Peter

A friend of mine shared a "devotional thought" today that I found quite interesting.  Peter probably lived his whole life hearing the rooster crow in the morning.  After he denied knowing Christ for the third time, he heard it again, in a completely different way.  It wasn't just a random sound for Peter, but it's the first sound of the day.  For the rest of his life he probably asked himself each morning after he heard the rooster, "Will I serve him today, or will I say again, 'I never knew him'?"

Spring Break and a new computer

This is my first blog entry on my brand new computer.  I pulled some strings with the FedEx people in order to get it on Friday night rather than waiting until Monday afternoon.  Anyway, it's a Macbook, and I'm having a lot of fun learning how to use it.  I even accidentally initiated a video conference chat with one of the pre-installed programs.  I clicked something on the screen and my friend who lives in Washington D.C. all of a sudden showed up on my screen, so we talked for awhile.

Spring break is drawing to a close tonight.  It wasn't really THAT much of a break.  I worked four days, did taxes, filled out a FAFSA, and took a really difficult Greek exam.  Fortunately, Elizabeth and I did get to have SOME fun.  On Thursday afternoon we drove to Laramie, Wyoming for dinner.  It was a fun little road-trip.  On Friday we "took the day off," and drove to Silverthorne to do a little shopping at the outlet mall.  Don't tell, but we also took a little detour on the way home to do some gambling -- a sort of belated birthday present for my wife.  She's had a tougher week than me.  In fact, as I type she's working on a really tough test for which she was advised to set aside 20-25 HOURS.  Ridiculous.

So anwho, I'm mostly just having fun typing on my Macbook right now.  Elizabeth's laptop has a broken "h" key, so any time you try to type an "h" you have problems.  You kinda get used to it, but now that I DON'T have problems, the world seems different!

Oh, and I did my taxes all by myself.  TurboTax helped me out with my Federal and Colorado state forms, but the California and Iowa taxes were just me.  I hope I don't ever have to file in THREE different states in one year again.  It's nuts.  If I ever move to a different state I'm gonna do it at midnight on New Year's.

Wife

My wife is fantastic. She just makes me smile so much. Today we were hiking in the foothills with another family and I just grinned because of how excited Elizabeth was. She smiled the whole time, she oohed and aahed over every little flower, dog, bird sound, cactus, and shrub along the way. She loves God's creation more than just about anyone I've ever met. I hope to have that much of an appreciation for the Lord's handiwork someday.

Thanks Elizabeth. You're the greatest wife a guy could ask for.

Weekend

Easter weekend was quite a rush. We had some friends visiting on Friday afternoon from Arkansas, so we took a tour of the Coors brewery. Then my folks with their four foster boys arrived Friday evening to stay for a couple of nights. Eight people living in a 1-bedroom apartment is kind of interesting, by the way. We had a lot of fun with my family, though. They left early on the morning of Easter, which was also my birthday. It was a good day. Elizabeth and I went to the early service at church, and then made red velvet cake when we got home. We went out and saw The Bucket List in the afternoon, which is a very good flick. I would recommend it to you. It was the first movie we've seen in a theater in almost a year (since we got married last July).

My wife got me a Jason Witten jersey for my birthday, which is super sweet. It's one of the throw-back jerseys the Cowboys only wear on special occasions. She's a sweetheart. I also bought a computer yesterday. It should be arriving in the mail later this week, and I'm excited.

Today is the first weekday of spring break, though it hardly feels like it's gonna be a "break." My wife and I both have tons of schoolwork to do this week, as well as multiple other tasks to take care of -- and I'm still working all week long. We might get out of town a couple of times for a few hours this week, but that's about it.

Debate

I had an argument with myself today. I realized that I already have a facebook account, and it seems like you can do just about all of the things you can do in a blog with your facebook account. That's when I started arguing. The beauty of facebook, you see, is also its curse. Facebook makes it so easy to find out stuff about almost everyone you've ever met. You click on a friend's profile, which reminds you of another friend, so you click on theirs, and you look at pictures of them and then you see a picture of another friend and you're curious about them so you check out their profile and so on. I'm confident that people view my facebook profile fairly occasionally just because of the nature of facebook. This blog feels much more private. It's much less convenient and easy to find people here. You can't really stumble upon my blog by accident like you can my facebook profile.

I eventually conceded the argument to... myself.

Wailer

When I was in college I wrote a daily e-mail (which eventually turned into a bi-weekly or less e-mail) that I called the Wailer. The name was a spoof of the daily campus news e-mail, the Crier. It was basically my chance to just write whatever I wanted. My distribution list began with about 50 names, and then I only added those who e-mailed me requesting to be added. At its peak, the Wailer was being sent to just over 300 e-mail addresses per day. I had a great time writing it, because it didn't make any difference whether or not anything I said was important, logical, humorous, or even if it made sense (most of it didn't). I think part of the joy of writing the Wailer was that my audience was so abstract to me. I mean, most of the people reading it were my friends, but I wasn't handing them a hard copy and standing there while they read it. I wasn't giving oral presentations of each day's Wailer. I was merely sending out an e-mail to hundreds of people, never really knowing if anyone at all was reading it or laughing at it or getting upset over it. To me, my e-mails were completely isolated from everyone else. It felt like writing a blog. You never know who is reading, and it doesn't make any difference. It's an outlet.

Pilot

This is my first attempt at a blog. Let's forget that I'm coming a bit late to the party and embrace the idea that I showed up at all.

Let's start by laying some ground rules. Do not be surprised to find references both subtle and obvious to the world's all-time greatest television show, The West Wing throughout your perusal of my blog. I am a huge fan -- not because I love television, and not even just because it's a good show. I'm a fan because it's an amazingly engaging piece of work. It stimulates thought at all kinds of levels. After being introduced to the show by a college roommate, I have had the privilege of converting a host of others. They include my brother and his wife (and I'm pretty sure her whole family), one of my best buddies from college and his new roommate, and my wife. My wife and I are currently about a third of the way through the sixth season (there are seven) and we're beginning to wonder what we will do when we finish the series. Probably start right back over!

I'm not entirely sure what blogs are supposed to be used for. If I can figure out how to post photos and videos, I'll likely do that on occasion. Otherwise, I will probably just use this as an outlet to muse a little bit over stuff that I'm learning at seminary and in life. Happy reading.

Break's over.