Back to the City Again

Went back to Chicago this weekend.  Probably my last visit while Rob and Eliz are there.  It was mostly a boys trip with Brad Smith, and Greg Harmon joining me. 



Skyline in the day.  I'm hurting to use a camera better than the one in my phone.

It was a quick trip.  We took a side trip to visit Adela at her new job at "Peachwave".  They have totes the best hun-cal froyo (which is some type of white people jive talk for "yummy yogurt").  Then Friday evening we pretty much spent the evening hanging out in Dan Kruegers room until people started passing out (starting with Ethan Reynolds). 

Saturday morning we went to the "Walker Brothers" (I think) pancake house.  I ordered the 49er flapjacks that take up the whole plate. 

(Imagine a picture of giant flapjacks.... fail on my part)

Then we went by the Home Alone house and watched the Office (which is fantastic this final season) at Rob's.  Later in the afternoon we journeyed to the Lincoln Park Zoo and Brad got to see some cows and goats.  It's kind of funny to learn about how cows and goats produce milk.  Especially when I've seen thousands of them over the years in Michigan.

Brad taking pictures of barn animals.

After that we ate at Giordano's.  I'm sad to say we didn't capture any video of this family that was letting their kids run wild including a 5ish and 6ish year old that were running through the turnstyle door.  They both were caught in it a couple times, or it caught their arm or leg as they were half in and half out.  Awful parents...

Girodano's was perfect, like usual and we all had Cake Shakes from... Piradelli's.  I always mess that one up.  And I don't feel like looking it up cause I'm using the tv computer since I left my netbook at Rob's along with my Bible and a couple books.

Brad's large shake that I finished most of.  I'm a fatty.

It's ok about the Bible because I have others.  I used the one from when I was a kid for Sunday School.  When I was studing I figured out it has almost all of Revelation underlined.  I was a bit obsessive about it as a kid. 

This week was about 1st Corinthians 7 and about how Paul suggest we skip the marriage thing because it's hard to stay focused on God while married.  It wasn't all anti marriage though.  We discussed WHY it's hard and how high school students should really consider if they want another random high school kid to be affecting their life decisions.  I thought it went well though.

Have a great week!  Go for a walk or something.  I know I'll be trying to get out and about this week.







Busy Busy

Not too much to say.  I blew it for pictures, like usual.  I went for a walk with the Riegel's and all I have to show for it is this:

We had pizza from Papa Johns after our walk.

It was fun though.  Nice and windy weekend over here.  Oh yeah!  I went to see Alistair Begg speak in Lansing and caught up with some friends there.  I hate driving in Lansing.  Streets don't make any sense anywhere.  But whatever.  Always good to hear Uncle Allie (he was speaking on Romans 12).

Just got this in the mail.  Creepy cover.

I'm trying to read more but I'm also busy and Summer sports will start to complicate that soon.  I'm reading an Old Testament reading program with my church, and that occupies me for the most part. But I'm also trying to read The Millenials, Christian Reflection, and Love and Respect.  Rob introduced me to Harry Blamires (pronounced like "choirs" they say but I choose to pronounce it with a Spanish accent).  It could be a dud, but he tutored under CS Lewis so he's got that going for him.

All of this reading on top of studying and preparing Sunday School lessons.  I can't decide how that's going.  One week seems fantastic and the next is meh.  I keep praying that something that makes sense is sinking in somewhere.

That's it.  Peace out!

Sunday School

On Wednesday our Youth Pastor headed out for Colombia to pick up his newly adopted children.  That leaves me here to teach his Sunday School class.  Usually I am a little hesitant to take on extra responsibilities.  I already try to keep myself basically overbooked, so adding in more items to the agenda can be extra complicated.  This is one that I'm pretty excited about though.

I usually have a couple things that i'm excited about in my reading and it's fun to turn that into a lesson.  My first lesson was today.  We discussed martyrs for a bit and read out of the Jesus Freaks book (by DC Talk).  I plan to read one of the accounts from that book per class.  Maybe two sometimes.

The main topic was prayer.  If you've ever been in a Bible study with me than you can guess which author inevitably comes up.  That's right, I quoted heavily out of the Efficacy of Prayer by my favorite author, CS Lewis.  He gets pretty verbose, but those are all opportunities to learn new words and try to figure out new concepts.  It's a great essay and I followed up with several prayers out of Genesis, Job, Kings, Psalms, Matthew and Acts.  

In other news Adela and her sister Ana came out for the Easter weekend.  Mom loved having ladies around to chat with and to celebrate some of the holiday traditions with.  She even made Easter baskets for the girls.  Not me though! 

On Saturday we also had the Moody's and McAdams' over for tacos.  Made for a full house with dinner, movies and Sorry!  

Good sun.

Now it's time for Spring!  It's setting in more and more.  I played disc golf on Saturday and it was packed to the gills.  Then after driving the girls to Hope I arrived back in Battle Creek at 8:30 PM and some small bits of light were still out here.  It's great and it's only going to get better!

Happy Easter!  Happy Spring!  Here comes the crazy, busy, fun, exciting, hot, and everything else that comes along with warm weather and sports seasons.

Harrrrcuts.

If you've been around me very much, then you know that sometimes I'm funny, and sometimes I'm funny to laugh at.  Well when I asked for hair clippers for my birthday... it was bound to be funny somehow.

I've always wanted to cut my own hair.  It's right up my alley.  A challenge that also saves me money, even if it's about 30-40 bucks a year of savings.  Most the time I have friends or family cut it, but this time I tried it on my own.  

And I screwed it up!  You can't see in these pictures but I had a fade guard on to help around my ears and I pressed it too hard so it make nice racing stripes on the side of my head.  I went back through with a kind of low blade, but never really fixed them.  After a couple days the stripes are mostly faded, but I can still pick them out.

Here's hoping next time I learn from these mistakes.

Have a great week!

Hat Pee?

Me and my hat in Colombia... apparently arresting Rebecca Penrod.

This hat has gone through a lot.  I think Rob won it in some kind of contest, or pop cap return thing or something?  He probably remembers.  One Summer day in 2004 or 2005 I needed a hat for softball and I happened to be at Rob's house.  So I asked to borrow one of his hats.

Me and my hat and my brother in San Francisco.

This is where the first discrepancy appears.  I thought that he said something about me keeping it and I don't think he remembers that.  Either way, I ended up using it as my go to softball hat for years and years.  In 2010 I went to camp to work maintenance and it became my go to work hat.  It turns out that maintenance is much harder on a hat than softball twice a week.

Throughout the years this hat went to Colombia and spent time at the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as well as Lake Superior.  It's an impressive resume for a hat I believe, and it held up really well until the maintenance thing.  Then the hat started tearing and keeping nasty stains.  It was pretty gross before the end.

The last photo of the hat.

Well my basement has been smelling like cat pee lately and I was trying to figure out why.  Then I picked the hat up to put it away and it was wet and smelled like... cat pee.  Gross.  So it's on the way out now.  It should probably get sent off in style.  A couple rounds of the M1 through it before a fire. Like any sentimental item that needs to be put down.  

That's pretty much all.  It's fairly gross, but there it is.

Adventurousness

Work is kind of setting in to a normal pace.  I don't feel like I'm near ready for working on my own, but I'm learning new things every day and settling into a pattern of work.  More importantly I enjoy going in and working, even when I stay a little late here and there.

I enjoy being able to afford some new clothes and I'm trying to pile up some work pants versus regular pants.  That, along with some new polos and black shoes were part of my goals of the week.  I headed out for Kohl's and JC Penney's with a side of Dunham's.  I came out with some pants, shirts, new gym shoes and a Winter coat (first one since 2003 or so).

I enjoy shopping for a little while, then I'm sick of changing clothes constantly back and forth and back and forth.

On Wednesday I snagged Adela up from Holland because her classes were cancelled for Thursday/Friday. So on Thursday I planned to leave work a little early to spend some extra time with Adela and Mom, maybe to watch a movie.  Well I didn't get a picture of it, but the cats head was a little goblet of blood and puss and nastiness.  She's been acting funny and sensitive, so a vet trip was being planned, but not on the day I got out early!  Long story short she had an abscess (basically a major scratch that cats have trouble healing) and the vet shaves around it and gives her some antibiotics.

She peed all over at the vet clinic, but otherwise it was fairly uneventful. 

Friday night we had the unique opportunity to spend some time with a couple of Adela's campers from this last Summer.  I don't think very many high school campers have their counselor show up at their house (without warning) on a random Friday night.  We went to the mall and rolled pennies and bounced bouncy balls, we ran around on the parking garage and stayed out of trouble up there, snagged some slushies from the "best" slushy gas station in town and finally went sledding at Riverside on the snow (and by snow I mean grass and ice).

On the way to the car after sledding I realized my keys were not in my pocket.  After searching for quite a while in the dark we called for back up.  Right as my friend arrived to help us out I found the keys.  They were at the end of my first run when I went head first.  I figured they were somewhere dumb in the car and I was an idiot or that I didn't search far enough out.  Well it was the searching because they turned up about 20 feet further than I thought I had gone.

I used Adela's nice camera flashlight and she used my janky one that takes pictures randomly along the way.

More shopping on Saturday and some play time with the Riegel's in the afternoon.  Winter is running out of strength and I'm excited to see dirt.  I'll be even more excited when it's dry dirt and I can run and play on it easier.  I enjoy the seasons changing and with more light at night I'm pretty excited about the the coming of Spring.

Found some clearance dress shoes for 12 bucks.  We'll see if I like them or not.

The Other Side of Lake Michigan

This week I enjoyed a new sports night.  On Monday's there is a bit of a church volleyball league that I'm looking forward to getting involved in.  For now it looks a little shaky, but if more people join the next session it could turn into a legit league.  And the bonus is that I can move a couple courts down and see my friends play basketball in the church league that plays at the same time.

Last week I posted the rain I'd been driving in.  That turned to super heavy snow.

Over the weekend I joined in on a small volleyball tournament with Dad at our normal Thursday night volleyball spot.  Before that I played some basketball at Harper Creek's Administration Building.  By the end of the day I was feeling pretty beat up.

Sunday at church we got to talking about the upcoming (August) mission trip to Colombia I'm going on.  It'll be interesting to sort out the 9 days of not working, but that'll depend on what I have going on at Denso.  For now it's exciting to sort out the details.  After church I rolled out to see Adela in Holland.

After several trips to the Holland Beach I finally got to see some sun!

The ice was treacherous to walk on.  I usually am pretty steady on it, but the wind and the slope was rough.

So the sun wasn't all the way out, but it was still very pretty.

Again... the iciness.  And all the ladders were covered with ice.  So falling in would involve a long swim to find somewhere to get out of the water.  Very sketchy.

So that was the deal pretty much.  Sports and Church fill my time after work.  Some days I get a little lonely without everyone I used to hang out with, but those nights I have video games and books to keep me company.