weekend update

Thank you all who have asked how our little Cougar has been doing. Gina and I picked him up Saturday morning from Demanes. The doctors and staff there are great. I think Cou was happy to see us! All his levels were normal except the liver enzymes. They are normally 100 and his were 700 and 800. They said this means he either ate something toxic or has a virus. Either way, he looked 100% better after getting rehydrated. He's now on a liver pill and antibiotics, which he despises. He spit the liver pill out 4 times this morning and the baytril makes him foam at the mouth. it's exciting.

I spent my weekend at Nwoods, singing for the main service and the middle school service directly after exiting the main stage, which meant doing the set 6 times (not counting rehearsals). Then a bunch of our awesome Reality kids helped set up the high school room for CRAV (our 2-hour worship experience). We rehearsed from 2-4 and then followed Reachout's set with ours. It was an amazing weekend. I'm not even tired today, which is incredible. my abs are a little sore though...

so today it's back to real life. sampling the disgusting lagoon. in the rain. sorting through piles of paperwork. yeah.

well...

this has been an intense week. work has been chaotic.
i haven't been home before 8pm since Sunday.
And to top it all off, i was awoken this morning to the sound of Cougar vomiting. This isn't totally out of the ordinary, but he hadn't done it in the last 3 months or so. But it didn't stop. First in my room, then the hall, then on the stairs, in the dining room, living room, kitchen, basement stairway, and in the basement. The poor little guy hurled at least 10 times between 4am and 5:30am (that I've discovered thus far). I thought maybe he had just eaten something that didn't agree with him and went back to bed at 4:15. When I got up to go to the gym at 5:30 I looked all over the house and couldn't find him. Normally, he's pawing my face at 5:00 because he's "starving." I finally found him, curled up on my chair in the living room. He would barely lift his head and couldn't stand up. In a panic, I called Gina (who else do you call for a 5:30am cat emergency?). She raced over (because she's an angel and I needed her). After a call to the emergency hospital, we decided to wait until 7:30 to take him to the regular animal hospital, two blocks away. The doc said he had a fever of 104 and was dehydrated (obviously from all that covered my floor). They were giving him an IV, antibiotics, doing blood work and possibly x-rays, all to the tune of $434-475. ouch.
I don't think he's covered by my insurance, even though he is treated as a child. He was crying in the back room as we left the office. very sad. Hopefully he'll bounce right back after his stay and be up to his old shenanigans by tomorrow night.
I miss my Cougar already.

Why it's good to live in the city.

This was once someone's yard...until today. This is what it looks like when your septic system goes bad.

This crazy system had two 1000 Gallon tanks, an electric lift station, 3 separate trench systems, and an old 1500 sq ft. sand filter.



So much for landscaping.
It took about an hour to draw all of this up. nutzo.

What I do for fun...

While Cougar was at home looking over some files...
I was out sampling some septic system effluent. Now there are two basic methods for taking a sample: either there is a horizontal PVC line buried beneath the surface with a vertical sample port line that stands in the yard, or there is a horizontal pipe that discharges onto the ground surface on a slope (ditch or ravine). The first method requires using a stick with a cup on the end to reach down through the vertical sample port to collect effluent running through the horizontal line. This is a pain, because you have to bring a sample stick with you and make sure it doesn't touch anything to contaminate it before the sample is taken.

Yeah, that's correct, don't "contaminate" the poo stick. gross.

So, I prefer sampling the surface discharging systems because you just stick a bottle under the pipe and collect some water. Simple.
usually.

Yesterday, I had to hang from a tree branch with one hand, while holding the bottle in the other to reach out over an 8-foot sheer drop into a ravine and collect a sample.
Today, I found this little beauty.

That's about 12 feet to the bottom. And everything was wet and muddy.

I braced myself with one hand on the top of the pipe and leaned out ever-so-cautiously over the edge.
I love my life.

Food for thought.

Just some fun little items I came across in the past week of food inspections...

This is supposedly a bucket of sanitizer. hmm...doesn't look very sanitary to me.

Recognize the buckets? Now they're being used to scoop out flour and breading. So whose grubby little hands are going to be digging in the food to get ahold of the rim?

I found this primordial ooze under the only dishsink in the facility (the logos have been blurred to protect the business's identity).

Looks tasty, huh? Don't order the pea soup.

Here Goes!

Well, it official. It has been announced.
I have joined the high school ministry staff at Nwoods, part-time.
Saturday will be my first day as the "high school associate."
I am eager to dive in! My duties will include managing the band's schedule, rehearsals, etc., creating stuff (graphics, video), room and stage design, heading up a ministry team (probably Worship), and leading a lifegroup. Some of the stuff I've already been doing and the others I greatly look forward to.

This job is an answer to much prayer, searching, and pleading.
For the past year (or several), I have been stretched to the financial limit. On one hand this has been a good thing. I've become much more responsible with the pesos I'm dealt and have taken ahold of my debt. If it can't be paid for in cash, it is not necessary. All that being said, I've still been left with empty pockets, piggy banks, and savings accounts at the end of the pay period. And "the man" still requires more. It had come to the point where another job was necessary. I'd have to quit serving at Northwoods to work elsewhere. This is the current view of my dashboard. It would be nice to be able to afford to fix things (and fill the gas tank = $456,000/week).


And then a position was posted. And here we are.
So thank you for all who were praying for my financial situation! Who knows where this road might lead. Maybe to a career that is actually fulfilling, not draining. Exciting, not mundain. Uplifting, not degrading...

mental wandering

I'm not sure where my mind will go with this post, but I'm going to let loose of the reins and ride.

Our small group started reading Brian McLaren's book, "A New Kind of Christian" last week. It is a fictional dialogue between a pastor questioning if he should be a pastor anymore and his daughter's high school science teacher, who is a philosopher and a Christian.

While we only discussed the first two chapters Sunday night, the conversation was good, and it wandered into other territories which have sparked a flame of intrigue in my little brain.

Firstly: Our current "revision" of what it means to be a Christian stems from Martin Luther and the birth of Protestantism in the 1500's. While there have been changes in the way it has been conveyed, the message is the same: that the "salvation was attainable only by true repentance and faith in Jesus as the Messiah, a faith unmediated by the church." (thank you wikipedia). Of course, this is still concurrent with our post-modern beliefs. However, our generation no longer must have concrete reasons on which to solidify our faith.

We don't REQUIRE an answer to the evolution vs. creation debate. It doesn't matter how many days or eons it took for the earth to become what it is today. We can stop searching for the "missing link" and still be able to sleep at night. We don't know all the answers, we can't have all the answers, and that's cool with us. What we do know is that God knows, and in that we can rest.

The conversation also took a tangent (thank you Charlie) into why certain cultures have developed along with the industrial revolution, age of technology, etc. while others remain "primitive." There are many philosophical suggestions, ecological equations and social theories that may shed light on this, but a recurring conversation with my friend Joe came to mind. In Genesis 11, all the people of the world spoke one language and some of them got together and decided to build a tower to the heavens. And they began to do so. The built and built, higher and higher, until they got God's attention...
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [c] —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

God himself admitted "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them," so he confused the people, to which Joe lends the superhero psyches. He believes that's why we only use a small percentage of our brain and that there are areas of the brain that medicine has found no practical use for. However, I find it fascinating that our modern studies have discovered ancient civilizations that were building pyramids (towers) in all parts of the world. The Mayans, the Egyptians, the Native Americans all spoke different languages and build with different materials and in different styles but they were all trying to get closer to the heavens. Even our modern engineers cannot determine how they accomplished such a feat without heavy equipment.

Did God hit the reset button on the early, superhuman brain?

tangent complete.

that was much longer than i intended. sorry.

just look at that face!

To all the cat lovers recently spurned by misguided small group comments, I give you the Cougar Collection, via the cellphone.

new life in old words.

Yesterday, I received "The Complete Bible Experience" from Amazon. Over 400 actors, singers, personalities, "perform" the bible as never before on 79 cds. I popped in the cd corresponding with my daily reading plan, which was in Genesis. I expected each actor would be reading a book of the bible. But it is more like a movie soundtrack, with the dialogue of each "character" spoken by a different person. The background sound effects and music add to the experience. I followed along in my study bible as I heard "God" speak.
It's just different than reading a page. There is inflection. There are dramatic pauses that are otherwise missed. It just brings it to life and keeps my mind from wandering. love it.
This morning I put the first cd in on the way to the gym to catch up on what I've already read.
Some points of interest:
In Genesis 1, God created creatures of the sea, birds of the air, and then animals of the land, then man. Science teaches that organisms evolved in this same order.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
Who is "us"? God & Jesus? God & the Holy Spirit? All three? God and the angels? Was God talking to his reflection in the water? Hmm...

In Genesis 3, after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve hide from God when they hear him coming. He asks, "Where are you?". Does he seriously not know? He's GOD!

In Genesis 8 when the flood water recede from the earth, where did they go? Formation of polar caps? Back into the atmosphere? cool.

Genesis 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. 2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."
Holy cow. What do you say to that? God APPEARED to him. Was it kind of like when Morgan Freeman showed up in Steve Carell's driveway in "Evan Almighty"? They chat. Then in verse 22, "When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him."
I'm just trying to picture this. God appears out of nowhere, tells Abraham to "nip the tip" and then up, up, and away's back to his holy throne.
18: 1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.
How cool is this relationship? You're sipping some lemonade on your front porch and God comes strolling up the sidewalk. The next thing Abe knows, he's bargaining with the LORD over saving Sodom from destruction. And GOD gives. WOW.

Maybe Abraham had it easier than the rest of us.
He didn't have to rely on faith that his prayers would be heard.
Or that God even existed.
He could ask his LORD face to face.
Kind of a "Deal or No Deal" situation.
The Howie Mandel God.
At what point did he decide to stop coming to earth in flesh? Or was this Jesus?
No, it couldn't be.
Jesus is played by a different actor.