Interesting Article

I found this article over the weekend and it really had a profound effect on my thinking. The author is Shane Claiborne, a pastor who founded The Simple Way community in Philadelphia, he's a very insightful radical man who challenges a lot of our stereotypes a/b the urban community and our beliefs a/b Jesus. Check it out here.

To be honest the idea of stepping in cow manure is grotesque to me, I mean I often wonder how I'll change my kid's diapers one day, so it got me thinking how loving and humble our God must be to send his one and only son to this "Stank Manger." How amazing must he be to love people like me, who think so highly of themselves they're afraid of getting their feet a little dirty.

MLK Jr. Weekend

I had off this past Monday, so Nic decided to join me in taking the day off himself (floating holidays are a true blessing) and I must say we fully enjoyed our long weekend. Friday night we went over to a friend's house from Dream Camp for a game night, we enjoyed a way fun game of Taboo and numerous tears from laughing so hard. Saturday we did some shopping and overall took it easy. Sunday I caught up with some of my friends from college, who were in the process of driving cross country from Virginia to San Francisco, it was so fun to talk to them and it makes me realize how valuable friendship really is. Sunday night was our "Wii Like to Party" night and we realized that some of our friends really get into their Wii Sports, Wii boxing for some is like taking a cardioboxing fitness class at the YMCA, if you haven't seen people Wii box yet you're definitely in for a treat. Monday Nic played in a "Playing for the King " MLK Jr. Basketball Tournament (see the picture) at a Baptist Church in Southwest Philadelphia, unfortunately his team lost but it was a fun time none the loss. I sat on the sideline cheering them on along with the other wives and girlfriends, conveniently located next to the portable heaters. It was hard to go back to work on Tuesday, I think I could definitely get accustomed to a 4-day work week. But nonetheless it's back to the cube farm for the both of us, more updates to come soon.

2008 Update

After a long and awesome week in Cincinnati, Nic & I made the drive back across a couple of states to Philadelphia. Cincinnati was amazing, we got to see friends we hadn't seen since last Thanksgiving (2006) and hang out with the super cool Uebel family. A couple of our friends had gotten engaged in the past few months so I got to see some new bling too (well done to both the Reuter boys). Nic's parents gave us $ to purchase a new bed/mattress & I don't think I could ever have asked for anything better. We put everything together this afternoon & our bedroom now looks like a furniture showroom. We were truly grateful for their thoughtfulness and generosity and upgrading to a queen bed after a year and a half in a full is like sleeping at the Hilton every night for us now.

We started out New Year's Eve at a performance by Stomp (Nic's Christmas present from me). These performers are truly amazing and can carry a beat 10,000 times better than I can with what seemed like every object known to man. Nic was so inspired by the performance that he was quite the human beat box over the next several days. We finished up the evening with the Biewengas; it was a pretty low key evening at their apartment, but a super fun one. I know sometimes I tend to rant a/b how much I don't like Philadelphia, but the Biewengas are certainly one thing I truly love about Philadelphia, I can't imagine having better neighbors or medical advisors =).
Nic & I are looking forward to what this new year will bring. We'll be sure to keep you posted as it all unfolds before us!

Star Struck

April and I have been hooked on the NBC show "Clash of the Choirs" the past few nights. The concept of the show is that five famous singers go to their hometowns, recruit a 20-person choir, practice, then come to New York to compete over four nights to win bragging rights for their city and to benefit a hometown charity. It just so happens that one of the groups is from Cincinnati (where I grew up) and one is from Philadelphia (where I live now). It also just so happens that the charity that the Cincinnati group is competing for is the Children's Hospital Newborn Intensive Care Unit; my mom is a nurse practitioner working in the Children's Hospital NICU.

If that weren't enough motivation to watch, I actually personally know two of the choir members. One girl with the Cincinnati group was in the same church youth group as me when I was in high school. Another girl in the Philly choir goes to church with us here in Philly and was featured last night talking about her survival of cancer.

The show itself is actually quite entertaining, despite having to watch Michael Bolton (that no-talent a** clown*) and a little more country music than I'd like. It's a good show to watch with TiVO - we went through last night's two-hour episode in about 30 minutes by skipping all of the commercials, overly emotional interviews, and singers' responses to the other choirs.

It's odd to see people I know on national prime-time TV - there's something about it that makes me want to tell everybody I know how cool I must be because I know people on TV (which is probably why I'm writing this post). Attention, fame, and connection have always been very alluring to me - just having the silly ties to the show has boosted my sense of self-worth a few notches. I feel a little bit like a 12 year old girl at a Hannah Montana concert when I watch because of the unexplainable and difficult to control "star struck" feeling I get.

So the real question is who are we voting for to win (the show selects the winning choirs by audience voting, similar to American Idol)? April is sold on the Cincinnati choir after their very cool a cappella performance of "Flight of the Bumblebee" last night. I'm still on the fence between them and Philadelphia - I would be happy if either of them won. What it really comes down to for me isn't so much the singing, but the fact that I love both of those places.


* Sorry - I couldn't possibly mention Michael Bolton without some kind of Office Space reference.

Holiday Time

We just got back from a nice long Thanksgiving weekend down in Chatham, VA with April's parents. It was great to escape the city, enjoy a delicious home-cooked Thanksgiving meal thanks to April's grandparents, and spend some quality time with the family. Even Mabel enjoyed having some open space to run and getting spoiled by the Travises. Another highlight of the weekend was watching the Hokies beat up on UVA on Ronald's beautiful HD-LCD-TV while enjoying the company of Megan Redd perhaps one last time before she moves to California (like everybody else we know, it seems).

After a surprisingly easy drive up through VA and then up 95, we got back, unpacked, cleaned up a little bit, then didn't waste any more time before putting up the Christmas decorations. This was of course accompanied by listening to the two greatest Christmas albums ever created, "Snow Angels" by Over the Rhine, and the Beach Boys Christmas Album (I still know about 90% of the words to this album from the millions of times the record was played in my house in my childhood Christmases). I've always said that you need to wait until at least after Thanksgiving to start putting up Christmas decorations, listening to Christmas music, and getting in the Christmas mood, so the timing was perfect tonight. Here's a shot of our tree and stockings in the living room:

What's on my Google Reader?

Since I haven't been generating a whole lot of original content for this blog lately, I figured I'd post a list of some of the feeds I keep up with on my Google Reader. It an easy and convenient way to keep track of blogs and news feeds that I like to follow.

• CNN.com - Recent Stories - My favorite place for current news.
• philly.com - News - Local Philadelphia news stories.
• Phillyist - News and stories about what's going on around Philly.
• ESPN.com - Recent sports news.
• Damn Interesting - Stories and essays about topics that are damn interesting.
• Real Live Preacher - A preacher in Texas who writes essays about life, church, and Jesus.
  
• Post Secret - A very interesting art project where people mail in postcards with their deepest secrets. Warning - contains some R-rated content.
  
• The Dilbert Blog - Thoughts from Scott Adams - the guy that writes the Dilbert cartoons.
  
• The Daily WTF - Funny stories about the things that go on in the software industry.
  
• I Can Has Cheezburger? - Cat-themed geek humor. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I get some good laughs out of this site - April makes fun of me for it. It has its own language and inside jokes that you'll have to get used to.
  
• Straight Cash Homey Dot Net - Pictures of people wearing ridiculous sports jerseys.
  

I hope that gives you a few enjoyable things to look at. I'm going to try to put up a clips feature on the blog soon so you can see the stories and blog posts that I found interesting and tagged as public in my Google Reader. Does anybody have any other good feeds to recommend?

It's November already?

I can not believe that tomorrow is November 1, I feel like the month of October just flew by. We've been pretty busy lately, although I must admit this past weekend we took some time to ourselves, which was really nice. We went to go see Dan In Real Life starring Steve Carrell, which wasn't your typical Office like humor, but a really good movie, I
highly recommend it. Tonight we had a Halloween party with a really awesome turnout- lots of creative costumes. Nic & I were Beauty and the Geek and I must admit Nic makes a pretty convincing geek, pocket protector and all (thanks Randy). So now we look forward to November, 2 weeks from today is my birthday (in case you didn't already know) and I'm really looking forward to being 23. I can't really believe I'll be that old though, again just another reminder of how fast time flies, maybe I should've named this post, where does the time go? Enjoy the pictures.
















Pictures: The Geek and his dog. My terrific pumpkin. The little witch.