Currently Reading

Thanks to my friend Levi Avery for a short blog post inspiring me to (attempt to) jump back on board the blogger bus in 2015. Blogging more was one of my goals that I laid out for myself towards the end of 2014, so now that we're 2/3 of the way through January, I suppose it's time to get started.

Still need to do a bit of focused thinking on format, subject matter and length of posts that I'll utilize, but for today I'll take a cue from Levi and share what I'm currently reading.

(All photos in this post supplied by Google Images). I got Every Good Endeavor for my birthday last June, but being as I was pretty focused on my grad school program at the time, I didn't even think about starting it. December brought graduation, and January brought a promotion, so I figured the new year was a great time to jump in. Very good book so far. This is my first Keller read, and now I understand why so many Christians are so enthused about his work. It's accessible, relevant and very thoughtful work. Well recommended.

I'm also wading through:

This one I picked up at the now-closed Barnes and Noble in downtown Rochester last fall. It just kinda caught my eye from the shelf, and I had a gift card worth roughly the purchase price, so that worked out well. It's my first Caro read, and wow, it is dense and incredibly thorough. One of the things I enjoy most about historical biographies is how much perspective it gives on current events. Robert Moses was New York City's master planner for a good chunk of 40 years, and had a tremendous impact on the way it looks and lives today. At 1,160 pages, the book will consume most of the calendar year I suspect, but so far it's been an exceptionally rich biography with pluperfect research. It's even expanding my lexicon, teaching me words like pluperfect.

Thanks for reading!

Midnight ramblings

The family is gone until August 12th. I kinda think I know how they feel when I leave for college. Except they are ALL gone. I miss them. A lot. I'm actually fairly lonely right now, though I've been filling my schedule fairly well so far. Sigh.

I'm having a bit of an episode with books right now. I started reading Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. I was aware that it was an abridged version, but was ok with it at the time. I absolutely LOVED the book. Hugo was, on an almost by the page basis, becoming one of my favorite authors. Then I posted on my facebook that I was reading the book, and someone asked me if I was reading an unabridged version, to which I responded in the negative. The ensuing disparaging comments brought me to the point of actually pulling my bookmark out of the book and returning it to the shelf, opting instead to locate a full version of the book. My next title to read was Charles Dicken's David Copperfield. I carefully searched every page on both ends of the book to make sure that it was unabridged, and finding no declaration of its being condensed, I commenced with the story. I was about 65 pages in, and it just wasn't grabbing me nearly the way that Oliver Twist did this spring. I was a bit disappointed, but the book was beginning to get better, so I was far from giving it up. But that night, when I was hanging out with a friend, we were in Barnes and Noble, and I found a copy of David Copperfield in their classics section. I noticed that it was considerably thicker than my own copy, so I turned to an early chapter to read a segment I was familiar with to see if it was the same. Low and behold, there, staring back at me in black and white, was the beautiful prose and beautifully orchestrated acrobatic language that I had fallen in love with, but was nowhere to be found in my own copy at home. So, immediately upon coming home, my copy of David Copperfield fell to the same fate as Les Miserables, and was returned to the shelf. Except with far more disdain, because I believe I was tricked into reading a book which I had expected to be unabridged, later to discover otherwise. Hmph. So I'm not reading anything at the moment. I think I'm going to try and get into one or two or the books I picked up at the International Christian Retail Show in St. Louis in June.

Thinking about books and stuff, I just read (on an Apple news web site, amusingly enough) that the new Amazon Kindle is priced at $139. You know what? At that price point, I am considering myself interested. Sure, it'd be awesome to have an iPad, but realistically, I'm due for a new computer after I graduate next spring, and I'm gonna get a macbook pro. I'd like to have an e-reader though, and something with limited function might actually encourage me to do more reading on it, since I won't be able to be distracted by a fully functioning web browser the way I would with an iPad. We'll see. Maybe a Christmas present for myself?

I'm starting to get into trance and electronica music more than any other time that I can remember. I owe this joy to the band Cinnamon Chasers, an indie electronica/techno band from the UK. They are great, particularly the songs "Luv Deluxe" and "Jetstreams." I've got a couple friends at school who have been into this type of music for several years, so I'm excited to go back to school and discover some of the great stuff they have.

T minus 13 days until I move back to school. 18 days til all students return, 22 days until classes start, and 277 days until graduation, Lord willing.

Another Monday post

Man, the weeks just fly by. Especially when I look and see that it's already been 7 days since my last post. Hmm.

Well, I guess a lot of things have changed, or at least happened, since my last update. Wednesday the 9th I played a sweet game of Ultimate Frisbee with a group of people, one of which I really knew, some of whom I vaguely knew, and most of which were total strangers who became friends by the end of the night. I love ultimate frisbee. Playing with people who love playing it makes it even better. I told myself going into it that I shouldn't push myself too much, that I should hold back on some of the crazier things I've been known to do when playing, and try to take care of my body and not break anything in lieu of Thursdays on First starting the next morning, but I didn't listen to myself. I ran, jumped, dove, grabbed, slapped and yelled like I didn't have to get up at 5-something the next morning. And I loved it. :)

Thursday was the first Thursdays on First & 3rd of the year! This is what my whole internship has been based around and gearing up towards. I was excited, but a bit apprehensive heading into it, being a very visible leader of the event but having no hands-on experience with it before. From my perspective, it went great! We had a decent number of volunteers who were great to work with and enjoyed being there, and the vendors (at least the ones in my area) didn't cause any trouble or make too much of a stink about anything. They're pretty much all great people.

Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate very well, and it rained off and on (mostly on) from 11am through 3pm, causing most of the lunch crowd to stay indoors, leaving many of the vendors with some long faces. My boss was |this| close to calling the market off because there was some danger of high winds which could really wreak havoc on the 10x10 tents the vendors set up. Fortunately, she decided against canceling the evening portion, and all the bands played. People responded, and the evening crowd was quite a bit heavier. I enjoyed a vegetable panini from Martinis at the Kahler Hotel. It was good!!

The band stopped playing shortly after 9pm (which I think is about half an hour later than they were supposed to) and I ran around all over the place making sure all the vendors were getting things taken down without any problems. My night ended around 9:45, making for a day of slightly over 14 hours. I loved every minute though, and can't wait to do it again this week, though hopefully with better weather!

Friday morning I slept in until about 10am. It was my birthday, and mom made me a 3 egg omelette with peppers, onions, mushrooms and cheese. It was delicious!! While it was being prepared, I admired and inspected a birthday poster that mom, Johanna and Cassia had made for me. It said "Happy 22nd birthday Christian" on it, with the word "happy" hidden 22 times on the poster. I found 17 of them the first time through, but had to look a bit more carefully for the other five. Good work, Team Family. I spent the rest of the day at home, playing baseball, mowing the lawn and hanging out with Johanna while the rest of the fam ran errands for the weekend's festivities.

Saturday night I had a party with my college friends. Sadly, a majority of the people I invited were unable to attend, but a number did come for a short while. We had a hoot playing some crazy tennis, a "closest to the stump" golf shootout, and some great food and games of Apples to Apples and Uno. My dear friend Laura was the only one who stayed the whole night. Knowing that she drove down from her home north of the cities for my party was a tremendous blessing to me, and really meant a lot to me, since most of my friends couldn't make it. Praise the Lord for His blessings. :)

Sunday ushered in party # 2, this time with all my Scout Troop friends. This one was pretty much a Troop 102 reunion, with 12 of us joining together for a bonfire and a creepily hilarious game of Apples to Apples that lasted somewhere around 3 hours. My green apple card winnings pegged me as being "intelligent" and "sexy." What more could a man want to be? :P

Today it rained all day, and accordingly I spent it curled up in a chair reading from 8am straight through to 1pm. I finished Anne Graham Lotz's The Magnificent Obsession. The last 60-75 pages were mostly decent, but I still won't recommend the book to anyone. Way too much speculation and conjecturing of biblical figure's thoughts for a Christian Living book for me. I also finished Skye Jethani's The Divine Commodity, which I found to be a thoroughly engaging and culturally accurate and relevant book that I will soon be recommending to a couple of the pastoral staff at church. I recommend it to you, dear reader as well. Find this book and read it.

I'm also now about a third of the way through Emily Bronte's sole work of fiction, Wuthering Heights. Such a turbulent book so far!! Love it though; really intriguing character interplay and intertwining. I also started a biography about George Frideric Handel. I've wanted to read a biography for a while, and for some reason I just had it in my head that I should read about Handel. We'll see if anything jumps out at me as I work through it's 175 brief pages. I also started Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution. Looking forward to digging into this much-talked about book!

That's about it for now. Looking forward to Thursdays on First again this week, and then a trip to Lake Mille Lacs this weekend! First time up there for the summer, should be great. Gonna do some serious reading/fishing, hopefully. Then the weekend after that I'll be flying down to St. Louis for the CBA convention! I went in to Christos this afternoon and talked with my boss there about that. Sounds like it's going to be a great time!!

Monday... That's my Funday!

I was going to write last night, but the site was down for some maintenance or something.

The last couple days have been great! :) Saturday was a busy day at the car lot, and even though we didn't sell anything, we got a few good leads for the week and had quite a bit of traffic through, so it was fun. Church was good too. I skipped the service and locked myself in the bookstore to read my new books! I got the following titles:
-The Complete Signature Classics by C.S. Lewis (7 of his most famous titles all in one gorgeous hardback volume. AHHH!!!!!)
-The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani
-The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne
-Stuff Christians Like by Jon Acuff
I'm 1/5 through the Jehani book and LOVE it so far. The Acuff book I just tossed in my glove box in my car, planning to just keep it there so I have something to browse when I've got some dead time somewhere.
Sometime when I have more energy maybe I'll actually write about WHY I bought said titles and what I think of the ones I've read. Ha.
Over the weekend I also read a book written by Sherwood Eddy called Religion and Social Justice. The interesting part about it was that it was written in 1927, so it talked about things like the horrible pay for factory workers in the U.S., and the effects of the prohibition of alcohol. One of my favorite parts of the book was this quote:

"Were we not so accustomed to war, as once our forefathers were to slavery, we might see the folly, the futility and contradiction of trying to live our lives in water-tight compartments, half pagan and half Christian; at one time believing in the sacredness and protection of human life, at another preparing for its fi...erce destruction."

Nice to know people "got it" back in the 20's, too.

Other highlights of the weekend included a great game of kickball at pastor Dan's house, attending the wedding reception of a friend I know from Fusion who is the driving force behind GFC Media, the film company that I worked with when I played the role of Billy Boy Scout. If you click the GFC link you can find that particular film on their video page. Good memories.
I also had a great cup of tea with my dear friend Emily. We enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and discussed the pros and cons (well, mostly we just discussed the cons) of "seeker-friendly churches." Good stuff.


Today I got up around 9:30, ate a leisurely breakfast, spent some time in the Word, and then Julia and I went downtown to see Monroe Crossing play at the Peace Plaza! It was my third time seeing them, and they have yet to disappoint. Such tight-knit talent!
After that I took Julia to her flute lesson. I then ran some errands, during which I swung by First Alliance Credit Union, where I broke the door handle off their front entrance. I'm a pretty enthusiastic person, especially when I'm having a day filled with stuff like God's Word, live music and sleeping in, so I was feelin' it. I walked up to the door and gave it a rather authoritative tug. The handle snapped right off! It seemed to have been loose before, but I still felt pretty awesome.
There was an employee who had just walked out the door and when she realized what had happened, she took care of the issue and put the now detached door handle to a back office somewhere. We had a good laugh about it.
I spent 3 hours at Christos and then went to Panera for supper with Bob, after which I went to Soldier's Field to see if anyone was playing Ultimate. There was a group, and I jumped in. I played barefoot, since I was only in flip-flops. I enjoyed the exercise, but when your ears get dirtier than your feet, it's not as fun. Stupid cussin' high schoolers.

Tomorrow will bring about my last RDA work day before the Thursdays on First summer market kicks off!! I am really excited for everything to start up, and hope to see many friends, family and acquaintances downtown over the course of the summer.

For now though, I've written enough, and I can hear books calling my name. I'm in the middle of three right now. the Anne Graham Lotz book I've mentioned before, The Divine Commodity, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which I started on a whim last night.

P.S. I love that one of the tags I can use for this post is "accidental vandalism." Bahahaha.