I wear plaid. I'm a blogger.

Tonight we celebrated Katie's half birthday. By eating half a chocolate cake. Ordering half cheese/half pepperoni pizza. Drinking 3 of the 6-pack of Coke. Giving Katie half of a birthday card. Inviting half the guests. Expecting half of them to show up. Planning to meet during the half time show during the Broncos game. Best part: Katie and Isaiah were asleep on the couch from 4:30-6:30. Everyone showed up at 6 and I actually got everyone into the living room standing in front of Katie before she realized that there were 8 other people with us. You don't know sneaky until you know a group of sneaky people. In other news: This morning for worship we passed out 600 whistles, flutes, kazoos, and hand clappers and sang "Make a Joyful Noise/I Will Not be Silent". It is possibly the coolest thing ever to see old people playing slide whistles to their hearts content during a worship service. Go God!

Well, this morning is my birthday, and as I lay here sleeping in on my birthday morn, what should I hear but the familiar sound of animals pitter pattering across my rooftop as if Christmas eve were here again for all things 1:10 our size. And that's when it hit me. It snowed last night. There should be a 0% chance of squirrels making nose on a rooftop covered with snow. Unless...they are under my roof....

I have a bone to pick with the creator of fantasy football: why can't my team win?? Don't get me wrong, I love to play fantasy football and I care much more about the NFL when I play fantasy football than when I don't. I love to watch games that don't involve the Bengals because there is a good chance I have a player on one of the teams who I am pulling for or against. In general, fantasy football is just plain fun. But it also is brutal. My team just bounced from a 3 game skid at the beginning of the season to an impressive 10 game winning streak, only to lose in the first round of the playoffs. The past 2 years, my team has played very well through regular season play and made it to the mini-super bowl game only to finish 2nd. So what is it, Mr Fantasy Creator, about this game that you have designed to be so cruel to me? You allow me to put together a good team and then squander my hopes in the playoff rounds. How wicked are your thoughts!  Or....

There is only one thing about our current living situation that I find unpleasant: we have no garage. All in all we have a great little house. Private culdesac (which is a nice way of saying dead end), big trees, hard wood floors, fireplace, and nice neighbors. Even the bus drivers who blast their radios at ungodly hours of the morning and litter or street with lunch wrappers aren't that bad. But on a day like today, when you have a 2 hour window to work on your wife's car, not having a garage is really gonna stink. Santa, if you're reading this, please bring me a garage for Christmas. That's all I really want. Speaking of stinky things, my dishwasher is cleaning dishes, but causing then to smell like mildew or rotting milk, both of which leave me with a less-than-clean feeling when I put a cup to my lips. And speaking of bus drivers, Katie and I have decided to win them over with love instead of griping to or neighbors about them. If we give them candy and Christm...

Merry Christmas!!!

This past week (it was a Tuesday, I do believe) I met up with a friend at a very delicious deli, namely that of Firehouse Subs. They are best known for their numerous hot sauces and giving you much more meat than the stingy Subway (though the calorie count will get ya). We were a good ways through our meal and nearly wrapping up our conversation when I thought I recognized a friend walk into the store. I wasn't quite sure if it was in fact someone I knew or not, but after she ordered her food and was facing our way, I made eye contact and beckoned her towards our table. Sure enough, it was a mutual friend of ours and she had come in the restaurant to eat by herself. No one. Should eat by themselves. The three of us engaged in delightful conversation for the next 20 minutes or so and then parted ways. I learned in hindsight that Stacy had actually prayed that morning to not spend lunch time alone (as she had the day off and knew she would be Christmas shopping by herself). At th...

I am sitting at my kitchen table reading a very boring theory book about temporal setting of rhythmic placement in Allemande music (I know, thrilling, right?), and Isaiah is beside me. He is cooing away in a sing song manner and looking up at the ceiling. No lights on, no flickering shadows, nothing. What makes a baby coo like that? I would propose that babies see things we don't see. They haven't yet learned what to look for as far as earthly things so they fix their eyes on what they CAN see. I think babies are born with spiritual eyes. They can see angels and they sing along with the song of heaven. I believe that babies have eyes that still can see what we have trained ourselves to look beyond--the spiritual world of angels, demons, and the heavenly. I wonder if it is possible for us to retrain our eyes to see that too? For a later conversation--I have had house mates who claim to see demonic forces and spiritual activity, so the answer to my above question is ye...

That's right. Most years I am perturbed to hear Christmas music before Thanksgiving but this year I am thoroughly ready for Christmas season to be here. Maybe it's because we've had a couple sub-freezing weekends already and maybe it's because I have a son for the first time and I want him to experience Christmas. Either way, when Thanksgiving dinner was done, Christmas music starting blasting from the Readmobile on our trip home. This will be a pretty swanky holiday season :) Some highlights: -Ran the Turkey Trot 10k downtown. It was a very fun event and I finished with a 9:09 m/m pace. Not too bad considering I did a 9:03 m/m pace for my first 5k this spring! -Bought red rope lights which we will decorate our front porch with. Soon to follow will be the candy cane looking pillars on our house! -Wrote, rewrote, and re-rewrote the sermon for this weekend. Praying that God uses me in spite of my pride (it's a curious thing to feel pride about delivering the word...

Two wonderful things have happened this weekend: Saturday: made a fire hot enough to melt glass. Not just one bottle, but two. Turns out melted glass is fragile and so I don't have any awesome art decoupage to show for it... Sunday: made the perfect chocolate chip cookie. How? theperfectchocolatechipcookie.com/ okay, so these were the ones we didn't follow the recipe exactly and ended up with not QUITE enough flour...

You know, the whole concept of running as a sport just doesn't make sense. Why would you train your body through running, to be able to run further/faster the next time? When does this skill become useful? When do we need to run 26.2 miles to the next town to tell them we won before collapsing in a heap of exhaustion? ...and yet, this is what I am doing. I now am up to 6 miles at a time of 9:30 min/mile. Not too bad considering how boring running is. The current goal is to run the Turkey Trot downtown so I bought some fancy new shoes today and by golly! do they make a difference! They put a spring in my step, a smile on my face, and a color beneath my feet.

PS, Take this Pinterest: homemade Daniel-style Reese's cups. Constructed from my own fabulous brain without the help of your online sources from who-knows-where

Dear Diary, (I mean...manly blog of men stuff) Thursday evening I played my first indoor soccer game in probably 4 years. All said and done, it was a BLAST!! I absolutely loved having the chance to be competitive and turn it on athletically (in a co-ed league, so it wasn't ALL that, but still). However, when one's own body hasn't played soccer in 4 years, when one hasn't demanded the rigorous stop and go and change of direction that soccer requires, one will soon find out the next day that those muscle groups that one demands the attention of (while they still be there) are not nearly up to snuff with the level of expectation. And then one will realize that climbing the stairs, crouching, and climbing in and out of a car are suddenly delightfully painful activities. Today, post house build (Help Build Hope at Parkside), my legs are reminding me that I have a looong way to go before I can expect to get any response from them again. Gratefully there are 2 weeks before...

I like to consider each purchase I make as an investment. -I bought a pair of skis as an investment in winter sports so I wouldn't have to pay for the rental each time. -I bought a garden hose as an investment in taking proper care of my lawn. -I bought a car jack as an investment in DIY car maintenance. -I bought courses from the University of Kentucky as an investment in my education. -I bought a motorcycle as an investment in experiencing the beauty of creation as it whizzes around my helmet. -I bought a cruise package from a tele-marketer as an investment in a future vacation. -And I bought a 1976 MG Midget as an investment as a small riding lawn mower, since it is the only vehicle that fits in my backyard and has enough horsepower to pull down fence posts. That's right. The Ranger wouldn't fit through the gate to make it into the backyard (in fact, I broke the driver's side mirror trying to make it fit), so THIS clever guy decided to make use of the fact t...

Ordinarily I am not a fan of Halloween. Why? you may ask. Because it is filled with kids dressing like dying people, dead people, and ghosts of dead people. All in all, a rather morbid concept. However, this year I really wanted to use the holiday as a chance to connect to our neighbors. Most days we don't talk (let's be honest, we never talk) to our neighbors. But on Halloween, it's like a gimme! (literally, it's a gimme, gimme). So after talking to Matt and Clayton at church, I approached this Halloween with 2 fresh perspectives: 1) Use Halloween to connect to neighbors and build some small amount of relationship. 2) Use Halloween as a social event. Christmas, Easter, and even Thanksgiving are all friendly holidays, but they can be offensive to non-Christians. (I suppose the 4th of July is a safe one to share, but no one goes door to door). Halloween is an automatic social holiday--almost like a modern day masquerade. So I spent Wednesday night building a fire...

I'm so glad that even after the leaves have fallen (at least at my house) the pedals haven't.

You know what's sad? Coming home on Monday to see a business card wedged in your door for someone who does leaf removal when it is less than 24 hours after you raked the leaves.

Thursday I went to a Lasik specialist to see if I was a candidate for lasik corrective eye surgery and before I get into the nitty gritty details of cost, procedure, and how wonderful it would be to wake up and read the alarm clock, let me take you into the back rooms of this practice and inside the mind of one of the practitioners. As a part of the initial visit to see if I am even a candidate for lasik there are a series of tests that everyone must go through. The first test was being taken into a back room where a nurse (female) was about to test my vision and measure part of my eye. About to, because I spoke up and asked if I needed to take my contacts out beforehand (why would I want Lasik if I already had great vision??). She then took me to another room to take out my contacts, test my vision, and see what my prescription is. After discovering what my vision is (or isn't) she had me sit in a room and wait for the doctor to talk about questions I may have about Lasik. The d...

 It's taken a whole week to be able to talk about it, but I think it's finally time to mention that the playoffs don't matter any more. Who cares whether which big market team wins the world series?? San Fransisco knocked off the Reds, so I can't root for them, the Cardinals I can never root for, the Yankees no one cares to root for, and that leaves the Tigers (whom I love dearly, but don't follow very closely...like a second cousin or something). We took Isaiah to clinch game #2 (a.k.a. Wednesday night's loss) and then my dad and I received tickets to go to Thursday's clinch game #3 (a.k.a. The End of the Season). We had great seats for game #3--so close that I could yell at the guys in SF's bullpen and I knew they could hear me. I got into their heads, saying things like, "Hey! Which of you is going to be the first to cry when a Redleg hits a game winning homerun off of you?" (those are biting words). Then I decided to shout at SF's rig...

Needles make me squirmish. I really don't care to give blood or get shots because I just don't care for needles. It isn't anything terrific--as in, I don't pass out and grow faint looking at them--I just don't like the thought of being pricked by a needle; it isn't fun. Hoxworth calls me every couple weeks and reminds me that people are dying and that their blood bank is too low and my blood type can save lives, and every time they call I have two responses: -The first response is that I feel equal parts heroic and empowered to go save a life. -The next response I have is to ignore the call, because, well...I don't like being stuck. This leads to guilt, most assuredly, but not quite enough guilt to call them back and schedule a time. Well, a couple weeks ago they got me. I answered the phone and they talked me into saving a life by giving my blood. Those darn save-a-life speeches just have a way of getting to me I suppose. I set it up to happen during ...

Do you find yourself sneezing, sniffing, and snuffling? Do you have itchy eyes, runny nose, and scratchy throat? Then I have just the solution for you!! Go outside and start hacking away at your neighbor's unkempt yard. After a few hours of wheezing in the pollen and grass clippings, you'll be feeling right as rain! Yes folks, you too can overcome your head cold with just a few short hours in your neighbor's backyard, turning this: into this:

 Ahhh....what a nice refreshing view. Sometimes you just need to sit back and take in the beauty of creation that surrounds us. What a nice, peaceful, serene hillside to enjoy the changing color of the leaves. Sit back and take in the sights and smells. Autumn is a truly beautiful time of year. Unless of course, the reason you are there is because you ran out of gas on the side of the highway...

Every good story should start with, "It was a cold, dark, rainy Friday night..." and end with, "And that's how the midget ended up in my front yard..."

I'm really not sure which is worse: deep fried Twinkies, or deep fried vegetables. On the one hand, you are admitting the fact that this is unhealthy for you and you're saying, "What the heck, let's make that Twinkie deep fried and go ahead and clog all the arteries at once." But with the vegetables I feel like someone said, "You know guys, we are eating way to unhealthy here at the Brown County Fair, it's time we introduce veggies as a fair food. What's more healthy than veggies?" and then they dropped them in 4 gallons of boiling peanut grease. That's the Brown county fair for ya. Commonly known as the LittleStateFair.com. Katie and my first date as parents and we decided to go eat deep-fried everything (corn dogs, waffle cake, and elephant ears) and watch the tractor pull. It don't get no more romantic than that. Shoo. So there we are, watching this culturally foreign concept known as "tractor pulling" (for those of y...

If I had to liken my personality to an animal I think I would be a chameleon. (speaking of which, who decided to spell that?) I find myself becoming like those I am around. When I spend 2 weeks in Brazil, my speech starts to pick up a Portuguese dialect. When I am with baseball players, I tend to talk about sports, accomplishments, and make crass jokes. When I spend time with Renaissance Festival people (Ren Fest) I talk using a cockney accent and make lots of jokes. When I am with music theatre people, entertainment, music theorists, etc. I adopt similar speech traits and I adapt my interests and conversation to match other people's tones. In many ways I could see this as a strength. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:22  I have become all things to all people so that by all   possible   means   I might save some.  In many ways that has been a life verse for me--I can grab a hold of what Paul meant here. And that can be a healthy thing. It is difficult to have a ...

If you happen to stumble across a 1994 Ford Ranger, nothing fancy about it with slight rust showing on the body and you notice that the owned left the door unlocked, don't try to break in and steal something. Chances are pretty good there is nothing worth stealing. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it looks like a cow.  There is DEFINITELY nothing worth stealing. So then, Mr. Friday-night-post-storm-glove-box-opener, what exactly did you think you would find in my truck?? The highest valued thing in there is my change jar for parking meters and you didn't even notice that! Well, that aside, Friday night marked a duly interesting evening for me. Katie and I were at my parents house letting the grandparents of our first child have their fill of hugs and kisses. Round about 8:30p I checked in on the first place division-clinching Reds to see that the score was tied 1-1 in the 7th inning. Our magic number was 1 and all we needed was a run in order to clinch first place in the cen...

I just rediscovered the art of the blog and realized that I make a lot of good memories when I am blogging. Blogging is different than journaling, you know. Journaling is that sappy chick stuff. Blogging is manly. Blogging requires quick wit and a mustache. You have to move to Canada to become a blogger and wear plaid. Blogging destroys rainforests. No. no, I must be thinking of something homophonic... Alright, so here's the quick set up: This past 370-odd days Katie and I have.... ...relocated from Georgetown, KY to Linwood, Cincinnati ...finished our course work at UK ...started at a church in Cincinnati called Parkside Christian Church (www.visitparkside.com) ...bought a house ...lead worship for the North American Missionary Convention ...had the lead pastor at PCC fired after we were there for 2 months ...almost get a dog (until we found out...) ...find out we were pregnant ...buy a cruise (stupid me and clever phone salesman. No, just stupid me) ...sell both moto...