I’m not much for Christian parody…most of it sucks. But i thought this was pretty funny. Check it out.

http://www.whiteboydj.com/babygotbook.html

This is my personal account of July 14th, 2006, as required by Kimmy’s latest blog point challenge. This post will be continued throughout the day as i can find time to write.
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I’m afraid this first portion of the post is going to be horribly redundant if you’ve read Elizabeth’s blog. Oh well…blog points are blog points, right?

So…as Elizabeth mentioned, we were at the drive-in theatre when ‘today’ rolled around. We finished the 2nd movie of the night (Cars), while i was attempting to get Verity to fall asleep in the back seat of our car. We’d forgotten her pacifier, and so she had a hard time settling down. After the movie we packed up and drove home. On the trip home Elizabeth and i had an interesting conversation about the fact that Derek Webb has been making me nervous lately. By nervous, i mean that whenever i think about him or the things he’s premoting i get a weird feeling–kinda like the one i get in other situations when ’something just doesn’t feel right.’ But i can’t put my finger on it.

After unloading the car i carried Verity upstairs for a quick diaper change and then put her down to bed. She was so tired that she was asleep without a peep. After that i headed downstairs to the studio to work on the latest Worldview Academy podcast–which was due mid-week, and that i hadn’t completed because of a computer problem on Wednesday. Melssa had never seen the studio before so i took her down to show her around. She seemed to think it was cool. Then she headed up to bed and i finished the podcast, which consisted of taking the final podcast wav file and trimming and fading the ends and then rendering through a limiter to make it louder. Then i uploaded the final product to the Worldview FTP server and entered the podcast copy into the podblog so it would show up on the iTunes feed.

That being finished i headed upstairs for one last check of email and the blogs and the message boards i frequent. Then, it was off to bed where Elizabeth was already asleep. That was around 4:00am.

Since i got to bed so late i woke up later than i should have–although it doesn’t matter because i didn’t have any work today until 11:00am. So, i got out of bed, got dressed and poked my head into Melissas room to educate her on Verity’s morning ritual. Then, since Verity was still asleep (long night) i headed downstairs with my socks in hand (i always carry my socks downstairs and put them on in the living room). I grabbed my computer and quickly logged online to check email (one ad from ebay, one ‘watch list reminder’ email from ebay, one from Bob Schmid about worship on Sunday, which i forwarded to Kim, one from Steve Baldwin about worship stuff for next week, and one from Kim commenting on the one from Bob that i had forwarded to her. No email mentioning anything sexy or too good to be true–because i have a really good spam filter).

Elizabeth brought Verity down for a few minutes so i held her on my lap and we had another small lesson in discipline. The small lessons are starting to pay off already. She’s already starting to be obediant to “no” and we can tell that she’s starting to think about the things she wants to do. Then Elizabeth took her back to bed. Then, i worked on this narrative for a while.
While i was looking at email i burned a couple of Derek Webb’s latest podcasts to a cd so that i can listen to them in the car. Hopefully i can lose the nervous feeling or i can figure it out.

After burning the cd i headed out to my car to head for my first stop over in Canfield. I had the stop written in my appt. book for 11:00am. I was running late since the cd took longer to burn than i thought it would. So, i got there 10 minutes late. Normally, no problem. Randy, my contact at the car dealership made it a point to look hard at his watch as i walked in. So, i figured he was mad because i was ten minutes late, and there was a customer waiting on me. Randy walked me over to a newish saab 93 and showed me a damaged spot in the headliner where someone had punched a hole in it while they were trying to fit a ladder in the back seat. Who tries to put a ladder in the back seat of a new saab? Anyway, i spent 20 minutes working on it. When Randy came out to look at it he thought it wasn’t done good enough, but i told him it was the best i could do (he already knows the sort of work i can do, and always tries to get more from me than i can give). Knowing he wanted a better job, and not wanting to blatantly point out that a new headliner would cost $300, i just told him there was no charge, and i left.

From there i drove to the LaZBoy furniture store in Boardman to look at a chair with a razorblade cut in the back. I spent 35 minutes fixing that and then spent 25 minutes chatting with Bill, the service manager, about business and the local economy and business stories and stuff like that. I’ve never been good at small talk, so i look at times like this as a good thing, if for no other reason than the fact that if Bill likes chatting with me and feels like he knows me on a more personal level, i won’t be as easy to replace if someone else comes along who fixes leather chairs.

From LaZBoy i drove to New Castle, Pa to look at another set of furniture that i need to work on. On the way over i finished listening the the Derek Webb podcasts (which were discussions with Don Miller). They’ve given me much to think about. Specifically, they discussed the so called ’social gospel’ and some of the ‘new’ concepts that Derek and Don have been addressing in their music and books. So, they discussed things like compassion for human suffering and they discussed the validity and justice of war and human violence. There’s much more that could be said, but i’m still processing it. Basically, the bottom line they are promoting is that once we have recieved and know the gospel, it is our duty to act on it the way Jesus did. To love people, to feed the hungry, to help the poor and to show them the world that will be (when there is no more hunger, pain, and suffering), by helping to alleviate their hunger, pain and suffering now. They also talked a bit about Derek’s personal conviction that it would be a sin for him to take a human life in any situation, including war or self-defense. He stated that as Christians he believes we are called to find creative alternatives to the taking of human life. I’m not doing the conversation justice. Like i said, much to think about.

After i finished the podcasts i turned off the radio and just drove in thoughtful silence. Besides the Derek stuff i’ve also been thinking very hard about my place at Old North, and the fact that i think God is telling me that i need to step down from all musical pursuits for a couple of years. That, in and of itself, is a huge thing to me and it’s causing me much unrest. I don’t want to give us music–especially now that i’ve seemingly found a place to use my gifts again. So, the delimma i’m facing is trying to decide if God is trying to tell me that i shouldn’t give up music, or if he’s testing my resolve to follow what i think He’s saying. The easy thing to do would be to keep things as they are.

After following the directions i was given to New Castle, but finding that they were in error and sent me 10 miles out of my way, i finally found my destination and looked at the furniture and quoted a price. I scheduled the job for next Friday. The guy i’m working for mentioned the possibility that Pittsburgh airport needs someone to fix the vinyl seats in the airport. That would be a nice contract if i could get it.

On the way home from New Castle i listened to my phone messages and realized there was a message that Randy left on Wednesday telling me that the customer mentioned they wanted to meet at 10am instead of 11. I was supposed to call if i couldn’t make it by ten. For some reason i never got the message, and therefore never called. So, the customer arrived at ten, i arrived at 11:10, and that’s why Randy was mad that i was late.

When i got home Elizabeth met me at the car and handed me a 16oz bottle of water, which i promptly chugged. Then i ate some pizza, and then held Kins for a few minutes and then. Sat down to work on this post. Then we found out that our Netflix DVD didn’t get here for the big MST3K deal tomorrow, so i’m looking for a good episode online. Don’t know what i’ll find in time for tomorrow.

I wasn’t able to find the MST3K episode that i was looking for, so i downloaded a couple of others. Then, i got the brillient idea to look through our old video tapes to see if i could find the episode that i knew we’d taped from TV a few years ago. Way at the back of the cupboard i found it…cool. After i had confirmed that it was indeed the episode we were looking for i cleaned up the mess of video tapes that i’d made and i began getting the house cleaned up for company tonight. Melissa was in the kitchen working on her lime cake and so Cynthia swept all the carpets in the living room and dining room while i gathered up all the trash and got it taken outside. Then i decided to put a screen in both end windows of the living room and get a fan so that it wouldn’t be quite so hot in here. That worked well. The rest of my cleaning time consisted of sweeping the kitchen and the entryway with the broom. While i was doing that i thought some more about the Derek Webb stuff, and a lot more about the situation at Old North. I commented to Kim either today or yesterday that things seem sort of disjointed at ONC, what with three different worship bands sharing duties, but not a lot of real communication between the three bands. Then, i thought a lot about why i was cleaning the house, and how thankful i am that we have friends that are willing to come over to a house that’s so hot and dusty and hard to keep clean. We don’t have a dog anymore, but the floors still get dirty like you wouldn’t believe.

I also started thinking about this whole ‘blog point challenge’ that this post is a part of. I’ve been thinking about how Kimmy throws out a blog point challenge and we all jump to do it…like a pack of little dogs runs to the food bowl when it’s time for their dinner. I’m not sure i like that.

After i swept the floors i went down to the studio to empty the water out of the dehumidifier. It’s pulled over two gallons of water out of the studio control room in less than 20 hours–the one room in the basement that doesn’t feel damp when you walk into it. While i was in the studio room i thought some more about the idea of starting a podcast to syndicate the weekly sermons over at ONC. I’ve been thinking about that for a couple of days. I haven’t talked to anyone about it, but i think it might be cool. It would be one more step to modernizing the way things are done.

After i came upstairs i noticed that the power supply that i bought on ebay had come in the mail, so i spent 10 minutes installing it in my grandma’s computer. It’s ready to send back to her now. Hopefully that was the only problem she was having with it. She likes to be able to send and receive email, but hasn’t been able to do so for a few weeks because her computer wasn’t working. Rachel brought it home for me to look at the other day and that when i found the power supply problem. Hopefully it’s taken care of
now.

I’m caught up to ‘now’ again…almost. I just tried calling Kim to let her know that she could come over for movie night any time now. But, i just got her voice mail, with the funny ‘wax off’ guy.

Alright…just checked my myspace page. No new email or friend requests.

At some point after this i decided to eat dinner. Elizabeth was making a salad, so i decided to make one too. So i made my salad with iceberg lettuce, a hard boiled egg, frozen peas, shreaded cheese, a handfull of cheese puffs, topped off with italian dressing. Not my favorite, but adequate.

I ate my salad and helped Cynthia add some pictures to her myspace page until Kevin and Kimmy arrived. They promptly pulled out their macs and started macking. Then i went upstairs to wake up Kins so that she’d sleep tonight. I got her up, but couldn’t find any clothes for her…so i brought her down in her diaper. We played on the floor for a while.

Kim showed up and played with Verity for a few minutes before Cynthia took her up to bed (Kins, not Kim). Then Kim and i talked for a bit about music related stuff. Then we put in the DVD (Back to the Future). We paused the movie 30 seconds in so that Melissa could pass out her lime cake. Then we watched the movie, pausing it a couple times for Kim to get phone calls.

It’s been a few years since i saw the movie, and it’s better than i remembered. The movie ended and Kim and Kimmy started tearing apart various aspects of time travel. That brought us up to almost midnight. Kimmy and i spent the remaining minutes fighting in typical fashion. What a fitting end to a blog point challenge day.