busy, blah

I'm working a lot these days. That sounds incredibly familiar.

Tyler is working out so well that it is difficult to grasp. He's working a lot of hours, and has learned an amazing amount, amazingly well, in an unbelievably short period of time. I forget that he's only been at this a few weeks now.

I'm quoting, landing and starting new jobs all the time, it seems.

Corben turned 3 yesterday, we had a "Thomas the Tank Engine" birthday for him. We're trying to get him potty trained, which is a pain. He seems to get it and do really well, then just stop caring and pee under the table or something random like that.

Emma speaks in art. When she wants to say something, she creates something, then labels it clearly in marker.

Abby is sick. She coughed all last night, had a fever and was miserable all today, then threw up this evening.

I love working with the Jr. High and High School Students. I love the students in our little group: Derek, Chelsea, Mara, CJ, Kyle and Christy. I feel a big struggle in knowing that I need to plan activities, and spending time planning spiritual direction for the students I work with. I want to just focus on spiritual stuff, but I know they need to do fun things and go fun places. I'm at the opposite extreme of where I was 10 years ago -- then I was all play, little growth with the kids.

I have been having great meetings with the adult volunteers with the Youth program at Peak. Greg (the senior pastor) and I get along really well, and every time we meet I feel so blessed. I look forward to our weekly (or whenever we can pull it together) meetings.

I miss drawing regularly. I called Dan today and asked about his class. I'm going to try to start carving out some time every week to go. I get really excited about becoming a good painter. I have basic stuff related to "putting what I see onto paper" pretty well down, but I have a huge gap in understanding composition and handling color well.

My camera is pretty well hosed. I think it has a short. It has lost several screws and part of is has come off. It drains new batteries in an hour. It still takes decent pictures, but the battery thing is too much of a hassle, so I haven't taken any photos in weeks.

I have a new guitar. I got money for Christmas and my birthday in December, which I have saved along with a little more since then. It's a semi-hollowbody electric modeled after the Gibson ES335 - Chuck Berry's guitar. It's a beatiful guitar. I think I'll play it in church this Sunday. When I feel like killing some batteries I'll take some photos of it and post them.

I've read all my friends' blogs recently. I didn't even have the energy to comment on most of them. Happy Birthday Emily, if you happen to read this. I know I'm a few days late. Hi to any of the rest of you who check in as well.

If you stop by, say hi. Thanks for popping in.

Quiet lately?

WELL here I am, at my desktop at 11pm on a Wednesday night.

I missed the weekly men's breakfast at Silver Grill today because I worked until 1:30 this morning on a project I needed to complete.

We had youth group at Peak tonight, which went well. We talked about the Church as Community - as God's plan to show his love to the world. I thought it went rather well. We've decided to stop pretending we're a big group and to start meeting at someone's home. We've been meeting in the church basement, which is fairly large and too well lit to feel cozy.

It was announced last Sunday in church, so I can now officially announce here, that I am the interim youth pastor at Peak Community Church. I have an office at church now. It's all pretty exciting. I meet with the parents of the students this Sunday to answer questions, get to know everyone, maybe take a little heat - I'm pretty sure that comes with the job.

I have found a new favorite web site: Bear Skin Rug - it is well laid out, very clever, the site's creator - Kevin Cornell - does wonderful illustrations. I just really, really enjoy the site.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but a site that I check every day - no matter what - is Digg. It's a community-based technology blog and you can find some pretty amazing stuff there almost any time of the day or night.

So what's really going on these days?

I am very busy building web sites. I am the new youth pastor at my church. We have decided to take Emma out of private Christian school and send her to either a really good charter school (if she is accepted) or our local public elementary school.

This was a very tough decision. Emma has made some friends at her school, she likes it there, we like the school staff. In the end the decision was made because of finances, although we would have gone ahead and continued in spite of this if there had not been other significant reasons. The second reason is that in Fort Collins, it is really tough to get a bad education. Either of the schools we are considering are very highly rated academically. They both also have all the resources that are made available to public schools. Finally, we don't want our kids to live completely inside the "Christian bubble" that we have been wrestling with lately.

I have stopped meeting with my drawing group since I am out in the evenings more often (with the church youth and their leaders). I think that "not drawing" has had the greatest impact on me. I really miss going. I miss the people, I miss creating, I miss the catharsis that I seemed to encounter almost every week, I miss leading the group, greeting newcomers, scheduling the classes. Once things get a little more under control I may try taking a painting class during a weekday or something that doesn't tie up my evenings or weekends

Part of what I miss is related to the "Christian bubble" thing we're dealing with lately. As I step into a staff position at church, I will be forced to close doors on other parts of my life. I don't want to close doors on "the outside world" - this would be doing exactly what I am trying to teach the students not to do..

I am tired. Tyler starts working with me full-time (or at least half-time) next week. I have been trying to keep my workload very high so he has something to offset when he becomes available. I definitely need some rest.

On that note, I head to bed.