I just ran across a clip on YouTube and for the last two and half minutes I was five years old all over again, grinning wide-eyed and singing along with my old pal Ernie. If watching this clip doesn’t make you smile then you need to have your smiler examined.

Rubber Ducky!

I snuck (sneaked? snucked?) out of my cage just long enough to let everyone know I’m still alive. My whiteboard says (in big, threatening red letter) “2 WEEKS TO GO!” even though, I only have one week and two days (not counting the weekend, which I will probably spend working too).

Anyhoobers. I know I’m missing out on all kinds of yummy news stories this month, but darn it, if I don’t get this project done, they’ll take away my web-guru card and I won’t be able to blog at all!!

I promise to be back at full blogging velocity sometime in early October. (Notice how I kept that really vague. I didn’t even say which October!)

Can I just tell you, I hate being sick. I don’t have the energy to yell about it or anything, but if I did, whoo, what a fit I would pitch.

I started feeling “weird” last Wednesday around the time I showed up at church. My voice was kind of froggy. By Thursday at lunch, I was officially “ooky” and went home early from work. Friday, I fought through the violent, phlegm-filled coughs and actually got some work done, but as soon as I got home, my wife grounded me to the couch for the weekend.

I like TV, but I hate commercials. I also get really grumpy when 100 out of our 120 channels are airing something about terrorism and/or the 9/11 attacks. (The other 20 were either trying to sell me exercise equipment or teaching me the best way to cook squid.*) We still don’t have anything that resembles a TiVo, despite my best efforts, so the weekend was pretty miserable. I watched two movies (Bewitched: 4 grins, Brothers Grimm: 3 grins) and about five episodes of Star Trek TNG. I slept a lot during the day but not much at night.

Now it’s Monday and I’m back at work, still all snotty and coughing, but alive in spite of it all. The show must go on, and in my case, “the show” is a web site that needs to be done by one-October whether I feel like it or not. Three weeks to go. *sigh*

* These statements are false generalizations, but when I’m sick, I can not be held responsible for the truthiness of my writations.

It’s official. I am behind. (No, I did not say, “I am A behind.”) It’s crunch time at work. I am taking the lead on Alt-N‘s new web site design. Not only are we re-designing the look of the site, we are re-writing it ASP.NET, implementing a new content management system, and re-designing the commerce portion of the site to use a new, custom designed web service model for Microsoft Commerce Server. Dave is truly on the bleeding edge with his modifications to MSCS and I’m just hoping to keep up with him.

Anyway, all this is to say my blogging will continue to suffer at the bottom of my priority list for at least another two weeks. Maybe more.

I have lots of personal news to share and even more topics I’d like to blog about, but I just don’t have the time. I will do my best to squeeze out a couple of posts in the next few weeks, but I can’t make any promises at this point.

Keep the internet warm for me. I’ll be back soon.

I don’t like to bring sad news to my blog. It is, in its very nature, a place to laugh, but I don’t feel much like laughing today.

Last night, we got a phone call that we’d been expecting. One of our “kids”, Rachel, called to let us know her dad went home. He was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor a month or so ago. Rachel, an 8th grader in our youth group, lives with her mom, but was very close to her dad. She’s been dealing with depression, frustration, and anger (as anyone would) since the diagnosis and Tammy and I have done all we could to love and encourage her and her mom.

Just past midnight, we headed over to Rachel’s grandmother’s house where he had been living under hospice care. We hung out until about 3 AM when the mortuary folks came and took his body.

Tammy’s never experienced death up close. It’s probably the topic she’s most uncomfortable with and I was curious to see how she would handle the situation. She was perfect.

I firmly believe that God uses bad situations to accomplish good things. I think that last night was the best possible way to expose Tammy to this part of life. Since she was not related to the person who died (in fact, we never even met the guy) she didn’t have to deal with her own feelings of loss. Instead she was able to focus her energy on loving those who were hurting. She was exposed to the experience without having to experience it. I’m confident that this will give her what she needs to deal with the experience herself down the road.

It’s funny how our culture has such a hard time with death. I’ve seen cemeteries in Europe where people sit and eat lunch among the tombs as they would in a city park. In some cultures, funerals are celebrations of either a life well lived or a passage into a better existence than ours. In some cultures (sadly), death is praised as an admirable service to god and country, a tool of war.

But here, we avoid it at all costs. We shutter when we drive by a cemetery. We spend most of our life, and a good chunk of our income, trying to cheat death, trying to stay young, anything to keep us from the thought that we will ever die. Why is that?

Personally, I prefer the teachings of Paul: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” I don’t look forward to the process of dying. I know that there are folks who will be very sad when I’m gone. But ultimately, I know that death will be a victory. I know that when I leave this body, I will stand in the presence of God, full of praise and joy that will never end. If you don’t have that same knowledge, I would love to share it with you.

I got the write up done and the pictures posted from the mission trip. Check it out here.

I’m home from the mission trip. I have about 150 pictures, not all of which are worth sharing, but I’m way too tired to cull, resize and crop them. But I promised to get them out ASAP, so I have a zip file of the raw images straight off the camera. It’s a 67 megabyte file, but if you must have them right away, then you’ll be willing to wait for the download. Clicky clicky.

I’ll get a write up done soon, but right now I have to stay awake long enough to put together tomorrow’s Sunday school lesson.

TTFN

Despite the title, this post has nothing to do with my underwear.

My elbow (formerly known as broken) is now fully functional. Last night was the first time I rode my bike on some hard off-road trails since the break. My arm performed perfectly. My lungs, however, did not. Two months of inactivity have adversely effected my stamina and my waist-line. Still, it is good to be back on the bike. To commemorate the occasion, I’d like to introduce you to my old friend “Angry Kid” and his own bicycle accident involving the very same bone I broke. Clicky clicky!

Tammy and I spent last weekend at youth camp with Glenview‘s middle school and high school youth. It was awesome! We learned about surrendering our lives to God, made some new friends, and Tammy got a great chance to get outside her “comfort zone”. (She’s never been real big on sleeping and bathing in such close proximity to other people.) By Sunday night, she didn’t want to leave. Even though camp lasted until Tuesday, she and I had to be back to work on Monday. We look forward to meeting up with the kids at church tonight and hearing about what we missed.

I’ve seen a few movies in the last month or so, and still have reviews to write. Keep your eyes pealed for those. I also need to finish writing the last chapter of our climbing wall build. So much to blog, so little time. Oh, I already told you that, huh? Well, then I guess that’s all I have to say about that!

…so little time. The last few days leave me with a salmagundi of stories and wit I’d like to share, and yet, it’s already a short work week and I’ve got plenty to do. Ah, well. The old blogging will just have to come as it can. I just wanted to whet your appetite a little. There’s much to come in the next week or so, including movie reviews and some great stories and links.

Hope you all had a great Memorial Day. Hug a vet today!

Last weekend, we went camping! Yes! Really! Camping! I KNOW!

I’ve got the pictures and story written up, but it’s really long, so I put it in a separate page.

It was an awesome trip and I have to send out much love and thanks to Haven, Kaela, Miranda, Chris, and Andy. Let’s do this again… in November, when it’s not so friggin’ hot!