Happy Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all...There's a lot of people we wish we could see this Christmas, but we hope your holiday is full of joy, peace, and contentment. (Even if you don't get to be with US...I know that truly is a great loss for you.) To the left you can see how far our tree has come since my last post. Actually, it's pretty much dead now, but that's what you get when you cut a tree down and stick it in your house for a month. It looks pretty anyway. Jess and I have officially declared tonight (Saturday) to be our own Private Christmas Eve. Tomorrow we will have our own Private Christmas Morning, and then head up to Big Bear where Mom and Bill and Grandma and Grandpa are waiting for us at a cabin they rented for the week. It just dumped snow up there, so hopefully it sticks around. We'll do some sledding, relax with hot beverages by a real wood fire, and thus it will presumably feel like a "real" Christmas this year - something we are both looking forward to. Due to Christmas on a Tuesday and the generosity of my boss, I get a four day weekend (Sat - Tues) - and due forces unknown and unexpected, Jess actually gets four days off as well (Sun - Wed). So I'll probably actually just take an extra day off, and we'll stay up there until Wednesday. No need to rush into a 3 hr drive down a snowy mountain after eating a big Christmas dinner - that's what I always say at least. Well, as I said earlier, we hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your respective families and friends....And God bless us, every one.

And so it begins...

The holiday's are upon us. Resistance is futile, there is no escape... And surprisingly, (shocking in fact, even to myself) I find that as the mad holiday season prematurely descends upon us, I am almost...well...enjoying it? For one who is most often characterized as a humbug or a scrooge, this strange feeling of pleasure is quite different. Frankly, it's odd enough to internalize it, much less act upon it. But yet I already find myself willingly partaking in holiday activities. The day after Thanksgiving, my crazy wife went out shopping before the first of her two shifts at work. And in between her shifts, guess what? More shopping. And I offered to join her. The next day, she had a rare Saturday off, and I had the itinerary ready to make the most of it. My mom joined us, we had lunch, and then went shopping all afternoon - I even braved Michael's to help her pick up ornament-making supplies. Later at night we went and picked up a tree, then I sipped egg nog while we watched a movie and did some present wrapping. Now mind you, Jess would have done all that with or without me, but the point is I volunteered to join her. I planned half of the activities, for goodness sakes! And dang it, I had a good time!!! I remember being told that I would start to enjoy Christmas again when I had kids of my own to enjoy it with. Of course, kids are a little ways off yet, but apparently the same principle applies to my wife. As the complete opposite of me in almost every way, she doesn't have an ounce of scrooge in her. She loves every minute of the Christmas season, and I suspect she enjoys it even more than most children do. So since making her happy makes me happy, it would seem that I must come to terms with my new appreciative nature for the holidays.

Random Thoughts, Infinite Sadness, and Air Travel

Well, the fires here are dying out, and things are getting back to normal. We saw Air Force One fly by the office last Thursday when Bush was touring the area. That was pretty cool. Things are busy at work...we are still wrapping up a big remodel and getting ready for all sorts of year end rush projects. I have my own (smallwindowless) office now, so that's cool too. I was somewhat bummed to see the BoSox sweep the World Series...I was mildly hoping that the Rockies would take it. I would have at least liked to see a close series. Oh well, guess I'll just have to wait for the Mariners to make it next October. The real sadness that has befallen me lately however is due to my sister and bro in law. In what seemed like a hasty decision to outside eyes, they announced they were packing it up and moving back to Idaho in two weeks. Two weeks. Can you believe it? I was shocked and dismayed. That pretty much reduces my social circle by approximately 50%. (I suppose I should do something about that...) They knew they wanted to move back, and they just decided it would be better to do it now - before Brady invested alot of time and money into his photography business down here and then had to cut ties later. So they're going to stay in my Grandparent's house for a few months (Gma and Gpa are down here for the winter) and then I'm sure they will find a nice, newer house that's five times the size of our apartment for about half as much...*sigh*...nothing like that North Idaho Cost of Living. The only upside of the situation for me is that Jess and I are going to help drive them up there (gotta love roadtrips) and I should have at least one day in CDA to see some friends before I fly back. We're leaving on the 10th and should get up there late on the 11th. Jess is staying through the end of that week with her parents, so she's happy about that. I think we snagged the last of the cheap flights before the holiday weekend. I'm telling you, ExpressJet is the bomb diggity. Non-stop Spokane to San Diego - flight time under 2.5 hours - with taxes and fees...$80. Freaking crazy. Everyone in the Pacific NW needs to come visit me. Everybody.

California Is Burning

Unless you live in a cave with Osama, I'm sure you've heard about the So Cal wildfires going on. We got home from Israel safe and sound Saturday night (It was an incredible trip - I'll post more on that with pics later) and Sunday morning we noticed the smoke. Then things got pretty crazy down here. The San Diego fires have already collectively burned over 300,000 acres. Somewhere around 1,200 homes have been destroyed, along with hundreds of commercial buildings. Hundreds more have been damaged. At one point they had evacuated around 500,000 people. Jess and I are quite safe where we are in La Jolla, but my Mom and Bill, and Lani and Brady and the fam all had to temporarily evacuate on Monday afternoon. Fortunately they were able to go home Tuesday afternoon though, and all is well. We had our friends Johnny and Brooke in town for a couple of days, and Lani and Brady ended up having to stay Monday night with us as well. So we had 6 adults and 3 kids in a small 1 bedroom apartment for a while...that was interesting. :) That incredible NASA photo above shows you what the 50+ mph Santa Ana winds were doing to fuel the flames. They have finally died down, so I think the worst may be over. They have lifted quite a few mandatory evacuations, so a lot of people have been allowed to return home. I think quite a bit of progress was made today, though I think it will still be a while before everything is out. They now estimate that the largest fire, the Witch fire, is 10% contained (this is better than the 0% containment estimate made yesterday.) That one fire is responsible for 200,000 acres and 800 homes. President Bush is supposed to tour the area tomorrow...it's just crazy how much damage has been done so quickly. This is one of the many maps that gives you an idea of just how big the burn areas are. So far the city has taken it very well. Most of the area business and restaurants are donating tons of free food and services. There's nothing but good reports from Qualcomm Stadium, where they housed about 10,000 evacuees. Our church opened as an evacuation center as well and was able to provide shelter, food, clothing, medical care, child care, etc. Like I said, I think Jess and I are safe here by the coast...and it's also comforting to know that in a worst case scenario we could easily fit everything valuable and important to us in our car. :)

New Additions to The Fam...

No, not those kind of additions...In fact, Jess has decided to go back to school for a little bit starting in January (working towards a child development degree) so those kind of "additions" will be put off for a little while longer...For now we will stick with our beta fish, Turbo The Survivor. (So monikered because "Turbo" fits his personality, and "The Survivor" as a tribute to when we went to Idaho and left him unattended for 10 days in our hot apartment with no AC...) Anyway...I did however make a couple of rather expensive purchases lately, the first of which being my lovely new scooter... It's a little 50cc 2002 Yamaha Vino - I was going to put this off, but I found a good deal and didn't want to look around for another six months. She's not perfect, but it sure beats walking a mile and a half to work every day. I'm open to name sugggestions, so far I'm thinking of going with "Gomer." Aaaaand as a necessity for our Israel trip, I also bought this new camera. It's a Fuji s6000 and it rocks. And I'm not even totally sure how to use it yet, but it rocks. So, speaking of our Israel trip...we're leaving tomorrow! Holy crap! (actually today...I need to get up in 5 1/2 hrs, so I should probably go to bed...) I worked like 13 hours today trying to get ready, and just now finished packing. Craziness. Well, providing I don't get blown up by any muslims, and I will definitely post some pics when I get back. Cheers!

Street Scene

So a couple of weeks ago I ended up scoring a couple of tickets to Street Scene from a lady I work with, who scored them from someone she used to work with etc... Jess and I had been wanting to go, but there was no way we were going to shell out that many clams for a good time. I had known there was a chance I would end up getting free tickets, but didn't think it was a very good chance, so I didn't say anything to Jess about it until I knew for sure (which was the day beforehand.) Anyway, long story short we ended up spending that Saturday afternoon there and had a pretty good time. I had gone down to Tecate that morning with Brady to shoot some video for a True Light Ministries project thing, so I was pretty wiped...but it was still sweet. The highlight for me, of course, was seeing Matt Costa play. He had a full band and played alot of new stuff...and it rocked. Even though he was on a small side stage, and the mix wasn't that good. Plus he had to compete with some other groups that were playing on other stages - the most noticeable being some rap group somewhere nearby, which made for some humorous moments and comments. (My favorite being when Matt Costa mentioned that he didn't know what they were doing "over there, but over here we're gonna play some MUSIC...") After his set, everyone was yelling for him to play "Sunshine" cause had neglected to do so...but they were ready to tear down the stage and he had to quit, so we walked away rather dejectedly...until Jess spotted him grabbing his guitar and running off the side of the stage. So we booked it back, and sure enough he was hanging out and playing unplugged for/with the 20 or so people that hung around....it was awesome. We also saw (among others) Augustana, and I was actually pleasantly surprised at their quality and depth (i had only heard that one radio song up until then.) And we saw Panic at the Disco, which was entertaining. The highlight for Jess though was the headliner for the night - Muse. They surprised me by actually opening their set with "Knights of Cydonia," and followed it with more well-crafted (if not strange) music. I have to admit they are a little weird, but they did put on an impressive show. The only show I ended up missing that I wanted to see was G Love and Special Sauce. Well, plus I wish I could have gone back on Sunday to see The Killers and Brand New, but you know what they say about beggars and choosers...So anyway, there you have it. Street Scene: Lots of music, lots of fun, lots of drunk people making out in the mosh pits, coming home and smelling like pot...All in all a good time.




(I have a few more pics on myspace)

On Boston and Being Busy

So I've been quite busy lately and have thoroughly neglected my new blog...no great loss I suppose. We moved to a new, larger, tiny one bedroom apartment the end of July, and we are enjoying it very much. So far I have only had to sell one kidney to cover rent. I spent the first week of August in Boston at an LPL conference...that was alot of fun. I highly recommend it as a good place to visit...it was so freaking muggy there though, it was ridiculous. But all of the people we ran into were extremely nice. They talk your ear off (esp the cab drivers) and they have wicked awesome accents to boot. Then Jess and I spent a week in the middle of August up in Idaho...It was great to get back home after a year and see everyone. Or at least almost everyone. I realized that I really missed the whole small-town feel of Cd'A. The day after we got in we just walked around downtown and I kept running into old friends...that just doesn't happen in SD. My body decided that since I wasn't working it was an okay time to finally get sick, so I ended up wasting a whole day in bed. But we still crammed alot in, and we got to go to my cousin Holly's wedding before we left too. All in all a good break. I didn't really have time to take alot of pictures back home, and we really only had one day in Boston to bum around...but here are a few quick visual highlites...

Below left is the balcony of the old statehouse where Bostonians had their copy of the Declaration of Independence read to them (the "Boston Massacre" occurred about 20 yards in front of this building. - Below right is, well, Paul Revere's grave...

Above left is the steeple of the Old North Church (Christ Church) where Robert Newman hung two lanterns to signal Paul Revere - And above right is the pulpit inside the church (Charles Wesley once preached there.)

We had oysters on the half shell at the Union Oyster House - the oldest continuously running restaurant in the states...

And we had some drinks at the Bell In Hand - the oldest tavern in the states...

And one of the keynote speakers at the conference was good old George H. W. So that was pretty cool. He's looking pretty old though. Anyway...I'll make a folder on myspace and post these and others. I'm definitely in the market for a better camera before we go to Israel next month....How many kidneys does a body have again?