So it’s the second day of school, beautiful late-summer evening, work piled up a bit today, let alone reading that needs to get done for school… And what do I do?

SPEND FOUR HOURS IN A BAR!

Yes, I am a bar-room degenerate…  I was over at Old Chicago’s from 8pm until Midnight!!  That’s nuts!  I went over there thinking I was going to be there for an hour, maybe two, BUT NOT FOUR!?!  What started simply was Michael and myself sitting at at the bar eventually turned into a group of 10 people moving to table in the dining room.  For a brief while I thought Michael and I got stood up by all of our friends, but Karen and her guy Ryan came to the rescue.  Then 9:45 roles around and all of the sudden we have people surrounding us who I don’t even know!  A bit nuts… 

Now I know what you’re thinking, but no, I wasn’t sitting around drinking the whole time.  I did have the equivalent of about three beers during those four hours, and ate one of those mini-pizzas they serve at Happy Hour, but a good deal of my time was having some very engaging discussions with a lot of my friends I haven’t seen in a while.  It was really nice to be able to make those re-connections, catch up on how everyone is doing, laughing a lot, along with hearing some very thought-provoking words.  I especially appreciated the discussion I had with my friend Christian regarding Spirit Fire and the state of things at John XXIII.

Reflecting upon our talk I’m once again feeling nostalgic for the "good ol’ days, and when thinking about just how much things have changed it really blows me away.  At the same time, it’s refreshing to know that people who are tied to once was are still around, and at the same time are very committed to campus ministry.  It really inspires me to do my part to support those people, pray for them, and do what I can to offer any help.  At the same time I feel very affirmed with where I’m at with NCSC, and greatly appreciate the opportunity I have to connect with amazing students who are very passionate about campus ministry (and who are more aligned with my theology).  I would like to find some way to bring that connection back to J23, specifically with the students who are struggling in finding their place at our changing church…  Something to think about for the rest of this week.  More on this topic to come…

Well time for bed, long day tomorrow.  I need to keep on top of things and spend no more time in bars this week!

Hahaha I came across something this morning that made me laugh pretty hard – a good piece to all of the Dave Matthews haters out there.  As a big fan I found it pretty funny too, mainly because I hear this all the time from people who used to be fans.  Some of my favorite lines were:

"I was so blown away by everything I did—especially my live performances. I remember me and my buddies used to drive for hours just to go to one of our shows."

"Rock music with a violin? I don’t know," Matthews added. "Seemed cool once."

"I used to talk for hours about my music or spend a whole night in a DMB chatroom," Matthews said. "But now, the people at the shows seem like such geeks, standing there with their elaborate taping equipment. They’re really, really young, too. What do I have in common with them? They’re just a bunch of kids who need someone to look up to. Why would I look up to me? I’m so 1997."

And even though I shouldn’t have to point it out, I will – the Onion is weekly satirical paper, so obviously this interview never happened

Oh and 2 & 1/2 weeks until Red Rocks.  My tickets get shipped tomorrow!

So thus ends my first day of classes..  It’s back to school time and you can just smell that chalk dust in the air..  Well I can’t – because this is another semester of on-line classes for me..  Another semester where I’m not cool enough to go to an actual classroom.  Actually, it’s more like I’m really slammed at work and between my job and all the traveling I’m doing this fall semester I thought it’d be in my best interests to take on-line classes.  So right now I’m only taking 2.  I’m thinking about adding another one on, but we’ll see how things go.  I’m already looking forward to the spring when I’ll actually be going to a class again!

While this marks a big change from summer-time to fall for most of my friends, the biggest change is that I’ll no longer have time to play 3-4 games of Madden per day, but rather only 1-2…  Actually there are more changes for me, but it’s mainly that I need to find some good solid time to get my reading done, as well as caught up in all of my assignments.  Right now I feel pretty good about being able to manage my time, especially when I’m not working from home as much and going into the office a little more often.  The change of environment really encourages me to be productive.

It’s funny to see the changes that happen in Fort Collins when school starts. There are some good changes and some really bad changes.  The good changes is that the Old Town night-life really picks up, and the city is a-buzz with activity.  The downsides is that there seems to be more traffic, and things are just overall more crowded.  All summer long I was one of three people in my apartment building that was living there, and it seems that literally overnight the parking lot is now full and everyone is busy doing their own thing.  On Friday night I came home to find that my next door neighbor was having a party…  Looks like things are getting back into routine.

A few nights ago I made the mistake of going to Target on the day that Freshman move into the dorms.  That was one of the worst ideas ever – that place was a freakin’ zoo.  Between freshmen in there with their parents getting things all situated, along with the brand new room mates that didn’t start moving into their place until this afternoon, Target was a total mess.  It seemed like every section of the store was packed. Then I went over to Best Buy (oh, during this whole time I was working on accessorising my new camera), I’m standing in line and there are these two girls in front of me.  One of them has this "Nintendo GameCube Starter Set" complete with the console, extra controllers and a few games, then her room mate had 5 2-packs of movies…  Okay, so what’s wrong with this picture?

1) What are two girls doing with a Gamecube?  Now I"m not saying that girls don’t play video games, I know a few that do, but when was the last time you saw two girls buying a game console?  I might be stereotyping, but virtually all the video game-playing girls I know got hooked on it because some guy in their life (either a brother, boyfriend or guy room mate) had the video games…

2) And what the heck are you doing buying all this entertainment crap 4 days before school starts?  While everyone else in line was buying laptop accessories, keyboards, memory sticks (all the basic back-to-school stuff) you guys are stock-piling video games and DVD’s?!?  This is going to be one fun semester for you guys!

3) When it came time to pay one gal put most of it on a gift-card she had, then put the rest on her credit card with the other girl saying "I’ll pay you my half later".  When it comes to room mates, this is always a bad idea.  If you’re making joint-purchases with your room mate, 99% of the time someone’s going to end up getting screwed.  When the end of semester/lease comes, you find yourself battling with them about a fair price for the other half of what you want.  The monetary value is never what you think it is, and then it becomes worse when people mix in sentimental value into the item ("well the TV is worth more to you because you watched it a lot more than I did").  This is never a good idea – I have the battle-scars to prove it!

So yes, maybe a few nerdy observations here, but the way this line was moving I had A LOT of time to think about this kind of stuff!

Oh, so I finally took a picture with my new camera…  And it seemed really appropriate that my inaugural picture for my new camera was of people who are very important to me – my family..  And as you can see, I was not actually the photographer of my camera’s first picture:

My mom, my sister Amanda, (me of course), and my sister Christina

Then my second picture was of me with my Broncos season tickets before I had to tear the first pair off for the first pre-season game:

More to come later, but for now I must get going to bed, as I have yet another full day ahead of me!

Ever since the game came out last Tuesday, I’ve been consumed my that game.  Okay, well maybe not consumed – but it’s sure taken up A LOT of my free time!  Ugh…  Right now I’m playing as two teams (Broncos & Eagles), and I just finished up with Week 5.  2 games per week, then the 4 pre-season games, which means that I’ve played 18 football games in the last two weeks!  Ugh!!!  At least next week I’ll get all busy with school and my Madden addiction should taper…

On a plus-side my stats are doing pretty well.  I’ve had some trouble with the Eagles playbook so I’m putting most of my stock into the Broncos (of course…).  What’s funny is that every year I blow the rest of the "league" (run by computer) out of the water on offense, then my defense is always pitiful, but this year it’s a complete 180.  The Broncos & Eagles are like 27 & 28th in the league on Offense, but in defense, they’re 1st & 2nd respectively.  After 5 games my Broncos have only allowed 489 total yards and 7.9 points a game! It’s been nuts!

Okay but enough about football – back to the real world…

Yesterday I met the sweetest, most precious & beautiful little girl – one that I am lucky and proud to call my God-daughter!  Little Sophie Elizabeth was born on Monday night, 7 pounds 9 ounces!  I got to meet her for the first time on Wednesday and she was the cutest thing!  I got to hold her for a few minutes, and she was so peaceful in my arms!  It’s amazing to experience the miracle of life, and a true gift of love in such a little person   I’m glad to say that Mom is doing great as well!  I can’t wait to get back down there to see the two of them soon!

Other things going on:

I picked up my Broncos season tickets on Tuesday!  I am so excited, just getting to hold both sheets of 10 tickets and thinking about all of the fun this fall and winter will bring.  I’m going to be paying for them for quite some time, but it’s all going to be worth it!  1st home game is on Saturday, which is a pre-season game, but I’ll be staying up here and playing at church…  My first game probably won’t be until the home opening on Sept 18th…  I’m still wondering what I’m going to do on that Christmas Eve Raiders game…

Also my new camera came in today!  I got it all unpacked and am reading through the manual and getting really exciting about it.  I charged up the battery (and bought another battery pack – these rechargeable lithium ion batteries are new to me – usually I was happy with the Energizer AA’s), got a case, went through the features, but I have yet to take a picture.  It’s kinda funny, but I’m putting a lot of thought into what my first picture with my new camera will be.  You want it to be something special – it’d be too cheesy to just take a picture of my desk or the wall or something like that..  I should at least take a picture of a  pretty landscape, or a good friend or someone in my family…  Hmmmm..  So yes, the camera has yet to go off..   Any suggestions on a 1st picture?

And with that I am retiring my old digital camera.  It’ll be making the trip next week up to Boston and MIT with my sister Amanda.  Hopefully it’ll give her many good pictures to come.  The last pictures I took with that camera were of the NCSC July trip here in Colorado, and the picture count was at 3641.  I’d say I got my money’s worth out of it   I hope my sister gives it a good home!

So a few more days have passed and with it not much time to post, but I’ll try to see what I can do to get caught up on where things are at:

So an update on a few lingering things…  I finally wrapped up the whole situation with the web page, ending with me identifying another contact for the web site.  It was a bit of a painful process, I spent quit a bit of time composing the emails that I sent to them, and I got some pretty interesting responses.  For those who are interested, I have posted the emails, and you can read them.  I have taken the liberty and removed any specific names (remember break down situations, not people).  If you really want to know who I was exchanging emails with you can go their staff page and figure it out, but it’s not really worth it.

• Email #1 – Me to J23 Staff, Monday 8/8
• Email #2 – J23 Staff member’s response to my message, sent about 4 hours after I sent my original message
• Email #3 – My 2nd email to the staff, sent about 4 hours later, early Tuesday morning (8/9)
• Email #4 – J23 Staff Response to my email, sent late Thursday 8/11
• Email #5 – My resignation announcement sent to J23 Leadership community, Fri 8/12

So that’s finally done with.  The leadership email went to roughly 85-100 people, as of right now the response has been pretty minimal.  I got one or two nice notes from people, but it’s been quiet – almost too quiet.  Which then gets me back to wondering: all the people that would have cared about this – are they all gone now?  Have things changed that much in our faith community that virtually all of the institutional memory has been wiped?  It might sound harsh, but that’s been something that I’ve really been thinking about and praying about when asking the question, "Where is my place in this community?".  It still looks like I have a lot of questions that still need answering.

I’ve gotten over the bitter, anger, and grieving stages, and have really come to peace to where I’m at with this situation, however there is a part of me that’s still a bit upset that I haven’t heard anything from any other staff members, namely the pastor.  I’ve put 5 years of my life, and countless hours of work into designing, re-designing, developing and maintaining the web site, and you would think I would be acknowledged for my efforts or thanked – I guess not…  Maybe that’s just the way things are at the new J23…

So shifting gears to a few other things.  I ended up seeing Four Brothers with my mom and sister last weekend.  It turned out to be an ok movie. It wasn’t great or spectacular, but it was entertaining enough so that I didn’t regret going.  The biggest highlight of the film for me was the fact that Andre Benjamin (or better known as Andre 3000 from Outkast) had a major role.  I love Outkast and 70% of my love for them is because of Andre 3000.  He did a really nice job in the movie.  Nothing academy-award winning, but pretty good nonetheless.

Speaking of rap-stars-turned-movie-stars, I saw the latest "thug" to add his name to a cast list – 50 Cent.  Who is going to be starting in an essentially auto-biographical movie about his rise to stardom…  Now I don’t mean to pile on the movie before it comes out – but when did it become a requirement that in order to make it big into the rap world you need to star in a movie…  Some recent flicks that come to mind:

• 50 Cent in Get Rich or Die Tryin’
• Eminem in 8 Mile
• Nelly in the Longest Yard
• Ludacris in Crash and Hustle & Flow
• Snoop Dogg in Starsky & Hutch

That’s just off the top of my head.  I bet if I did some extensive searching through the IMDB I could find a ton of other rappers that have starred in movies.  I’m not saying that these people aren’t talented (I actually thought Ludacris did a good job in Crash), but is there any specific reason why there is such a correlation between Hollywood & the rap industry.  I guess in order to have "Street Cred" you not only need to have a wrap sheet, but also a silver screen credit as well.   It gives you the impression that the media is just in one big bed of cross-promotion with each other.  You give us 50 Cent in a movie, we’ll make sure that Lindsey Lohan and Hillary Duff cut an album.

I’m not against artists branching out into different forms of medium.  But do it the right way and let your talent speak for itself.  I admire Andre 3000 in his acting endeavors, mainly because he’s suspended his career in doing acting (their last CD came out over 18 months ago and Outkast hasn’t toured since, no news about a new album).  Or when actors/actresses branch out (Russelle Crowe has a band that plays in clubs, Forrest Gump‘s Gary Sinise has a cover band called the "Lt. Dan Band" – that plays at military support foundation’s fund-raisers.  I just get frustrated when there’s some media fat cat playing Gepetto, pulling the puppet strings while a certain star all of the sudden has a media blitz (new movie, new album, new line of clothes)… 

Then they wonder why the music industry is losing so much money…

One last thing…  I once again spent money that I didn’t have this weekend, this time upgrading my HP Photosmart 935 Digital Camera and buying a brand new Canon Powershot S70.  7.1 Megapixels, and probably a bit overkilling (being that there really wasn’t anything wrong with my 5.3 Megapixel HP), but with my sister going to Boston for school, we decided that I’d sell my HP to my family for way below cost (and I’m throwing in a 512mb SD card in there as well), so that my sister could take that digital to school with her.  Part of the other reason I did it is that I knew I was about 6 months to 1 year away from upgrading my HP, and I’ve been pretty frustrated with the direction they’ve been taking.  When I bought the 935 I bought it with the intention of possibly upgrading that to a more enthusiast model – with a stronger optical zoom, better resolution and better features.  But it seems that since HP discontinued their 945 (pretty much the most advanced model they have), they’ve relegated themselves to producing this mid-range, beginner-class cameras that appeal more to pop culture than the tech enthusiast.  While I was researching the Powershot, I made one last stop over to the HP pages, to look at their most advanced camera, and right next to the image of the camera, here is what I saw:

Hmmmmm…  Now please take it out of the homosexual context, because I’m not considering that – but think about the audience that Queer Eye appeals to: typically a younger demographic, that likes to stay pretty trendy, and is tied to this "flavor of the month" mindset.  Maybe I’m stereotyping here, but I don’t think that the Queer Eye audience cares much about the line resolution in pictures, the boot-up time, time between photos, or the lighting modes that are available – but rather whether or not the camera looks "hip & stylish".  I can understand their targeting of this "flavor" demographic, but at the same time, they’ve really turned their backs on the tech enthusiast – who may some day wish to "grow out" of their camera and graduate to the next level…  For whatever reason, HP’s camera line isn’t doing that.  Which is why I switched to Canon’s.  If I someday outgrow my S70, I can upgrade up to the powerful G6, or (if I find a pile of money) the Digital Rebel XT.

So maybe a bit of a gripe on techno-babble, but these are a sample of the random thoughts floating in my head this week…

…trying to not think about school starting next Monday ….