Work. Play. Live. Love.

I built a website for my Dad's Book

2010-07-09T07:36:00.001-05:00

The Emberoks website is open for business!

I built it to promote my dad's book, of which the first 10 chapters can be read online right from the website, and you can buy the book if you like what you read.

So, click here: http://bit.ly/Emberoks-launch to check out my work (website) and my dad's work (awesome book). Oh, and I earn a dollar everytime somebody decides to buy the book...so maybe you should do that :)

Joseph

2010-05-26T10:59:00.001-05:00

If you cannot see the video, please make sure you have JavaScript enabled and that you have the latest free Macromedia Flash plug-in. Click here for the free plug-in.

Joseph's Story

Joseph was called by God to a desolate, unreached area of South Asia. Year after year his self-sacrificing labor took its toll on his body. He endured beatings, stonings, insults and hunger for the sake of the Gospel. Despite the incredible hardship, he refused to give up. And today, Joseph has planted 25 thriving churches and 28 mission stations.

Joseph is just one of more than 16,500 Gospel for Asia missionaries, each with his own story. By sponsoring a missionary you can partner with one of these faithful and fruitful believers to impact Asia.

Help support a missionary like Joseph for $30 a month.

The video and all information borrowed from the Gospel for Asia website. You can see the original page here: http://www.gfa.org/joseph

What's in a name?

2010-03-16T07:40:00.001-05:00

Well, Juliet, quite a lot goes into a name actually.

Don't get me wrong, I love thinking about names for my son and trying them out to see how they will sound. But it's complicated. For those of you that are parents, this is probably old news to you. Even for those of you who aren't parents, I know that most of us have thought about names and what all goes into a name. But it becomes quite real when you realize you have three months left to decide on a name that somebody will carry around for the rest of their life.

Let's review some of the pitfalls of naming that I've been warned about by others--many of these following the basic can-a-5th-grade-kid-make-fun-of-your-kid-because-of-his-name? rule:

1) no body parts or bodily functions as the name or part of the name.
2) no name or part of a name that can rhyme with unfortunate body parts or bodily functions ("Bart-fart")
3) opposite gender sounding names (this has become less of a no-no due to all the unisex names recently, but there is still an inherent danger of lots of teasing if you give a boy a very girlie name or a girl a very boyish name)
4) names that no one will be able to pronounce correctly on the first try (again, not a complete no, but you have to weigh the benefits of the name against the annoyance he'll have of telling every single person he ever meets how to say his name)
5) name combinations that cause their initials to be something bad. For instance, no one in our family will have a first name that begins with "S" and a second name that begins with "T". The resulting initials would be "STD"...

And those are just some of the things to avoid. When you get into this naming thing you start thinking about what the name means, how it sounds rolling off your tongue, etc. And you don't just want this to be any old name, you want it to be a good name, heck, a GREAT name. After all your kid is gonna be wearing it for a good 80+ years (enshall-yah).

Now that I've written an entire post about the difficulties and dangers of naming a kid...anybody have any suggestions? :P

You don't have to give me the name you've secretly been hoping to name your first boy or anything...just some names that you like. We have some ideas for names of course, but I want to make sure I'm not overlooking any name or groups of names in the consideration process. It would be fun to hear why you like the name too, if you have a specific reason.

Seeing Pam in labor makes me wonder what our experience will be like

2010-03-08T22:26:00.000-06:00

Provoke Your Own Mind

2010-03-02T04:08:00.005-06:00

"Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives the expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance."

-- Oswald Chambers

Google Search: "how to hang cabinets on the wall"

2010-02-11T10:14:00.005-06:00

Researching skills that I had once upon a time in order to build some kitchen cabinets for my mother I came across the following article using the Google search from the title. I wish that I could say that I wrote this very funny piece, but since I didn't I will quote you an excerpt from the beginning of the article and then give you the link to the article so that you can read the rest:

How to Hang a Cabinet

"...recently I realized I needed a new medicine cabinet for my bathroom. When the salesperson at Medicine Cabinets Party Town Discount Superstore told me how easily I would be able to assemble and hang this piece of furniture, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a little bit of home improvement, and then brag about it unrelentingly for the rest of my life.

The salesperson assured me I would be able to assemble and hang the medicine cabinet with a few easy steps, in about 15 minutes. His estimate was off by only 13 weeks, two days, nine hours, and six minutes..."

The rest of the article can be found here How to Hang a Cabinet

The Danger of a Single Story

2010-02-06T09:59:00.000-06:00

I saw this on my friend Dan's Facebook wall and thought it was worth re-posting. It's 19 minutes long, but it's worth it, so find some time and watch Chimamanda Adichie's talk about the Danger's of a "single story". In what areas and about what people do you only have a single story?

These aren't your Grandparents' Christmas decorations

2009-12-22T09:19:00.002-06:00

Every year around Christmas when the houses start getting decorated with Christmas lights I remember how much I like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's rock versions of Christmas carols. Why do lights remind me? Most of you probably already know...

Sometime a while back (I think I was in junior high?) someone decorated their house with a ton of lights and set them to light up in time with one of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's songs. And then posted the video on the internet (or was it far enough back that it got spread around as filler news on nightly newscasts? I don't remember). Ever since then it's been the thing to do for people who have too many Christmas lights, too much money, and too much time on their hands. The results are often amazing.

I found what I think to be probably the best video I've seen of a Trans-Siberian Christmas House this morning, so I decided to share it with you:

Intellectual Honesty and Articulating your Beliefs

2009-11-30T11:04:00.002-06:00

"Since human resource managers and psychologists both value behavioral consistency as qualities of reliability and mental health, it would seem safe to assume that the choices people make tend toward an overarching goal or goals."-- JV

I think JV is on to something, but I would make an edit to his comment that changes the direction by 180 degrees. I would say that it is "safe to assume that the choices people make tend to reveal underlying belief or beliefs". This still fits with JV's examples, such as the first example of the scholar: The scholar believes in the importance of improving themselves intellectually or in contributing to a body of knowledge, and their consistent actions reveal that belief.

Dave made a point that hits on what I think is one of the most honest parts of the Atheist position. He said that, "...one of the big reasons to have a religion (read: God) is to have the value set of the religion, and the comfort of the belief that someone or something is out there guiding us," And I think that most Atheists truly believe that is why most people "have a religion". Atheists, as Christopher Hitchens said in the debate JV introduced us to, as well as in an essay conversation with Wilson on Christianity Today in 2007, choose not to believe in God because it would be "too easy and too comfortable", but it would not be intellectually honest. To tie this in to the comments above, their actions reveal their belief that sound reasoning and intellectual honesty is something that can be attained and something to strive for, which I also believe. But what about those many many people, me included, that believe in God because they believe it is the most intellectually honest position?

Atheists and Christians, Buddists and Muslims, Democrats and Republicans (just to provide a non-religion example) all have their value sets. These value sets often, if not always, direct their actions. Obviously, value sets (read: beliefs) are not a simple thing. They are often convoluted and obscured and complex which makes it difficult to articulate what we believe and what we think other people believe. I think this is a good place to re-quote Sister Carlotta:

You are so convinced that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you really believe without believing you believe it.'"

--Shadow of the Hegemon, pg 80-81

Dave made the excellent point that (difficulty aside) we should be able to articulate the positions of our counterparts [people who believe differently than we do]. And that's what I was trying to do with Atheism in my last post. So maybe using "god" was a little goading on my part, but I don't think that it was confusing the dialog. Because what I'm trying to get at is: what do you trust? Christians believe that there is a Truth out there and that it can be articulated and understood as God. Atheists believe that there is a Truth out there, but that God doesn't fit anywhere in the picture. The truth, as they see it, is that Nature explains everything.

To put it another way: Christians believe that God created the world. That at some point in time nothing existed but God and then He created the Universe. Atheists believe that Nature created the world. That at some point in time nothing existed and then the Universe came into being of its own accord. Does one of those things really require more belief than the other? And you can't get out of this question by saying that science proves one or the other. Christian sceintists believe that science provides evidence of a Creator's design. Atheist scientists believe that science provides evidence of Nature's development from nothing to the current state. Their assumptions and value sets affect how they interpret the scientific data.

The reason I keep pushing on this whole assumptions / value set thing is that I think it is crucial to being able to get anywhere with the next two questions. I don't think that we have to agree with each others' value sets in order to dialog, but I do think that we need to be able to try to understand (at the very least) our own value sets in order to have an honest dialog.

As JV mentioned and Dave alluded to, evaluating the "rightness" and "wrongness" of a person's value set is a lot harder than defining it or understaning it. But I think trying to evaluate the "rightness" or "wrongness" points to something that people don't always want to say directly, and that is that each person believes that her or his value set more correctly describes the world.

So what are your values? What are the rules that can't be broken? What can you trust and fall back on with any certainty?

Okay, I'll give it some time to get feedback from you on this latest one, and then in the next post we'll move on to the next question that I wanted to address: Is there a God?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T08:30:00.002-06:00

To everyone who is checking blogs and doing stuff on the internet today I wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. It all centers around giving thanks for what you have, family, and a communal meal. I love my big, weird family and can't give thanks enough for the privilege of being able to spend Thanksgiving Day with my wife, mom, dad, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, ancles, grandparents, nieces and extended family. I only wish Melissa's family and my family could be in the same place so that we could celebrate together.

I'll leave you with the words of thanks which I really like and are attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (but I can't find anywhere that helps me cite where this prayer is from):

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

Does Belief Matter: Continuing the Discussion

2009-11-24T14:11:00.002-06:00

Does it even matter if we believe in God at all?

If you're starting the discussion here the original post might be helpful to give you some background. You can find the original post, and the comments I am responding to now by clicking here.

Ok, I was going to try to respond to a few of the comments with a comment of my own, but I want people to keep engaged in the conversation and I know that some people don't go back to read comments on a blog after a day or two. So for clarity's sake and to see if I can get more people's input I've decided to post my reply to JV, Nate, Ariah, and Dave as a new post.

JV's comment is up first, and I wanted to wait and watch the Hitchens/Wilson debate before I responded. Hitchens' (the atheist in the debate, in case you aren't familiar with his name) comment about Reason and not thinking the same as Wilson comes in part 9 near the end (each part is about 8 minutes long). The debate is good, and I'd suggest watching it though I don't feel that Hitchens was in full form during this particular debate. He seems to be doing a lot of commenting on how ridiculous religion and belief in God is without backing it up with logic. That's not to say that he doesn't make some good points (so does Wilson I might add). But I feel that in his answer about Reason, and actually in many of his answers, he was so busy saying what was Not True that he never told us anything that he believed to be true. And obviously he thinks some things are true. He has trust and confidence in some things -- in logic (as Wilson pointed out), in physics, in scientific measurements of the solar system. But all he did was use those things to tell the audience what was not true. At one point during the questioning a student asks Hitchens if there was a God, and He/She/It was a loving God, what would that look like? And what would that God have to be like in order for Hitchens to believe in God? And all Hitchens did was tell the student that how God would obviously NOT be like the God of Christianity.

JV also rephrased the original question, "does it even matter if we believe in God?" in an interesting way. He said, "The question is whether or not belief is appropriate. Does what we believe have an effect on reality?"

Ariah then posted a reply to the question with a link to a clip from Regligulous that reflects how most atheists would answer my question:

The sum of the clip and of Hitchens position is that yes, it really really really does matter if we believe in God because so many awful things have been done from religious conviction, i.e. in the name of the God in which these people believe.

Nate and Dave made two separate but related points. I'll give you Dave's first because Nate's point follows on the logic of what Dave said:

Dave said, "I think it's worth noting that there are also those who have come to their belief in religion or belief in science through reflection and thought..."

Nate said, "I am (of course) especially interested in where dialogue starts when two people can identify the assumptions, experiences, and thought processes that leads them to two different gods."

And I would say thanks to Dave for pointing that out and that I agree with Nate completely. And I think that is the background reason that I wanted to start this conversation. I did completely leave out a group of people who have, as Dave notes, come to their belief through reflection and thought. This wasn't on purpose -- I think that by trying to concisely state my position I oversimplified. I'd like to incorporate the ideas presented by Dave and Nate into reply below:

My position would be that everybody has some assumptions on which they base their life. Some have examined those assumptions, many have not. Do you know what your assumptions are? Have you examined your assumptions? I would say that in the cases of violence and evil in the world perpetrated by Christians the perpetrators knowingly or unknowingly based their lives on assumptions about God and the world that were false. Some Muslims have said the same thing about others of their faith that cause death and destruction. But precisely because of that, because of how drastically they can change how we live in this world our beliefs absolutely DO MATTER. Christopher Hitchens' life would be drastically different if he believed in God. If he assumed that logic and reason could lead to God, his life would be drastically different. If Billy Graham or Osama bin Laden or the Dali Lama had different assumptions about the world and therefore had different beliefs, this world would be a completely different place. So to agree with Ariah once again:

I believe that belief, and knowing what/why you believe (meaning the assumptions behind your belief) are very very important things.

Do you think that it's fair of me to say that we all have and live off of at least some assumptions?
Do you agree with my assessment that we should know and be able to articulate what our assumptions are?
What do you think about the fact that a rational extension of what I am saying is that we all have a "god" of some kind, whether it is the God of the Bible, the "god" of Science/Nature, or some other type of "god" that we assume?

Believing in God: What's the point?

2009-11-22T12:50:00.008-06:00

Is there a God? If there is, does it matter which God it is? Does it even matter if we believe in God at all?

I know, each one of those questions above has been the subject of whole books, of entire categories of books even, and here I am putting all three of them at the top of one of my blog entries. Who does this guy think he is, right? I don't plan on writing a book here on this blog, but I do want to talk about these questions for several reasons:

1) I know that many Christians come to a serious questioning point in their faith over one of these questions, or a similar question about who God is and how He (She? It?) relates to us.
2) I know people that would answer these questions exactly opposite to the way that I would.
3) I know lots of people that have no idea how to answer these questions, or don't think that there is an answer, or never even thought about these questions.
And...

4) A blog is a nice detached place to have a discussion about this without any one person feeling like I am attacking them personally. I honestly wanted to ask multiple people about this sort of thing in the Peace Corps but wasn't good at figuring out a way to do it without seeming to be rude. Dave was one of the few exceptions to that rule and I had a lot of good (plus a lot of strange) conversations with him. So here's an attempt to start a bit of a conversation online.

So I'm gonna start with the last question first and deal with these things one at a time: Does it even matter if we believe in God? Or, as I put it in the title: What's the point?

I think it's extremely important to figure out whether or not you believe in God, and why you believe it (surprised? I didn't think so). Why? Because everybody has assumptions in their life about how the world came to be, where it came from, and what our purpose is. Now some people have the assumption that God created the world, everything came from Him, and our purpose is to serve Him. But they've never really thought about it. They don't know why they assume that this is the case other than the fact that everybody around them says and assumes the same thing, so obviously it's true, right?

Some people have the assumption that nobody created the world, the world just came into being, everything including us developed over time from other things that existed before, and our purpose (if we even have one) is our own survival or happiness. But they've never really thought about it. They don't know why they assume that this is the case other than the fact that everybody around them says and assumes the same thing, so obviously it's true, right?

So who's more right? Maybe you'll say it doesn't matter which one is more right. But what ever you say has repercussions for how you live, doesn't it? If you believe in luck, you probably avoid walking under ladders or breaking mirrors. If you don't believe in luck, you won't avoid those things because those things won't have any significance to you.

Whether you say that the first example is right, the second example is right, or you say that it doesn't matter which example is right, you are presenting a value judgment. You are stating with authority that you believe something. Even if all you are stating is that you believe in not believing in anything...

I think that the point of figuring out whether or not you believe in God is so that you aren't ignorant of the assumptions (or belief systems) that are ultimately affecting a large part of your decisions and the way that you live your life.

Let me leave you with a quote that Melissa reminded me of from one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card:

'...I don't believe in any doctrines.'
'That,' said Carlotta with exaggerated smugness, 'is proof positive of my assertion. You are so convinced that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you really believe without believing you believe it.'"

--Shadow of the Hegemon, pg 80-81

So what do you think?

Do you think that it's fair of me to say that we all have and live off of at least some assumptions?
Do you agree with my assessment that we should know and be able to articulate what our assumptions are?
What do you think about the fact that a rational extension of what I am saying is that we all have a "god" of some kind, whether it is the God of the Bible, the "god" of Nature, or some other type of "god" that we assume?

Jesus Answers the Question

2009-11-07T08:40:00.001-06:00

Thanks everybody for your answers, they were great! I purposely tried to ask the question using today's language so that it wouldn't be an automatic tip-off that I was asking the exact same question that a Pharisee asked Jesus in the Bible. Aleya started us all off with the right answer, but the conversation continued because people rightly understood that it needed to be a little more clearly defined. Rachel and Ariah worked to define "love" a little more clearly and Whitney and Robin both seemed to then begin working out what exactly it would look like to "Love God". And Whitney, I think you are right that to love Him we must know Him. Robin, I love that you brought up the point that while Loving Him is the correct answer, the acting out of that love is going to be a form of worship for us. I think you meant worship through music, but you stated it so well when you said, "love manifests itself in worship". I think our love for God, in it's full and complete sense, will have a very strong element of worship. How could it not if we truly know Him as Whitney mentioned.

But Jeremy saw my question and recognized it as the same one from Matthew and Mark where the Pharisee asks Jesus what was the most important commandment. Rachel summarized the answer in her comment, but thanks to Jeremy for bringing out Jesus' full answer. When the Pharisee asks Jesus his question, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 for the first answer, and then summarizes whole chapters of Deuteronomy for the second part of His answer:

Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, [a teacher of the law] asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

And [Jesus] said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depends all the Law and Prophets." (Matthew 22:34-40)

I mentioned that the Pastor was talking about this passage on Sunday. He was actually focusing on the second part of the answer that Jesus gave. The teacher asked for a single answer, and Jesus gave him two. Why? Because they are so closely intertwined that they really shouldn't be separated. The pastor began his sermon with an anecdotal story about a Mennonite man who was asked by a stranger one day if he was a Christian. And the Mennonite's answer was, "I'm the least qualified person to answer that question. You should go ask my neighbors."

Now, I talked with David and Melissa about it a little, and David commented that he didn't necessarily subscribe to the whole "preach the gospel, and if necessary use words" philosophy. I think he's right, and I think too often people use that as a "way out" of speaking about our beliefs and our God.

But I think that Jesus made the point clear: Loving God is specific, it's all out, no-holds-barred. It's not just with words, it's with your heart and your mind and your soul. In Deuteronomy is says, "with all your strength".

So thanks everybody for your answers. Keep the conversation going.

Most important thing for a Christian to do

2009-11-04T15:35:00.001-06:00

So rather than a long involved "part 2" post today (don't worry, that's coming soon) I have a question for you instead. This is a question that I'm curious to hear your answers to after having listened to a sermon related to this on Sunday. So here it is:

"What, in your opinion, is the most important thing that we are called to do?"

I'll give my answer in a bit, but I'm interested to see your responses first.

Writing about not having anything to write about...and other things

2009-10-29T23:42:00.000-05:00

So my last post where I wrote about anything worth writing about was over two weeks ago. You'd think that in this self-obsessed day and age I'd be able to think of something about my self or my life that I figured was worth writing about. And I did. But then I got back home and thought to myself, I don't really have anything to say. The blog should be witty and clever and thoughtful and God-honoring and...list a bunch of other cool adjectives here. And so now I should talk about how people, especially of our generation, are self-absorbed and focus on themselves all the time. Or something like that. But the reality is that I'm bored. I'm actually waiting to go pick David up from the airport and his plane has been delayed until midnight thanks to the cool front that moved through Houston and brought a lot of rain and wind with it. So I thought, "now's a good time to write something in your blog."

Now that you've been warned what kind of post this is: read on at your own risk.

The other reality is that there are about 7 people that read this blog other than me, and they are all friends and family of mine (Hi Mom!). So really it doesn't matter if this blog is hip or cool. It's basically just my journal. And you happen to be reading it.

Alright, contrary to the evidence presented in this blog I have been doing some interesting things and I'll try to catch you up:

First in chronological order is the fact that we lost our cat. That was Sunday night on the 11th, right before I posted about finishing my cardboard chair. I spent my free time that week either looking for her, posting flyers about her, or updating my resume and cover letter to start looking for assistant or substitute teaching jobs again.

Jump forward to the next weekend (life happened in between of course...work, Shwey searching, etc). Melissa had found out about something called Free Night at the Theatre. We managed to score tickets to a one man performance of Hamlet and Jeremy and Amanda (Jeranda? Amandremy? ...I'm asking for Jeremy's sake) came with us. Melissa went all out and made some amazing lasagna for us for dinner beforehand. The performance was intense, and the actor was impressive. He managed to convey so many emotions, delivering so many lines spot on (at least, in my uneducated opinion) and must have been completely worn out after being so physically and emotionally active for 2 straight hours. We think that he only forgot his lines once, and he recovered in such a way that it could have been an intentional part of the scene, so we're not actually sure (Jeremy would say he is sure).

Tuesday night (Oct. 20th) Mom and Dad took Melissa and I out to Cheesecake Factory as a belated birthday gift. It's a bit of a tradition for them to take us out to eat on our birthdays. I think it started because it was one of the few ways to have guaranteed one-on-one time with them without being interrupted by life and the immediate crisis of one of the other 8 siblings.

...oops, it's 11:40. Time to go pick up David from the airport. Yeah, it's awesome. He's coming down to hang out with us over the weekend. So I guess I'll have to catch up to the present in another post.

Peace.

Should this be my next project?

2009-10-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of www.inhabitat.com

Just kidding! We don't even have a lawn at the moment. And do people actually do this? Has anybody seen anything like this in person?

Oh yes, it's real. Here's where I found the picture:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2005/06/04/lawn-couch/

http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/05/28/grow-your-own-grass-furniture/

Extreme Home Makeover: Project Complete!

2009-10-12T11:13:00.009-05:00

Yep, it's done! And, as promised I've got lots of pictures of the process and the finished product. Obviously we will still be improving it -- Melissa has some great ideas which she talks about on her blog. But the furniture is complete. I've even got pictures of Melissa sitting on it, just in case you are skeptical.

So, are you ready? Here we go (click on any of the pictures to see it full sized):

Here's the before shot. This is where the loveseat is going to be.

So first I laid out all the structural pieces. As you can (maybe) see, some of them have slots in the bottom and others have slots in the top. These will fit together to make a solid grid that will give the loveseat most of it's strength.

And so I started putting the pieces together. Thanks to Shwey (our cat) those pieces behind me didn't stand a chance of escaping.

The piece I'm touching has slots in the bottom that fit into the slots on the cross pieces. I cut a lot of slots. It took a long time.

Shwey inspects my work.

Finished assembly of the frame

This was actually a trial run I did the night before. In this picture I'm only using half of the frame pieces, for the real assembly I actually double-layered each part. Because I had such good cardboard I was able to make sure that the "grain" of the cardboard on one piece was vertical and on the second piece it was horizontal. It's the same principle they use for plywood -- a bunch of flimsy pieces of wood, layered together in opposite directions, makes for a very strong finished product.

Next up is a little more strengthening. To create support for the arms and back I needed to put in a bunch of little cross pieces. Small boxes are perfect for this.

Here you can see how I put the supports into the frame

Next Step was to glue on the "skin". Put on glue. Apply pressure. Let dry. Repeat.

The curved parts were the hardest. First you have to role and bend the cardboard so that it will mold to the shape you want. Then you have to glue in sections because the glue dries too fast. At least if you're using a hot-glue gun.

Press down and be sure that the cardboard is touching on all points. And keeping constant pressure until the glue dries is key. I had to re-do several spots that hadn't bonded well.

My lovely wife models with the nearly completed loveseat. And yes, it holds us both, I just don't have a picture of us both sitting on it.

Complete with facing on the front of the arms. And those were my tools: A square, box cutters, scissors, measuring tape, and a pen. A long straight ruler would have been nice, you need something to help you make long straight lines...don't EVER assume that the cardboard is straight or square.

From a little further away so that you can see how it fits in the room. It obviously will look a lot better once Melissa gets it covered, but it's now usable.

The entire project took me about 20 hours over the course of three weekends. I know, it sounds like a long time, and it is. But take into account that I work slowly on projects of this nature and that the main labor for this project was cutting out the cardboard pieces. It could definitely be done faster.

To see how we upholster it check Melissa's blog in the following weeks. And yes, I'm using the "we" very liberally here...Melissa will probably be doing most of the work, but I'll help how I can. I'm excited to see if we can upholster it in such a way that people wouldn't even know it was cardboard. I think we can.

Thanks for reading.

Looking for a Job? Do what this guy did

2009-10-09T09:39:00.002-05:00

LONDON (Reuters) - In a pinstripe suit, silk tie and polished shoes, David Rowe has all the trappings of a successful London city worker, except for one stark difference -- he is wearing a sandwich board that says "JOB WANTED"....

Wish I'd thought of this. Now I'd just feel like a copycat. Or a creeper, since I'd most likely be doing it outside of Elementary and Junior High schools.

Here's the rest of the article: http://bit.ly/yXMPD (it's a link to Reuters website)

She's here! I have another niece!

2009-10-06T13:23:00.002-05:00

Text message i received from my brother a few minutes ago:

--ORIGINAL MSG: The human has arrived

Birthdays!

2009-10-05T23:33:00.001-05:00

My birthday was Saturday.

Saturday I was busy doing other things and just posted some Hassaniya rap music here for you. You don't have to understand it, just appreciate it for me. It's my birthday after all. But I promised to tell you all about what I did for my birthday, and even though I'm a day later than I might have said I'd post it, here it is:

So I started out my birthday by going to class. Yep. But it's not like when I was younger. I voluntarily signed up for this class. I wanted to be in this one. Not necessarily on my birthday, but hey, what's a guy to do? So the class was good, I got lots of tips on creating lesson plans and am one class closer to getting my teacher's license. After the class comes the fun part.

Melissa enlisted Elise's help and the two of them got the family together plus several friends to celebrate my birthday. Sadly, the Martins (my cousins) were missing, but I totally understand why and am just sad that I couldn't go see their art show (which is what we'd been planning to do before I realized my birthday was on the same day). My family obviously knows what my kind of party would include because Melissa and Elise got everybody together at 5 o'clock to play some soccer! This includes my sisters who came down from A&M university to help celebrate and hopefully be around for the official entry into the world of a niece. No such luck on the second part of that.

Now, I was sucking wind after about 1.5 minutes of soccer, but we stuck with it and ended up playing for maybe two hours. I realized that I am really out of shape, that I really should get some new cleats, that I am much quicker in my mind than I am in real life, and that my sisters are a lot better at soccer than I remembered (and fast too).

Then it was back to the house for some good food and hanging out. Just what I like. Chicken and dumplings, fried okra, and green beans. A solid southern meal to go with the first birthday I've celebrated in Texas since the year 2000. And then...cheesecake! Yes, Melissa made not one, but TWO cheese cakes for my birthday. Now, she will say it was from necessity because of the size of my family, but she definitely used that to it's full potential by making two different types: caramel pecan cheesecake, and a classic cheesecake with blueberries on top. I love cheesecake. And for those of you who have been to the Cheesecake Factory, their cheesecake is amazing, but for once it was topped. And I'm not just saying that because she's my wife. Actually I think it was Rachel who mentioned it first. But it's true, these cheesecakes were amazing-er than the Factory made ones. And as if that weren't more than enough, Amanda made brownie-bite-cookie things that were also really good. Drooling yet?

I got a soccer ball and some gift cards with the mandate to use them for something fun. I haven't figured out what I'll use them for yet (with the exception of the Chick-fil-a one), but I promise it will be something good.

And I bet you've been wondering why I said birthdays (as in, plural) in the title. Well, my niece's due date was October 3rd, my birthday, and I'll tell you that Elise was definitely ready to have her on the third, but as I already mentioned that didn't pan out. However...

It seems that I will be going to spend the night at my parents house tonight and, if all goes according to plan, I'll be saying hello to niece number 3 sometime early tomorrow morning! If you happen to read this tonight (then you're a crazy night owl and) please pray for my sister that all goes smoothly and quickly and well.

What's the Right Thing to Do?

2009-10-04T23:31:00.005-05:00

Okay, this is the video version of me reading my favorite sections of books to you. I think I found my new favorite video series for a while. Yes, the video is an hour long, but watch the first 5 minutes or so and you'll probably see why I liked it. I think I most interested to see if anybody brings up God in these conversations. It doesn't happen in this video, but maybe in one of the next ones?

Check out the three episodes that have been released so far: http://justiceharvard.org/

Hassaniya Rap!

2009-10-04T00:25:00.000-05:00

Hi everybody. Thanks for all the birthday wishes on Facebook! I've got a coupla things I want to write about from today, because today was great. But it's after midnight here in the great country of Texas so I'm gonna save it for tomorrow. However, I wanted to put something up for my birthday and thanks to a friend on Facebook (Jay) who was also a Peace Corps volunteer to Mauritania (not at the same time as me though) I've got a little something for you here to tide you over till I write something for real.

One day in Nouakchott Melissa and I got into a taxi and the music sounded pretty good. It was also in Hassaniya. The driver, like many Mauritanians we met, was surprised that we knew Hassaniya and was happy to tell us all about this group. Apparently they sing a lot about social issues and situations in Mauritania. I was impressed. Well, Jay posted what I think is a music video from this same group (I mean, how many can there be? Mauritania is a small country). My Hassaniya isn't good enough to follow the message of the music very well, but I'm gonna try to listen to it a bunch over the next few days and see if I can't decipher it a bit. My guess from the words that I picked up is that they are singing about the poor and the problem of poverty in Mauritania...but then, I could be completely wrong. For all those Hassaniya speakers out there feel free to correct me and translate any parts of the song that you want.

Here's the video:

Can I read you something?

2009-09-28T23:26:00.000-05:00

I am constantly asking Melissa that question. I love to read, and when I find something particularly insightful, challenging, sad, or (most often) funny, I just HAVE to read it out loud to whoever will listen. I think it's because I want others to enjoy what I am enjoying. Melissa often puts up with me interrupting her in whatever she is doing (eating, reading her own book, working, cleaning, sleeping...) and only rarely gets annoyed at me. But, I realized that I've got a new outlet for those parts of books that I just have to share.
Yep, you guessed it: It's this blog.

The other problem with my love of sharing the things that I read is that I often want to share several things, i.e. Melissa says to me, "okay, but this is the fourth passage you've read to me from Goodnight Moon in the last 5 minutes. This is the last one, okay?" However, I don't like to transcribe things very much, so sharing via blog will help me keep the volume down and the quality up. I hope.

Okay, enough introduction. My first share is part of the introduction from a book I got for Christmas I don't know how many years ago from Melissa's Dad. It's called The Superhero's Handbook and it's written by Michael Powell.

"Whether you are naturally amazing, have been sent here from a distant dying solar system, or just enjoy fooling around with radioactive slurry, the fact that you are browsing through this book suggests that you may already be experiencing subtle body changes that single you out from the rest of humanity. You'll have a whole heap of unanswered questions about your emerging superpowers:

Why do I have this overbearing desire to rid the world of evil?

What's this sticky stuff on my wrists?

Should I enter the priesthood?

Why am I so much stronger, faster, and more polite than the rest of my friends?

Why do I feel so washed out whenever someone hangs a large green crystal around my neck?"

And from the first chapter: "Signs You May Be Special: How to Recognize Your Powers" there are scenarios that help you recognize your powers, and how to be sure that there isn't just some mundane explanation for what happened. Here are three of my favorites:

"Example 10: On a hot summer's day, whenever you leave your shades at home, everything in your field of vision appears to burst into flames.

Superpower: You harness the power of the sun to project energy beams from your eyes.

Perfectly innocent explanation: You live in Florida.

Example 9: You are two years old. A truck falls on your father, and you lift it off him with ease and save his life.

Superpower: You have superhuman strength.

Perfectly innocent explanation: It is a toy truck.

Example 8: You are walking in the mall with your pet tiger, when you are both transformed into super strong versions of yourselves.

Superpower: Looks like you finally found a use for that Sword of Power.

Perfectly innocent explanation: There isn't one dude. You are He-Man®."

So I could, of course, quote a bunch more sections that I find funny, but that would take a long time and probably be some sort of copyright violation. If you are interested in the book I know that you can find it here, and probably in your local library system too.

Enjoy. That is, until I find something else to read to you.

So Tired

2009-09-27T10:21:00.002-05:00

Servers anywhere will tell you that Friday night and Saturday night are, barring some really weird occurrence, the best nights of the week to make money because so many people are out having fun on the weekend. Last night was no exception. I arrived at the restaurant to find it absolutely slammed -- at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. There were about three or four of us who were supposed to start work at 4 pm so when we did that eased things up for a little while. But then, starting around 5:30 the people just came pouring in...

There was no relief. My section (my group of tables) was completely full for the entire night until about 10 minutes before we closed. Has anybody every power walked for 7 and a half hours before? If you haven't, I suggest not doing it without a little training first. Wow, my feet were so sore.

Highlights include: several low-maintenance tables that still gave me a good tip, serving a person that I could not tell whether he/she was a man or a woman until she ordered a drink and had to show me her license, waiting on the owner of the restaurant without knowing it until nearly 3/4 of the way through his meal, getting a 30% tip from the owner, and sitting down at 11:15 to do some post shift work that waiters always have to do (at least at Red Robin).

Lowlights: my feet -- they are still slightly sore this morning, forgetting to bring one of the kids at the owner's table his drink for at least 10 or 15 minutes, and of course, several under-tippers (think 8% or 9%) and two that didn't tip me AT ALL. Oh yeah, and one of the tables that stiffed me took my pen. That's a cardinal sin. Don't ever take a waiter's pen.

On that note. I know most of you that read this blog are young-ish and most don't have kids yet. So there is still time:

Please, please, please, don't send your kids out into the world to hang out with their friends without impressing on them the importance of tipping their waiter. Waiters HATE to see groups of kids come walking into the restaurant because they usually don't order a lot of food, sit around at the tables for a long time, ask for all kinds of weird things that aren't on the menu, and then DON'T TIP. Both of my non-tip tables were high school age kids. One of the low tips was a table full of older boys that sat around for about an hour and a half, drank a glass of water a minute and ordered about a zillion french fry refills. And then left me 4 bucks on a $48 meal. I think (at least I hope) that most of them don't know the rules for tipping, and that is a consolation some of the time...but still. Waiters hate seeing groups of kids walk into a restaurant. Maybe our kids can change that?

In other news, Melissa and I are going to the Sunday morning service at one of the countless churches within a 8 block radius of our apartment. We've enjoyed going to church with my family out in Baytown, but we want to be connected to our neighborhood too, and going to a church nearby is one way to do that. If we do stop going to Alliance, I'm going to miss attending church with my family and I'm going to miss Pastor Jim Black's preaching. He loves God and loves his congregation, and his sermons always challenge me to earnestly evaluate my life as a Christ follower. I'll have to listen to his sermons online whenever I can.

Also, I don't work Monday or Tuesday, so hopefully I can finish the love-seat, which has been sitting assembled in my living room just waiting for me to put the skin on it. I was gonna wait til I was completely done to show pictures of it, but I'm doing it in such a piecemeal fashion that it has taken a lot longer than I expected. So I'll end this post with a few pictures of what I've done so far:

All the pieces laid out before assembly

Assembly

Finished assembly

Tip for Tipping

2009-09-23T00:38:00.003-05:00

Those of you who have been a waiter before (and even those of you who have not) might think that you know where I'm going. You might think that I'm gonna rant and rave about how people these days don't tip enough, but that's not what I want to talk about. This is really more like a case study into the lives and psychology of waiters.

The job of serving food requires that a person deliberately choose to be on the downside of an unequal relationship: The power is all in the customer's hands. In any other setting the waiter and customer are (at least theoretically) equals, but not in this setting. In the restaurant the customer is always right.
Whatever the customer wants, he gets. The waiter simply does the bidding of the customer. Every day the waiter literally works for the approval of the customer and the customer gives the waiter indication of his approval through his tip. I've received some good tips in my day, some bad tips, a lot of regular tips, and a couple of really, unexpectedly awesome tips. By awesome I mean I received a 100% tip. Yep, the guy's meal cost him $10.38 and he tipped me 10 bucks! (It's more like 96.3%...but that's not really the point is it?) What made him do that? And why is getting a tip of more than 15% such a big deal for waiters? Let's break down an example day for a waiter:

Joe Server gets to Cafe Cool at 5pm. Few people eat that early so he serves maybe one table between 5 and 6 pm. 6 to 7:30 is a popular time to eat so he's really busy serving 3, 4, and 5 tables at a time til about 8 pm. 8 to 9 pm he serves a coupla tables and then his shift is over. He's worked 4 hours and served maybe 10 tables. Let's say the average table spent $40 on dinner. So a 15% tip from each table would be $6:
$6 x 10 tables = $60
4 hrs x 2.50/hr base pay = $10
Total Earned = $70 (or $17 per hour -- nice)
subtract 5% of total sales (which is $40 x 10 tables or $400) = -20 dollars
subtract 15% of $70 for taxes/social security = -10.50 dollars
final count: Joe walks out with $39.50 (or slightly under $10 an hour)

So what's the point of taking you through the example? The point is that waiters are good with percentages. That 15% is expected. It really is, without it they don't get close to earning minimum wage. And it's the baseline for evaluation. 15% to the waiter means that they were adequate and pretty much invisible to you. 20% means that you noticed them and were impressed with their service or just respected the fact that they do so many services so that you can enjoy your meal. 10% on the other hand, means that they did a really bad job of serving you or that you just don't respect how much work they do.

A 20% tip is an affirmation of value. As a waiter I see a 20% tip and I get all happy because I know that the person or people I just served appreciated the work I did for them so much that they parted with more than the minimum required amount of money just to indicate that to me. In a sense, they are validating me as a person. They are reminding me that I'm an equal. (Now, I don't think that most people consciously do this, or would ever say that they thought I wasn't their equal, but as I mentioned above, the power inequality is still there.) So can you imagine what I did when I got that 100% tip? I honestly didn't even know what to do. I walked around and showed it to all my waiter friends (yes we do that, for good AND bad tips). I thought back over the meal and tried to see where I could have done something so amazing that it would warrant that sort of tip. Nope. I did a good job, but nothing special. So the only thing that I could do is assume that he were affirming my value as a person. I walked away from that 4.5 hour shift with $21 dollars and felt great.

So what's the application for you? Well, times are tight. Seems like everybody is being more frugal...which is probably a good thing overall. But if you're going to go out to eat please don't be frugal on your tip. You're doing more than saving yourself a dollar by tipping light, you're saying that you don't care about the waiter as a person or value his or her work. And when you give a 4 dollar tip for a 20 dollar meal (instead of a $3 tip) it won't go unnoticed. That little extra dollar goes a long way to validate your waiter as a person. Sounds a little melodramatic, maybe, but it's true.