Playing in the Dirt

I'm in the process of making my house a little more presentable, so that I can either sell it or rent it out. Today, I planted flowers for the first time since I moved in. I bought some as plants, and others I planted seeds. I planted Petunias, Alyssum, Morning Glories, and Phlox. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out, since I am totally new to the whole flower garden thing. I also spent some time working on the lawn, but it seems that I'm always fighting a losing battle with my lawn. I just hope that it looks somewhat presentable by mid-summer.

I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow, as I'm taking my black Civic down to DC. The car has a CD player instead of a tape deck, so I'm stuck with the lousy Belkin FM transmitter to listen to my iPod. Hopefully, I'll be able to find some good radio stations on the drive instead.

Hot, Hotter, and Nuclear

A friend of mine and I had dinner tonight at the Buffalo Wild Wings in downtown Ann Arbor. I love wings, but for whatever reason, I had never been there before. The restaurant offers a wide range of sauces, so my friend and I decided to try some of their hotter varieties. Lots of places claim to have hot wings, but usually, the wings are pretty tame. We started with the "Hot" sauce, and it was very tasty and reasonably hot. After we finished those up, my friend then starts eating one of their hottest wings ("Blazin"), and says, "This isn't too bad, unless there's a delayed reaction." He starts munching on the next one, and said that it still wasn't too bad. Fifteen seconds later, he's sweating as the full impact of the sauce sets in. I join in on the Blazin wings, and wow, did that sauce have a kick or what? I'm thinking, "this isn't too bad, I can deal with this." And then halfway into my second wing, the heat rose exponentially, and my mouth declared a five-alarm fire. So good, and yet so insanely hot. Both of us were laughing so hard at how hot the wings were. If you like good wings, I definitely recommend that you try this place out. Just be warned that the Blazin wings are pretty hot!

The Road Goes Ever On and On

This afternoon, it was a beautiful sunny day in Ann Arbor. One of the side effects of Michigan winters is that you appreciate spring and summer days all the more. I took the opportunity to go running, and decided to take my camera with me. I took some pictures, which I used to create a little photo essay about Gallup Park. To me, running along the Huron River, with the sunlight sparkling off the water, is a wonderful experience. It almost makes me forget that my lungs are straining to grab every oxygen molecule that they can.



This evening, I hosted a dinner party for a bunch of my friends. Not everyone could make it, but I still had seven people show up at my house. One of the benefits to having a house is the ability to fit eight people around the dining table without introducing total claustrophobia. That's a feature that I am going to miss once I move to Virginia and move back into an apartment. Dinner went very well, and it's always a fun time when my friends and I get together.

I didn't get much done on the house today. I installed a new rocker-style switch in the small bedroom, but that was the extent of my move preparations today.

Song of the day: Boston by Augustana.

Wind of Change

I had to take a break from my packing today, as I needed to get some programming done for a client. The clients pay the bills, so it's a good thing to keep them happy. I'm working on adding some features to some messaging software I wrote. The customer (a large Fortune 500 company) is using Microsoft's Exchange server for their client-end messaging platform, and Exchange fails miserably under moderate to high loads. Because my software is used on their backbone infrastructure, by adding some relatively simple capabilities, we can work around Exchange's flaws.

It was a beautiful day outside today, which was a pleasant change from the gloomy days earlier this week. I managed to break away from work for a little bit and go running. I haven't been running as dilligently as I should have been lately. I have a 5K in which I will be running in early May, so I need to work on getting myself back in shape. I'm hoping that the weather will remain nice and that tomorrow I will get a chance to go running on the Gallup Park trail.

By the way, did anyone catch the Scrubs episode last night? It ended on a somewhat melancholy note, but I think it was one of the better episodes this season.

Tomorrow night, I'm hosting a dinner party for my some of my friends in Ann Arbor. I used to do this about once every month or two, but my recent travel schedule has made this difficult. Given that my tenure in Michigan is growing short, tomorrow's event will be one of the last ones I host here. I'm going to miss all my friends in Ann Arbor. You've all been wonderful. Hopefully the Net will help us shrink the miles in between DC and here!

The Magic Carpet Ride

Here's a photo of the new carpet in my master bedroom:

The David Minute

Where: Virginia
Mood: Fair
Weather: Rainy, windy, chilly
Work: Paperwork - tedious
Dinner: Benihana - chicken and shrimp - good
Movie: House of Sand and Fog - really weird
Evening out: Fun
Upcoming events: Driving to Michigan
Sleep: Lacking

Are Two Negative People Positive?

The forecast for this weekend predicts bad weather, so the newcomers hike for Frontline got canceled for this weekend. That was the main reason I was going to be sticking around town on Saturday, so I may end up starting my drive back to Michigan on Saturday instead.

I went and looked at a potential place to live tonight. The unit is nice, and it's very convienent to several of my customers. It's even walking distance to my brother's place. The availability for on-street parking concerns me a little, but living in a truly urban area would be an interesting new experience.

Had an interesting lunch today, but that's a story for another time.

Song of the day: Get Smart theme song (and it was actually work-related too, go figure!)

Leaning Towards the ???

Tonight I am going to do something a little different for my blog entry. I'm going to talk a little about my home church, the Ann Arbor Vineyard, in the hopes of starting some discussion among my friends who also go there. So I need to start with a little history regarding the Milan Vineyard, which was where my church originally came from.

The Milan Vineyard was (and is) a wonderful church that has a mission to "lean towards the lost, the young, and the poor." The church recognized the fact that churches can be very inhospitible places for people who have never been to church before. People in churches tend to have their own lingo, and assume that you already know who people like Isaiah and Melchizidek were. Imagine walking into a church for the first time and having somebody walk up to you and say, "So, have you been washed in the Blood?" Some churches are like that, and can be intimidating even for those with an extensive church background. So in order to lean towards the lost, the Milan Vineyard does a great job of reaching out to newcomers, skipping the lingo, and putting sermons into context. "There was a man named Isaiah, who lived in the ancient Jewish community, who said..." For leaning towards the poor, the Milan Vineyard has an active ministry called the Compassion Ministry. Each week, the church gives out over 2000 lbs of food to people in need in the Milan community. And rather than pretend that kids don't exist, the church has a very active program to reach out to high school youth.

The Milan church thrived in the late nineties. People loved coming to church every Sunday, and the church grew to the point where they decided to "plant" a new church in the Ann Arbor area. And thus the Ann Arbor Vineyard was born. The first few years were wonderful, because the church was essentially still the same as the Milan church. But over the past couple of years, the church has been struggling to find its own identity. Our mission statement changed so that we lean towards the lost, the poor, and the young ... with the goal of planting churches. (BTW, shouldn't church planting be auxillary to its mission?) Unfortunately, the environment in Ann Arbor is different from Milan, and many of the ways that we reached out to the lost, the poor, and the young don't work in Ann Arbor.

I think that if you could identify the one area where the Ann Arbor church is doing well, that would be the outreach to single moms (no, single dads aren't included). The church has done an admirable job of reaching out to single moms, but we seem to have forgotten about the lost, the poor, and the young.

So, the points for discussion are: Is it time to formally change the mission statement of the church to reflect our focus on single moms? Can we find new and innovative ways of reaching out to the lost, the poor, and the young? What about reaching out to the 18-35 age range, which is traditionally ignored by churches? Can we re-incorporate some of the more contemporary elements to worship that we used to have? And what can we do about the "blah" feeling that many of the people are having about church? And most importantly, where does God want the church to go?

Feel free to submit anonymous comments, or associate them with your name if you would like.

Thank the Genius Who Invented Carpet

The contractor came out to install the carpeting for two of my bedrooms today. For the first time since I moved in, the master bedroom is almost livable! I have to re-trim three doors though, since the carpet height is now high enough that it's rubbing against the doors. The high-end carpet pad was totally worth it, as it makes the carpet wonderful to walk on. It's too bad that I won't be here to enjoy it.

I finished my taxes today and got them all either e-filed or mailed out. Tax time has been more annoying than usual for the past several years, since I have to file a federal return and two state returns. It's the price I pay for having a business based in a different state. Next year will be even worse, because as a result of moving back to Virginia, I will need to file four returns. The Virginia Department of Taxation requires two returns to be filed if a shareholder of certain Virginia-based businesses moves into or out of the state. Why they can't simplify the process and only require one is beyond me. I just hope that next year's taxes go better than when I moved from Virginia to Michigan. I ran into the problem that at least some of the staff at Taxation are completely clueless, and don't even understand their own regulations. Welcome to Virginia government!

I'm off to Virginia for the rest of the week, and then driving back to Michigan next weekend. And then I come home and start preparing to move in earnest.

Song of the day: A Day Late by Anberlin.

The Clock Starts Ticking

Tomorrow, the Lowe's contractors are coming out to install carpet in two of my bedrooms. I had to get the corner bedroom emptied out and ready, and in the process, I started realizing how much stuff I am going to have to give away or throw away. I've been at my house for almost two years, and I have acquired a fair amount of stuff in that interval. Since I'm going to be moving into a one-bedroom place, I have a lot that needs to go. While moving is a pain, it does help keep our possessions from overtaking us.

The amount of work that I have to do over the next month and a half is staggering. I have to sort out what needs to be given away, what needs to be packed, and what needs to be thrown away. And then there is the work that will be necessary to sell the house. I'm just hoping that the whole process goes smoothly, and that I am able to quickly sell the house.

The Exodus of Generals

For the beginning of the war in Iraq, I have held the opinion that the war was mismanaged. If the war had followed traditional military doctrine, we wouldn't be having the troubles we are now. Instead, the war was used as a prototype for the "Rumsfeld Doctrine", which believes that the traditional overwhelming force should be replaced solely with small, agile, precision strike teams. As a result, we didn't have the troop strength necessary to maintain order in the Iraqi cities. The resulting power vacuum led to the insurgency we see today. Many senior generals in the services have the same opinion that I do, as this Washington Post article explains.

I strongly believe that the military leadership needs to be subordinate to the civilian leadership. But I also think that there needs to be a good way for the military leadership to approach the President and inform him that SECDEF is incompetent. It's a pity that the only avenue available today is for generals to resign and express their concerns after the fact.

Delirious? Rocks

Tonight, I went to see Delirious? and Tree 63 in concert. Tree 63 is a little Christian rock band from South Africa, and they are great in concert. One of their best pieces of the night was their cover of Blessed Be Your Name. Forget the cheesy, wimpy, and totally lame versions of this song that you have heard in church. The band managed to turn this song into a sonic-blasting example of what Christian rock should be like. Even their album version doesn't come close to what they can do in concert.

Delirious's performance was excellent, and they managed to seamlessly blend a rock concert with an evening of worship. I have encountered excellent Christian musicians, and excellent worship leaders, but the combination of the two is extremely rare, and Martin Smith manages to do both. Throughout the night, it was extremely clear where Delirious's focus was. I especially liked their rendition of Investigate, which was a much harder and more dynamic version than that which appeared on Glo.

The crowd was slow to warm up tonight, but that is probably due to the concert being held on a Wednesday night. There weren't nearly as many high school and college kids as I would have expected, and the energy they would have brought was missing. The crowd eventually warmed up, but I can just imagine what Delirious would be like performing for something like Cloud 9. If you were to couple an energetic young crowd with Martin's amazing energy levels (I don't think he ever sits still), the results would be totally amazing.

Off to Virginia

At the end of May, I am going to be leaving the wonderful town of Ann Arbor and moving back to Virginia. I am really going to miss my friends, the town, and the midwest way of life. But, on the plus side, I'm going to get back all the time I spend traveling, and it will be nice to consolidate my life in one place. I'm hoping that I will be able to build a social life in Virginia, and not let all my time get sucked away commuting and working.

Random Thoughts on a Sunday

It was a nice sunny day today, so I took the bike out for a quick ride today. The weather was chilly (this is supposed to be Virginia, not Michigan!), but it was a fun bike ride nonetheless. I need to work on getting myself back in shape, and I can't wait for the weather to warm up a little.

Tonight, I went to church at McLean Bible Church in Virginia. On Sunday nights, they have their Frontline services, which is their ministry to Gen X and Y'ers in the DC area. This was my first time at the church, and it was an interesting experience. While it is only a third of the size of the Willow Creek Community Church, it is still much larger than the Ann Arbor Vineyard, where I currently go. I was impressed by the fact that there were over a thousand young people attending church on a Sunday night - and that was just one of the two Frontline services. Many churches ignore the 18-30 age group, so I'm glad that there is a church that is actively reaching out to them.

I picked up a ticket to the Delirious? concert that is going to be held at McLean Bible this week. Tree 63 is also going to be playing, and I'm looking forward to the concert.

The End of the Weekend

It's Sunday night, and I'm back in Northern Virginia. I can't say that I'm happy to be back here. Today was a great example of why I hate this constant travel. I spent the day doing paperwork and packing, and then headed off to the airport to catch my flight. I can think of a lot of things that are much more fun to do on a Sunday afternoon. On the plus side, the end of my travels is fast approaching. On the minus side, it looks like I'm going to be stuck in the decaying urban sprawl that is known as DC. My interview on Friday went ok, but I don't think it's quite the right fit. The office is relatively small, and the people seem fun and interesting. The problem is, they probably won't need someone locally with my skill set for a while. They do have a slot that they think might be a good fit for me, but it would require me to travel to ... DC. Um, nope. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

So, unless I can work out an alternative within a few days (and yes, I'm desparately looking for one), it looks like I'll be moving back to Virginia. I'm looking at a move to Virginia as a short-term solution (probably a couple of years at most), which should give me some time to figure out where I really want to live and work. I'm really going to miss my friends in Ann Arbor, the quirky little town itself, and the ability to drive anywhere without being locked in gridlock.

So, we'll see if God will pull off a miracle this week to allow me to stay in Ann Arbor. If not, it will be time for me to start packing.