Category: Personal News

A church recent­ly vol­un­teered to pur­chase bicy­cles for Paula and I. That’s a super-prac­ti­cal way to sup­port our min­istry since the cam­pus is so vast!

Any­way, the pas­tor asked me to research bicy­cles and let him know what we need­ed.

All the bicy­cle sites online seemed to be focus­ing on upper-end triathalon-type bikes, which just aren’t what we need. So I start­ed think­ing about it, and I real­ized that Mor­mon mis­sion­ar­ies prob­a­bly know more about the type of bicy­cles we’re look­ing at than any­one else.

So I decid­ed to do some research, and I was amused to find that there is a com­pa­ny that makes spe­cial­ty Mor­mon mis­sion­ary bicy­cles. In fact, that’s all that they sell–and no one except Mor­mon mis­sion­ar­ies can pur­chase them.

I love this quote: As for theft, long a prob­lem for mis­sion­ar­ies, Spence notes: “If you see a hip­pie guy with long hair rid­ing a Lia­hona down the street, and he does­n’t have a shirt and tie on, you know the bike’s not his.”

I knew that the Mor­mons have spe­cial Mor­mon under­gar­ments (which I under­stand Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch wears), but I had no idea they had spe­cial bikes as well!

We just dropped Paula’s par­ents off at the air­port. I hope they have a good, safe trip back. I also hope noth­ing gets confiscated–Paula’s mom had some cuti­cle scis­sors tak­en on the way in!

In case you’re won­der­ing, it was a pleas­ant vis­it. We went to San Jose, San Fran­cis­co, Big Basin (where we saw some tru­ly impres­sive red­woods), and San­ta Cruz. Woohoo!

Men­tion­ing San Jose reminds me: I recent­ly dis­cov­ered that San Jose is actu­al­ly larg­er than San Fran­cis­co (both in terms of land mass and pop­u­la­tion). It’s the third largest city in the state–following Los Ange­les and San Diego–and the eleventh largest in Amer­i­ca.

That real­ly threw me for a loop. My whole life I’ve thought there were two big cities in Cal­i­for­nia: Los Ange­les and San Fran­cis­co. Once again, my Gen X geo­graph­ic illit­er­a­cy races to the fore!

On a per­son­al note, my in-laws are vis­it­ing right now.

It’s pret­ty amazing–relatively few peo­ple want­ed to vis­it us when we lived in Spring­field, MO. Now that we’re in the Bay Area, it seems as though we have a new guest every week­end!

In any event, my in-laws are vis­it­ing. At one point we began dis­cussing Leonar­do Da Vin­ci’s Last Sup­per, and I men­tioned that there were no chairs at that meal–the par­tic­i­pants were all reclin­ing.

That lit­tle tid­bit of triv­ia trau­ma­tized my moth­er-in-law. I think she felt slight­ly betrayed. I always try to bear in mind that the lit­tle details I learned in sem­i­nary can real­ly dis­turb peo­ple if com­mu­ni­cat­ed improp­er­ly, but this one kind of caught me off-guard.

Sor­ry!

As I men­tioned a few post­ings ago, there’s an arti­cle about us in Aca­di­ana Chris­t­ian.

I just heard from the edi­tor of said mag­a­zine that it’s now online, so now you can read it!

Here, in a bla­tant attempt to get linked, I’d like to men­tion a blog that I’ve been read­ing with great enjoy­ment for some time now: Heal Your Church Web­site by Mean Dean Peters.

He mus­es on church web­sites, how to make them bet­ter, and all sorts of oth­er issues per­tain­ing to the web (par­tic­u­lar­ly the Chris­t­ian cor­ners of it). Here’s my lit­tle blurb about it (for his blurb con­test): he’s a ver­i­ta­ble micro­celebri­ty among Chris­t­ian web­heads. (How’s that, Dean? note: Dean got back to me and would pre­fer some­thing describ­ing his site: try a haven from the Jesus junk clut­ter­ing the web, or an irre­sistible mag­net for Chris­t­ian web­heads, or cast­ing down every vain web­site that makes peo­ple think Chris­tians are lame, or where­in a micro­celebri­ty among Chris­t­ian web­heads preach­es good design, or giv­ing Chris­t­ian web­sites a bap­tism of fire, or per­haps even goad­ing Chris­t­ian sites to move beyond spin­ning cross­es. But here’s my fave: where­in a Chris­t­ian web­head does bat­tle with the forces of kitsch)

FYI: here are some oth­er blogs I try to check on a reg­u­lar basis (no par­tic­u­lar order):
Jor­don Coop­er: cool Cana­di­an min­is­ter
Andrew Carea­ga: author of sev­er­al books & a Charis­mat­ic youth pas­tor I met at a con­fer­ence
Nic­ho­lette Lock­wood: a stu­dent from our last cam­pus min­istry (read her tes­ti­mo­ny).
Joshua Sar­gent: an AG pas­tor who stum­bled across my blog
Wil Wheaton: yes, he used to play Wes­ley Crush­er on Star Trek. No, he’s not a Chris­t­ian. I just find him inter­est­ing.
Richard & Christie Browne: friends from Mis­souri
Joel on Soft­ware: I just like this guy’s approach to pro­gram­ming

And two metablogs that I vis­it:
Blogs 4 God: a cool col­lec­tion of Chris­t­ian blogs
blogdex: I’m just fas­ci­nat­ed by this tool. It’s the Yahoo! Buzz of blogs.

The oth­er day I got a phone call from an old friend of mine (Dan­ny Dard­eau: his sis­ter and I were in Chi Alpha togeth­er, and his broth­er-in-law was my roomie) back in Louisiana.

He’s begun a Chris­t­ian mag­a­zine called Aca­di­ana Chris­t­ian and the mag­a­zine decid­ed to fea­ture us in a mis­sion­ary spot­light!

We haven’t seen the issue yet, and it does­n’t seem to be post­ed on their web­site, but we’ve already had friends and fam­i­ly men­tion see­ing us in ‘that Chris­t­ian mag­a­zine.’ That’s pret­ty cool!

This is a bit of a ran­dom entry, but I’m about to send out a post­card to all the church­es in my new dis­trict, and I’ve had the hard­est time fig­ur­ing out what the rules and rates are for post­cards.

You’d think it would be extreme­ly easy to find that infor­ma­tion on the US Post Office web­site trans­porter 3 online , but it’s not.

After much search­ing, here are the basic rules: post­cards cost $.23 to mail and must be between a min­i­mum of 3–1/2 inch­es high by 5 inch­es long by 0.007 inch thick and a max­i­mum of 4–1/4 inch­es high by 6 inch­es long by 0.016 inch thick.

I don’t know if you’ll ever find that infor­ma­tion use­ful, but by blog­ging it here I’ll save myself a huge headache next time around!

Today I got one of the best birth­day presents I’ve ever received–a cit­rus tree! Actu­al­ly, it’s three cit­rus trees in one. I’ll name it trin­i­ty. A com­pa­ny named Willits & New­comb spe­cial­izes in cit­rus trees, and make these “cock­tail” trees by graft­ing two or three vari­eties onto one trunk. Quite cool!

This one will bear Valen­cia Oranges, Eure­ka Lemons, and Bearss Limes!

This is one real advan­tage to hav­ing your moth­er-in-law come for a vis­it right before your birthday–you get great gifts!

This is almost the last bit of news on my mom’s vis­it: she’s leav­ing Tues­day morn­ing…

Today we went to church at Penin­su­la Chris­t­ian Cen­ter, the church Paula and I have been attend­ing since mov­ing here.

After­wards, we came home, had some PBJ sand­wich­es, and passed the after­noon lis­ten­ing to the Penin­su­la Sym­pho­ny play a free con­cert at our apart­ment com­plex! Evi­dent­ly Oak Creek apart­ments are a big spon­sor of the sym­pho­ny, so once a year they come do a free con­cert for us. Pret­ty cool.

That made me start think­ing, how­ev­er. How can an apart­ment com­plex afford to spon­sor a sym­pho­ny? The answer: pret­ty eas­i­ly. Oak Creek Apart­ments has 759 units. Rent­ing those at Bay Area prices means they’re tak­ing in around 1.5 mil­lion dol­lars each month. Even if they had 50 employ­ees and paid them $100,000 a year they still would clear around a mil­lion each month. Pret­ty neat busi­ness, that.

We wrapped up the day by grilling some steaks. Fun stuff.

Today we took my moth­er to vis­it Mon­terey Bay Aquar­i­um and San­ta Cruz Wharf.

As far as I’m con­cerned, Mon­terey Bay Aquar­i­um is the best aquar­i­um in the uni­verse. It’s amaz­ing! If you ever get a chance to vis­it it, you have to go. If they ever put the sev­en won­ders of the world to vote, I’ll serous­ly con­sid­er cast­ing my bal­lot for this attrac­tion. It is sim­ply breath­tak­ing.

After spend­ing four hours in the aquar­i­um, we were quite ready for sup­per at the Bub­ba Gump Shrimp Com­pa­ny (yes, like in For­rest Gump). It was pret­ty neat, and the food was good. We even got our pic­ture tak­en with a For­rest Gump imper­son­ator!

Final­ly, we vis­it­ed the San­ta Cruz Wharf at the north end of Mon­terey Bay. It was pret­ty neat, although the sea lions weren’t too frisky.

Over­all, it was a pleas­ant day spent roam­ing North­ern Cal­i­for­nia.