Resurfaced.

Not going to lie, September was a pretty great month.

2009-10-09T22:33:00.010-04:00

Well, I bet you've been wondering, "What's up in the life of Joe? That guy blogged every day for a whole year, then suddenly stopped, and now my life is in shambles because I just can't keep up with the intricate details of his awesome life like I used to..." Well, fear not, dear friends, because here is another update.

For starters, every time I try to write an update now, I feel very much out of the habit. My writing feels forced, and the humor just isn't there. Maybe it was never there and I'm just now realizing that. Thanks for telling me. Just kidding.

Anyway. Let's see. September was a busy month. Rachelle and I had something going on pretty much every weekend in September. Over Labor Day Weekend, two of our friends from community group, Dan Sims and Rachel Richards, got married. It was a good time. I was asked to run sound for their wedding, which meant hauling an SUV full of sound equipment and a keyboard, but I enjoyed being able to serve my friends in this way. Rachelle came with me and we had a lot of fun.

We dieted for most of September, and our first "meal off" (our diet allows us one meal off per week and one day off per week, where we can eat whatever we want, pretty much) was at the wedding rehearsal dinner at Golden Corral the night before the wedding. I think it might have been a mistake for me, at the end of the first week of my diet, to go to a buffet place on my meal off. Just saying. I had so much food that at one point I was convinced my body was going to split into two and there'd be two Joe's. I already have a twin though... I wonder if that would make me a triplet. I should look into this in case it actually happens sometime.

On the day of the wedding, I dressed in my usual all-black production garb. It's what I do. I bought a new black shirt (I found black shirts at Wal-mart that actually fit me) for the occasion. It came with an insert in the collar to keep it in the proper shape while in the packaging, which I found I could turn around and make myself look like a priest.

That brought me a lot of personal amusement as I walked around Rachelle's apartment while she was getting ready, responding to all of her questions with, "Yes, my child" I tried to make her call me Father Joseph but she wouldn't go for it.

Rachelle's dad and step-mom visited Southside Fellowship on that Sunday over Labor Day weekend while they were in town. I was able to come say hi to all of them for about a minute before I had to run back into the control room to run things for the morning. Ah, the life of a media director. We were able to eat dinner with them that night at her aunt and uncle's house in Greenville though, so that was nice.

The following weekend, we drove to Albermarle, North Carolina, to celebrate her cousin AJ's daughter Juliette's 1st birthday. On the way there, we stopped by the IKEA store to pick up a gift card for her step-mom for her birthday. Seriously, I could spend all day in that store. They have everything including the kitchen sink. Just imagine if a store like that combined with a Wal-Mart. I would probably be at the front of the line to inquire about renting out a section of the camping department so I could live there.

Rachelle and I took a bunch of good pictures at the birthday party. It was a lot of fun. The theme of the party included lots of ducks. Lots. of. Ducks.

The following weekend, we went to Charleston to spend the weekend with Rachelle's dad and step-mom at their house. We arrived at their house that Friday evening just in time for a late dinner, and then spent the rest of the evening just relaxing. On Saturday, Rachelle and I got up early and set out to explore downtown Charleston to take some pictures and check out the market (for those that don't know, there is an area in downtown Charleston on Market Street where there are a lot of vendors selling various handmade things and items). We were wanting to take some creative pictures while we were there, but found a lot of the people in the market were adamant about not having their picture (or pictures of their wares) taken, so that hindered our creativity some, but we were still able to take some good pictures.

We also took some pictures around downtown Charleston a bit too.

I spent most of the day with my mind focused on Saturday evening. I had made plans prior to coming to Charleston to meet with Rachelle's dad to talk about "some important things in my relationship with Rachelle". You probably know what I'm talking about. I spent most of the time at dinner that night nervously wringing my hands underneath the table while talking to her dad. The funny thing was that at the booth we were sitting at, my side was broken or something, and I was sitting so much lower than him that I was practically looking up to him and my chin could have rested on the table.

The dinner went well. On that Sunday morning, we all went to Seacoast Church, where Rachelle's dad and step-mom go to church. I really enjoyed the service. The pastor spoke from Acts 2 and then they had a "spontaneous" baptism and it was a really touching moment for me to see so many people choose to get baptized and proclaim their salvation publicly.

The following weekend was pretty much the only weekend where Rachelle and I did not have a bunch of plans. We had been wanting to go apple picking at SkyTop Orchard for awhile and had thought about doing that, but it was raining pretty badly on that Saturday morning so we decided not to go. Instead, we just spent most of the day just relaxing at Rachelle's apartment, going to lunch, and enjoying the day. I had ordered a new lens for my DSLR (it's a 50mm prime lens that goes down to f1.4... in other words, really narrow depth of field and really awesome in general) and spent a lot of the day just taking pictures inside the apartment.

Later that afternoon, I recommended we try to go to downtown Greenville to take some more pictures. So, we headed downtown with our cameras and an umbrella, because it was still raining. And, I had something else with me in my pocket as well. Wink.

We headed down to the Liberty Bridge in Falls Park, where we stood on that bridge for almost an hour, just talking about some of the facets of our dating relationship over the last few months. Rachelle and I spent a lot of time in downtown Greenville together before we were even officially "dating".

After a while, I handed the umbrella to Rachelle and set my camera bag on the bridge. Just moments later, I got down on one knee and asked her to be my wife. Many tears of joy were shed, and we enjoyed a special moment there on the bridge together in the rain. Along with some other random people on the bridge, who thought it was so romantic. She said "yes!" in case you were wondering.

We decided to get out of the rain for awhile. We started walking back toward the parking garage and stopped to take a few photos of ourselves to celebrate and relive the moment.

When we got back to the car, we both pretty much immediately pulled out our cell phones and started calling and texting our family and friends to share the good news of our engagement. We decided to go to Copper River Grill to celebrate. I had told Rachelle that I loved her for the first time in the parking lot of that restaurant, so we thought that would be a poignant place to have our celebratory dinner for our engagement.

We spent almost an hour just sitting in the parking lot calling and talking to our friends, still sharing our news. When we were finally done with phone calls, we went inside the restaurant to eat, only to find out that they had a 40 minute wait. So, we made a reservation and then went to Barnes & Noble to check out wedding planners. Getting a head start on things, you know.

We ate a ton of food at dinner, but it felt good to celebrate. It was pretty much the end of our diet game, so it was justified. I ate so much food. A lot of rolls, salad, chicken, alfredo... lots of goodness.

The next day was a lot of fun going to church and sharing the news, but most everyone that we didn't call had found out via our Twitter and Facebook status updates. My friends Rex and Catie were in town over the weekend so they took us out to lunch to celebrate, which was fun.

I took Rachelle to get her nails done that Sunday afternoon before going to our community group so that she could show off her ring and enjoy having pretty nails too.

So, that was pretty much September. Overall, I'd say it was a pretty great month.

October is going great so far. We have been planning out wedding stuff like crazy. I am participating in Tietober again this year, although almost no one is really noticing or commenting much this time around, which I can only presume is because I am not blogging about it every day. It's getting pretty popular on Twitter though and people are enjoying seeing what ties I wear each day, and I am hearing more and more reports of people participating in Tietober to some degree. I think most people are just not willing to wear a tie for every day of the month like I am.

I got a new PDA phone this week. I've had the Motorola Q for over two years. I wouldn't say I "loved" that phone, but I definitely got used to it and started to enjoy its interface and conveniences. I was driving to the church on Wednesday and thinking to myself, "This phone isn't that bad, I'll probably keep using it for awhile before upgrading, even though it's old". Then, literally 2 minutes later, I spilled my water bottle all over it and it didn't work anymore. So, I drove to the Verizon store and got a Blackberry phone. I later took apart my Q phone and let it dry out some and I separated the parts that were shorting out so that I could turn it back on and get some data off of the phone. I'm such a nerd. I was able to get all of my contacts and pictures and video off of the phone though, so, go me. I did break some of the case getting the phone apart though, so, it's not really usable anymore, I guess. Although it still works as good as it ever did.

Anyway, that's about it. I'm not sure I really enjoy posting long entries spanning entire month(s) of my life, but it's all I really have time for these days. And for now, I'm ok with that. The rest of October (Tietober!) is going to be really busy. Rachelle and I are traveling to Montana this weekend and will return next Friday. Please don't steal stuff at my house while I'm gone. If you take my lawn mower, at least cut the grass before you take it. I would hate to make Tim have to cut it by hand with a pair of scissors again, but, it might not be too bad, it is cooling off a bit around here.

Later,

Joe

So what happened in August?

2009-09-01T19:11:00.001-04:00

Life has been busy. Work is busier than ever. I've really been enjoying my new computer/hardware setup, but the loss of my assistant has made things more stressful for me than I thought. I have been doing a decent job of keeping my tasks managed so I don't forget anything or anyone, but it still happens from time to time.

To update this blog, I've more or less resorted to just bulk updates or monthly updates on my life. So, here goes. August was a lot of fun. Rachelle and I went to Charlotte, NC on August 1st to meet my friends Rex and Catie. We met at the Cheesecake Factory for some delicious food goodness. I love cheesecake. Just going on the record with that.

After eating a good lunch, we went to the IKEA store there. In Charlotte I mean. There's not a secret IKEA store inside The Cheesecake Factory, in cas you were wondering. IKEA is an interesting store. The place is massive and full of furniture made by, presumably, the Swedes. I am at least assuming they name everything because all of the product names are hard to pronounce and whenever I say them, I sound like I don't know how to read.

We spent a long time walking around the store. It was fun to look at their layouts and envision myself setting up a room in my house to look like that. Everything is pretty cheap there. I'm terrible at decorating things, by the way. I appreciate a well-decorated space, but part of me is afraid to spend money on decorative items that are mainly for other people to look at, when I am worried that those people may not like my decorations.

I obviously need to grow in this area, because my house does not look that great. And, of course, when I say "my house", I really mean "the house that belongs to my grandmother that my twin brother Tim and I rent from my parents". But, just imagine this paragraph and others like it if I used that whole phrase every time. "I was thinking about decorating this part of the house that belongs to my grandmother that my twin brother Tim and I pay a monthly rent check to my parents, who are in fact, my landlords, with wall to wall carpeting and floor to ceiling polka dots." Yeah, I think it works. That's not a bad decorating idea either.

Anyway. My friends Jami and Lauren from community group got married on August 8th. I was a groomsman. I look pretty dang good in a tux, if I do say so myself. I won't point out where I am in these pictures. Just look for the best looking groomsman, and if it's not me, you need to have a discussion with yourself about your perception of "awesome".

The night of the rehearsal dinner for Jami and Lauren's wedding was my first time ever going to an event with a "+1" (you know, with... a date), and I wanted it to be really special. Of course, having Rachelle with me made it special, but we went a step further and came up with matching outfits.

Of course, on the day of the wedding, after it was all over, Rachelle and I went out and took some photos of ourselves looking quite styling! I'm in love with this girl, I tell you. She's great.

The next weekend was Rachelle's birthday weekend, so we traveled to Conway, SC (where she grew up) and visited her family. They all liked me, I think. It was fun to just relax and not have to work on the weekend for a change.

I made the weekend special for Rachelle by giving her a birthday gift every day of the weekend (one on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday). I got excited about her birthday a few months ago and had already purchased one of her gifts in June.

After celebrating a big Sunday birthday lunch with the family (on the 16th), Rachelle and I drove to Charleston, SC, where her dad and step-mom live. We spent the night at their house and then drove back to Greenville on Monday after looking around Charleston for a couple of hours.

The weekend after Rachelle's birthday (the 22nd) was quite a busy Saturday. In the morning, I came over and helped set up Rachelle's portfolio and business presentation for an expo that her apartment complex was hosting. It was a neat opportunity that allowed her to showcase some of her excellent photography work to other local business owners and apartment renters who came in and out of the apartment office during the day. Hopefully, that will yield some more photography work for her, because she is quite talented! And of course, I get to be an assistant photographer on some of her shoots, which is always fun.

Rachelle stayed at the apartment office for a while to show the portfolio to people coming by (there were not a whole lot of people... but, that's how things go sometimes). We left around noon to drive to my parents' house for an "August birthdays" cookout. Apparently, a lot of the people in my family have August birthdays. I guess I never tuned in to that.

I bought my dad a pair of pliers for his birthday. He is always saying "you can never have too many pliers", so I decided to take him up on that. Part of me sensed that once I gave him that pair, he finally had "enough pliers", but hey, I found a deal on a pallet of pliers, so, he'll be getting them for a few years. Don't tell him.

We stayed at my parents' for a while, and, of course, while we were all together, we pulled the whole family together for a big photo. I put my DSLR on a timer, and, after positioning everyone, jumped into the picture myself. The picture came out ok but everyone was in such a hurry to disband that I'm sure it could have been better if we had more time.

We left that party around 2:15 and headed straight for Charlotte, NC. Rachelle's cousin, AJ, and her husband Jason live in Albemarle, and the four of us (and their baby daughter) met at IKEA to peruse the store. That's right, twice in one month. It was fun.

We went through the store a lot quicker this time. I bought a lamp. It's awesome. I have it sitting on my desk at work. That's all I bought for myself. I also bought some shelf pieces for my friends Dan and Rachel, who are getting married soon and are decorating their new house and they asked me to pick up a few pieces for them while we were there.

This past weekend was the first "free" weekend we've had in a while. It was nice to relax. I got up early and tried to do some yard work. My front yard has been in need of a good cutting in a long time, and the back yard was even worse. I got out my lawn mower (again, that possessive "my" really means "the lawn mower that my dad lets me borrow because even though I'm 25 and should own a lawn mower and power tools and a toolbelt and 42 pair of pliers and a fashionable scarf, I do not yet own such things") and tried to start it. I tried for like 30 minutes. Piece of junk mower. It gave my arm a good workout though, and made me look quite foolish in front of all of the neighbors, I'm sure.

I called my parents and let them know that the mower wasn't working, and that they could just come get it at their convenience. I made plans to somehow afford a new lawn mower, and then my dad offered to let me borrow another one of his. Seriously? Who has that many lawn mowers? My dad, apparently. My dad has a lot of stuff. Ask to borrow some pliers from him sometime.

I spent the rest of the morning on Saturday trying to get things done around the house. I made a "to do" list around the house of all the stuff I have to... you know... do. Sometimes I call my lists "to get done" lists, but hey, don't judge. I swept out the carport. Old houses that don't have garages sometimes have these things called "carports" where you park your car. It has no door. It's basically an outdoor open shelter that just collects leaves in the fall and dirt/sand the rest of the year. Sweeping that out was a chore and a half. I also did a lot of laundry. In the midst of washing clothes, I super-cleaned the kitchen. Tim had jello "awhile ago" (I don't really want to say how long) but to make a long story short (yes, even I am sometimes capable of summarizing), the jello had turned to some sort of plastic and was stuck to everything in the sink and all the bowls and dishes in the sink. So, I spent a long time cleaning that, as well cleaning out the microwave, stove, etc. It looks good.

Rachelle and I met Tim and my friend Brian Schlarb for lunch at Moe's around 1pm on Saturday. That was a good time. Brian and I haven't gotten together in a long time and he has been wanting to meet Rachelle for a long time too.

It was good to enjoy some Moe's because I knew it was going to be my last Moe's experience for a while. Rachelle and I officially started our diet yesterday. You can read about it some more on her blog (chubbychelley.blogspot.com) if you want to. I enjoy reading what she writes. Rachelle has a way of writing that I wish I could... I always mention too many boring details that no one reads. You know what I'm saying. Are you even still reading?

Anyway. The diet excites me some because getting healthier is supposedly a good thing. I've always been "the fat kid" so it doesn't really bother me that much. I like to eat. Food is comforting to me. When I've had a crappy day, shoving food in my face (and eating it, not just leaving it there) always makes me feel better. But, I know that's not really good for me. Plus shoving food is messy, let's be honest.

Rachelle and I started going to the gym last week too. That was kind of a first for me. I've enjoyed running on the treadmill. Listening to electronica on my iPod helps pass the time, especially because we've been going to the gym in 30 minute increments, and I can't say that just running in the same place staring at the same wall for 30 minutes is what I would call "fun". Although, I suppose if you saw me on the treadmill, you wouldn't classify what I was doing as "running" anyway. Sometimes I visualize a twinkie right in front of me. Don't judge.

The food control with the diet though has been harder than I thought. We're only on Day 2. Everything we're eating (we planned out healthy meals for the entire week) has tasted really good but it just hasn't left me feeling as full as I am used to, and so I pretty much feel hungry all the time. I know that's dumb, because I'm obviously not starving. I just have that hungry feeling all the time. We also have to drink at least 3 liters of water a day. That's easy for me. I can drink water like it's my job. Actually, I wonder if there is a job that allows me to get paid to drink water...I'm going to look into that.

So, yesterday was harder to diet than I thought it would be, but it was ok. I passed the time by doing work around my house. I got up early and went to my parents' house to get the other lawn mower from them. I spent a couple of hours at their house just sitting around and talking, and then came back to my house to do some yardwork. After I finished cutting both the front yard and the back yard, I worked on Rachelle's iPod for a while (trying to get the iPod fully synced to her laptop) and then went to Walmart and bought some things for the house. Several of the things on my "list" around the house had to do with organizing various areas, like the utensil/silverware drawer, bathroom towels, etc.

Here's what I ended up with.

Good progress, I'd say. Things are definitely neater. I've been on an organizing/cleaning craze for a while... it's like I can't stop! I've completely cleaned and reorganized my office at work, gotten cables tied down, taped down, etc. and it's looking awesome. I got a lot of things done on my house "to do" list too, so that felt good.

So I guess that was pretty much August. I'm looking forward to what September holds! Rachelle and I are traveling back down to Charleston September 18-20 (yep, another Sunday off for me) to spend the weekend with her dad and step-mom, so that should be fun. I'm also traveling some in October. Rachelle and I are going to Montana in the middle of October to visit Tara Barthel and her family, and I'm going to Tampa, Florida at the end of October to shoot a wedding. I don't think I've ever traveled this much in such a short span in my entire life. It's fun though.

What have you been up to?

Later,

Joe

It's kind of like reading a chapter of the biography of my life... covering a month and a half at a time.

2009-08-03T23:06:00.000-04:00

If you were a regular reader of this blog, I bet you're feeling pretty disconnected from my life by now. I mean, after all, you did get to read about every day of my life for over a year. And then I suddenly stopped. And I haven't "blogged" in a while. I refuse to be one of those writers though that apologizes for not writing. This is my blog. I'll write when I want to, and not write when I don't want to. It's as simple as that.

I've written before about why I chose to stop, but the bottom line was that it was just too much stress in my life to keep that kind of commitment--to write every day at the end of the day about what I was up to. That and I was pretty sure that out of my 1200 readers (ok, I may have made that number up), only 2 people were actually reading every entry. Me being one of them. My mom was the other. Probably. Ok, maybe not. But still.

So, what's new in my life in the last month and a half? I would say "not a whole lot", but you know me better than that. Assuming that you've been reading this blog for any length of time more than "a minute".

I've been spending a lot of time working. You know, that whole 9-to-5 thing. Actually, for me, it's 1o-to-7 or sometimes 6-to-1... with breaks... and whatnot... hey, I get my work done. I just don't have a traditional schedule every day of the week since I work on Sundays and late other nights of the week.

One thing that has been real enjoyable at work lately is my new workstation. For a long time, I've had PC computers running Windows XP and Vista that, for the lack of more appropriate words, just weren't great. They were good computers, but not good for what I needed to do.

Several months ago, I started putting plans together to budget and ask for a new workstation--a Mac. I was tired of having a computer with only 2 or 3GB of memory that just couldn't render what I needed it to without failing. So, I put plans together to order a new Mac Pro desktop with 16GB of memory, more hard drive space, faster processors, and a larger monitor. I proposed the plan to Art (Southside's executive pastor), he approved it, and I ordered it.

It has been so nice to use these past few weeks. I can render things that used to take 45 minutes on my PC in under 2 minutes on the new workstation. That's a huge time-saver. And it doesn't crash all the time. Plus it just looks pretty sweet on my desk. I still have my PC workstation for "office stuff" and image work, secondary projects, etc. so I have them both side-by-side on my desk.

In my non-work time, I've been hanging out with my girlfriend Rachelle. She is great. That's an understatement. She is such a blessing in my life. We met through the community group at my church, although sometimes I just tell people that she saw me from a distance working in the tech booth and thought I was "super hot". I mean, who's to say that isn't also true.

Anyway. We spent a lot of time "hanging out" (whatever that means to people these days) in May and I asked her to "be my girlfriend" on June 4th at 1:14pm (if you were curious). It took me a long time to build up the courage to do that because I had never done that before. I spent 25 years of my life without ever dating anyone or having anyone special in my life like her.

Since then, we've been spending so much time together and it has been great getting to know her more and more. Here's a picture of us when we went to see the movie, "Up", in 3D. I highly recommend the movie by the way. Maybe not in 3D if you have vision like me and can't see 3D things because your eyes don't work together. But the movie is still great.

On June 26, I surprised Rachelle and took her to a Beach Boys concert. We both love the musical stylings of the Beach Boys. It was a lot of fun. We had great seats... I kept joking that we were sitting so close to the stage that we could smell their wrinkle cream. They had some new people playing in the band to help fill in the sound... I thought their electric guitar player looked a little like a young Randy Travis... but maybe it was just me.

Rachelle and I met her friends (well, now I can say "our friends") Matt and Crystal for dinner on Monday, June 30. It was a good time and we all ended up going to downtown Greenville for some ice cream. As we were standing outside The Marble Slab, a couple came walking down the street holding the cutest little puppy. They were giving it away, and after a few minutes of deliberation, Rachelle decided to adopt the dog, who was immediately dubbed "Carl".

Of course, if you've seen the movie "Up", you may get the reference of the name Carl to the character in that film. Carl is so cute.

Helping to take care of Carl was a learning and growing experience for me. People say that puppy care is kind of like baby care. All I can say is, if kids also make sounds like dying turkeys at night, well, maybe I am going to have to re-consider being a dad. That's all I'm saying. Just kidding.

After owning Carl for about a month, on July 29, Rachelle decided that she couldn't keep him. Taking care of a puppy is a lot of work. It takes a lot of time and attention, and neither of us could give that to Carl. So, we listed him on the local Greenville Craigslist to give him away. People told us that doing that was sketchy... but you know what else is sketchy? A pencil artist struggling for ideas. That's all I'm saying. 17 hours later, we had found a new home for Carl where he will have a big yard and be happy and run around with people who have lots of time to play with him. Unlike us, where he was in his crate a lot because Rachelle and I both lead very busy lives.

Anyway. Backtracking a little bit. July was a lot of fun. Of course, I spent a lot of the time working. I love my job. It's so much fun. I was able to produce a few videos and spend a lot of time continuing to configure my new workstation. I have a great setup now. On the one hand, it's been kind of boring this summer not producing a ton of videos, but on the other hand, it's been nice to have the slow time to allow me to finish up some other projects and try out new ideas.

Andrew (you may remember his blog, Clarity) quit being my assistant at the end of June. That was a sad time. Well, not really. He's still around. He's just not my assistant anymore. He had to quit working so he could focus on his nursing classes and whatnot. So, now we're sort of back to the whole "just Joe" thing. It works, for the most part, but I sometimes struggle to get it all done.

One project I have been focusing on since Andrew left has been to "re-claim" my office as my creative space. I've shared my office with an intern/assistant for the past 2 years. It's been fun, but I'm ready to have it be "my" office again. You know, where the organization can be to my standards. Where the cleanliness can be to my standards. Where the layout can be what is best suited for me.

I started by moving some of my desk stuff around and moving it up closer to the door, etc. This gives me more room for my computers and monitors (now that I have more on the desk) and allows me to have more room for my desk chair. My next step is to move the other desk out (that the assistant's computer is on) and turn the front half of my office into a creative space with some nice chairs. The only problem is I don't really think I am allowed to spend money on stuff like that so maybe I will buy my own nice plush cushy chairs or something.

Anyway. Let's see. What else happened in July. I had a fun time at my parents' house on July 3rd celebrating July 4th. We all had dinner and played some games and just relaxed. On July 4th, Rachelle and I went up to Hendersonville, NC and watched some fireworks at her friend's parents' place. There were a lot of people there and it was a lot of fun.

On July 9th, Rachelle and I decided to be kind of spontaneous and get haircuts. I know, right? Me. Spontaneous. Actually, I really wanted and needed a haircut. I had been cutting my own hair for 3 years, and, as it turned out, people were just being people and not being honest when they thought it looked good. It actually looked bad. Thanks guys. Just kidding. But I messed it up really bad back in April when I cut it. So, I let it grow. And grow. And grow. You know, so that when I did get a haircut, the mistakes could be fixed easier. Or something. I don't know. Just look at the picture and comment on how great I look.

A lot of other stuff happened but I'm sure you're bored with reading by now. Giving "the highlights" is harder for me than just writing about every single day. Which I could still do, by the way. My mind has an amazingly active memory. Don't ask me to start calculating prime numbers or anything like that though. It doesn't work that way.

Later,

Joe

I would say something like "ah, the joys of home ownership", but... I rent. So, let's all laugh at the landlords. (Sorry Mom)

2009-06-19T08:09:00.003-04:00

I know I say this often, but I really miss writing daily. When I don't spend time writing, I feel like the creative energy just continues to build up and it just comes out in bursts in other avenues. I've been spending time writing entries in another blog I started. It's not as exciting as this blog though. That's all I'm going to say.

I also tend to have a penchant for writing poems. I've always loved creating poems and rhyming things. Sometimes they come to me quickly in my head and other times I may spend several minutes, hours, or days writing one piece. I've written way more than you think I have. People just don't know about it. And, no, I don't have this dark side of me that I let out in poems... I just like expressing thoughts and ideas through literal imagery. That's it. Most of the poems are about life, the people I care about, and ice cream. Because I love ice cream. Don't judge me.

Anyway. This blog entry will not be a poem. In an attempt to continue to share about the awesomeness of things about my life, here's a story from this past week.

I generally leave my house on Sunday mornings by 6:15AM. This past Sunday, as I was walking through my living room to head out the door, this is what I saw out my window into the backyard: (This picture was not actually taken at that time... it was much darker in the morning).

At first glance, I thought to myself, "Why did someone take everything out of my shed and put it in the back yard? And then take the shed?" I mean, I know with this economy, people are facing hard times, but taking a shed and leaving the stuff inside is really bad. I could only assume that the shed-abductors had enough broken rakes and plastic plant pots.

Anyway. I didn't have time to deal with it Sunday morning. My mind is in a special place on Sunday morning--I rarely give anything a second thought if it isn't related to producing services for Southside on Sunday morning. So, I left it like it was.

That afternoon, I came back to the house with my girlfriend Rachelle and we scoped out the damage. The shed was still there, surprisingly. I just couldn't see it in the dark. We had a bad storm over the weekend and it blew the whole shed over, leaving the foundation and everything just sitting on the slab.

So, while not relieved (because, hey, it was just a bunch of junk in a shed... plus the lawn mower), it was interesting to know what really happened. We looked at it for a few minutes and then left.

On Monday afternoon, my landlords (read: my parents who own the house that I rent) came over to scope out the damage for themselves and help fix the situation. I did a pretty good job of letting them do most of the work while making it look like I was helping. That's not true. I did a fair amount of work. We cleaned a lot of it up and threw away a lot of the junk.

All in all, we found like 12 broken rakes, some clippers that were missing a handle, 387 plastic pots, 2 buckets of seashells, a broken grill, and some other random things.

I enjoyed getting to clean out most of the junk. Since Tim and I moved into the house back in February, I've been afraid to look in that shed. Not that I'm scared of bugs... but in a shed like that, my brain starts to imagine a spider that has grown so big that it eats small cats. That's all I'm saying. So cleaning it out was good. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a minimalist... I don't like to keep junk around that I don't need. That doesn't mean that I don't keep things that have sentimental value... but at the same time, if I have something that I don't use, I either sell it or give it to someone else. Except for my GI Joe collection. Stop hounding me about it. I'm keeping Dialtone. He is awesome.

Anyway. My dad and I were able to flip the shed back over onto the foundation and nail it back down. I say that like I did a lot of work, but really I just used one hand and flipped it right over and my dad used a bunch of screws to secure it in place.

The doors are kind of "by name only" because they got so bent that they won't even shut. Oh well. I never locked it anyway. Please don't come steal my lawn mower. Actually, it's my dad's lawn mower that he lets me borrow. So, don't steal my dad's lawn mower. I would hate for Tim to have to cut the grass with a pair of scissors while I sit on the back porch sipping lemonade. Actually, that doesn't sound half bad.

Anyway. There's a fun story about my life. I many more things to share, but that's enough for now. I can hear the box of Cheerios calling me from the kitchen...

Later,

Joe

I've always been good at pretending to know the songs I'm singing though... so that helped a lot.

2009-06-01T17:48:00.006-04:00

So, this past Wednesday, I went to the Hillsong United concert at the Verizon Wireless amphitheater in Alpharetta, Georgia. I think that "Alpharetta" is just a fancier name for "outside of Atlanta", but, whatever.

It was a great time. Normally on Wednesday nights, I'd be stuck at the church supporting the band practice. Not that I feel that my time there is wasted... but I do sit around a lot on those nights. It was a nice change of pace to not have practice and to be able to do something else fun.

I road down with Andrew (my assistant at the church), his wife Kristi, and my friend Rachelle. It was a good trip down. I passed a lot of the time by being talkative and taking boring photos with my camera... but we've all established that I often take photos as a way to remove myself from the social scene.

The concert was great. I'm not a huge Hillsong United fan, but we've done a few songs from their group at Southside for worship. I'd say out of all of the songs I heard, I only knew like 3 or 4, but it was still a jam. Or, a jam and a half, you could say.

I really didn't take that many photos during the concert. I was the only one who brought a camera... and sometimes I just enjoy where I am too much to really care about taking photos. Not that I would have had taken great photos from all the way at the back of the amphitheater... where we were sitting. Haha.

There were camera operators working the concert, which was a nice touch. I didn't really like any of the creative shots or composition for the first half of the concert, but it got better (a lot better, actually) during the second half.

Also, halfway through the concert, it started raining lightly. Then it started pouring. The cool thing was though, that even though it was pouring down rain, no one left the concert. Ok, I couldn't see anyone leaving... but maybe a few people did. Sinners. God knows you left. Just kidding. I mean, it was an amphitheater, so... of course we expected to possibly get wet, right?

There was something cool about worshiping in the rain though. I mean, it's one thing to raise a hand or arm or hands or arms in the air when you're singing to God. It was an even better experience to do that in the rain... with your entire body getting wet and your arms in the air getting hit by water and singing "In my heart, in my soul, Lord I give you control... Consume me from the inside out Lord!"

I left the concert with a joyful heart and thankful spirit that the God we worship can show His awesome power in so many ways. I was a little jealous that all of the band members had haircaps. And to think, I almost brought mine with me, and I didn't. The ride home was a lot of fun even though we were all pretty much soaked by that point. I enjoyed the experience and if I had to do it all again, I'm not even sure if I'd bring a poncho.

Well, maybe just a towel. But still.

Later,

Joe

A very active memory is a blessing... when you get to use it.

2009-05-22T09:31:00.005-04:00

Stopping my daily blogging was probably one of the smartest decisions I ever made, but I still miss it. Every time I sit down at my computer, I feel like I could just write for days about... well... my days. Some of it would make you laugh, some of it would make you cry. Not that my life is all that melodramatic, but you'd definitely be bored to tears.

So, in my endeavor to consider myself a "writer", here's an entry centered around one main event. Look, it's my blog. I can do that if I want to.

Anyway. This past weekend, I had the privilege of being a groomsman in the wedding for my friend Justin DeGarmo. I remember when I met his girlfriend (now wife) for the first time. He introduced me to her, as he introduced me to many other people, as "Big Papa". Justin was the first one who started calling me that years ago and the nickname just stuck.... probably because I am big and sort of a father figure. Or, maybe it's just because there's a part of me somewhere inside that wants to be somebody else. Who knows... well, besides the voices in my head.

So, when Justin got engaged, he asked me to be a groomsman in his wedding. I put the wedding date on my calendar and grew more excited and anxious about the big day as it drew closer. For whatever reason, their wedding was on a Friday night. That meant the rehearsal was on Thursday night.

The wedding was in Atlanta, so I headed down Thursday afternoon after visiting a friend in the hospital so that I could be there in plenty of time for the rehearsal and all of the festivities. The drive down was pretty uneventful, unless you count me driving 75MPH on the interstate and somehow randomly spotting my dad driving on the other side of the interstate in the other direction. Pretty good for someone like me with seemingly terrible vision. It was more one of those things where I put my crazy good photographic memory to use... I saw the shape of his car from far away and recognized it was him. It made for an interesting phone call when I passed him though.

Anyway. Back to the main story at hand. I drove to Atlanta (Jonesboro, really) in record time. I wasn't really speeding, but it was just an easy drive with little to no traffic. I made it there by 3pm. I parked at the hotel, grabbed some of my things from my SUV, and headed inside. Already, I was starting to hear people yell, "Big Papa!" as I came in. In fact, I was pretty much solely referred to as "Big Papa" for the duration of this event. Someone called me "Joseph" and I didn't even turn around because I was so used to hearing Big Papa.

I was introduced to new friends by my lofty moniker. Ok, I really don't use that word often enough. Moniker. Anyway. I am pretty sure that there were a good number of people there with the wedding party that never knew my real name. That is just really hilarious.

So, the rehearsal and all that stuff went really well. I had to walk down the aisle and escort a bridesmaid and all that stuff. I like to think I did a great job, but in reality, it's not that hard. The rehearsal dinner was a lot of fun.

After the dinner, we all headed back to our hotel. Most of the "young folk" (me included) decided to go next door to the bar by the hotel because it was Karoake night. "Big Papa" had been elected to start us off singing. When we got to the bar, we quickly realized that it didn't look like we'd get to sing or participate. The room was full, and they sat us outside where we couldn't even hear the karoake music. So, it quickly became a "let's all hang out here and have some drinks instead". Look, I have nothing against alcohol. I personally choose not to drink for a variety of reasons. (1) I'm already pretty awesome and, if inebriated, there's no telling how outgoing I could get. The world is not ready for that. And (b) I feel like it honors my parents who taught me not to drink. So, it's a personal choice I make. I don't feel like having beer separates me from God. Wine does though. Just kidding.

So, being the "only guy there drinking water", I decided to head back to the hotel. I got a few stares from some of the wedding party and a few concerned "Are you ok Big Papa?". I ensured them that I was fine. I went back to my hotel room to relax.

The hotel room was cramped. The parents' of the bride and groom had reserved rooms for all of the wedding party. I was very grateful because that saved me some money. I was anticipating 2 guys to a room. Instead, we had 5 to a room. Not that bad, but, for those that understand my personality, you know I like alone time / personal space. If I ever get married, my wife will probably hate it when I retreat. I enjoy being around people, but if I don't at least get a small amount of time where I am not expected to be sociable, I get very tired. That's all I'm saying. I like people. I like talking to people. Just not 24 hours a day.

I also like clean/organized spaces. Most people wouldn't think that if they ever see my office, but that's different. My office is messy because I don't have places to put anything, and a lot of people just dump stuff on my desk. My computer files are impeccably organized though. That has to count for something. At home though, I keep the house pretty much spotless. Sometimes I let it get out of hand just so I can clean it... but for the most part, I enjoy keeping things tidy. Very tidy. So, you can imagine that sharing a room with 4 other guys and all their stuff on the floor, etc. just drove me a little nuts.

Anyway. I came back to the room, walked around for a bit, and then turned in to go to sleep. I wasn't really that tired but I figured I could at least fall asleep as a way to avoid talking to people. I know. I'm terrible.

I slept great. I woke up at 7AM, got dressed, and sat around in the hotel for a while. Around 9:30AM, I grabbed my camera from my car and went for a walk. I walked all the way down to a McDonalds near the hotel to get some breakfast, fully anticipating to end up sitting there alone eating breakfast.

As I was sitting there, an older guy came and sat down in a booth near me. He began reading the paper and made a comment (the type of comment that was really just said to himself but you could tell he wanted other people, specifically me, to hear it) as he was reading. He said something about "I'd like to take a bat to that guy's head and see how he likes it..." (referencing some story in the paper about a crime... I'm terrible at following news stories but it was something to that effect).

Normally, I ignore these types of comments... mainly because I'm really introverted. Moreso than you might think at times. But, as I sat there, I really felt like this would be an opportunity to talk to this guy about Jesus. So, I turned to him and in the most graceful tone I could muster, simply said, "You're right man, but that's why we have Jesus--He gave us grace to live and we can give that grace to other people." I tried to say it in a way that was not condecscending or hurtful, but just open and insightful.

I slowly started talking to this guy, Charles. At first, it was an occasional comment over my shoulder before turning back to reading blogs and tweets from my phone. See, I was still trying to avoid conversation while having conversation. But, we kept talking and eventually had turned to face each other and stop what we were doing to just talk.

He was older than me. I'd say he was 65. He looked at me and said, "I can tell you're a Christian", which, yes, I confirmed to him that I was a follower of Jesus. He told me a lot of things... most of which were just advice from an old man to a young man. Things about working hard, being diligent, respecting women, and honoring God. He was a Christian too (saved at 11 years old) and in fact, goes to the same church as Truett Cathy, the guy that started Chik-fil-a.

We kept talking and before I realized it, it had been over 2 hours. It was a great opportunity for me to encourage and be encouraged by another follower of Jesus. We closed out our conversation by praying. Charles prayed for very specific things in my life. Things that, strangely, I would not write on this blog, but felt compelled to share with him. I'm weird like that.

When we finished praying, another woman nearby had teared up a little bit and said she had been praying right alongside us. What a blessing! I felt like I needed to get going and get back to the hotel, so I said goodbye and walked back to the hotel.

I shared part of my conversation that I had with Charles with a couple of the groomsmen but for the most part just kept it to myself. It was a good way to spend 2 hours of my Friday and it made me think... I wonder how many of these opportunities come my way that I simply ignore because I don't want to interact with people?

Anyway. The rest of the day was great. I went to lunch with Justin and a few other people to Chili's. Gotta love those Crispy Honey Chipotle Chicken Crispers. Yeah, I don't know why they put Crispy in the name twice. I personally would like it if they called them "Super Spicy Awesome Tasty Drippy Messy Chicken Fingers", but the manager said that the product names come from corporate or something and can't be controlled by the franchise. Lame.

During the afternoon before we had to get ready for the wedding, some of us went to see the movie, "Angels and Demons". It was a sequel to the movie, "The Da Vinci Code", both of which were based on books by author Dan Brown. I enjoyed the movie. I remember when I saw "The Da Vinci Code" for the first time, I enjoyed it but was equally bothered by the heresy of the film. I don't think I'm really spoiling it for anyone--but it basically claims that instead of returning to heaven, Jesus stayed on earth, married Mary Magdelene, had kids, and died on earth. Obviously we know this is not true, but in spite of that, it made for an interesting film. "Angels and Demons" was originally written as a prequel book to "Da Vinci Code" (I think) but felt kind of like a sequel movie.

It was good. I enjoyed it and it was a good way to spend the afternoon. The movie was over around 4pm and we all headed back to the hotel to get ready. We were supposed to be ready to go and be at the wedding chapel by 6pm. So, I got ready at 4pm. It took me minutes to get ready, mainly because I'm awesome at putting on tuxes. I ended up standing around in the hotel for almost an hour and a half while waiting on everyone else to get ready. I guess I should have just waited a little longer to get ready. The bride's mom saw me ready so early and told me she wished she could clone "Big Papa" so everyone could be ready on time like me. It's good when other people notice and value my commitment to being on time.

The wedding went well. It started at 7:30pm so there was a lot of standing around beforehand, and of course, copious pictures afterward. Everything went off without a hitch (well, except for THE hitch... of marriage... nevermind). After the wedding, the reception was on-site, which was nice because we didn't have to drive anywhere to get there.

I ate some food and mingled with some of the wedding party and a few other people. I'm terrible at mingling. I'm not like "let's only talk about the weather" bad, but overall, I just don't like smalltalk all that much. Anyway. After the bride/groom dance and the bride/father dance, they opened the dance floor up for everyone to join. No one came out, so, I stood up and slow danced with one of the other groomsmen. It was hilarious and weird at the same time. A lot of people laughed and within seconds, the dance floor was full of people. A whole room of strangers thinks I like men now... but at least I got the dancing started. You're welcome.

I left around 9:45pm and headed out. I probably should have stayed longer since I was in the wedding party, but I really didn't want to stay for the duration of the reception since I was planning on driving home that night. Sharing a hotel room with 4 other guys for another night just wasn't that appealing, I guess.

Another groomsman rode back with me to the hotel so he could drive home too, and I headed out. I had to fuel up my SUV before driving too far, but then was on my way home. I made it home in pretty good time, getting to my house in Simpsonville just before 1AM.

Overall, I enjoyed getting to be a part of the wedding and it was an honor to get to stand up there by my friend Justin and support their union. It was great getting to reconnect with some familiar and old friends and meet new people too. And, I have to say, answering the Spirit and talking to that guy was probably the most rewarding and encouraging conversation I had all weekend.

Later,

Joe

It'd make for a great product review if the duct tape company was interested...

2009-05-05T22:16:00.006-04:00

So, here's something I did yesterday on my day off. I replaced my broken driver's side mirror. First, let me share the awesome story of how it broke in the first place. Well, I say awesome, but I really just said that so I could grab your attention.

Back in October 2007 (October 14, 2007, at 2pm to be exact), I was driving through the church parking lot, dropping my friend Tyler off at his car. Jared, a high school student, came running up to my car and pretended (as I was moving roughly 1.89 miles an hour at this point) that I was hitting him. He rolled on the hood of my Trailblazer SUV and then slowly rolled off the side. I was laughing. Then, as he rolled off, his arm hooked my mirror and broke it straight off.

Calmly, I lowered the my window and all I said was, "You're paying for that." I said it in a tone that was mostly sarcastic, because, it was a pretty funny moment of how it broke, yet, at the same time, I had no idea how much it was going to cost to repair.

So, right then and there, I pulled out a roll of duct tape and taped the mirror on. And it stayed that way for a long time. A really long time.

If you recall, someone offered to find me a mirror at a junkyard. And finally, he got found me one, and I picked it up last August for like $75. Not a bad deal. By the way, it should still be considered awesome that I can link back to previous days of my life. It's like a text-based soap opera.

Anyway. So, that mirror sat in the back of my Trailblazer since August. I left the old mirror duct-taped on (it still worked and moved... but kind of sagged as the tape decayed from the weather). I was secretly hoping that a friend or someone in the church who does car body work would see it, and say "Joe, let me fix that for you". I was content to have it stay broken until I got that offer.

I never got that offer. A couple of weeks ago, my dad had to replace a mirror on one of his SUV's that he got at a car auction. He did it himself and told me it was pretty easy, so we decided to try it on my Trailblazer. I knew all along that I could do it myself, but the lazy part of me (it takes over a lot on a lot of things) just never cared enough to do anything about it. Look, I'm just being honest. Don't judge me.

So, yesterday, around noon, I headed down (over?) to good ol' Piedmont, South Carolina, where my parents live. I backed my car underneath my dad's old truck shed so we could work on the mirror without getting rained on. After eating some lunch, we went to work.

Taking the door apart was easy, and we really didn't have to do that much work. All in all, it took about 20 minutes. I had to put my arm all the way down inside the door and disconnect the old mirror power connection and hook up the new one without being able to see the port. I thought that was pretty awesome--not only do I have photographic memory, but a pretty good "mind's eye" as well, whatever that means.

The new mirror looks great, although it's not exactly the same as the old one. Most people don't notice.

Look, my dad does not pride himself on his photo skills. I think I left it in manual focus when I handed him the camera. It was mostly my fault, but it blurs out my imperfections, so I suppose it's all good.

So, I guess I should have done this a lot sooner. That drive up to the men's retreat back in January wouldn't have been such a pain to see behind me if my mirror had not been hanging sideways the whole time. I just wish a friend had offered to do it sooner, so the lazy part of me wouldn't have remained in control the whole time. I guess I'm kind of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Lazy-boy.

That joke was lame. I realize this.

Later,

Joe

Gomer Pyle used to say a word I'm sure that describes how you felt.

2009-04-28T19:12:00.001-04:00

So, this past Sunday, I took the day off from working/directing tech at the church. Even longer than my once legendary record of running the video switcher the most consecutive times in a row, was my record for not missing/working Sundays in a row.

My last "break" was for a weekend back in March 2008. That's right... over a year ago. That was back when I had pretty much just started this blog. And, if you recall, when I came back, I had found out that the lighting system had pretty much blown up, and it was the week before Easter, and it was a stressful time of my life.

I more or less vowed that it was not worth the time and effort to go on vacation. Every time I left, it was a lot of work in advance and a lot of work upon returning just to even leave in the first place. So, I just stayed in town every weekend (or returned late Saturday night) to be back at Southside for Sunday morning to direct tech.

I suppose it should also be a convincing factoid when I tell people that I don't really get sick... that I was able to make it to church every Sunday so early in the morning for like 60 weeks in a row. I didn't miss a single week.

Matt told me that after the Easter season was over, he wanted me to take a Sunday off. So, I started working toward taking this past Sunday off from working. I worked all week on video spots and documentation and checking/double-checking to make sure everyone was scheduled to be there and that I had pretty much everything ready to go before Sunday morning. I like having everything ready-to-go before Sunday morning anyway, but there have been a good number of Sundays where I just showed up and figured it out as I went along, because I knew it wouldn't be a problem.

Even though it was a lot of work, I really enjoyed my Sunday off. For once, I actually slept on Saturday night. I woke up at 9AM Sunday morning without a single missed call or text message. (Several weeks ago, I started putting my cell phone in another room during the night so that I would not be tempted to wake up and check emails, or answer it while I was sleeping. It helps a lot.)

I got up after sleeping in, got dressed, ate some breakfast, and then went to a service at Brookwood Church. It was great. The nice thing is that it's like a mile from my house... a lot quicker drive than going to Southside. Not that anyone should pick one church over another just because it's close to your house.

I walked in, acted like a regular attender as much as possible, and sat in the middle of a row of chairs smack in the middle of the room. My friend Tory joined me so I wasn't completely by myself. I had never been to a service there, but I liked it. It was different than Southside, but there were several production aspects that I enjoyed (and similarly was disappointed at). It was a nice change of pace.

The main reason I didn't attend a service at Southside on my day off was that, having not been on a break for so long, I wasn't sure that I could sit in a service and not overly critique my team or jump up from my seat the moment something went wrong.

So, after the service was over at Brookwood, I walked around their facility for a while (I had not been there before) and then headed over to Southside to catch the end of the third service. I joined the team in the tech booth and hung out with a few of those guys for a while.

Overall, it was a good morning. I've been working like crazy since Sunday trying to stay caught up on projects though. I've fallen into the "was this worth it" frame of mind a few times already today, but I know the time off was worth it. I was able to relax and refresh and refocus. I've heard many comments already from people saying, "I didn't even know you were gone on Sunday", which I am assuming means, "You trained the team so well to operate without you" instead of, "We never notice if you're there or not." I suppose the latter isn't that bad either, since I'm all about being invisible. Like a ninja.

So, other than that, I've been crazy busy. Working long hours and getting things done. I'd write more about it... but, would you really read it?

Later,

Joe

I still get a huge laugh out of having a long and random post titles that don't really mean anything.

2009-04-14T23:59:00.004-04:00

You know, when I started this blog, I had grand expectations. I wanted to have a large number of people following me daily, reading all of my words, and then sharing their comments on my grand and fascinating life.

For some reason (even though I am pretty awesome), that never happened. Perhaps my sheer verbosity was so encumbering that people simply could not participate in a way that ameliorated the conversation or in a way that would not seem completely extraneous.

Yeah, I was just throwing out some old vocab words I remembered from school. They all fit, but it doesn't really mean anything.

Anyway. Nobody ever really commented. And I think I know why. I often shared some of my opinions, but mostly, I stuck to being chronological. I didn't share tons of insight into what I was thinking or learning. Just what I was doing. Ok, well, I'd also argue that I shared a lot of my thoughts through the sarcasm and jokes and humor, but still. We all know you skipped over the middle parts of my writing anyway. And I know a few people searched for their names and only read those parts. I know. I know.

I read a lot of blogs. I comment on a lot of them. For a while, I did this so that they'd also comment on my blog. This was a tactic I learned from the days of having "guestbooks" on websites. Yeah... If you had a website in 1996, you know what I'm talking about. That tactic doesn't really apply anymore. Most people simply want to read anonymously and if they do want to share a comment, it's either in a discussion-type forum or they only want to share when there is something to contribute to.

And, after all, let's think about that. Who wants to contribute when all I ever wrote about is what I did during the day? "Uh, yeah, Joe, I agree... you work a lot... thanks for reminding us...".

I had a conversation last weekend about this with my friend Catie. She recently started a blog. Reading how she expressed thoughts and ideas and concepts immediately put me back in my mindset of fear that stopped me from blogging when I first started this whole thing back in 2005. (For those that have been following the story... you know about that, for those that haven't, well, it was called, "A blog of how your life COULD be", and it was a pretty awesome blog). I used to write my opinions on that blog and thought nothing of it. However, whenever my writing caused conflict, my first tendency was to either delete the offending text, or to completely ignore that person that was offended by my writing. Because, let's be honest, either what I wrote they misinterpreted, or, what I wrote they misinterpreted, right?

I have always hated conflict. I'm a pretty peaceful person, and somewhere along the way, I just assumed that I'd never be capable of writing something that would offend somebody else. As I kept that old blog, I finally decided that I just didn't have a good handle on my emotions (or, at least, expressing them online). I wasn't comfortable with putting my thoughts and expressions out there for people to read and possibly criticize/discuss.

I think that caused me, to a degree, to want to avoid any real deep expression of opinion on this blog. I did it from time to time, but I always forced myself to keep the mindset of, "Would I take this and go read it to every single person I know or might know and not offend them?" That can make for some pretty boring reading. So, I stuck to the chronological thing. It worked.

And the thing is, I like the chronological style of writing. Over time, I started to feel pressure from the people following me ("reading often or daily"), to fully inform them of my days and actions, for the sake of making the story that much more complete. I have often felt like if I could devote all day to writing, that I would and easily could. My mind is so active that it's easy for me to sit and write out everything I've done in the last day, week, or month. I suppose that's a good thing and a bad thing. I still don't know why I'm so good with dates.

I think people are looking for more than chronological writing. And a side of me wants to contribute in that way, revealing more of my thoughts. It's a style of writing I've always enjoyed, and it will be new and refreshing challenge for me to consider how that might look.

So what does that mean? I don't know. As much as I would enjoy returning to a daily posting habit of writing about my days, I don't think it's for the best. I have found a certain freedom that I have come to enjoy about not having to write about every little thing. It has nothing to do with not wanting accountability, but rather, sometimes I just didn't have the energy to fully articulate how I felt about a particular part of my day. And I hated doing anything half-heartedly.

I have no immediate plans to disable this blog. However, at this time in my life, I want to focus on a different style of writing, and this doesn't suit it.

Now, feel free to comment on THAT... or not.

Later,

Joe

I miss blogging.

2009-04-07T21:27:00.002-04:00

I really miss writing out my thoughts every day. I keep telling people I am enjoying my break, but it's like a part of my life and daily routine are just plain gone.

I'll be back at some point.

Just saying.

Later,

Joe

I can't promise this will be interesting to read, but at least there are some photos to look at.

2009-03-29T23:31:00.002-04:00

So much has happened in my life since my last blog post. Nothing too exciting, because I like to think that the mediocrity of my life provides stability for others. And I just don't do a lot besides working anyway. But, things have happened.

Last Friday, March 20, I went to a concert put on by some high school students at the Liquid Highway on Butler Road. It was a good time.

I knew most everyone there and spent most of the time talking to my friend Robby about life. I also pretended to run the sound board, because I'm awesome like that.

I worked most of last Saturday (the 21st) at the church, getting things ready for Sunday. I had to finish up some video rendering and I also set up the sound system again for the youth room. They took most of the system to the Liquid Highway concert and didn't hook it back up in the room. Me being the guy that I am, I hooked it up for them. It wasn't hard except hanging the speakers by myself was a little difficult since they way at least a hundred pounds each and I had to hang them on some cables attached to the support beams of the room. Good thing I have a strong back.

Last Sunday was great. We had a busy morning with a full ensemble of singers and lots of different solos. I took some cool photos from the catwalk.

I helped with camera direction and did some switcher work but for the most part, I just observed and helped keep the team on task.

Sunday evening, I went downtown and met Jami, Rachel, Dan, Dustin, and Brandon at Mellow Mushroom. We had a good time. We all ate dinner together and then Jami and I walked around and took some photos in downtown. I took this not-so-exciting picture of a tree. That was really all I took pictures of. Sometimes, I just don't feel like taking photos, I guess.

Monday was good. I slept in late, met Zack for lunch, hung out with him at Gamestop for a while, without buying anything. We went to Best Buy and played the Rock Band setup there. It was fun. We drew kind of a crowd. I guess that happens when you're awesome at it like me.

I went to work on Monday. I know I wasn't supposed to. But I did anyway. I wanted to clean my office and get ready for the week. I ended up not doing any work. Some people came in to my office to talk. I ended up talking to Tommy until 5pm. Monday was his last day on staff at the church. We talked a lot about that. I left around 5:30pm and went to Rodrigo Rodriguez's house to meet up for a bit. I've been helping him pretty much every week to get some more of his videos digitizes and put onto YouTube.

I stayed at his house for a bit and then left. I drove straight back to the church. I had nothing else to do. I found Tommy and Tyler upstairs playing pool in the youth room. We talked for a bit and then I invited them to my house to play some rock band. I also grabbed my "learn to play the piano for adults" book. That's right, I'm teaching myself to play the piano. So far, it's going well. I'm also learning to read sheet music at the same time. Some of it is confusing. I guess I've given myself some bad habits over the years from just hitting random keys with whatever fingers I wanted to. The good thing is that I'm already learning chords and harmonic intervals and it's easy for me to hear the notes and know what they are just by hearing them.

Tyler and Tommy came over and we played Rock Band until almost 1AM. It was fun.

Tuesday was such a long day. I came in for the worship planning meeting, which went well but was very short. I went to Quizno's for lunch with Matt and James. I ate one of the new "Toasty Torpedoes" and it was fantastic. One of the best things I have ever had from Quizno's. I actually used to eat there ALL THE TIME when they had this sub called the "Honey Mustard Chicken" on Ciabatta bread. I swear, my friend Rex and I ate there all of the time and enjoyed that sub very much. Then, one day, somebody at Quizno's Corporate decided that they'd stop serving the sandwich on Ciabatta bread. And I stopped eating there frequently. I mean, they had the perfect thing going, and then they stopped.

Anyway. After lunch, my main project for the day was to tape some voiceover talent for the Vapor Golf Tournament coming up. We had a ministry highlight scheduled for this Sunday. We had originally planned to script and shoot a video but somewhere along the way, somebody decided it'd be "quicker" to just do a voiceover and take a still photo and animate the mouths of the people in that photo, making them talk about the golf tournament.

Recording the voiceover took some time. Josh, Chris, Nate, and I provided the four voices while Ruthie and Laurie watched.

I voiced a character that sounded like Louis Armstrong, so I had to talk like that for like 30 minutes while we did multiple takes. It pretty much wrecked my voice for the rest of the week, but I guess that's the sacrifice I have to take to do things with excellence.

I worked on that project the rest of Tuesday and left around 6:30pm to go home. I ate at Chik-fil-a (by myself, sigh) and then went home. I spent the rest of Tuesday evening practicing the piano (or, trying to, anyway) and just relaxing.

On Wednesday, I met Andrew early at the church (at 9AM) so we could set up a green screen in Room 202. I had to tape a lot of different projects this week. We wanted to set up the green screen to interview some people in the choir (and some church staff) for a video we're going to make for Palm Sunday. We also took advantage of the setup to film some other segments for Easter Sunday. When I got there at 9AM, we couldn't start setting up because there was a Bible study meeting in Room 202. So, we couldn't do anything except pile all of the equipment outside of the room. I ended up setting it up by myself Wednesday afternoon.

I worked late at the church until about 10:30PM, videotaping interviews and whatnot and then came home. Jami came over and we hung out until past midnight just talking about life and playing some Halo. It was fun. I went to bed super late and then came in Thursday around 11AM. I picked up Matt at his house on my way in because his car was out of commission.

I spent most of Thursday doing rotoscoping/photoshop/animation work in Photoshop/After Effects for the golf tournament video. I had to redraw parts of the photo/faces in order to be able to animate them.

I worked until about 6pm and then went home. Tommy and Tyler came over again around 8:30pm and we had a movie night of sorts. We showed some old videos that I made in the past and some that Tommy had made and talked about them and just had a good time. And of course, we played lots of Rock Band and whatnot. Around midnight, we had to go on a run to Jack in the Box to get some food. I used my diplomatic voice and managed to get a free drink upgrade from a medium to a large. While we were waiting in the drive-through, we took several photos of Tyler, Tommy, and me doing crazy and frightening faces. It was hilarious but I think the people waiting behind us were less than amused.

Friday was another long day. I got to the church around 9AM again and got straight to work. It was a service-project day for some students at Southside Christian School, so Zack came to help me tear down the green screen setup. Some of the other students also helped carry down the equipment so that was nice and it saved me a lot of time. I spent the rest of the day working on the animation for the Golf Tournament Promo. I can't honestly say it took less time to make that video than it would have to just have scripted and shot a real video, but it turned out decently, so everyone was still happy.

I worked until about 6pm Friday and then I came home. I took a shower and changed clothes and then headed back out around 7:30pm to go to the movies. My friend Cheryl invited me to go see "Monsters Vs. Aliens" with some friends. So, Cheryl, Ruthie, Mike, and I met to see the movie. Cheryl is a non-movie-talker, and I stated that I don't talk during movies... but I really do like talking. It's one of my favorite things to do. I enjoy watching and focusing, but part of the movie-going experience for me is laughing to side-comments with my friends. I forced myself to remain quiet during the movie.

I thought "Monsters Vs. Aliens" was hilarious. I laughed a lot. Right after it was over, the four of us had no other plans, so we decided to take in a double-feature. We got back in line and bought tickets for the movie, "Taken". I really enjoyed that movie also. In fact, I enjoyed the whole night. It was nice to hang out with some friends and watch movies. "Taken" had some intense parts and I had a hard time believing that someone as old as Liam Neeson could fill the role he was cast in, but it wasn't too much of a stretch.

After "Taken" was over, we all hung out for a few minutes and then left to go home. I walked Cheryl to her car (because I'm a gentleman like that) and then went home. I ended up staying up late again and then slept in on Saturday. I slept in until like 12:30pm. It was awesome.

I had to go to work in the afternoon yesterday to finish up some animation for the Golf Tournament Promo as well as set up some camera stuff and get everything ready for Sunday. I can't say I love working on Saturdays, but it's not that big of a deal, I guess.

Here's the Golf Tournament Promo video, in case you were wondering how it turned out.

Tim and I went to Wal-Mart yesterday evening and bought some things. I wanted to have a hand-towel holder near my sink so that when guests come over, they could use a hand-towel for hand-washing and whatnot. I also wanted to get a new bath mat because I didn't like my old one. I mainly didn't like the color. When we got home, I installed the new towel ring and cleaned my bathroom. It looks spiffy.

Last night, around 10pm, I had a creative idea to animate Psalm 147, which Matt wanted to have put up on the screens during an instrumental solo during one of the songs for the worship set.

I worked until almost 2AM this morning on this.

Animating it was easy, but the layout took a while as I decided how I wanted it to look. Not my best work ever but it worked extremely well with the set today. The timing was almost perfect.

So, after not getting to bed until like 3AM, I turned around and got back up at 6AM. I got up but I definitely wanted to keep sleeping. I came in to church this morning and got everything going. I had to transfer the Psalm 147 animation from my Macbook to my workstation and convert it to a format that our video playback would work with, which took a little bit of time.

I helped do some camera direction this morning and then ended up running the forward camera during services today. I thought I did a pretty good job considering I didn't have an intercom headset hooked up. I just focused on getting some creative shots.

The stage set today looked pretty cool.

I took some time during the second service to listen to Brian's message and take notes so that I could lead discussion tonight with my community group, which met at my house. I came home after church and managed to squeeze in about an hour-long nap and then cleaned the house and got everything ready for people to come over. We had a good sized group of 9 people. I led discussion through the passage from this morning's message and we all talked about it. It was a good time. Some of us went to Perkins afterward for dinner, and I'm pretty sure "annoying Joe" made an appearance.

So, that's some details of the last few days of my life. You're welcome. I could probably provide more detail, but that'd only make an already long and boring entry that much longer... and I know that no one reads in full detail. Well, my mom does. But moms are supposed to do that.

I've been immensely enjoying my break from blogging. I have found that I take less pictures each day though. I guess it's because I have no need to... who would look at them? I'm liking not having to write each day. When I come home, I can just go to bed! No more staying up late writing entries that no one reads or comments on or probably even cares about. I'm still thinking through how I want to blog regularly again though. I love journaling like this but I have a few other ideas that might be better suited to public consumption that wouldn't just be completely long and boring. We'll see. Thoughts?

Later,

Joe

It's not a weekly review blog. It's a "whenever I feel like it right now" blog.

2009-03-17T23:01:00.003-04:00

Let's see. Many exciting things have happened since I last wrote. Not really. I bet you'd be impressed to know though that I could sit here right now and write out what I did every single day since my last entry... but we all know you'd skim it anyway, so here are some of the highlights.

On Friday the 6th, I spent most of the evening with my friends the Morgans. Rex and Catie came down from Greensboro and whenever they come to visit his parents here in town, it pretty much means that I'll be hanging at the Morgan household too all weekend. When I went over to their house Friday night, Rex and Catie's dog, Sasha, was super excited to see me as always. And I was super excited to see Sasha, and also a new family pet, Rudy. Rex's parents recently got a little dachshund puppy and it is so cute.

And, of course, for whatever reason, all pets love Joe. Maybe I smell like bacon or something.

I also went to see the movie, "Watchmen" that Friday evening with Rex, his sister Sara, Sara's boyfriend Matt, and a couple of other people. I enjoyed some parts of the film but it was kind of long. I never read the graphic novel or anything so I was confused by a lot of it.

Saturday was fun. I didn't really have a lot to do. Rex and Catie came over to the house around lunchtime. I gave them a tour of the place and then we went to Oriental House for lunch. I think they're hooked on the goodness that is Oriental House. That place is so good. After lunch, the three of us went to the church and set up some computers in my office and played StarCraft. It was pretty much a "comp stomp" game (where we all gang up on the computers). We definitely won.

Let's see. Some other stuff. Sunday the 8th went well. I did not run the video switcher. Actually, I really didn't do much of anything except help direct some cameras. That was about it. It went well.

With the exception of Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, I managed to walk at least two miles every day this past week. Ok. If you didn't see right through that, it was really only Tuesday and Thursday that I walked. Happy? I just felt like walking both of those nights, so I did. It felt a little weird walking at night since I basically just walked from my house all the way into downtown Simpsonville and back, but hey. I had a flashlight. And an iPod. So it was cool. I kept looking behind me expecting to either get jumped or have a cop flagging me over so I could get arrested for walking at night or something. But, neither of those happened. I did step in a puddle one time and got my shoe all wet, but hey, these things happen.

I also played some Halo on Tuesday night and then, at 11pm, left my house, drove to Brixx, and hung out with my friend Tory there until 2AM in the morning. And then we stood out in the parking lot until like 3:30AM after Brixx closed, just talking about tech and geekery and cell phones and youtube. You know. Guy stuff. I can't say it was a blast getting home and going to bed before 5AM though and having to go to work later in the morning. Blah.

The nice thing though was that Mike Hawkins, one of the community pastors at Southside Fellowship, took me out to lunch for my birthday on Wednesday. It was a late birthday lunch, you could say. We went to Two Guys pizza in Simpsonville (which, ironically, is not run by two guys, but rather a husband/wife). I took Mike over to my new house after lunch and gave him a tour of the place. I think most people are disappointed when they come to my house and see that I don't have it like beautifully decorated and everything. I enjoy stuff like that, but I just don't have money to spend on stuff like that right now. Is that bad?

Thursday was a long day. I had some meetings. I don't know if I will ever be able to enjoy meetings. Something was ingrained in me at my past job about meetings and that mentality will probably stick forever. Meetings are not for accomplishing anything. You just talk about things you say you are going to do later. And then maybe you do them later, or you don't. That's it. That's all you accomplish in meetings. That's why I don't like them.

Andrew and I spent the entire afternoon on Thursday from 1 to 5pm setting up a green screen video shoot for a Habitat for Humanity promo. It took forever to setup but worked out very nicely.

The video turned out great though. I spent all day on Friday editing it, using some b-roll footage from the Habitat Promo DVD that we had looked at earlier (which was not all that great). I really liked the look of the foreground subject with the blurry background activities. It's subtle and really helped to enhance the video in a cool way. It makes me wish I could do more green-screen things.

I was going to go to an early St. Patrick's Day celebration on Friday night but I was feeling pretty tired from coming down with a cold. You know, the whole stuffy head feeling and whatnot, so I politely asked if I could back out of my commitment to the party. Sometimes I feel like when I ask people if I can back out, that they get the feeling that I'm just being unnecessarily polite. I guess I'm just different like that. I feel like if I've committed to something, that I am required to fulfill that commitment and go unless they say otherwise.

I spent most of Saturday just sitting around at home too, recovering and resting my voice so that I wouldn't have to talk much. I was worried that I'd cough a lot and end up getting laryngitis and lose my voice and not be able to direct the tech team on Sunday morning. It's happened before. We had to use flares and Morse code. It was not a smooth morning, let me tell you. I had lunch with Tim and my parents at this diner near my house, and that was really all that I did on Saturday, unless you count "catching up on laundry" and "watching Nacho Libre" as activities.

Sunday was such a long day. I really didn't sleep at all Saturday night even though I tried. I went to bed before 11pm and just kind of stared around at different places in my room trying to fall asleep. I tried watching boring tv programming to put me to sleep. No dice. I tossed and turned all night, drifting to sleep for a few minutes, waking back up, drifting back to sleep all night until 5:45AM when I decided to just get up and get going.

I've mentioned this several times before, but I cut my own hair. I've been doing it for a few years now but my mom still doesn't believe me. Other people don't really say anything, so either it's really obvious (in a bad way) that I cut my own hair, or people just don't care about that sort of thing. Anyway. I woke up Sunday morning and badly wanted to cut my hair. It was getting long in some places that I felt kind of self-conscious about it all of the time. So, in a rush on Sunday morning, I cut it. I cut a lot of it. Too much in some areas, not enough in others. It was a dumb decision. I left the house in a hurry to make it to church only to be self-conscious the entire morning of my uneven hair. I found out later that what I had accomplished was called "layering" when cutting hair. I guess I'm just more awesome than I think.

Sunday morning went great. I would even venture to say that it was awesome. I ran the switcher and directed 4 cameras for a fun prelude and a couple of other songs in each service. Everybody could hear me on the intercoms and things just went very smoothly, which again, I can only attribute to having an awesome team of volunteers, that, for some reason that I still can't figure out, love to serve on the tech team. Maybe it's because they envy my hair cutting skills and wish I could teach them.

Here's a video of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" that we did on Sunday morning as a prelude to each service. It was kickin'.

In the evening, I went to hang out with my community group at the Salamone's house. I was looking forward to it since we had not been together as a group in a long time. We had a lot of new people with our group tonight and in total, there were 16 of us there. We all had to wear nametags and introduce ourselves. When I realized we were going to be introducing ourselves, I decided to come up with a completely false backstory about where I was from and what I did before coming to Greenville and Southside Fellowship, only to find out we were just telling our names and that was it. It was kind of a shame really, because I had a good back story.

My back story was like this. I used to live in Massachusetts, where I worked as a wine-taster, specializing in red wines, merlot, mostly. I served local restaurants as a connoisseur and expert to give patrons accurate descriptions of taste, flavor, age, etc. On occasion, I'd freelance and write in local publications and give advice to wineries around the northeast on what to stock, etc. I quit that a few years ago and moved to the Upstate, South Carolina to pursue a career in photography and hand modeling and ended up at Southside. It's not a true story, but it sounds interesting, doesn't it?

Anyway. I didn't get to share my awesome made-up back story since we were just sharing names. Oh well. Maybe next time. I thought it was a pretty awesome story seeing as how I know absolutely nothing about wine (I've never even had wine before). I just thought it'd be funny to see how many people I could convince. Of course, half of the room already knew me very well so they would of course never fall for it.

We spent a long time discussing Sunday morning's message as a group. I think there were a few people at the group who had not heard Charlie's message from the morning. You'd think I would be able to speak knowledgeably, having been there for all three services, but nope. It's so hard for me to sit and listen as Charlie preaches on Sunday mornings. I'm so busy thinking camera angles, when to cut, listening for slide cues, talking about upcoming projects in the tech booth, and coordinating other things in the building on Sunday morning. It gets kind of crazy sometimes. I have to make an active effort to either listen to the podcast online or read the manuscript... which I actually prefer to do anyway.

After we were done meeting, a few people left and the rest of us hung out at the Salamone's house for a bit and then some of us went to Perkin's for a late night dinner. "Talkative and probably annoying" Joe continued his presence (he was there all night at community group) at the restaurant and was probably annoying the other restaurant patrons. I'll have to get on his case about that. Is it weird that I talk about parts of my personality in the third person? They really only surface every now and then... mostly depending on the amounts of sugar I've had and new people I am around where I feel like I have to impress them with how funny I can be. It's really a weakness of mine and is probably more of a method of hiding my true self to avoid being real with people. Kind of like that awesome back story. Look, I'm just being honest.

Monday was a nice relaxing day. I was so tired Sunday night that even though I wanted to stay up late and eat pop-tarts and watch tv, I fell asleep after midnight. And I slept until like 10:30AM. It was fantastic. I met my brother Tim and Russ Bryan, the operations/IT director at Southside Christian School, for lunch at Oriental House. Look, they picked it. I just recommended it. That's all. I specifically wanted to talk with Russ about letting me come and speak/lecture to the media arts class. I've wanted to do it all year and after passively saying to others, "I wish they'd let me come teach something", I decided to be more proactive about it. Just one of the few things I've been doing now that my daily energy isn't targeted towards blogging.

Russ and I talked in detail about the class structure and what they have been learning and some other things that I could possibly teach to them. I had a few ideas of my own and we talked about possible schedules where I could come and teach. The downside of course is that it would be hard to do anything in the short amount of time I am given, not to mention the wide range of age/class level in the group of 14 students. We're going to work something out soon though for me to come and present some things that I've done for Southside Fellowship and maybe show a few advanced techniques like green-screen keying, syncing external audio to a camera, etc.

After lunch, I went to my friend Ben Cornwell's house to help him fix a tv. He bought an older projection-model tv from somebody for $50, but it was broken. There was something wrong with the convergence signal. Like any geek, I decided it'd be fun to take it apart and see what we could do.

We took it apart and then did some research on the internet about parts. I took a few pictures of the problem and we went to a local electronics store (apparently, the only place in Greenville that services Toshiba televisions). I told a guy there about our problem and tried to get him to tell me how to fix it, without letting on that I intended to fix it. I could tell he wanted me to just bring it in and let him fix it... for $270. I did my best to sound somewhat knowledgeable yet ignorant until he told me the part number I'd need to use to fix it. When I told the guy that I had taken the lens off of the green lamp, he gave me this look like I was retarded and then said, "WHAT'D YOU DO THAT FOR??" and my response was hilarious yet poignant.... "So I could look inside? And show you this photo?" I think he was underestimating my electronics skills to take things apart and not break them.

Then we went back to Ben's house, looked up the part online for $12, and bought it. It'll be in on Saturday. We're going to try to fix it ourselves, and save basically $240. I'm awesome like that. It's just a basic integrated circuit soldered to a board anyway... how hard can that be. Famous last words, I suppose.

So, that was pretty much my Monday. I went to Rodrigo's house again in the evening and helped him with some more video stuff and hung out there for a while. I'm pretty good friends with them now and Mary said Rodrigo would even play in my wedding. Now I just have to get a girlfriend, I suppose. I figure though that'd be a good dealbreaker, you know? "Hey, if we ever want to get married, I've already got an internationally-known classical guitarist who will come play at our wedding..." Maybe, maybe not.

Today was a good day. I came in just in time for the worship planning meeting in the morning. I went to Applebees for lunch with James, Matt, and Jackson, and then spent the afternoon setting up and shooting a video to create a ministry highlight for the new "Fellowship Connector" website thing that we launched recently at the church. I tried to use my camera dolly that Rex and I made a few years ago, but after setting it all up, I decided I didn't even like the shot idea, and basically ended up not using it. I do that sometimes... I change my mind once we get on the set. Art didn't seem to mind.

I worked on a few other projects today, cleaned up my email inbox from the last few days, helped with stage setup, etc. Tim and I ate at Chipotle for dinner and it was great. That's right, South Carolina has a Chipotle now and the only one is on Woodruff Road. It was great. Oh, and with today being St. Patrick's day, I managed to avoid getting pinched all day long even though I wasn't wearing anything green. Look, I just don't own anything green. It doesn't look good on me. It's a choice. Don't judge me.

So, that's been the last week and a half or so of my life. What's new in your life?

Later,

Joe

This week in review

2009-03-06T16:31:00.000-05:00

I'm still on a blogging break, but I don't want to disappoint you, my loyal readers... nay, fans! So, here's a bit of my week, in review.

We had some crazy snow come through on Sunday night. I really don't follow what the weather people say is going to happen, because, most of the time, it's not accurate enough for me to really be interested. So, Sunday night, I'm taking a nap and Tim goes out to get some pizza. He comes back in and says, "It's snowing outside, can you drive and get the pizza with me?" I am like, "What? It's South Carolina. This isn't Montana. We don't get snow here." But, sure enough, I looked out the window and 6-7 inches of snow were coming down fast. It was crazy.

Somewhere in all of that snowstorm, our cable got knocked out. Getting it repaired was a bit more of a fiasco than I wanted it to be, but, it was really no big deal. It took a few days of calling until we finally got things in order and an appointment scheduled for repair.

I had an eye exam on Wednesday. I always hate going in for eye exams. I worry too much about them. I had one last year (a couple of days before this blog started) because I went in to renew my driver's license and failed the DMV eye test. Yep, that's right. So, I went and got my eyes checked. I'm on yearly checkups now, which is probably a good thing. The eye doctor that I go to is the same one that noticed my twin brother Tim's brain tumor when he had an eye exam back in 2005, which started that whole chain of events with brain tumor cancer, etc. So, of course, every time I go to the eye doctor, I'm thinking, "This is it. This is when the doctor sees the same tumor in the back of my head that I should have, since Tim and I are identical twins."

After having my eyes sprayed, poked, blasted with light, dilated, etc., I was deemed to have "good eye health". My prescription changed but not enough to get new glasses. I did have some enjoyable moments while having the eye exam... one of which was memorizing the eye chart and reading it to them while not looking, to prove that they should probably be changing the letters up every time, at least for people like me with photographic memory. I also got my glasses straightened again since I dropped them a few weeks ago.

So, I spent pretty much all last week and up until Wednesday morning worrying about dumb things like eyes and tumors and all of that. I really should learn to not worry about things out of my control... because... really... is anything in my control? The answer is no. It is all in God's hands.

The rest of my week was pretty uneventful. A cable tech came out on Thursday morning to fix the cable but couldn't because the power line was too low, or something.

I had to call the power company and have them come out and pull the line back up. That phone call made me laugh. A lot. Somewhere along the way, I got disconnected and then reconnected and I was able to hear a phone conversation that I probably shouldn't have. And it was hilarious. I had to call Charter again Thursday evening and schedule another appointment for them to come fix it. Two customer service reps escalated my call to dispatch and they came out today to fix it.

I was expecting just one Charter cable tech to come out. I had to leave work and come home around 1pm but it was not a big deal. The guy showed up around 1:30pm. He took a look at the problem outside the house (after I explained the problem inside). About 30 minutes later, another cable tech van pulled up. I was kind of surprised but figured, hey, when you're Big Papa, people just show up to get things done for you. 20 minutes later, ANOTHER cable tech van pulled up. By this time, I was getting intrigued as to what the problem might have been.

They worked for about an hour and a half and then the cable came back on and they left. One of the technicians said the line was dead, or something, and they had to replace it. I wasn't sure what that meant. After the three of them left, a fourth van pulled up about 20 minutes later (another guy) to work on the problem and make sure I was happy. I was really hoping more vans would have pulled up at the same time... kind of had a record going.

So, anyway. That was kind of my week in review. This weekend should be fun. My friends Rex and Catie are in town so I'm sure I'll be hanging out with them some. I've been cleaning the house in anticipation of their visit to see the new place. I've also got to catch up on some work on Saturday to get things ready for Sunday... can't say I'm really looking forward to that, but I take my responsibilities pretty seriously and it's important enough to come in on a Saturday to get it all done instead of trying to squeeze it in on a Sunday.

That was my week in review! Not a super busy week but not entirely slow, either. We'll see how this break from blogging/writing goes. I really like to write, but it's kind of stressful sometimes too. I'd really like to start some kind of writing project that creates dialogue with others... if you have any ideas.

Later,

Joe

Best of Resurfaced. Not because you asked for it, but because I thought it'd be fun.

2009-03-03T13:58:00.001-05:00

So, apparently, South Carolina can get snow. Who would have thought? I haven't seen snow here in Greenville in like two years. At least, not any amount of enjoyable snow. And it always frustrates me when we do get cold, inclement weather. Practically every business shuts down, people drive on the roads like the lanes are just suggestions, you know the drill.

I've never been one of those guys that gets super excited and wants to go out and play in the snow. I mean, I did it all of the time as a kid, but somewhere along the way, I decided it was more enjoyable to stay inside and not get my clothes damp and wet and dirty. Plus I don't really own any gloves or boots or anything. I did go out in the snow and take some photos. I love taking pictures when the weather changes like that. I'm just not that into making snow angels by myself.

Anyway. I tried to write up my "best of Resurfaced" post only to be encumbered with two problems. (1) I couldn't post the entry because I had no Internet access; and (b) the entire blog is hosted online and not on my computer, so I couldn't even look at my blog to pick my favorites. So, here I present to you now, my top 14.754% favorite entries from the past year, in no particular order.

So those are a few of my picks. Some I picked because liked the titles, others had good content where I revealed a part of my personality or the entry told a bit more of my story. And some of them just made me laugh again or had good pictures. What do you think? What were your favorites?

I'm going to be taking a break from blogging as I decide how I want to pursue writing. If you have thoughts or opinions on the subject, feel free to let me know.

Later,

Joe

Instead of asking people what they do for a living, I think I'm going to start asking people, "So what was your first cat's name?"

2009-02-28T23:59:00.006-05:00

I love Saturdays where I don't really have to do anything. Of course, sometimes, I have Saturdays where I should do things but I don't and stay lazy all day. Today kinda felt like one of those days.

I stayed up late last night and then slept late this morning. I laid in bed a long time after waking up, enjoying that I really didn't have much to do. I should have spent the time cleaning the house, but I just didn't feel like it. I watched some movies on tv and spent some time trying to be creative in After Effects on my Macbook, coming up with some announcement slides for Sunday morning, but ended up not really coming up with anything. Some days, I just don't feel that creative. It happens.

I put away most of the laundry that I did yesterday. I also repeatedly went into Tim's room to try and make him clean it up. Tim definitely has more "stuff" than I do in his room. My bedroom still looks like I might be moving in. All I have is my bed and a nightstand for my alarm clock. That's it. In the closest, I have some clothes and a few things, but other than that, the room is pretty empty. In Tim's room, however, he has a 8-foot long table for his computer desk, and a 4-foot table for his tv, as well as a closet full of things, a big bed, a little student desk that he puts drinks and stuff on for when he watches his tv, etc. Plus piles of clothes on the floor and whatnot. And he likes it this way. I can't stand it, but for the most part, I realize that it is his "space" and it should be how he likes it, although I still want to see his room clean and organized.

I remember growing up that Tim and I were always different with our levels of organization. We shared a bedroom as twins until we were in middle school and my dad turned the bonus room upstairs into a bedroom even though he probably wanted it to be a study/office for himself. My dad's cool like that. Anyway. Tim and I shared a room and my mom could always walk in and tell who had cleaned and who hadn't because my things all had their place and Tim's things looked like they all shared one big place. The floor. We just share different opinions on what "put away" looks like. So, if people ever try to tell you that twins are all alike... there is one way that Tim and I are different.

So, back to today. I pretty much lazed around all afternoon. Is lazed a word? It better be, because that's what I did. A little bit after 5pm, I decided it was time to get some dinner. Tim and I headed to Pete's of Simpsonville, which is right down the road from our house.

I'm pretty sure that every town has a Pete's somewhere. I know of at least 5 just in my area. Either this Pete guy has a great franchise or somebody is making a lot of money on his name. That's all I'm saying. All of these restaurants are the same... they serve hamburger plates, cheeseburger plates, etc. And a lot of other things on the menu that I'm sure everyone is afraid to order or try.

Tim and I decided to get our food to go and eat at the house. I became fascinated with the big aquarium that is inside this Pete's restaurant. It almost made me want to eat my food there just to keep watching the fish.

Tim and I ate back at the house, which was probably a better decision since we already had drinks at the house, and watching Discovery Channel shows about fish is probably just as exciting as watching real fish anyway. We watch the Discovery Channel a lot, actually. Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs are a couple of my favorite shows on that network.

After dinner, I laid on the couch for a while watching tv. Tim and I also played my Nintendo Wii some in the den for a while. We're still not sure what we're going to do with that room. Right now, it just has the tv and Wii, two old rocking chairs, and a portable fireplace. Pretty empty otherwise. Maybe I could turn it into a dining room. That might be cool. I'd probably have to get a table and some chairs though, because people probably don't want to sit on the floor. Unless we're eating asian food or something.

Around 7:30pm, I left the house to go to my friend Robby Wisnewski's house. I've known Robby since high school, but we were never really friends in high school. In fact, I remember meeting him in high school and thinking, "this guy would never be someone I would call a friend". But God always knows what's up. And we're good friends now. Robby is such an encouragement to me in my walk and he has such a heart for missions and seeing the Gospel spread to every man, woman, and child not only here in Greenville but around the world.

Driving to Robby's house was rather uneventful. I took the "scenic route". And if you don't believe that, then, I got lost. I managed to get myself un-lost and over to Robby's house in about 20 minutes. We spent about an hour just talking about life and church and work. Have you ever noticed how the number one question people ask when they talk to other people is, "How's work going?" or, when meeting someone new, "So what do you do for a living?" We live in a world where what we do for work is the primary focus.

Robby works at SourceLink, a direct mail company here in Greenville, where I also worked for 3 and a half years. So, we know a lot of the same people. We talked for a while about that and then I updated him on some things I've been working on at the church lately. After about an hour, we decided to watch a movie and hang out in his basement. We watched the movie, "Bangkok Dangerous" with Nicholas Cage. I think Cage is a great actor but sometimes doesn't pick the greatest movies to be in. I thought this movie wasdecent though. The ending was a little lame and his character motivation changed somewhat, but I still enjoyed it, particularly the director's use of color to set the mood of each scene. See, I bet a lot of people never notice stuff like that.

I stayed at Robby's house just hanging out and talking until about midnight and then I came home. Stay tune tomorrow for my final daily post, "Best of Resurfaced." I can't promise it will be a great read, but it should be entertaining.

Later,

Joe

It's like the end of an era, really, if you think about it.

2009-02-27T23:58:00.005-05:00

Today was a nice slow day at work. I didn't come in until just before 11AM. I spent most of the day working on video editing. Andrew focused on finishing up the light cues, which was really nice because I didn't have to focus on that at all. I don't think he enjoys it as much as I do, but sometimes I get so busy in a week that I just have no creative energy left to write a bunch of light cues.

While I was capturing some video for a project, I passed the time by cleaning up my desk. I had been using this really small (and really quite useless) dvd player that was hookd up to my VTR. I liked having a small console player but it would only play maybe half of the discs that I put in it. For a lot of discs, it would never load the menu and would give me the "waiting" symbol forever and never do anything else. So, I finally decided to replace it today. I didn't have an extra player so I just took my favorite one from Room 113 that I like to use a lot. I guess I'll have to replace that one soon.

If you look closely, you can see a green goblet with "Jojo" written on it, sitting on my desk. I made that myself back in December 2007 when my friend Mike from Florida came to visit. We actually made 4 of them using Christmas glasses and sequin stickers from Wal-mart. I always thought it'd be fun to have a "chalice" to drink out of, even though it was really just a joke. We had fun making them though and it made for some fun pictures back in the day. Now it mostly just sits on my desk and I drink out of it every now and then.

Around 1:30pm, I went and got a quick lunch from Salsarita's, which is right next to the church. I ate a small quesadilla at my desk and then went back to work. Andrew left around 2:30pm and I stayed a for a few more minutes and then left around 2:45pm to go home. I probably could have stuck around but I felt like I'm starting to come down with this cold that is going around my circle of friends so I thought I'd just go home and lay down for a while.

When I came home, Tim was still in bed asleep. When he gets sick, it always hits him hard and he needs sleep. When I get sick, sometimes I hardly notice it until it's almost over. We're just different like that. I laid on the couch in my living room for a while watching tv classics such as "I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Cosby Show". Then, I did some laundry and took a shower.

I woke Tim up around 5pm so that he could shower and get dressed and ready to go to the Salamone's house for dinner tonight. Frank and Susan invited us over to celebrate their son Zack's birthday as well as to just hang out, which I thought was nice.

We got to the Salamone's house around 7pm. Susan was still setting the table when we came in, so Tim and I helped with that while waiting on Frank to get home from work. We had lasagna and salad for dinner and it was great. We also had some sweet potato cake which was really good. I had never had that before.

Frank, Susan, Tim, and I played this game called "Sequence" which I really enjoyed, even though Tim and Susan beat Frank and me twice. Tim was surprisingly good at the game. We ended up staying at the Salamone's just talking and hanging out until about 11pm and then I enacted my role as "the closer" and we said bye and left. Tim was starting to yawn a bit and was tired after having been sick for most of the week, and Susan was starting to come down with a cold too so I figured there was no need to stay super late. Nobody likes a guest who doesn't know when it's time to leave, anyway, and if there's one thing I'm good at, it's knowing when to get out of somebody's house. Haha.

I stopped by Jack in the Box on the way home because Tim really wanted a milkshake. When we got home, we both watched some tv for a while. That was pretty much my day. Sometimes I feel eloquent and full of words, other times, not so much.

Be sure to check back tomorrow. I'm going to be posting a "best of" post, with links to some of my favorite posts from the past year of blogging. And it will be my last daily post, so I guess I should make it a good one.

Later,

Joe

I still want to write a book... I just need a killer idea. Not an idea about a killer, but... well you know what I mean.

2009-02-26T23:45:00.000-05:00

Every day this week has felt like a chore just to blog. Sometimes I enjoy it, but lately it has just been "one more thing to get done so I can sleep!". You know, because I'm so dedicated and all that. I'm still deciding if I want to stop daily blogging or not. I am thinking about starting up a completely fictional blog--kind of where I write a new part of the story each day/week/whenever. I'm really good at making up details and stories (some people call this lying but I call it dramatic concealment of facts).

I woke up this morning (after staying up so late again) bright and early... at 10AM. I forgot to set my alarm again. I remember waking up at 5AM when Tim got up because I heard his bathroom shower making a weird noise and I sprung out of bed thinking something was wrong. Then I remember looking at my alarm clock and thinking to myself, "Hey, I never set that, I should do tha...zzz". So, yeah.

I got up this morning and milled around the house for a bit and then left. I headed to RadioShack on Woodruff Road so that I could buy the right kind of fuse for the mover light that I worked on last night. I also wanted to buy some connectors and tools. Every few months, I like to go to RadioShack and buy some things with my own money to give to the church. 90% of what I buy gets "borrowed" and never returned by various ministries/events in the church, but at least it is helping out somewhere.

Today, I bought the fuses (or, at least what I thought were the right size fuses... only to later find out they wouldn't fit). I also bought some 1/8" to 1/4" adapters and cables since the band members are always needing more of those. I can't determine if I am buying crappy cables or if they are breaking them, or both. But either way, the cables are needed to make ministry happen. So, I bought them. I also picked up a soldering iron since the one we had at the church was pretty much worn out, and I know that Andrew really likes soldering, so I thought I'd buy one so he didn't have to bring his own personal one in all of the time. I also bought a tiny Maglite flashlite since I am always borrowing one from Jim Peterson and thought that'd be useful to have in our tech arsenal of tools. I actually used to have a nice Maglite that I kept in the control room but I think somebody "borrowed" that one too. Oh well.

After I was done shopping at RadioShack, I went to the Oriental House and waited until noon to celebrate Andrew's birthday. I passed the time by reading blogs on my smartphone and listening to the radio. I'm also still listening to the new Coldplay album and trying to learn the songs so that people will think I am cool and hip.

I saw Matt pull in to the parking lot a few minutes before noon, and Andrew showed up right on time. It was just the three of us for lunch today. I suppose one could argue that I am more popular... since 9 people joined me for my birthday lunch... but then again, it's not like I was able to talk to all of them.

Our table order number today was 17. If you recall from Wednesday's entry, the number was 25 and I was turning 25, which we thought was impressive. And everybody thinks Andrew looks 17, so somehow it fit today, too.

I ordered something completely different today at Oriental House. I got the steak bowl combo. I wish I had known it came with so many mushrooms.

For those that know me well, you know that while I enjoy mushrooms, they do not share a mutual interest in me. For a long time, I avoided them simply because one way or another, they would fight their way back out of me. So, I avoided most of the mushrooms today.

When I got back to the church, I was excited to try and fix the mover light by putting in a new fuse. I got out the fuses that I had bought but realized they weren't the right size. I did revel in that I had convinced the store manager to give me a discount on the fuses though. So, at least I bought some fuses for cheaper even though they did me no good.

I met with Eddie for a bit today to discuss some web ideas and options for our website. Before I was hired on as church staff in June of 2005, I had already been contracted out (along with my friend Rex) to design and develop Southside Fellowship's web site. We worked on it from February 2005 until it launched in November 2005. I still have all of my design and production notes from working on that site.

That site is now old, in terms of design and interface. Several things about it annoy me--mainly that any time we want to provide a rich document, it is done via a PDF, which, as an end user, is not always the best format to read in. I suppose it's great if you want to print it out and read it on paper though. We also want to be able to leverage capabilities with our new church management system, Arena, and provide more customization features and link member data to the site, do online registration, etc.

I had a lot of opinions on the subject (including things we ought to be doing like staff blogging, RSS/syndication feeds for all content, video integration, etc.) and we discussed those ideas for a while. Eddie and I have a lot of impromptu meetings like this that just happen. He was just part of a meeting to discuss possibly redesigning the web site, and I think the sole purpose of the meeting was to determine if I should even be a part of that, which I thought was kind of funny. Southside already has a .NET developer on staff... he just happens to be the media director and does nothing with computers/programming for the church. We're talking about me here if you're not following.

I asked Eddie that if another meeting took place, to let me know because I'd like to come present some ideas and at least propose some possible solutions, even if I am not allowed to participate in bringing them to fruition. I think everyone would enjoy having me work on the project, but I think again most people realize that I am probably best serving the church in my current role as media director.

That was kind of a tangent. When I came back to my office, I found Andrew working on the light cues and plots, which I thought was great. He had a few questions about the mover lights and the cues in general for Sunday services. We went on a search to find Matt and thought we'd find him upstairs when he wasn't in his office, only to later remember he was in the weekly pastors' meeting.

On our way back downstairs, I went to the catwalk to take a look at one of the other mover lights that wasn't working. I forgot that all of the mover lights were connected to the DMX chain in series, so, when I disconnected mover #2, it made #3 and #4 not work anymore. Of course, #3 wasn't working because I had unplugged it on Sunday. It does this weird thing were it makes constant noise when in its "home position" and I got tired of people coming and telling me about it, so I just decided to start unplugging it every week.

I also repositioned a couple of lights while I was up on the catwalk for Andrew who was at the light board, and then I came back down to my office. When Matt got out of his meeting, he came to check the order of lyrics on the computer in the control room and then talk to Andrew and I about lights and video for Sunday (our followup "tech talk" that we have been trying to do regularly each Thursday).

Zack, one of the students that I mentor, stopped by the church today when he got out of school. He made a video for his media arts class at Southside Christian School and wanted to show me some of the things he did for it in After Effects, including using a rendered bullet he made in Blender (a 3D program I am just beginning to learn) to simulate someone getting shot. It looked pretty cool for what it was--a handycam shot. I was impressed.

While Zack was there, he also helped me install the fuse into the mover light. I figured that either putting the fuse in would work or it wouldn't work (I know... undeniable logic, right?) so we put the fuse in and then pu the entire fixture back together, except for the cover, so that I could watch the power supply when we plugged it in. When I plugged in the light, something else sparked on the power supply, the fuse blew again (it was a fast-fuse) and I was back where I started. In other words, I tried to save the church $5,000 by replacing a $0.89 fuse, but was unsuccessful. Now I have to figure out how much it will cost to service the light and then decide if that is worth paying for on an old light. Hey, at least I tried. That's probably more than other people would have done. I've actually saved the church a good bit of money over the years by always fixing things when they break instead of buying new/sending it off to get "professionally repaired". There are some things that I won't service myself, but if I can figure it out, then it's worth the time. At least, I think so.

Rob Marks, the children's ministry pastor, stopped by a little bit after 4pm to record a voiceover for me for a video that I'm putting together for Sunday. It took a few takes as I coached him on voice inflection, etc. When he came in, we were talking and he saw my Canon Powershot on my desk and asked if I could show him how do to do the color accent feature that I was using on it. It took me a minute to follow how we got to that subject until I realized he must be an avid reader of my blog. Just another one of my many anonymous readers... you guys can all feel welcome to leave comments.

Recording the voiceover with Rob did not take very long. When we were done, I helped Andrew with the positioning of the teach lights for Sunday. Even though the bullnose where Charlie preaches from is always in the same place, I have never really liked the lighting for it. It seems to have dark spaces on the ends of the bullnose, and the color is never what I like. The main problem is that we're using ETC Source 4 PAR's to light it... and not ERS's (ellipsoidals). We don't have enough ERS's though to do anything about it.

I left a little bit after 5pm today. As I was getting ready to leave, Paul Tedder came and talked to me for a few minutes, and then Matt asked me to help move the keyboard that was on the stage out to a guy's car. Matt has been working on a project for this guy, John, who is Charlie Boyd's neighbor. So, Matt introduced me to John and then John and I carried the keyboard out to his SUV and then I went back inside, grabbed my stuff, and headed home.

I sat around for a few minutes when I got home but didn't have much time before I had to head back out to go to Rodrigo Rodriguez's house. He invited me back over tonight so that I could help get some more of his songs onto his YouTube channel. I am (begrudgingly) getting better at iMovie, which is really the only video editing software that he has on his iMac. We were able to get 5 more songs online tonight, which took about 4 hours because I was rendering in MPEG Streamclip, editing in iMovie, and uploading to YouTube all at the same time. We took several breaks while the computer was rendering, because there really wasn't much else that we could do. It was neat to hear more of Rodrigo's life story while we were waiting on the computer to render the video.

I left his house around 10pm after getting the last song from one of his DVDs put online. Part of me wanted to just take the rest of the DVDs and put them online in my spare time, but I think Rodrigo is enjoying learning and I am having fun hanging out with new people too. I've always enjoyed getting to know new people better. I'm just not that good at it yet.

Anyway. This blog post turned out alright, I suppose. Still not one of my greatest entries or anything. Tomorrow will be a fun day. It's Friday, and I like seeing how everything comes together on Fridays. I've got some video editing to do for Sunday, which I'll probably spend most of the day on. In the evening, I'm going to the Salamone's house for dinner. Frank and Susan are the hosts of my "20-something singles community group", which I enjoy being a part of. Lately, it has felt like the "20-somethings engaged people and JOE" group, but, that's just life. My friends get engaged. I stay single, for whatever reason. But hey, all in God's timing, right?

Later,

Joe

The robot's name was "Walter", and I didn't know enough about programming at the time to move past basic functions. But then again, I was only 9...

2009-02-25T21:50:00.006-05:00

When I woke up this morning, I was not feeling so great. I think I may be getting sick. We will see. I decided to lay in bed for a little while and then just come in for the afternoon since I'd be working late anyway. Gotta love Wednesdays.

On my way out of the driveway, I checked the mailbox and saw that the Charter cable bill had come. I was somewhat anticipating there to be a problem again with this month's bill since last month's had mysteriously had the Showtime package added to it (without my consent). I expected the bill I opened today to be around $120. Instead, it was like $12. I checked all of the numbers and either they made a mistake or they comp'ed me an entire month's bill, because the balance forward (which is supposed to be $0 if I have paid up to that point) was a negative amount (the exact negative amount that I paid for the last bill). I'd like to think it was for having to wait like 6+ hours for the technician to come out and set up the cable, but it's probably more likely just a mistake. So, I guess I'm going to have to call and find out about that. I suppose I could just pay what the bill says, but I don't really want to get charged twice as much next month or something like that.

I picked up lunch on my way in to the church and spent most of the day in my office, working. I did some research last night on dual-head video cards for a new computer that Eddie wants to put in Room 202. I made some recommendations of cards on NewEgg, and then Eddie picked one of those, and I bought it today. I selected overnight shipping so hopefully it will arrive at the church sometime on Friday so that we can install it before Sunday.

My brother Tim came to the church around 1:45pm. He wanted to borrow a wireless handheld microphone and some other stuff for some kind of event at Southside Christian School. I let him borrow the wireless handheld from Room 202 and a long VGA cable.

I helped him carry the stuff out to his car and then I walked over to the church "copy center" to check my mailbox. I go over there all of the time to check my mailbox and it is always empty. I found Jes and Lindsey in there working on some kind of booklet project. Jes was cutting envelopes with the cutter and Lindsey was taking the envelopes that Jes cut and then using an exactoknife to cut off the edges. Or something.

I stayed in there and talked to them for a while and then went back to my office. On my way back, Alysia, one of the Fellowship Kids (children's ministry), found me because we were supposed to meet and talk about a promo for Look Up Lodge for this Sunday. Last April (April 6, to be precise), we showed a promo for the summer camp at Look Up Lodge for our children's ministry based on some edited footage from an existing promo video for Look Up Lodge. I thought the actual promo video from Look Up Lodge was poorly made so when I made that promo last year, I cut out a lot of the footage and shortened it down to just a minute or so. Alysia and I looked at it again and decided to just re-use what we already had and update the voiceover at the end with the accurate event dates and registration details.

After we were done looking at that video, Alysia left and I decided to take a look at the Varilite mover light that I took down from the catwalk yesterday. It stopped working on Sunday so I wanted to try to figure out what was wrong with it. While it was on the catwalk, I couldn't see/reach the control panel, so I wasn't even sure if it was powering on at all. I decided to mount it to one of the short truss pieces that I had, and get it free-standing so that if I managed to get it to power on, it would have enough room to swivel around and move (it does that when it first turns on).

I mounted it to the truss which was kind of difficult considering the fixture weighs like 75 pounds. I realized once I mounted it to the truss that I needed to counterweight the truss to keep it from falling over. I managed to hang some bricks on the other side which helped some but not really. I ended up propping it up with a stool. In other words, I just wasted time with all of the mounting since I couldn't properly counterweight the thing.

I plugged it in and it did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wasn't really surprised, since that's how it was behaving when it was mounted on the catwalk, but I was hoping it would be making a noise or something. Nope.

I took it back off of the truss and put it back on the floor of the office. Sometimes I wish I had a better workspace to look at/fix things than my office, but I'd rather work in my office where there are lights than work in the Worship Center where I'm not allowed to have the lights on.

I did a bit of audio editing today on a voice mail message that Matt got on Sunday. Several months ago (I'm not really sure when), Matt's wife, Whitney, was shopping at Wal-mart and struck up a conversation with a guy in the parking lot and ended up giving the guy a copy of Southside's "He Has Done It All" CD based on the Galatians series that we re-capped last April. Early Sunday morning, this guy (his name was Christian) called Matt's extension at the church and left a long voicemail about how this CD really encouraged him and God has really taught him a lot through listening to the songs and scriptures on the CD, even when he was ready to take his own life, the songs and words came back into his head. So, anyway, this guy left a long and touching message. Matt forwarded it to me and I recorded it onto the computer and we cut out some of the pauses and unncessary parts and shortened it down to play it tonight for the Worship team.

Around 4:45pm, Andrew called me to see if I wanted to meet him at Moe's for dinner. I jumped in the car and headed over. I called my mom on my way there and sang the last part of "Happy Birthday" when she answered, pretending that she had taken so long to answer that she missed the rest of the song.

I met Andrew at Moe's. There was practically nobody there, although it was before 5pm.

We ate dinner quickly and then we both went back to the church around 5:15pm. When we got back to the church, we had at least an hour before the worship team meeting, which started at 6:45pm. I went up to Room 202 and played around on the keyboard for a while. Actually, a long while. Around 6pm, I turned on the rest of the sound system and tested the CD of the voicemail message that I had edited earlier to make sure it was good to go.

Andrew came in and hung out in the tech booth in Room 202 with me for a while. I had to stay in the booth to run the audio while the team met tonight. That's usually what I have to do every Wednesday night, but I don't mind too much because it allows me to serve the entire team. Plus I get to avoid social interaction, so, what's not to like.

As we were closing up, Matt asked us all to break up into groups of 3 or 4 and pray for each other, which I always like doing. James, Andrew, and I all shared some things going on in our lives that we needed prayer for. I opened up by jokingly saying "I have this annoying assistant at the church that really tries my patience..." (Andrew).

When we were done, I went downstairs to get ready for sound check. I talked to Chad Boyd some (he plays electric guitar in the band). Chad is an avid reader of my blog and will probably be really disappointed if I decide to stop blogging at the end of February. I'd like to keep going, but I think I need a break. I'm not sure for how long. We will see.

After helping with soundcheck some, I decided to take apart the Varilite mover light I had worked on earlier to figure out why it didn't work. My first thought was that made a fuse had blown or something. I had never taken apart one of those movers before, so it took some time to figure out where everything was.

I finally found the fuse/power supply area.

It looked like the fuse was blown.

It took some work to get the grill/cover off of the power supply, and sure enough, the fuse was blown.

It was a 3.15 amp 250 volt quick burning fuse. I checked my supply of fuses and as luck would have it (whatever that means), I was out of 3.15a250v fuses. I had the empty case for them though.

I thought I'd look around and see if I had any other fuses of the same size. I remembered seeing one in a VCR that I took apart a couple of years ago (remember that photographic memory I have? see, it really works), so I went and got that VCR out of the storage room. I took the VCR apart (it was one of those DVD/VHS players) and pulled the DVD drive out of the way so that I could get to the fuse.

I put that fuse into the mover and plugged it in but it didn't work. I figured a lower-amp fuse would just blow quicker... but it didn't do anything.

I'm going to go to RadioShack sometime tomorrow and buy the correct replacement fuse and see if it works. If not, I guess we're not any worse off than before, but if it does work, then I just saved the church a lot of money, just by being resourceful and using some of my electronics skills. I really enjoy taking stuff like that apart and trying to fix them.

I remember as a kid, I used to take cheap electronics like radios, old computers, tv's, etc. apart and seeing what I could make work by putting it together just a little bit at a time. I built a robot out of vacuum and computer parts one time but it never really did work. It did get me a spot in the school yearbook though that year (I was in second grade).

A little bit after 9pm, I left to go home. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I decided to stick around at the church a little longer and see if anyone wanted to hang out. I parked on the East side of the building and went inside. I found Robby and Ruthie hanging out and talking but it looked like they wanted to be alone so I talked to them for a few minutes and then went back into the gym/worship center. I was really hoping that some people were going to hang out at Brixx or something but it didn't look like anyone was up for that, so, afer staying a few more minutes, I went home.

So, that was pretty much my day. Not super exciting or anything. Tomorrow will be a fun day. It's Andrew's birthday so we'll be going to Oriental House again for his birthday lunch. I'm also going to Rodrigo Rodriguez's house in the evening to help him with some more video stuff.

Later,

Joe

I'm really just looking forward to having lower car insurance... is that lame?

2009-02-24T23:51:00.005-05:00

Today was such a good day. I've never really been the type to wake up on my birthday and expect it to feel different, or expect to feel older or anything like that. To me, my birthday is just like any other day except I get a little more attention and people sing to me instead of me singing to them like I normally do.

I woke up and went back to sleep. My birthday present to myself. I came in to work around 10:15AM this morning. I had a few minutes in my office before I had to go to the worship planning meeting at 10:30AM. That meeting went fairly well. We spent a few minutes talking about this past Sunday with the special stage setup, worship set, etc. Matt had to go to a doctor's appointment at 11 so we had a quick meeting today.

We talked for a few minutes about something I've been suggesting for a while now--flat screens in the front area of the building. I've always thought it'd be a good idea to set up a few flat screens in the cafe/commons areas and the registration centers so that we could replay ministry highlights, announcements, etc. I spend 40+ hours sometimes on editing the short spots for only a few people that actually get into the service on time to see them. It's not that I really care that much that "lots of people see my work", but it'd be nice to see it get used for more than just the one time showing it in the service. It would also give us more opportunities to use the cafe as a multi-purpose room since it would have video capabilities to go with the existing audio capabilities. The only problem is that flat screens and the technology to provide content to them costs money. Money that we probably don't have right now. Oh well. Maybe in the future.

After the worship planning meeting, James and I went to Matt's office and had a bit of a tech talk but mostly just talked about music, life, video games, and whatever else came up. Around 12pm, we left to go meet Andrew at Oriental House for my birthday lunch. I had invited a few people and most of them showed up as well as a few other people too. There were 10 of us altogether and the people at Oriental House did a great job serving all of us.

I really enjoyed having lunch with friends that I work with, and Andrew bought my lunch too, so that was nice. We agreed that he'd buy my lunch on my birthday today at Oriental House, and I'd buy his lunch on Thursday at Oriental House. So, it all works out.

Our table order number was 25. And I turned 25 today. That seemed kind of ironic. Maybe the people at Oriental House knew because I go in there all of the time. Or maybe it was just by chance.

Jasper showed me this cool function on my little Powershot while we were at lunch that I had never even played with--color accent. It can pick out a color on the fly (samples it from whatever it is pointed at) and highlight that color by desaturating everything else outside of that color tolerance. I've done the effect before on the computer, but it's neat to see a little point-and-shoot camera do it on the fly.

We all got fortune cookies when we got our bill too. I got a little bit creative with the fortunes that were all piled onto the table.

When we got back from lunch, I worked on sending some emails and trying to get caught up on my inbox and contacting volunteers, etc. I don't send one to every person each week but I like to single out one or two people from the team each week that I thought did a stellar job and send them a note of encouragement just so they know that I appreciate them. I can remember doing each of those positions as a volunteer so I know how much it means to have someone on staff that notices their good and hard work. And our tech team is the best. Some of those guys would be there every week if I let them.

I helped Andrew some with the setup and we took down the cross on the stage. I messed up one of my favorite ties while lifting the cross up from the floor onto the side stage loft, which was pretty disappointing, because it was one of my few ties that goes well with my gray shirt. Oh well. I guess that means I get to buy some new ties!

As I was working in my office, Andrew came in and asked if I could come out and help him move a platform, which was really just a ploy to get me to come out so the staff could sing happy birthday to me. I was slightly surprised to see that many staff members all congregated together, but I did hear most of them standing in the Worship Center, so I knew something was up anyway.

It felt great to be on the receiving end of having "Happy Birthday" sung to me. I only regret that they sang in the dark (we don't keep the lights on in the Worship Center), so I couldn't really see everyone.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on projects in my office, updating my task list, and writing notes for things to do this week. For as electronic as I try to keep my life, I still do a lot of things on paper, namely via steno and legal pads. I love those things. Steno pads are portable, and I've used legal pads for as long as I can remember. Yellow for some, white for others. When I worked at SourceLink, I had folders and folders of handwritten notes and task items that I used for each project. It was a convenient offline way for me to stay efficient. Plus, it made me look super-organized and busy when going to meetings.

Today was by far the busiest and most active day I have ever had on Facebook. I had so many people write on my "wall" wishing me a happy birthday. Some were people that rarely talk to me, others were close friends just using a convenient tool to wish me well. I had a lot of text messages and calls too. It felt great to have so many people remember and recognize my birthday. I guess turning 25 is supposed to be some kind of milestone. I kept a record of every message that came in and made sure to personally respond to each one in some way, because I figured if I was on the other end of the communication, I'd sure enjoy a response. Generic messages are ok for some people (i.e. "Thanks for all of the birthday wishes everyone!") but I just enjoy using the opportunities to reconnect with people. I guess you could just say I'm a social person like that.

Andrew worked on the light plots today while setting up the stage and I helped some with that. I was actually really glad to see him taking the initiative to do that since lighting is always an area that I have wanted to improve but have never really had the time to concentrate/focus on it. I spend so much time during the week with video and overall organizational stuff that I rarely get to actually focus on lighting plots and design.

Around 5pm, I got out the hydraulic lift we have at the church so that I could take a look at the mover light that stopped working on Sunday. I was going to have Andrew help me take it down from the catwalk, but the lift needed to charge and I didn't have time to take it down before going to dinner at 5:30pm.

Today was International Pancake Day at IHOP, probably in honor of my birthday. I made plans last week to meet Rachel and Dan there for a birthday dinner. As I pulled into the parking lot, the place was packed out. There was not a single parking space in the restaurant parking lot. Every car coming in was driving through and having to back up and turn around and go back out and park elsewhere just to come to IHOP. I saw a bunch of cars trying to do multiple point turns in a tight area at the end of the lot to turn around. I decided, having an SUV, that I'd just turn around where I was at. So, I pulled forward and to the left, and then just backed up onto the grass/sidewalk and turned around in one point. I parked in the HH Gregg parking lot next door to IHOP on Woodruff Road.

I met Rachel and Dan and Lauren inside. Lauren had gotten there a lot earlier than the rest of us and got a table already. Jami came in a few minutes later and Dustin ended up joining us too. Dinner was great. We all had the free short-stack of pancakes and I also ate some chocolate-chip pancakes. It was way too much food. I couldn't even eat it all. Someone in the restaurant paid for our entire bill too, which was cool. I don't even know who it was. We tried to find out and they wouldn't/couldn't tell us. So, either someone knew it was my birthday, or they saw my cowboy hat in my car when I parked. Just saying.

So, after dinner, I drove back to the church to help finish with the stage setup. Jami and Lauren followed me to the church to help with the stage setup, which was kind of nice. Andrew and Dan were pretty much already done minus wiring a few things up, so we helped with that. Jami also helped me get the broken mover light down off of the catwalk so that I can inspect it in my office later this week. The last time I had to take one of those off of the catwalk, I carried it down the narrow stairs on the loft to the catwalk and almost fell when doing it. This time, I decided it'd be a lot safer or at least a lot more fun to use the lift and carry it down with me in the lift, so that's what I did. The constant swaying back and forth from the lift was a little disconcerting, but I got used to it.

Jami and Lauren left around 7:45 to go to Walmart to pick out movies to watch. I invited them over to see the house and watch a movie since they weren't able to come to my big house party last Saturday. I stuck around at the church to help finish the stage setup and do a quick sound check before leaving.

I met Lauren and Jami at Wal-mart and we perused the discount DVD movie bin for a while. Jami started organizing the DVDs, which took a while.

We finally made some selections, bought some candy, and left. They followed me over to the house and we ended up watching "Remember The Titans", which I already had at the house. We were all quoting the movie since we've all seen it so many times. We also talked a lot during the movie, which was ok since, again, we had seen it so many times.

Today was really a great day. One of the best birthdays I've had in a long time. I can remember in past years always getting depressed on my birthday just because I felt like I was in a phase of life that wasn't for me, or that I thought I would have accomplished more by then, or something. I've never been the type that embodies the attitude of "man, I'm getting old" (or "older" or whatever), but I definitely am guilty of attitudes like "man, I thought I would have had a girlfriend or dated by now" or "I thought I would have been a home-owner by now" or "I thought that my opera career would have taken off by now". You know. Important things like that.

Anyway. Tomorrow will be a fun day. It's my mom's birthday. I like to think that Tim and I were the best birthday presents she ever got. Because, you know, who doesn't totally love spending their own birthday the next day in the hospital after childbirth. I'll be working all day but hopefully I can pop out of the office for a little bit to go wish my mom a happy birthday.

Later,

Joe

Or, it could just be completely awesome and original. Did you ever think of that?

2009-02-23T23:51:00.000-05:00

I stayed up so late last night watching Robocop movies. Yeah, I said Robocop. I stayed up until like 4AM. And having already had like no sleep the night before, that wore me out. I slept until 11AM. I got up and took a shower and cleaned up my room. I really didn't have much to do today.

After eating some lunch, I left the house and drove to the apartment one last time. My mom did a great job of cleaning the place (I didn't even know she was going to do that for us) but there were a few places that I needed to finish cleaning. So, I got to the apartment around 1pm and worked for about an hour on cleaning.

Here's the once-famous Cooking with the Boys set.

I had do some cleaning on the cabinets in both bathrooms, and then I spent the rest of the time cleaning the stove in the kitchen.

I could not get them any cleaner than this. I tried with all of the tools in my arsenal, which mainly consisted of used and fresh paper towels, Lysol multi-purpose spray, and what I hope was a sink/dish brush and not a toilet brush.

There was also a stain on the carpet in the living room that I could not get up, no matter what I used. Not even a Rainbow vacuum would lift this stain.

If you're wondering what the stain was, it's fruit punch. This one time, I tipped my Moe's cup over on the floor when I fell asleep on the couch, and it sat like that all night. And I never could get it up. I put a floor speaker there to avoid embarassment at my social parties. I thought about making a metaphor about that stain and covering it up to sin in our lives and covering it up, but I don't really think anyone would try to cover up their own sin with a sound-system speaker. Maybe I messed up my own metaphor. I'm not sure.

When I finished cleaning everything (including wiping down all of the cabinets and doors in the apartment), I drove up to the office and turned in my keys. Shannon turned her head and closed her eyes and held out her hand to take them. They really did not want to see us go. But hey, you can't pass up house-living to stay in apartment, especially when you feel trapped in your level of auditory expression by the neighbors living above you.

We talked for a minute while Shannon looked through my file and then we went back to the apartment to do a walk-through inspection. I didn't really care to participate in the inspection, but she invited me to come along, so I figured I might as well. Shannon noticed the red punch stain. Everything else passed on the inspection. Hopefully they'll have other ways to get that stain out (I suggested painting it white... but that didn't go over well), otherwise I'll probably have to pay to replace the carpet. Or, at a minimum, I won't get my deposit back. Sigh.

I headed back to the house after the inspection was done. I sat around for a few minutes and headed out just before 3pm to go to Rodrigo Rodriguez's house. Rodrigo was the guest guitarist who came and played at Southside Fellowship back on February 8th, and I am helping him get some of his performances put onto YouTube to expand his audience reach. As I was driving to his house, he called me and asked if we could reschedule since he just got back in town from a gig in Florida. So, we rescheduled for Thursday and I turned back around and went home. I thought about driving around downtown Simpsonville and taking some photos, but then decided it'd be more fun to go home, lay on the couch, and eat pop-tarts. Yep.

Tim came home around 4:30pm from work. I spent about an hour trying to stream a movie off of Hulu but it just wouldn't buffer. I don't get it. It's 2009. If people really want to leverage video on the Internet, we shouldn't have issues like that. It's frustrating.

A litle bit after 6pm, Tim and I left the house to go meet some of my family for dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. Tim's birthday (and mine too) is tomorrow, my mom's is Wednesday, and my uncle David's is Wednesday. It's a big birthday week in our family.

As soon as I came in, I did my usual "take photos and ignore social interaction". It helps me adjust. Don't judge.

We all got cards from people in the family. I like getting cards. I'd never admit it publicly, but it makes my day (perhaps even my week or month) when I get a handwritten note in the mail. Hint hint.

I tried to get the employees at Ruby Tuesday's to come sing to me but they wouldn't do it. Instead, they brought us free sundaes.

I asked our waitress to take a group photo (well, really, I just made it blindingly obvious that I wanted a group photo taken and she offered). I had to crop it so it'd be framed right, but I appreciated the effort.

Dinner was great. Look at that photo. I'm probably the only guy I know who willingly wears a tie when he feels like it, for no real reason. I tell people it's "because I look so good in them", which I don't even think is true. I just like wearing them.

Tim and I left and drove back to the house in Simpsonville after dinner. When we got home, I pretty much made Tim clean part of the house while I worked on putting things away in the kitchen. He didn't want to and I kept coming back and making sure he was on task. I figured since I had taken care of finalizing all of the apartment details, that he could at least chip in and clean the house. Tim and I differ on the word "clean" too, I think. And that's ok. As long as his definition of clean only applies to his room and space, and he applies my definition to the rest of the house. I'm definitely not a perfectionist either, but I have my moments where I want things to be spotless.

I played some Halo tonight with a few friends. That was fun. I also spent some time organizing my iPhoto library and picking out some good photos that I've taken over the past year or so that I want to get printed up and framed to hang around the house. I thought it'd be funny to have a collage of pictures of me doing different faces but wasn't sure if that'd be weird looking. You know, to have a bunch of pictures of just me all over the place.

Tomorrow is going to be a great day. It's my birthday and I'm getting a bunch of people together to come to Oriental House with me for my birthday. It's also International Pancake Day at IHOP. Let's be honest, they're probably doing that just for me. I think I'm going to go there for dinner with Dan and Rachel. Oh yeah, and it's a regular Tuesday so we have a lot of stage setup to do along with meetings and probably some video-taping in there somewhere.

Later,

Joe

I should try moving my alarm clock across the room or something. Or maybe go to bed earlier. They're probably both good ideas.

2009-02-22T21:51:00.006-05:00

I woke up at 5:45AM this morning after falling asleep sometime around 2AM. I really do stay up all night worrying about the dumbest things. When I woke up, it felt so good to just lay in bed. This is sort of a problem I have. I tend to fall back asleep. I woke up again at 6:17AM. I wanted to be at the church before 6:30AM this morning. I dressed in a hurry and rushed to the church. I met Brad Roberts, one of the sound team volunteers, who was waiting for me on the East side of the building since he didn't have a key to get in. I hated that he had to wait on me, but at least he was only waiting a couple of minutes.

I brought all of the equipment in the control room online and then worked on the light cues until about 7:40AM (after I tested all of the videos for the morning, of course). I should have just gone in last night and written all of the light cues but I didn't feel like it.

I stayed up last night worrying about who was going to be there to run things and really thought I'd be running the switcher and lights (nearly impossible), switcher and slides, or slides and lights (also nearly impossible). Like I said before, I worry about some of the dumbest things. I should have just trusted that God would provide. And He did. David, a new volunteer, came and ran slides this morning. Tyler showed up after being sick all week with bronchitis to run the lights. And Gewan ran the video switcher. That's right, after running the switcher for every single service for 17 weeks in a row (not including during Jingle Jazz, which I also ran it then), my reign was over.

Gewan said that if I was living to run the switcher every week in 2009, then my priorities were in the wrong place. That's probably true... but really the only reason I was in that position for that long is because I was investing my time in increasing the quality of a certain area (camera direction and switching).

Anyway. During each service today, I helped with video playback and really just observed everyone work. During the first service, we had an interesting issue with one of the "mover" lights. We have four Varlite VL1000TS lights that we can control from the light console, move them around like spotlights, etc. We use them all of the time for creative sets, gobos, etc. During the second song in the first service worship set, the 2nd light lost control and pointed up at the speakers. On a normal week, it probably wouldn't have been as big of a distraction, but with only having lights on the cross, this was pretty noticeable.

I walked out to the light console and watched as Tyler reconciled the problem by turning off the light. I hate being the guy who comes out and yells/takes over when a problem occurs, so I rarely take action unless it's a big priority and is disrupting a lot of people. Tyler turned off the light (the light intensity control is separate from the moving capabilities). He couldn't get the light to move, so I decided to go up to the catwalk and take a look at the light.

When I got up to the light on the catwalk (which wasn't the easiest feat with all of the lights off, but I managed to do it without tripping over anything), I realized it had no power. I pulled the power plug out and put it back in. No change. Normally when the light loses power and resets, it will calibrate itself and swing around in a full motion and return to its home position or the position the light console is telling it to go to. This light did nothing.

While Charlie was preaching during the first service, Tyler and I went around to every single electrical breaker panel in the building to see if any of them were tripped. We've never lost power to those outlets before on the catwalk (that are dedicated for the light electronics) so I wasn't even sure where the breaker for it was. After checking like 12 panels and not finding a single one tripped, we gave up and decided to just rewrite all of the cues for the morning to not use that light anymore and then take a look at it after church.

The second service went really well. I took some pictures of our setup with the cross which I thought looked really cool.

During the third service as I was playing back the video announcements, I re-situated myself in the chair and my elbow hit the spacebar on Video Toaster while the announcements were playing, which caused it to do a video transition. Normally this would not be a big deal because the default transition is a cross-fade, and a cross-fade between two identical sources is not visible. Today however, the selected transition was a big alien monster claw that grabbed the video, pulled it down, and threw up the second source. Yeah, that was kind of visible. I think it happened during a funny part so people probably thought it was intentional, but it definitely was not.

After church was over, I closed up a lot of the stuff in the control room and then Tyler and I went up to the catwalk to look at the light that was having problems.

We couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. We even tried using one of the other light's power cords and another outlet. The light is just dead. Now I have to do some research and find out if it's cost-effective to fix a light that is 7-8 years old or to buy a new one. Or not buy one or fix it at all, which would really be unfortunate because we use them a lot.

Tyler posed for a "sad-face" shot with the light, because this light has served us so well for the past few years.

I left the church around 1:15pm to go home. My mom had called me yesterday and told me that when she left the house party, she had gone to my apartment (after taking Tim's key) and cleaned the entire place. My mom is the greatest. I stopped to check out the cleanliness and noted a few areas that still needed to be cleaned. I wasn't really in the mood to clean them today so I took a few pictures and then headed to the house.

I took this picture on my way out... it symbolizes doors closing in our lives that lead to new phases of life... or something. Or, it might just be a picture of my old apartment door.

When I came home, I ate some lunch and laid down on the couch for a while. I was feeling pretty tired so around 3pm I went to my room to take a nap. I fell asleep around 4pm and woke up again at 6:30pm when my parents came over for dinner.

We all ate some pot-roast barbecue for dinner. My mom also brought over a birthday cake since my birthday is this Tuesday. My twin brother Tim's birthday is also on Tuesday, but it's hard to get excited about that. My mom's birthday is on Wednesday. Andrew, my assistant at the church, has a birthday on Thursday. It's a real birthday week, for sure.

My parents left around 8pm. I got out my Macbook Pro and did some writing. As I was sitting at the table in my living room, I got a video chat request from my friend Justin DeGarmo. We ended up doing a three-way video chat with me, Justin, and Jeff Looney, another friend from high school. Jeff just moved out to Colorado, so it was cool to catch up with him.

Video chats are cool.

So, tomorrow is my day off. I'm going to stay up late tonight (because I can) and then sleep in (again, because I can). I'm going to go to my apartment at some point and finish cleaning, and then turn in the keys. Sigh. I'm also going to Rodrigo's house later in the afternoon to help him with some more video stuff.

Later,

Joe

In other words, "How I threw myself a birthday party jam without telling anyone about it." I'd like to see you pull that off.

2009-02-21T22:40:00.007-05:00

Today was a great day. I woke up at 6:45AM, thinking it was kind of early, and noticed my alarm clock blinking. I fell asleep last night with my nightstand pulled closer to my bed, and I must have pulled the power cord out of the wall for the clock just enough to reset it. So, in my "just woke up" stupor (which is never really that bad), I reset my clock time and the alarm and went back to sleep.

I woke up again when the alarm went off at 9. I felt refreshed and rested and I got out of bed and started getting ready for the party. I spent some time cleaning the house (more straightening, really) and then headed out a little bit after 10AM to go to my apartment. I wasn't sure if anyone would get there "early" (before 11AM) and I wanted to be there waiting on them, you know, because I'm such a polite host and all. And they are offering to help me move. Even though I only have two couches to move, and they're light enough I could probably move them myself.

I sat around in the apartment by myself which was actually pretty boring because there was not much to do. I passed the time by catching on my blog reading from my phone. I love having a mobile smartphone where I can do that on-the-go. My dad showed up right at 11AM. I wanted to wait a few minutes to see who else would show before we started moving the couches, but my dad was ready to work so we moved the first couch. As we were loading it into the truck, Andrew Stoeber and Brian Schlarb showed up. We let them load the second couch onto the truck. You know, so they feel like they helped. My friends Dan Sims and Rachel Richards showed up right as we finished loading the second couch.

There was literally nothing else to load up. We were done in 5 minutes.

Everybody followed me to the house, so I had this long chain of cars following me. I took this picture on the Interstate, which I thought was pretty impressive.

A lot of people showed up to the post-moving party today. We got the couches unloaded and in place, and started playing Rock Band almost immediately.

In total, 17 people came over today, which I'd say was a pretty impressive party. I asked my parents to go pick up some pizza while I hosted the party. As people came in, I tried my best to give introductions since I had people from my various "circles of friends" come who had never met each other before.

My sister, Gina, came over today and brought one of her cute little beagle puppies, Henry, with her. Having that dog in the house made me want to get a dog. I guess I'll have to ask my landlord about that, who also happens to be my mom. This dog loved people and getting attention, but constantly looked like he just lost his best friend. Happy dog but a sad face, at least in photos.

After we all had opportunities to play Rock Band, I organized a Rock Band Competition, which was fun. Some people had left by that point so we were only able to organize three bands. My band, "RimROCK!" was awesome. We named ourselves that because that's the name of the street this house is on, and I thought it was fitting.

There were two other bands, "The Dry Heaves", and "The Awesome Band". We tried our best to keep score but I think people found out that I didn't have a real prize so we all sort of lost interest in the competition and just started playing for fun again.

People started leaving slowly around 4pm. Mark and Melissa (some of my friends from SourceLink, where I used to work), were the last to leave. Clay hung around for a while and helped me arrange the living room like I wanted it. I wasn't really sure how the place would look with the couches so when we brought them in this morning, I just had Brian and Dan place them anywhere they'd fit, which worked for the party, but it wasn't want I wanted.

We tried a few arrangements and eventually came up with this.

After settling on the setup (which I'm still not completely sold on but will work for now), Clay and I went to get some dinner. He lives like 5 minute down the road so he knew the area better than me. I drove to Fairview Road and we looked around for places to eat. I found a Moe's. You can guess where we went. And don't guess like Hardee's or something. We got some Moe's and brought it back to the house to eat while watching a movie. I was a little disappointed in the quality of my burrito from this Moe's. Hopefully it was just a fluke.

Tim joined us and we watched "Iron Man" in the living room. That's a fun movie to watch. When it was over, Clay looked at all of the pictures I took today with me on my Macbook and we talked for a while and then he left around 8:30pm to go home. I played some Halo with James Brush and a few of his friends online for a while but then decided to call it a night.

Overall, a great day! I was glad that so many people came over. I'm sure my neighbors were starting to wonder if this was going to become a regular ritual, what with the 20 cars in the driveway and cul-de-sac and whatnot. I'm just excited that I can play my video games and watch television at a reasonable volume and use my sound system without getting yelled at by the neighbors.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. I should have gone back to the church and finished all of the light plots for Sunday, but I just didn't feel like it. I'm not really sure how tomorrow is going to go. My friend Tyler, who is on the schedule for lights, has been sick all week and may not show up on Sunday. I also found out tonight that Ben's whole family is sick so he will be at home taking care of them. It may be one of those mornings where I run 3-4 different things at once. We will see. It doesn't really stress me out that much anymore, but I don't like letting that become "the norm" that volunteers are exposed to, because it only emphasizes the point of view that their job function isn't important when one person can simply do 3-4 positions if someone doesn't show.

I am looking forward to tomorrow being a great day of worship with our focus on the cross. I hope that people enjoy the metaphor and are reminded of why we do what we do.

Later,

Joe

Just "getting by" has always been hard for me. It's just part of my personality to want to give 100% to anything I'm excited about.

2009-02-21T00:48:00.006-05:00

Today was a long day. I had some trouble falling asleep last night on the cold floor, even though I normally enjoy sleeping on the floor. This house creaks some too, so every time I moved around, I could hear Tim's bedroom door shaking, and, being the good brother that I am, I tried to not bother him as much as possible since I knew that Tim gets up a lot earlier each day than I do. Well, except for Sundays. I always beat him on Sundays.

I woke up this morning around 9AM and got to the church a little bit after 10. Andrew was already there working, but I didn't have much for him to do today. My primary focus was to work on the video announcements. In fact, I even skipped lunch to work on them.

Andrew worked on getting some lights set up to shine on the cross on the center of the stage while I was editing. I helped him test the placement of a few lights. Around 2:15pm, Mark Hudson, Lindsey's husband, stopped by to work on the light board with me. He is interested in volunteering with lights on Sunday mornings and we need more operators (need 2-3 more regular volunteers, really) with the light board so I was glad he came by.

Mark and I worked on the light cues for about an hour and 15 minutes or so. I gave him an overview of the console, its basic functions, how to write cues, some standard operating practices etc. and he picked it up really well. I think he is going to stop by again on Sunday morning for more training.

I finished up the video announcements during the afternoon, but I had to make a decision that I haven't made in a long time... to just re-use something I had already made and just "wrap it up". I hate doing that because I always feel like I'm not giving it my all or my best, but, on the other hand, spending 10-12 hours trying to come up with more creative titling and effects for a video that probably only 30% of the congregation will look at may not be the best use of my time. The one thing that really annoyed me with this week's video announcements was the audio... I had Matt wearing a lavelier microphone but it sounded awful. Nasally, really. And Matt wasn't sick or anything. It was probably my fault for the mic placement... but he was wearing a sweater vest. So, not much I could have done about it anyway. I did some EQ work and notched out around 1.4kHz which helped some but not a lot.

Sharon Thomas, one of the adult ministry assistants, stopped by my office to see if she had filled out a request to use the sound system out in the cafe for an event there tonight. I didn't recall seeing one but decided to just give her a quick overview of the system there anyway. I showed her how to turn the system on and how to use the microphone, and then went back to my office.

My mom called me this afternoon to say that she, my dad, and Tim had moved everything but the two couches to the apartment. They set up the washing machine and the dryer, and even set up my bed with fresh sheets. My mom is great. Back in December during Jingle Jazz week, when my life was really really stressful and I had been staying up all night working plus helping Tim with some medical issues, my mom came over to my apartment and washed my sheets and made up my bed for me twice in one week. It was so comforting to just come home to a fresh bed that one time when I had worked from Tuesday at 8AM (after only getting 3 hours of sleep) until Wednesday at 10AM and went home to sleep for a few hours before coming back to run the first night of Jingle Jazz. Thanks Mom.

Anyway. Back to today. Around 6pm, my friend Doug Whitley showed up along with his family and a few friends to do another character performance. You may recall one of the last times that I helped him with this. By the way, I totally love being able to link back to previous days in my life. Show me any other blogger who can do that. Doug was doing "Moses" tonight so that we could record it onto DVD for him to use as a resource for his ministry.

His two sons, Doug and Charles, worked as the camera operators. We got everything set up and ready to go. I put "Video Taping in Progress" signs up on all of the doors to the Worship Center just in case someone wanted to come walking in while we were taping. I sat in the control room the entire time that Doug presented.

We finished around 8:30pm and after taking a few character photos, the Whitley's invited me to their house for dinner. Before we ate dinner, I beat Doug III and Charles in Halo. Twice. I even let them team up against me. It was probably a little unfair because they rarely play, and I've been playing practically Halo every day for the last 5 years.

Dinner was great. We had steak and potatoes. You can't beat that. Doug told me all about his trip to Australia a few years ago and it was neat to hear about some of that culture and sights. They are always telling me of cool places I could go and visit. You know, if I ever took a vacation or anything.

After dinner, we all had some strawberry shortcake while Charles and I played "Nazi Zombies" on Call of Duty 5, which was a challenging game. I left around 12:15AM to go home. When I got back to the house, I found my room straightened with my bed set up and fresh sheets on it. Now I'll be able to sleep well, hopefully.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. Even though I really don't have much to move, I'm hoping lots of people still show up for the party / "extravaganza". That reminds me. I should probably go buy the snacks and food at some point.

Later,

Joe

I think I'm going to just start adding the word "Extravaganza" to everything. This is a blogging extravaganza. Yep, it works.

2009-02-19T22:13:00.004-05:00

Today was definitely a great day. I bet you are all reading in great anticipation for when I start off an entry talking about how bad my day was.

I slept at the house last night instead of in my comfortable bed at the apartment. I set up a blanket on the floor of my bedroom and slept there. Growing up, this room was always my grandfather's room (we called him "Pa-pa"). I remember as a kid sneaking in to his room and seeing what toys he had in his closet that he and my grandmother had picked up at yard sales to give to us grandkids. Every Wednesday, they used to have something sitting out for us that he had picked out at a yard/garage sale somewhere.

During the night, I got really cold because the vents were closed in my room, so I didn't really sleep that well. I set an alarm but I didn't set it the AM/PM part right so my alarm never went off this morning. I woke up at like 9:30 and started getting ready for the day. As I was getting ready, my friend David Koepper called me to catch up. I invited him to my post-moving party extravaganza on Saturday but he and his wife Erika will be out of town and can't make it. I do live within a couple miles of him now though so we're pretty much neighbors, which is kind of cool. We talked for a few minutes and then he had to get going since he was driving.

I got to the church this morning a little bit after 10AM. I had a meeting at 11AM, so my primary goal was to get as much progress done as possible on the video announcements editing before then. I had some some basic editing yesterday and color correction, but no audio EQ or normalization and I still had to remove the bad takes, unusuable clips, etc. and get it all organized.

I worked for a bit and then Eddie came by my office to ask me a question about a computer projector. We talked for a few minutes and then I went back to work. At 11AM, I had to stop and go to my meeting. Somehow or another I got signed up to participate in the bi-weekly (which, apparently, means twice a month, and not twice a week as you'd think) meetings for the upcoming Vapor golf tournament in May. You may recall from the last meeting that I pretty much talked the whole time about ministry highlights and video work. I learned in this meeting today that the gala/dinner has been cancelled, so we went through the task list again and talked about ideas to promote the tournament which was moved from May 4th to May 11.

I tried to take a few candid photos during the meeting but some people don't understand the word candid.

Ruthie gets it. Jes, not so much.

I get it. Obviously.

Nate and Laurie get it. Josh, not so much.

That meeting lasted about an hour and a half. We were all crammed into Jes's office. I'm going to be honest, I passed a lot of time during the meeting sending text messages and surfing the Internet from my phone under the guise of "researching something". I was also kind of self-conscious about the mustache that Josh pointed out that I had. I was going for "goatee" but I guess it just looks like a creepy mustache. Oh well. The meeting was over around 12:30pm.

Josh decided he wanted to go to lunch so he invited me, Nate, and Ben to join him at Moe's. I love Moe's. I think I've said that before. I've been offered a job at every single Moe's in this area, which I think is pretty impressive. Lunch was good today but we were all distracted by a scene out in the parking lot. Some woman got arrested while like 20 people from Moe's stared out and watched. We had no idea what was going on or why she was getting arrested, but apparently people like to stare more at those types of incidents more than traffic wrecks. Just saying.

We got back to the church just in time for the pastor's meeting at 1:30pm. The rest of the staff doesn't really know what they do in there, so I always joke and say they watch movies. I always ask Matt, "What movie did you guys watch?"

I worked in my office on the video announcement editing. Andrew was there and I had him work on a few projects. With our stage setup like it is this week (with the band on the floor), we decided to pull out a section of the bullnose that Charlie preaches from and put it away, to make more room for the band. I didn't want to use our normal teach lighting plot since it would have lit up an entire section of the floor where there was no platform (since we got rid of one of them). I asked Andrew to take down two lights and mount them on the bar in the middle of the room (that we haven't really used since like the end of November) so that we could have a more focused and front-lit teach lighting plot. I helped test the lights while he hung them.

Matt came by around 3pm and we worked on editing the video announcements together for about an hour. They came together quickly but I still have a lot of fine-tuning to do tomorrow. I want to throw in some animation at the beginning and do more color correction. When we were done editing, Matt and I had a follow-up tech talk that we like to do on Thursdays, where we discuss lighting options and ideas and any final video/sound needs, which I will then take and make sure that volunteers are well-communicated and that we are ready to go for Sunday. I am here to serve, after all.

One thing we noticed is that all of the music stand lights spill a lot of light into the room. Each light has a 40-watt frosted bulb in it. I had the idea to hook all of the lights into the lighting system, so that we could dim them and control the brightness, so I had Andrew work on setting that up.

I left the office a little bit after 5pm to go home. I went straight to the house. I ate some cereal for dinner (Cinnamon Toast Crunch... it's really good). I am the only person I know that likes cereal this way... but I like it when it soaks up the milk and gets soggy. Of course, I'm also the guy that likes cold/old pizza and leftovers too so who knows.

I watched tv for a while and played Rock Band for a while too. I really like being able to have my nice sound system on to enjoy the bass when playing Rock Band and not have to hear a banging sound from neighbors living above me.

Around 7:45pm, I left the house and went to the apartment. I really wanted to try to bring my mattress from the apartment to the house so that I could sleep on it. Tim was still working but I told him to meet me at the apartment when he left so that he could help me load it up.

On my way in to the apartment complex, I checked my mailbox to see if I had any mail, but apparently they've already reset my mailbox and no more mail will be delivered there. It was kind of a sad moment, really. What will I do now that I won't be receiving tons of junk mail each week?

When I got to the apartment, I started looking around to see if there was anything else that I needed to go ahead and bring over to the house. I took a look out on the back porch and totally forgot I had these rocking chairs out there. I guess I never really went out there.

I wonder where I got those from. I forget. They look nice. Maybe I will put them in the den until I figure out where to put them.

I also found my name-tag sticker collection on the back of my bedroom door that I forgot about. I don't really know why I started this collection but somewhere along the way, I thought it'd be fun to stick them all on the door.

"Awesome". I remember that day. Everybody called me Awesome and for a day, it was true.

I tried to load up my mattress into my SUV but it didn't fit. Nowhere close. I tried to bend it and force it in but still, it was definitely a no-go. Having to carry the entire mattress back inside the apartment was kind of discouraging.

While waiting on Tim to show up, I decided to go ahead and disconnect the washing machine and dryer and at least get those ready to move. I got the dryer disconnected and moved out of the laundry closet but the washing machine hoses were screwed on really tight and I didn't have a wrench. And despite popular opinion, I don't have super strength, although I did pick up the front of a car once.

Tim showed up a little bit after 8:30pm and we decided to load up his tv into my SUV to take over to the house. We had tried to take it before but it was too heavy to move. I think the real problem was that it was too hard to try to coordinate carrying it with Tim. I managed to carry the thing (which probably weighs close to 200 pounds) to my car and then unloaded it at the house by myself. In fact, by the time Tim got back to the house, I had already carried in the tv, set it up in his room, screwed the coax/ethernet jack plate into the wall, and set up the cable and powered up the tv. That's how great of a brother I am.

We unloaded a few more things from my SUV and Tim's SUV (like the rocking chairs, some hangers, etc.) and that was it. I'm really looking forward to Saturday and having my couches and bed moved in. I'm also really looking forward to having all of my friends over for a party. I really don't know who all is coming but I hope a lot of people show up because I'm going to be buying a lot of pizza.

And, of course, sometime next week, I have to super-clean the apartment and get it ready for turn back in. I am really hoping to get my deposit back but unless we can get some of those stains out of the carpet (one of them is blood), we probably won't be getting that deposit back.

Tomorrow will be a long day. I'll be working 9-5 at the church wrapping up video stuff for Sunday. In the evening, I'll be shooting video of my friend Doug Whitley presenting his newest Biblical character, Moses, so that he can have that on DVD for his ministry. And after that, I have to clean the house and get things ready for my party!

Later,

Joe

It looks way more artistic this way, trust me.

2009-02-18T23:47:00.000-05:00

Today was kind of a slow day, even though it was a Wednesday. I came in to the church around 10:30AM because I thought I had a meeting at 11AM. I worked fiendishly at my desk until 11AM, and then walked halfway across the gym before I stopped and thought to myself, "You know, my phone never reminded me of this meeting and neither did my workstation". I checked my calendar on my phone and sure enough, the meeting was at 11:30, not 11AM. I are smart. So, I went back to my office and kept working.

I imported the footage from yesterday's video announcement shoot into a new project. It always takes a while to import and index HD footage, at least on the computer in my office anyway. While I was working, my friend Brian came by to talk to me. He was driving by the church on an errand for work and decided to stop in and hang out with me for a minute or two.

At 11:30 (the actual time of the meeting I was supposed to have), I went to Mike Hawkins' office. We were supposed to meet and talk about a refined structure for future baptism testimony tapings and the whole interviewing process. Mike was in another meeting so I had to wait for that to finish first.

Mike, Dawn, Art, and I met in the downstairs conference room and talked about just some overall frustrations with the current procedure and some thoughts to improve it. Without going into specifics, there have been a number of times come up where we hit snags when shooting the actual testimonies that could have been avoided if we had a little more advance communication.

Some take-away's that I took from the meeting included making a DVD of "good examples" of testimonies to show to people who want to get baptized, so that they can get a feel for what their final testimony will look like. Hopefully, this will avoid parents and kids memorizing their entire testimony so that they can blurt it out in 30 seconds on camera and get it over with. I want to make the whole process more creative so that it's more about telling a story about their journey of faith rather than just 30 seconds of "convincing me you're a follower of Jesus".

When that meeting was over, Matt and James invited me to go to lunch with them. I drove this time and we went to Zaxby's (the good one near Five Forks not the "ok" one near The Parkway). I feel blessed to work at a place that is surrounded by 3 different Zaxby's restaurants, two of which are within like 2 miles of the church. That's pretty awesome.

All three of us had the "kickin' chicken" sandwich for lunch. James said it was the spiciest thing ever. It had some kick to it, but I think calling it the "messy drippy sauce that makes your bread soggy and chicken taste weird sandwich" might have been more accurate. I was doing good to not get any of it on my shirt, which I succeeded in keeping my shirt clean.

I sort of have this problem with spilling things on my shirt. In fact, I used to spill something on my shirt every day at lunch. It was a big downer every day beacuse I knew it was going to happen, even if I didn't want it to. So, most of the time, when I went to lunch, I'd just let something spill on my shirt just to get it out of the way.

In late 2005, I decided I didn't want to suffer from that problem anymore, so I made a proactive effort to avoid it. Sometimes it meant wearing napkins on my shirt. Othertimes, it meant leaning way over the table and eating slower. And I had to avoid eating salsa altogether for a while.

Anyway. Lunch was good. James has the funniest noises and exclamations when he eats good food. It makes me laugh. On our way out from lunch, we saw Ruthie and Laurie from the church waiting in line to eat at Zaxby's. I encouraged Ruthie to get the kickin' chicken, to see if she could also avoid spilling any on her shirt. I'm not sure if she accepted the challenge or not. Probably not.

On my way back to my office, I saw Jim Peterson (the church facilities manager) working on a project for me in the worship center. We've been running forward cameras for the last few weeks on a regular basis. Every time we use them, I've had to run extension cords from the camera locations out the doors of the worship center and into the hallway to plug them in. Those are literally the closest receptacles, besides the ones on the stage of course, but it's inconvenient to run a cord to those, not to mention it'd probably look sloppier than running it out into the hallway.

I had the idea to just tap into the two end receptacles on the stage floor which we never use and extend the down underneath the stage to the floor, so that we could then just plug the cameras right into those. Jim worked on that for me and had them up and going in no time.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on a variety of projects from organizing my notes to cleaning my hard drives and editing video. I had to capture a few DVDs but the little DVD player on my desk wasn't recognizing any of my discs so I had to go get a nicer DVD player from one of the classrooms. There's this one player that I always grab because I like it a lot. I bought it myself with my own money. I had bought a few for different classrooms a while back with church funds but one of the units never worked. When I returned that DVD player to Wal-mart, they gave me cash in return, which I stuck in my wallet, promptly forgot about, and later spent on something else. Probably goobers or skittles, knowing me.

A month or so later, I remembered and was like "Crap..." so I went and bought a really nice DVD player with my own money that cost more than what I was refunded before. Anyway, long story short, that's the player I always use when I want to test something or need another player because it works great. I should just take it and keep it at my desk but I don't.

Around 4:45pm, I went upstairs to Room 202 to set up some microphones to record Matt's second session of "Artists are Crazy!" with the worship team tonight. During the first session, he asked a lot of questions and a part of it felt kind of like a discussion. When I listened to the first session CD later, I realized that I couldn't really hear anyone except Matt. For tonight, I took our two Shure KSM44 LDC microphones and set them up in stereo in the room and patched them into the CD recorder along with a microphone that Matt was going to speak out of for the recording.

Andrew invited me to join him for dinner at Oriental House at 5:30. I had to leave the church around 5:15 just to get there in time because traffic is dumb. The food was so good there tonight. Andrew and I pointed out to each other again that while the service is nice there, having them ask you 20 times while you eat if you want more to drink is kind of annoying. Parts of me wants to say yes, but other parts know that there's no way I can explain to them that I'm drinking 80% Sprite and 20% Coke. It makes a pretty tasty Ginger-Ale if you've never tried it.

When we were hrough with dinner, we both headed back to Southside Fellowship. On the way in, we stopped at the copy center to scan in a few drawings of a project that Andrew was working on for his sister's wedding coming up in May. He wanted to draw a palm tree and turn it into a vector image in Illustrator. I gave him the idea to draw it in pieces so that he could manipulate it in Photoshop and then convert it to a live trace/live paint in Illustrator. It ended up working pretty well. I actually ended up making the entire thing for him in Illustrator based on his drawing and I think it looks nice.

I went upstairs around 6:20 to make sure things were good to go for the worship team time tonight at 6:45. I loaded up a blank CD into the CD recorder and made sure the microphones were good to go. I also loaded up a video on YouTube on the computer in the tech booth. That computer is kind of junky. It ended up not even playing the video correctly because it ran out of virtual memory (which means it didn't have enough real memory either). Computers are frustating sometimes.

Matt talked tonight about Artists and "Servant-hood or Stardom". He mentioned that three barriers to being a true servant were (1) Having an attitude of superiority; (b) Having selfish ulterior motives; and (red) Having confidence in our giftedness alone.

I took a lot of notes as he was talking (while also listening to the recording mix on some headphones at the tech booth and adjusting the mix as needed). I think this is an area that I really struggle with. I'm not always clamoring to be up on stage and be seen, but I definitely want people (and sometimes certain people) to know at times what I've been up to, sacrifices I took, etc. to make things happen. You know, like when I randomly tell people, "Yeah... I'm so tired this morning...... " (long pause because they are not interested) ".... I was at the church until 2AM this morning and then came back at 6AM to get this done." Did my admitting that to them really help the situation? Did it do anything to enable them to serve better themselves, or did it only serve to make me look like a dedicated individual in that moment?

The sarcastic and funny part of me argues that just me talking to them enabled them to serve better themselves but obviously I'm just joking. The second point, however is what I'm getting at. Almost every time I do or say something like that, I realize what it was that I just did. I took away the focus on what was accomplished and how God was glorified in an attempt to make someone look at me and say "Wow Joe, you did THAT?"

This is an area of my life that I am continuing to improve on. It's one of the reasons why I think I'm going to stop blogging when this blog turns one year old. I have other fantastic blogging ideas in the works though, so don't get too depressed kids.

Anyway. After Matt was done talking, we closed in prayer. The band went downstairs to start getting ready for practice. I stayed upstairs and put away the extra microphones and then went downstairs to help with sound check. Matt really wanted Andrew to play with the band this week since we have a smaller more acoustic worship set, so he asked me to call Brad, one of the volunteer sound operators, to see if he could come in and run sound this Sunday. I was hesitant to call since Brad wanted to take a break for a while, but I called and Brad was willing.

Andrew ran sound for most of the sound check and then Matt asked me if I wanted to run the sound board so Andrew could play with the band. It was one of those questions where the answer was already determined whether I answered yes or no. I really don't like to run sound that much, for a variety of reasons.

I am technically competent at the sound board. I know how it works. I know how to manipulate the settings (at its core, it is basically a computer anyway). I know how to use effects and adjust gain and run a basic mic and do some equalization. However, since I am rarely behind the sound board at any time, no one really has any confidence in my abilities. If it takes me any little bit longer to do something than it would take a regular operator, than someone starts coming back to "help out".

I also don't really enjoy running sound because I've discovered I'm really more of a visual person. There have been Sundays where Andrew and I discussed the worship set and he'll say something like, "Did you notice how Matt used different chords on the piano for that last song in each service?" And I'll respond with something like... "I never even heard the piano playing... but did you notice the light reflecting off of James' guitar was making circle shapes on the ceiling?"

I'm a visual person. It ties into my photographic memory stuff too I think. I do have a wide range of frequency hearing (really high pitched noises bother me a lot and I'm overall pretty sensitive to loud noises) but I'm not really a musician. I desire to be one, but I think I'm going to eventually have to accept that there are just some things that no matter how much I want to be good at them, I won't ever be.

Anyway. I ran sound for most of the practice and left the church around 9:40pm to go home. I stopped by the apartment and grabbed a bunch of stuff (mainly clothes and bedding materials and bathroom stuff) and came to the house. I'm going to be sleeping here tonight. I got tired of the whole driving back and forth thing.

So, that was my day. What was up with the crazy amount of rain we had in Greenville today anyway? I always feel depressed and sad when it rains, even though I spend most of my days inside. That line from "Men in Black 2" always come to my mind...

Agent K: When you get sad it always seems to rain.

Laura: Lots of people get sad when it rains!

Agent K: It rains because you're sad baby.

Something like that, except my name isn't Laura.

Later,

Joe