over all, I think our news and information culture is overrated.
What I do like is reading people's blogs. I like it because it's personal information about people that I know and care about. Even when it's people I don't know I like it because it's personal. Almost like someone talking to me.
I suppose this post has degenerated into somewhat of a rant/ponitification thing. BREAK LOSE FROM THE INFO GLUT! might have been a better title. Oh well, maybe I should stop myself now...

So much potential...

I've been trying to use Firefox for a while now and have decided that it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sure, it's got some neat features and such, but what good are those when it crashes 2 0r 3 times a day. I just wish I could figure out if I can change Internet Explorer because my screen resolution is 1400 X 1050 or something and all the images in IE show up blurry. Anyone know if there's something I can do? help... me...

Exciting News

Yesterday, our son learned to crawl forward! He was playing with a ball and accidentally hit it away from himself. So what does he do? He goes after it of course. I even got him crawling on video. Exciting. I think his crawling style resembles that of an iguana where he sticks one arm straight out and then places it down in front of himself. It's pretty cute, but then again everything about him is cute...

Nothing Much

Tonight we have a youth event. Games and Pizza. We're playing fly-swatter hockey. You use ping pong balls and fly swatters, and your lower back muscles get really sore for several days afterward from all the bending over if you are older than a high school senior higher. This time I'm going to get better quality fly swatters, because last year when we did it they broke too easily. Maybe Koho or CCM has a good fly swatter...

Pushing Myself

All those years ago when I first learned how to play guitar, I started by playing songs that I liked. Mostly Metallica and metal stuff. Once I had a feel for things I moved on the chords and scales and began to understand how the guitar worked and how to be creative with it. In my attempts to play piano I've always tried to start with scales and "learn to" books. The other day I came to the realization that if I'm going to learn to play the piano, then I need to learn some songs that I like. I need a challenge, a task to complete. So, while I was picking up the usb midi adapter, I also picked up... Charlie Brown's Christmas for Easy Piano. It's got to be my most favourite piano album of all time. So now I have my challenge, let's see if I'm up to it...

New Toys

Yesterday I bought a usb midi adapter. So now I can make sheet music for some members of our worship team using the keyboard instead of typing it in which takes alot longer. Although I wonder if it's that much faster now. You really have to have your timing down well, otherwise it gives all these crazy short rests and things. I suppose as I get used to it things will get faster.
Today involved one of the more traumatic experiences of my life. Our son had to get some immunization shots. I hate watching it because he obviously is in pain and cries a lot. But once it was over he forgot about it pretty quickly. Thankfully. Good thing it's another 6 months before we have to do that again...

Doctor Snuggles - The Official Web Site

Doctor Snuggles - The Official Web Site
Does anyone other than me remember this cartoon fondly? Or at all for that matter.

Empire of Me

I just finished watching all the documentary material that came with my Star Wars DVD's. It was fascinating. I really love all that background info and stuff. I was a little depressed though after watching Empire of Dreams. Here's George Lucas, this genius guy who has changed the face of the earth through his movie making and how others make movies, and what have I done? Sure I've done lot's of things, and really good things like having a son and seeing people's lives changed by God, but no one's going to make a documentary about me. It's just one of those "I'm turning 30 soon" moments (and I know that those of you over 30 are laughing at me). Anyway, my wife says I have changed the world, maybe not on a massive scale, but i've touched lots of people and changed their lives.
I think I like documentaries for the same reason I like Blogs... they make me feel a part of what's going on. Even though I'm not there with the people whose blogs I read, I feel a part of their lives because they take the time to tell me about what's going on. It just helps me feel connected to something bigger I suppose.
Too, old. Yes, too old to begin the training... (I'm only 29 c'mon)

Nothing Much

On Friday, the pastor and I shovelled the driveway of the church. He made a joke that it was nice to do something like that because often as a pastor you don't see the direct results of your work, but we had a big patch of blacktop to admire.
Yesterday we had a couple over and played Starfarers of Catan. It was fun. My wife won. That's why we got the game, because she likes it and can win (and usually does somehow). We also built a snowman in the backyard and pulled our son around in a laundry basket. He didn't seem too enthused about it, but we had fun. I'm sure next year he'll be beggin' us to take him outside...

Snow update

I got to shovel around the church today. It was kind of fun actually, but I don't need to do it all the time. It's perfect snowball snow, too bad my son isn't old enough to throw one at me. :)

Considering some people I've talked to here, I thought I might take and opportunity to make a weather comment. Seeing as how I have lived in or travelled fairly extensively in every province west of Quebec, I can say from what I've seen, that snow is snow. Every place has the same snow, it just depends on what the conditions are like when the snow falls. It never gets cold enough in Vancouver for anything but slushy snow, but that stuff happens everywhere else too. I think West Coast people try to trump up their poor weather conditions to seem worse than they are. Like, "it's just as cold here because it's damp". Um, plus 5 is never just as cold as -33, people just aren't used to it here and usually don't dress appropriately. And the snow isn't worse because it's slush. Saskatoon was a million times slipperier when I drove there this week, because it was frozen solid.
No West Coast person should ever feel inferior for not having bad weather like other parts of Canada. They should feel blessed and appreciate the fact that things are usually so nice here. I know I do...

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

That's right folks, here on the wet coast it is snowing today. I had to go down to the Larrivee factory to get my guitar fixed. I was going to go today, but I heard it was going to snow, so i went yesterday. It didn't take long, and I'm glad I went. This morning, I heard the strangely familiar sound of the snow plow outside my window and when I peaked through the shades.... dun dun dun! there was about 1 cm of snow. It's still snowing and I think I'll just continue to work at home for a bit. I know that I can drive in the snow, I just did in Saskatoon. I'm just worried about all those other Vancouver drivers. Plus, we didn't get collision insurance and I'd hate to slide into something or someone, that would be the end of me driving here I think.
So, maybe I'll take a picture or something just to prove it to you. It looks nice btw. In the 2 1/2 years we've been here, I've not seen this much snow except on the mountains. I hope it stays for a while...

Long time no b(log)

I brought my computer with me to my in-laws for Christmas on the off chance that I'd be able to poach some wireless internet at their house. By standing at the top of the stairs, holding the computer over the railing, I managed to get a signal. Not enough to do much though, so I didn't bother with it for most of the time.
We had a good Christmas vacation. We relaxed and ate and even went for a walk one day when the temp rose above -10. We got starfarers of catan for christmas and I got the star wars dvd set.
When we returned home, we found that our home had been converted into a sauna. The landlords fixed the heating and put up cedar siding around our entrance, so it is now warm, humid and smells like cedar. It looks really nice.
Anyway, I have much catching up to do, so I'll leave you with that...