on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 9:08 pm • No Comments
a.k.a. how you know you haven’t really gotten settled yet…
Imagine my chagrin, upon putting the onions and meat on to brown and turning to the cans of tomatoes and beans that were awaiting chilification, to discover that, quite inexplicably, my kitchen lacks a can opener. Despite being still occupied by its resident for the past year who, quite demonstrably, has a number of cans in the cupboard.* Odd.
In any case…I ruled out the idea of an excursion to fetch a can opener, and was just getting ready to ask the neighbors to borrow one when I discovered my recently purchased Swiss Army knife, with “4. can opener” emblazoned on the back of the still-unopened packaging. I spent a couple minutes trying to work out the bootstrapping problem of how to open the package of a knife packaged in packaging requiring a knife to open it, then found the scissors and was soon on my way to culinary bliss….where I remain.
on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 6:51 pm • No Comments
Hello! It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything…sorry about that.
This past week I’ve been busy getting ready to move to my new apartment, ca. ten blocks south of the VS house. That move finally happened this morning. (Elapsed time from when Meryl arrived with the truck until we had everything unloaded at the new place: about half an hour. Although, keep in mind that the truck had already been half loaded, and the few bits of furniture I own were delivered in a previous trip.) I’ll post more pictures sometime when I’m less exhausted, but here’s one to tide you over. From the covered porch looking southwest out toward West Seattle:
Isn’t it pretty? And here’s aiming a bit more directly West, toward downtown:
Notice how I strategically failed to show you any of the inside of the apartment in its current state.
Shout out to all my friends who are also getting settled in new surroundings!
Err, hello, MATH, people! …I guess maybe you get a $200 bonus for lasting the hour?
There, happy, jrosei? No, seriously, sorry about the lack of bloggage, folks. (Is that a blog jam? Writer’s blog? (pronounce with German accent)) I must have been too caught up in that thing called “real life.” Forgive me. And maybe I’ll even post something substantive real soon now.
on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 10:13 pm • 5 Comments
Tip 1: When getting ready to leave for church on the morning you’re presenting the sermon, don’t neglect to put page 1 in your backpack along with all the other papers you printed out.
Tip 2: Drink your coffee before checking over your notes, so that it doesn’t take you 3 times to notice that you’ve forgotten said page (the last being 10 minutes before the service starts).
Tip 3: Practice your sermon well enough ahead of time that you can recreate portions of it from memory (scribbled hurriedly on a spare piece of paper) if needed.
Fortunately I was ready for #3 despite failing #s 1 and 2!
Amusingly (in retrospect), this is almost exactly the scenario that occurred in the stress dream I had two weeks ago, just prior to presenting the same sermon at the other Mennonite church in Seattle.
on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 10:22 pm • 1 Comment
I just posted a quarterly report for Mennonite Voluntary Service, which serves as a recap of the past 3 months and a bit of a window into what I do all day long.
on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 8:21 pm • No Comments
70-degree sunny weather + being lazy on the porch with housemates + reading outside + 8-mile bike ride + baking bread and delivering it to friends + (free!) Mariners game + Mariners actually win + coffee with friends after church + (free!) choir concert + making a few extra bucks with some freelance programming + chatting with old friends online == one happy David
(minus any work completed on the sermon I seem to have agreed to give next Sunday, but we’ll get to that eventually…)
on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 11:45 pm • 1 Comment
I took Tuesday morning off work, to see the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu speak on a panel along with representatives from a number of different faiths on the topic of compassion. Afterwards, I participated in the 600-member choir and orchestra which performed the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. Thanks to Seeds of Compassion for organizing this event.
The discussion was amazing and I’d encourage any of you interested to check out the complete video webcast which is available here. The one from Tues. Apr. 15 is the one I was at. (You can spot me in the choir at 02:27:43 and a few other moments if you look carefully.)
One highlight of the morning for me was the following extemporaneous mini-sermon by Desmond Tutu (in response to the question, “How can you learn to not be so hard on yourself? How do you learn to redeem yourself for a mistake?”):
… It would be awful if we didn’t get angry when you see someone, for instance, violating a child. That would be awful! And so it is something to be thankful for when you lose your cool. That is quite important; it says something about a person. If you were to be indifferent, hearing that children were being killed in Darfur, I would get worried about you! And so I’m glad that you get upset.
And about the things that actually get to upset you… I get really angry with God. I mean I’ve…I’ve…rrrrrgggh!! You know…how can you–how can you?!–let this, that, and the other happen, you know. And the God that we worship is incredible, in a way. He says, “Yeah… You know, I gave them a gift of freedom. And they can use it that way. And I can’t do…I can’t do anything! Okay, get mad at me. Get mad at me; I’m glad you’re getting mad.”
And sometimes…I laugh easy, but I cry quite a lot as well…so, I cry. But I want to support you…for goodness’ sake, God has all of eternity to work on you. You and I are a work in progress! And if we slip — this is one of the wonderful things about God! — God doesn’t say (you know, if you make a mistake), “AAH! Good riddance to bad rubbish!” God…God picks you up, dusts you off, and says…Try again! And when you mess it up again, God says…”Tough luck. Come on, let’s try again.” Dusts you off… “Come on, try! Try…and try…” Because this God is a three-miles-per-hour God. Walking at our pace.
on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 9:36 pm • 3 Comments
I’ve been working a lot lately. Like, 110 hours in the past two weeks a lot. Mostly because I agreed to help RedPost Inc. (where I worked last summer) prepare the software for their new and improved Signbeta, a simple digital sign / photo frame which can be controlled via our website. (If you need to distribute content to a bunch of physical locations quickly and easily, check it out!) So that has consumed many of my evenings…It’s been an exhausting two weeks, but fun.
Today I scarcely touched the computer — a much-deserved break. Instead I hacked at the blackberries (an ongoing project), mowed the lawn, took a walk, finished The Kite Runner, ate some soup (thanks Meryl) and played the piano. Lovely!
on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 11:31 pm • No Comments
Check out this interview with Van Jones from tonight’s Colbert Report:
Van’s organization Green for All is promoting the creation of “a green economy that is strong enough to lift people out of poverty.” Check out the website — we’ve been working hard on it at ONE/Northwest, I did much of the skin implementation, and it just launched this afternoon. (I spent much of the evening nervously watching to make sure the extra traffic following the Colbert interview didn’t overwhelm our servers.)
