Whiskerino... over.

Hiatus from the blog for the Spring/Summer. Let life get the best of me, but I think I'm finally back on my own two feet and ready to do this.

Realized I never showed the final Whiskerino update.

From clean-shaven on November 1st, to full-bearded on February 28th.

Whiskerino progress...

Joined up on Whiskerino... November 1, clean shaven. By Feb. 28th, you should have one grand beard. Here's the progress so far:











Day One -- cold face after having a beard for a few years.











Day Two -- getting my Monday started...











Day Three -- One of the artists that I co-produced, played some guitar, bass and keys/programming for is now in the top 10 on the inspirational charts, just above Matt Redman and Kutless, and just below Mark Schultz and Steve Fee. I was pretty proud.

The one on the right was my original post, but I didn't read the fine print and was in violation of the rules. However, still an interesting moment. More pics to come as the beard returns to full fruition.

Been awhile...

It's definitely been awhile since I've done any updating to the ol' blog here... things are keeping busy as usual. Working the weeks away and before you know it, months have passed and here we are.

So sentence fragment recap? I think so!

Since my last post:

Summer. Work. New York City. Newark. Dublin. Driving a van on the wrong/right side of the road. Leading worship in Ireland. Driving the van on the wrong/right side again across the entire country of Ireland again. Bed and Breakfast in Bunratty, IE. Bunratty Castle in the rain. Ireland's famous Durty Nellie's for dinner. Fermented grape juice isn't frowned upon in Ireland. Cliffs of Moher. Lunch in Ballyvaughan. Smoke Salmon in Ireland is really only smoked (not exactly cooked). Blood pudding exists. So does Guiness, and in large quantities in Ireland. Back to New York. Back home. Back to work. Back to summer. Summer's gone. Winter, nope, wait... summer again. Fall. Summer again. Summer and winter in the same day. Lead worship at a conference in Tulsa. 3,000 people. Cool lights. Good sound. Good band. Excellent videos. Saw my mom. Loaded up the trailer and drove home in time to lead worship at church and go to a U2 concert. Best concert of my life. Second best concert being Coldplay. Work. Wife and I's random trip to Austin. Dinner on Lake Travis. Walk down 6th street. Unfamiliar with Austin, so movies and much needed rest. Drive home. Work. Halloween costumes and friend get togethers. Trick or Treaters. Shaved the wooly mammoth of a beard off. Posted first picture of my naked face today to start my first Whiskerino experience. Purchased a new MacBook Pro today as well.

That was pathetic! It really has been an excellent few months. But it's a lot to recap. Forgive me?
Then take a moment to enjoy some of the pics from Ireland. Top pic is me doing worship at the youth convention in Dublin, Ireland. The bottom 2 are taken by Durty Nellie's Pub, which is right in front of Bunratty Castle in Bunratty. The other guys are the other lads from the band we took to Ireland. Enjoy!

I need...

to create. to emote. to blog. I'll do something soon... promise.

home improvement...

*Uhhhggghhhaaa* (think Tim Allen's grunt on Home Improvement)

I feel like a man... a real man.
We just happened to go to Lowe's today, which always makes me feel pretty masculine, but today we decided, "Hey, let's buy a new chandelier for the dining room and a new light over our bar in the kitchen"...

It was somewhat of a planned impulse buy... something we'd planned on doing for awhile, but something we just didn't have time to do nor money to buy.

So we are looking through the lighting section at Lowe's, and we find the one's that we want... a neat chandelier and a light that hangs from a cable with a very very cool glass colored bulb thing that covers it... so we get all that stuff and then make a quick trip to Wal-Mart where we bought this outdoor clock to put out on the brick wall on our deck.

When we got home, I had a LOT to do... so I immediately got to work... the first thing I did was begin drilling a hole into the brick in the backyard... 20 minutes later, I had a hole and a masonry screw in the wall with a clock hanging from it! One down, 2 more projects to go.

Next I went to take down the old light... disconnected the old wiring, and stripped cabling to reconnect the new light with the new wiring. I decided, "eh, you know what? I'm good enough at this, I'll go ahead and put the cool glass slash semi-expensive bulb colored cover thing on"... you can already tell where this is going. Yep! Got the wiring connected and as I was was fixing to put the screw in to hold the light fixture in place, it all came tumbling down and the cool glass slash semi-expensive bulb colored cover thing shattered into about 1000 pieces over our living room, kitchen and dining room. So Jamie took another trip to Lowe's to get a replacement cool glass slash semi-expensive bulb colored cover thing... and now, voila!

After that, I went ahead and did the same thing to our current chandelier, stripping the wiring, getting the new one ready to hang. Let me tell you, this was the first time I've ever installed a chandelier, so the whole "chain" thing was totally trial and error... and it took me an hour to install.

But it too turned out good... except we broke TWO energy efficient bulbs (which I guess are highly toxic with mercury?)... so then we spent the rest of our night cleaning the floors, vacuuming up multiple sections of broken glass and bulbs, and then making sure our house was mercury free... which is slightly impossible to tell.

So hopefully we live through the night and all is well...
I do indeed feel like a man... I felt as though I did some pretty intense home improvement projects today! Doing some electrical wiring and ensuring the safety of all eating at our dining room table underneath our newly installed chandelier... ha!

Marathon blog...

It's been a little while since I've blogged... a lot has actually happened since I last wrote which is one reason I haven't written...

So I'll try to give the 'cliff notes' version.

Let's start with Mac, our Yorkie. We got Mac on New Years Eve and he was a welcome addition to the family... for the first time in our marriage, we had something other than ourselves to take care of and, although trying, we instantly became attached to him and found ourselves treating him like our own child. Mac was always a very laid back pup, liked to sleep a lot... we thought this was normal for most puppies as we've read, so we thought nothing of it. Within a weeks time, Mac went from what we thought was a normal puppy, to a blind puppy... Our 10 week old Yorkie pup was blind and his health was quickly declining... energy level was non-existent, and it was a pretty tough thing to watch. We learned a lot about what may or may not be wrong with him, and spent literally every day for a week at the 24-hour emergency vet clinic. After a few over night stays (and a lot more money than we had to spend), Mac's condition worsened until the evening that it all just became evident he wasn't getting better. The following morning, we were there as the doc put him down... I really never thought it would be as hard as it was, but it was definitely a tough situation for Jamie and I. Really tough... We later found out he had a liver shunt which would've eventually killed him or we could've spent the 2-3000 bucks for the surgery. (2-3000 we didn't have).

Long story short, we were devastated as you can imagine... but the same day some friends found out about losing Mac, and blessed us with our new pup, Macy. She's a pretty incredible dog, and we now instantly realize how an energetic Yorkie pup is supposed to act. The dog is everywhere! Literally, everywhere. Afraid to sleep because she's afraid she's going to miss something... sounds a little like my nephew!

So that's honestly taken up the majority of my life the last few weeks! I swore much more happened in the few week break I've taken from the old blog, but I'm afraid that's gist of it all.

In the meantime, I've started doing some design and video stuff again! I've forgotten how much I miss spending hours in Photoshop and spending 3 hours to animate a 30 second clip in AfterEffects... yup! It kind of makes me want to get back into it full-time. You never realize how much you actually miss doing something until you're not doing it anymore. (of course)

Thursday night, the wife went out with some girlies, so I went out with a few buddies to a last minute Charlie Hall show. The thing about Charlie is that, although he lives in Oklahoma City, he plays Oklahoma City maybe 2 to 4 times a year... so I knew that I would have to go! The show was actually an acoustic-esque "storytellers" evening, in which they would play songs off of the new album and explain his thought process behind each song. It was actually one of the most relaxing evenings I've had in awhile, just sitting and listening to some good music... the show itself was in a pretty small venue... with about 100-150 people in attendance. They were turning people away at the door because of fire-code issues. It was good running into a lot of random acquaintances at the show as well, and getting to hang with a few of the guys after the show.

But what I'll leave you with is something that totally impacted me that evening. They did a song called "Mystery", which, I've listened to before, but it came to a new light that night. I tell you what... I'll just post a video of them doing it at the bottom, as well as the lyrics... hopefully it means as much to you as it now does to me. Thanks for enduring the marathon blog...



Sweet Jesus Christ my sanity
Sweet Jesus Christ my clarity
Bread of heaven, broken for me
Cup of salvation held up to drink
Jesus the Mystery

Christ has died and
Christ is risen,
and Christ will come again

Celebrate his death and rising
Lift your eyes, proclaim his come
Celebrate his death and rising
Lift your eyes, lift your eyes

Patience...

2008 was a year of patience.
I don't quite remember asking God for patience, buttt...

Now that 2009 has started, the ante has been upped and now seems to be the most trying times so far.

Here's to patience and endurance!