I wear plaid. I'm a blogger.

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...