BoldUlysses.com

Driving back from Diane’s parents’ house in Lewisville last night, Luke was sitting in the back seat of the Saturn. The sky outside was dark and I had the radio tuned to the classical station, but turned down low. He was talking to himself about something or other, and I was thinking about the day and the remainder of the evening ahead. Already in a relaxed frame of mind on account of the night driving, the radio caught my attention–but not because of anything in particular that was spoken or any music that was played. The hour had just begun and the NPR news was on. After the anchor finished the news, the DJ (if you can even call them that at a classic station) talked a bit. I had the radio turned down just far enough to be able to pick out the “tops” of their speech, if that makes sense. I could make out the “s” and the “sh” sounds and a few of the lower tones, enough to determine the general cadence of what was said, but I couldn’t understand any of it outright. It felt like I was skimming across the surface of conversation, and the words became a prolonged sound effect, an accompaniment to a frame of mind.

What it reminded me of, after all, was trips to and from Europe on the 767. I never figured out whether what I’m about to describe was just in my mind (doubtful) or had some basis in reality (more likely), but when the in-flight film was being shown, the passengers had the option of listening to it by donning their headphones and tuning the armrest to the correct channel so they could hear the movie. Most of the movies they showed were over my head as a pre-teen, so I rarely put on the headphones to listen. However, the airplane had an in-flight speaker system, the one the pilots use to communicate with the passengers, and I remember the movie sounds emanating from those speakers at the same level and with the same quality as the radio in the car last night–just a series of random “s”, “sh” and “sp” sounds. If the ambient noise in the plane had been less, chances are the sound would have been clear, but the low roar of the wind and engines covered over all the sound except for that top layer. As I said, I never determined whether the sound actually was coming from the PA system speakers or it was just my imagination. Come to think of it, another passenger or passengers in seats around my own probably had their headphones turned up to excess. That’s probably where the sound came from.

In any case, the drive home last night, by virtue of that common element, appropriated much of the same mood as those plane trips, with a dash of nostalgia to boot. I remembered elation, excitement, anticipation, desire for the plane ride to last that much longer (though for most folks they can hardly end soon enough), nervousness about the environment in which we would land no matter which direction we were crossing the Atlantic, and a host of other feelings.

It’s been a long time.

1. When nerdy worlds collide. I enjoyed this greatly.

2. Current books in various states of finished-ness:

• Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku
• Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, by Geisler and MacKenzie
• Moon Shot, by Shepherd and Slayton

3. Penelope is very close to walking. She’s taken a few steps here and there, but doesn’t really grasp the significance of what she’s doing. We think she doesn’t really feel the necessity of it, since she’s a remarkably fast crawler. Over at Diane’s parents’ house on Sunday evening, she was exuberantly (and sometimes over-exuberantly) standing with the aid of plastic bins to pull herself up on. It will be great fun to see her totter along when she finally gets it. She’s a girl through-and-through, dramatic whether she’s joyful or distressed or demanding. And truly the apple of her daddy’s eye.

4. One of Luke’s favorite things at the moment is to go places with Daddy in the evening when I get home from work. I have the feeling he’d be content if I just strapped him in his booster seat in the car after dinner and drove around for 15 minutes. He just likes to be out and about with me, and I with him. We’ll go to stores, but almost never buy anything. Some days we’ll go to Harris Teeter and eat bites of every free sample we can find (including the cookies) and see if we can smell all the spices in the spice section of the store. When we visit Lowes or Home Depot we have our “stations” we always stop at, including the tractors, the doors, the windows, the rugs, the mailboxes, the doorbells and the brushes. Over the summer we took walks around the neighborhood almost every evening. The quickly-setting winter sun has put a damper on that activity, though, so we’re doing what we can to get out. We have a good time together.

Had a good time meeting with James and Rob at Barnes & Noble earlier. We get together for our weekly Bible study / man time most every Tuesday evening. We’re going through 1 Corinthians but the topics we discuss range far and wide. James is something of a renaissance man, interest-wise: intimidatingly well-read, good bead on philosophy and history, great taste in movies, science fiction, a computer whiz, and the list goes on… Rob and his wife and son are leaving around the beginning of next year for Egypt, to be missionaries. He’s a seminarian with a firmly Biblical grasp of all things theological and a winsome manner of expressing the basics of our emphasis as Christians. So during our weekly meetings, while I’m completely outclassed knowledge-wise, conversations are always a lot of fun.

I really get the sense that these are guys I’ll be friends with for a while. Rob points out, correctly, that when married and especially with kids, friendships become more of a discipline than a spontaneous occurrence. That is to say, it takes planning to arrange get-together, in contrast to the lack of premeditation that ruled the day before married life happened. I keep trying to imagine my life right now with respect to the only point of reference I have: my parents. I think about the lifelong friendships they’ve maintained and often wonder about the sequence of circumstances that made certain friendships thrive while others withered. And I can’t really put my finger on it since I’m not them, and chances are they couldn’t remember anyway if I asked them; they’d just say “Oh I don’t know; we just kept in touch.” It’s like trying to predict the weather or the stock market to a certain degree–sometimes (all the time?) you just don’t know what God has in store just around the corner.

But that doesn’t obviate the need to be intentional about friendships, and it doesn’t stop me from trying to figure out the alchemy of their longevity by mining the past. Was it a particular convergence of personalities with my parents and their friends? Perhaps–they all fill different “roles” when they come together as a group and complement each other without any obvious “gaps,” but that could just be my perception–I grew up with them as a baseline, not knowing anything else. Could it be similar social / church circles? Not likely–several families went to different churches and were involved in different community structures, so there was no help from that arena. Similar life situations? Maybe–all us kids are roughly the same age, so I’m sure they profited from a convenient common conversational vantage point. But there are so many couples in our social circles that we could describe as being in the same “life situation” with whom we don’t pursue long-term friendships. The more I think about my parents’ circle of old friends, the more I’m convinced that at some point, by all parties, the decision just got made, whether spoken or tacit: “Yep, this is it.” And from then on, although all of the couples certainly branched out with other friends, it seemed they always reserved a measure of their intentionality for each other. And meetups would regularly occur, as they do now once a year on New Year’s Day, just a few weeks away. Thinking about it, how rare is it that all four or five couples would decide to be intentional about maintaining a long-term friendship with each other in this day and age? How many friendships between two people survive the inevitable misunderstandings, hurt feelings and disappointments, let alone five couples? My parents and their friends are amazingly blessed, and I would count myself blessed to be able to follow their example in that manner. I certainly intend to try.

Seriously contemplating coming back here. Doesn’t seem like that much has changed, and I just need to write. I miss it. I migrated our joint blog to another service for a little while, and even integrated it with our webpage, but I found it harder to write spontaneously there. Kind of appropriate, too, that this new post comes two years to the day after I “signed off,” as it were. So we’ll see. I’ve checked my friends page on occasion and it seems like most folks have moved on. But that was never really why I was here in the first place–although it WAS nice to have an audience. I suppose that collection of motivational factors is common to most bloggers.

I’ve always liked LiveJournal. When I started my journal I didn’t know any other sites, and truth be told there weren’t many. I had no knowledge of the open-source software movement (odd coming from an NCSU alum, where comp sci majors are a dime a dozen), from which LJ came, but I think if I had I would have been even more drawn to it than I was. And although LJ has “sold out” to a degree, what with the ads and all the rest, it still seems like a good place to be, with a measure of user control most other blogs don’t have. So here I am again.

So what has changed in two years? Plenty. I don’t really fancy writing a bulleted list of developments, though, and I’m sure I’d leave some out, so what say I just resume posting and fill in the details as we go along? Deal?

I should bring you up to speed on the basics, though–Diane and I are still living in Winston-Salem, I have a job doing design for a local point-of-purchase display company and we have two kids: Luke, now 4, and Penelope who is 1. I will post pictures by and by, have no fear, but this is intended to be more of a writing outlet than a multimedia repository. Come to think of it, that was one of the reasons I didn’t post more in the other journal–I felt like even entry had to be accompanied by a picture or a video or something of the sort. Well… They’ll come in time no doubt, but this will be first and foremost a text-based endeavour.

By the way, this entry is being posted from our new (old) laptop–an IBM T41–happily running Fedora 10. It’s a brand new release of the venerable Linux distribution and Diane and I are enjoying it very much. Open-source journal software running on an open-source browser (Firefox) running on an open-source OS. Sounds about right.

We’re back. Sorry for the several-month outage there; I was lax in updating our hosting account and my PHP function call had an easily-corrected error that made the blog inaccessible.

Lots to tell. We’re back from the beach after our yearly trip last week, Penelope had her first birthday on August 30th and Luke is getting bigger and bigger. As they say, watch this space.

I finally sent out the notification e-mail for our new design business. No interest yet (not that I was expecting any after two days), but only very sweet e-mails from Mom and Mrs. Wall. I picked up our business cards a couple of days ago too, and that, to me, was the most exciting part of it–having something physical and tangible, as opposed to the quasi-virtual environment of the web and even print design, makes the whole endeavor seem more real. Not only that, but it motivates me to really invest and be diligent in doing the things I need to do to make sure this gets off the ground.

I’ve been learning PHP at work and home. It’s a very powerful and flexible web programming language that allows you to make interactive websites, and not just static “brochures.” Many, many online forums, e-commerce sites, blogs and news pages are programmed using it. I’ve just started, but already it’s a lot of fun to be able to create forms and such that output differently based on user input. Learning it, I have to restrain myself, slow down, code by hand, do little self-generated exercises and really absorb the language. I figure if I spend an hour every day working on learning it, and after PHP, MySQL (database language), then before long I’ll have the ability to make full-fledged e-commerce sites for people. That will be a nice tool to have in my belt. Yes, as a male, that’s really how I see these things.

I finished the Soviet SST book. It was well-written overall, though there were many passages that smacked of redundancy from earlier paragraphs. Having been written in 1989, before the fall of the Soviet Union, it was a little dated, but I enjoyed doing research to fill in the book’s speculation over now-revealed aspects of the Tu-144’s development and service life.

This is next on the reading list. I’ve started it, and already I’m impressed with the sheer scope of Edwards’ knowledge. He writes about insects, rainbows, theology, philosophy and among other things, a subject I always find compelling, aesthetics. His examination of what makes something intrinsically beautiful, excellent, right and pleasant is fascinating to a designer who is very much concerned with creating things that elicit an aesthetic response. Contrary to popular perception, very little of design is arbitrary, never mind the specific concentration (graphic, web, industrial). There’s a reason and a worldview fragment behind every almost every decision, every line and curve. So much of our lives is multidisciplinary in nature, and while the older philosophers, scientists and theologians seemed to see this, I wonder if we haven’t lost something in the fragmentation of expertise so prevalent nowadays. I really do want to know as much as possible about everything, and I feel utterly safe in that desire knowing that a good, rational, transcendent God created and sustains the universe. That foundation undergirds and ties everything together. How could anyone approach the pursuit of knowledge consistently and, dare I say it, honestly without that foundation? Goodness… There are volumes I could write on this, but for now suffice it to say that I’m very much enjoying Jonathan Edwards.

Kind of an embarrassment of riches in my cubicle at the moment…though I’m sure it’s nowhere near the concentration of monitors Paul has–I hear that he has at least half a dozen displaying various weather radar maps and schematics from divers areas. But I do enjoy having multiple screens. The closer I can get to the interface in the film Minority Report, the better.

Interface design is one of the big challenges of industrial design. Think about what we have to do just to communicate via a computer versus communicating with our friends in “real life…” At least on the phone we have the benefit of voice inflection–trying to get a point across with these machines means we have to squeeze our thoughts through our fingers onto keyboards with keys that were expressly designed to slow down our communication speed. And then reading it on a screen–using only one of our senses when face-to-face conversation involves sight, sound, gestures, sometimes contact and all the rest. It’s a complete bottleneck. At least with an interface like, for instance, the one displayed in several scenes in The Matrix: Revolutions, where the operators used intuitive movements and so much more of the available space around them… I witness those things and get excited about the prospect of technological progress in that way–the potential for increased efficiency, the sheer intuitiveness of it all… It’s an industrial designer’s dream.

Maybe a better way to approach the issue would be to imagine a world without computers, but the knowledge that they could be and had to be invented–starting with a completely blank slate (and we may be the last generation that can easily imagine such a scenario), would you really design a computer with a screen the size of a large piece of paper, with a little plastic lump with two buttons on in to your right and a plastic tray festooned with little lettered squares under your fingertips? I surely wouldn’t. We get used to these things far too easily and become so entrenched in the technological status quo. Infrastructure pops up and our habits dig in all the more, when really we should be learning, growing, moving, progressing…

…And in a perfect world we would be, and there would be nothing to fear from the movement. But human nature being what it is, doubts, hesitations and reservations appear in lock step with every bit of philosophical prodding. And the human mind so easily falls into the trap of thinking because we can do something, we must do it. Technological progress gets corrupted just as easily as the next thing without the filter, the foundation of a biblical worldview to rein it in. This is essential.

* * * * *

Lots of web goings-on these days. I finally purchased a separate hosting account for sufferndesign.com, so that’s up and running, and the full ImageWorks site is up, both “sides” designed by yours truly. Not only that, I’m doing a bit of reverse engineering on a e-commerce template purchased by the company in order to incorporate the look and feel of the current site, with which management is very pleased. It involves dealing with a lot of server-side code, something I don’t have a whole lot of experience with, and it’s .asp (Microsoft’s proprietary server-side web language) to boot, so I’m not a fan of that… But while it’s a challenge, it’s not insurmountable. Onward…

I’m in the midst of revising the website a tad. As many burgeoning designers are wont to do, I got overambitious and made too much site for the content that I had, imagining the content would magically appear and fill the empty space. But time and reality dictate a better approach: Make the initial site small and expand it as content expands. It’s certainly not hard to do.

So I’m taking down our two “non-blog” links and redirecting the “Design” link to the new Suffern Design page, currently under development. When that’s done it will have its own standalone URL. The “Links” and “Gallery” links will remain, pending content. I found a great gallery management program called Lightbox that I’ll be using when I get some pictures formatted, so look for that.

Just some housekeeping. Carry on.

Diane sent me this article this morning. Read it–the whole thing. I commented afterward that it is, in large part, a sort of Closing of the American Mind for the internet set–it has the potential to have that large of an impact if widely read. Not only that, but I fully expect these sorts of articles and studies to become increasingly frequent if thinking people have enough good sense to take a step back, a step away from the screen, and think critically about the internet revolution very much in progress. But for starters, the article is very much a must-read.

Appropriately enough, a few days ago I made my first trip the library in several months, and was startled with the realization that I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it. Looking through the directories, scanning the call numbers on the sides of books, finding the section I was looking for and browsing the adjacent titles… I missed it. I picked up a couple of books on web design, the collected works of Jonathan Edwards, Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans (one tome of a much larger series), and some, shall we say, “recreational reading:” Soviet SST: The Techno-Politics Of The Tupolev-144, which I’ve been enjoying very much.

I don’t think I would be overstating the case to say that the entirety of my consciousness enjoys the experience of the library: my memory enjoys the recollection of frequent trips to our neighborhood location with my mom and brothers, my emotions are satisfied with the serene experience of delving into a thoughtfully-written book, my mind is engaged in whatever material I’m reading, and above all my spirit praises and thanks the God Who gave us the creativity to make and communicate and disseminate thought in this way–more than that, Who Himself communicates to us through the written Word. The whole scope of the experience agrees with me.

Just a little bit of snake oil, tin foil
It takes so little charm

Really been enjoying the Weepies lately, although I will say their latest album, Hideaway is something of a disappointment, being slightly more “poppy” and less “folksy” than their first. For a band that straddles the line between the two genres as well as any I’ve heard, a seemingly small shift like that is fairly significant with regard to the subtleties of their sound. Deb Talan’s voice is less affected and more straightforward (read: less interesting) and Steve Tannen sings on fewer of the songs than he did previously. Don’t get me wrong–it’s still a great album, but the first seems to lend itself better to repeated listens.

We found a new home for Brie, our kitten. Diane’s allergies were out of control, to the point where her eye developed welts and she had to visit the eye doctor, and Luke, although he loved her, was absolutely terrorized by her. Imagine being 4 years old, strolling from one side of the house to the other and being ambushed from behind the couch by a frisky, unpredictable kitten, standing on her hind legs, paws flailing. She hardly even used her claws, but loved to bite and nibble, which was enough to spook him continuously throughout the day. It got to the point where he would go into his room and shut the door just to get away from her.

Diane had had the feelers out for a new home for her for a few weeks now, and on Saturday my father-in-law came through with coworker of his who had just moved down from Michigan and whose family was looking for a new kitten. We made the arrangements, got Brie all packed up, they dropped by in their conversion van, we visited for a little while and Brie left with her new family. It was sad, yes, but like I told Diane, they really are the perfect “distance” from us, in terms degrees of separation: not so close that we see Brie frequently enough to really miss her, and not so distant that we’ll never heard about her again. It was a blessing to find her such a good home.

Music recommendation: Jose Gonzalez. Despite the name, he’s of Swedish extraction. His style resembles “quiet is the new loud” artists like Sufjan Stevens and Kings of Convenience. Most of the songs on his album Veneer are pensive, intimate songs played in a minor key. The musical structures are simple but on repeated listens reveal nuggets like odd time signatures and carefully placed strums. Highlights include “Heartbeats” (an excellent cover of a The Knife song) and “Stay in the Shade.”

I first heard Gonzalez about a year ago on Radio Paradise, which I used to listen to far more frequently before they cracked down on audio streaming here at work (bandwidth issues), then a few months ago I heard him do an excellent cover of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.” The funny thing about all these artists I recommend is that I have absolutely no idea how popular they are. I haven’t listened to mainstream radio in several years–I have no idea what the stations are here in Winston-Salem–and we don’t watch television, so I could be unknowingly recommending the it-band or artist. It would be like if I lived in the mid-’60s and told everyone, “Hey, there’s this great new band you should listen to! They’re called the Beatles and they’re really good.” But… As I say that I’m reminded that talent transcends popularity to a certain degree, and just because they’re popular doesn’t mean they’re not good; quite the reverse in the case of many, but not all, and recently not even most, bands and artists.

This kind of thing is so telling. It makes two things crystal clear: The distinction, in academic circles at least, between “science” and “religion” is rapidly disappearing, especially with quotes emphasizing “the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning.” And those who write these articles and adhere to their assertions are absolutely blinded to the logical and practical absurdity of trying to live honestly with such a worldview. Science is no longer just a tool, a means with which we can gather objective information about the world–it has evolved (pun intended) to the point where it can provide us with meaning itself. Not only can science describe the facts, it can tell us how to interpret them in light of a whole other host of ways we think about ourselves, or so the intelligentsia would have us believe. Amazing.

Been listening to a lot of Derek Webb lately. He’s one of those artists who had bounced around the periphery of my music consumption for a long time and I’ve just recently given a second listen. Diane’s been a fan for ages, and we even included one song on our wedding soundtrack. The only album we have is She Must and Shall Go Free, and despite the overuse of certain poetic descriptors and adjectives (freedom, dressing, wedding imagery) it’s a gorgeous album, theologically dense, and even the “overuse” mentioned above I suppose could be a sign of thematic cohesiveness. I particularly like the song “Lover” for its hymn-like quality and deliberate gait. It reminds me anew of the utter beauty of God’s character and the theological ideas we study that flow from it. It’s so easy to get bogged down and treat them like a dry, dusty academic subject until we remember that concepts like “atonement,” “imputed righteousness,” “redemption,” “sanctification” and all the rest are rooted in the very character of the Lord and are Truth and Excellence and Perfection defined. Beauty, in other words. Good listen.

It’s been too long since I posted and I feel slightly guilty about that. During the last hiatus at least the site was undergoing a revamp, but I can’t use that as an excuse this time. In any case, it’s just hard to feel inspired these days. Or more precisely, the opportunities where inspiration and time converge are few and far between. I’m reassured, when I read old journal entries, that the paucity of my current output has more to do with lack of time than lack of thoughts or insights to share. Those still come fast and furious, and Diane gets the bulk of them whether she likes it or not (I trust she does).

Penelope has found her first word, or the first sound she’s made that resembles one, and I’m quite pleased with it. When the mood strikes her, indiscriminately (as far as we can tell), she will say “Da-da… A-DAda…” She probably doesn’t mean anything by it except exercising her nascent speech skills, but hey, I’ll take it for all it’s worth. She is beautiful and round and BIG. It will be a sad day when she completely outgrows her Baby Bjorn. She’s almost there, and it’s her favorite place to be, really. No crawling yet, but she certainly knows how to roll over and reach for things. Her preferred means of investigating is to point. If something comes within arm’s reach that she has to figure out, she will curl her little fingers up, extend her index, and feel it with only that one finger. Sometimes, especially with Granddad’s mustache, she will use both hands and do a double-barrel point.

Luke is speaking in nearly full sentences now. He seems to have mastered, for the most part, the you-I distinction, and now calls Mommy and Daddy by name, which is wonderful. His favorite thing right is Google Earth and zooming from place to place and in and out with Daddy. He loves to visit the Space Needle in Seattle, Crater Lake, the Burj Dubai and Ayers Rock. We try to limit his time, not wanting viewing anything with a screen to become too much of a habit, but it’s fun when we do get on there.

Also, we’ve adopted a kitten. She is, as of this writing, twelve weeks old, pure white, and her name is Brie (like the cheese, the horse in the Narnia book, or the town in LOTR, though those last two are spelled differently). She is, bar none, simultaneously the sweetest and most playful cat I’ve ever seen. She loves people, and cozying up to people, and she also loves tearing around the house, attacking the furniture and anything that moves (and doesn’t move) and terrorizing Luke even though he’s an order of magnitude larger than she. He’s finally getting used to it, but having her jump out from behind the couch at him, paws flailing (claws always retracted) was distressing him for a while. Poor kid.

This post was started about a week ago, but on account of divers things I haven’t completed it until now. The pictures don’t have much/anything to do with the paragraphs they’re next to, but I haven’t got our Gallery working yet, and I figured you all might appreciate seeing some images. Enjoy!

Aaron and Casey’s wedding a couple of Saturdays ago was wonderful. It was in Durham, and Diane and I and the kids made a weekend out of it, traveling back to Chapel Hill on Friday and returning on Sunday. Diane and I went to the rehearsal dinner on Friday night and I participated in some “groomsmen activities” on Saturday morning. Aaron is a triathlete and most (all?) of his friends are at the least very athletic, and at the most pretty hardcore like himself. Saturday morning we convened at the rehearsal dinner location and embarked on a “nice, easy” run for the better part of a hour, after which we played water basketball in the UNC pool. I was exhausted for the rest of the busy day, but it was good for Aaron in that he was able to get some jitters out through the exercise. All the groomsmen (myself included) had a lot of fun, too.

I miss the people in Chapel Hill. I grew up with them, but it’s more than just nostalgia or familiarity–these are godly families: warm, hospitable, caring, thoughtful, genuine, strong, and the list goes on… Diane felt the same way, and she’s only met them a few times. We think about our own family and there are so many traits and qualities about them we would emulate. A common link between my family and many of those in attendance at the wedding is homeschooling. Talking with my mom afterward, though, I decided that while homeschooling certainly provides a framework within which family relationships can more easily be as they were designed to be, it’s not a foolproof structure. The foundational element is a Christ-centered family worldview and parenting approach. The families are believers first, homeschoolers next. And we’re committed to perpetuating that example.

Luke has been loving the Play-Doh lately. He makes letters and numbers and takes pieces from some of his puzzles and presses them into the clay. He’s been drawing and writing (yes, writing) a lot too, and with his grasp of phonetics can actually spell most words in a rudimentary way. For Grandpa he’ll sound out and write “Grampa,” for Jupiter it’s “Jupitr” and for Pterodactyl it’s “Tradactl,” and so on. He’s becoming more conversational too and this really shows around the dinner table, where we’ll talk about the day, say funny words and imagine scenarios.

My daughter is 8 months as of yesterday. Still no “Mama” or “Dada,” but utter glee at most things and an all-consuming desire to do everything she sees her brother do, including walking and talking.

Eating mini Milky Way bars as an after-lunch treat reminds me of skiing in France. French students go to school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and a half day on Saturday, with Wednesdays off. Also, the schoolday finishes closer to 5 p.m. than to 3 p.m. like it does here in America. But the free Wednesday is a great break in the middle of the week. In the winter, my mom would send my best friend, Timothy, and I off on a day trip to the nearby ski resorts further up in the Alps. I remember playing a prodigious amount of handheld LCD gaming and really solidifying my friendship with Timothy. For energy during the day-long skiing, my mom would pack miniature candy bars in most of my coat pockets–European candy like Mars bars and Lion bars. Like Milky Ways, though, they contained caramel, and I remember my semi-frozen fingers fumbling and they unwrapped a bar on a chairlift, only to discover the bar itself was half-frozen as well and took a few minutes to thaw in my mouth. I remember darkness too… Those trips punctuated the winter weeks, keeping them from running together and fixing my memory on details like the trip home in late afternoon when the sun had already set and I squirmed on the scratchy fabric of the bus seat, unable to find a comfortable position to assuage my tiredness. Still, I wouldn’t have traded those days for anything.

Initially excited at the prospect of the “official prayer” of the National Day of Prayer being given by Ravi Zacharias, Diane and I were disappointed and dismayed to read the actual text of it. Not only does it leave out any reference to Jesus, in Whose Name we pray to the God the Father, as Christians, it fails to provide any mention of humanity’s greatest problem: SIN. Instead of pointing out our rebellion from God and our need for a Savior, it asks tepidly for guidance to elect one who will “respond to the wisdom from above.” I understand that NDP is supposed to be a “multifaith” event, but how could any self-professed Christian stoop to such levels of watered-down, universalist pragmatism as to pray that prayer? Where is the gospel? Where is Christ and Him crucified, the only thing Paul resolved know in the Corinthian church? Needless to say, Diane and I were let down. But, as she rightly pointed out, it reminds us to guard ourselves from idolizing our favorite apologists/leaders at expense of biblical truth.

Another interesting article from BusinessWeek. One of the owners of my company and I had a conversation about this very thing yesterday. We’re both of the opinion that something’s going to give on the energy front fairly soon–but that economic, and not political forces will propel the change toward more economical energy sources. As much as politicians pander for support by embracing the new environmentalism, there’s little any legislation will do, or do well, in effecting that change. It just won’t take until companies and people make the choices for themselves, en masse, and aren’t coerced. And anyway, if worse comes to worst and people are compelled to live closer to their places of employment and stores and have to rein in their spending and become “less affluent,” would that really be so bad? One of the most dangerous things we can do is to cling to our standard of living with a tenaciousness that defies all reason and sense.

Diane sent me a link a few days ago to a post on a blog written by Daniel Radosh. He’s not a believer, but he’s written a book called Rapture Ready, favorably reviewed by most of the biblically-grounded, thinking Evangelical establishment, in which he discusses his experiences with “Christian pop culture.” I haven’t read it yet, but it’s certainly on the to-read list.

The link Diane sent addresses “Christian Rock” and specifically the question “Does it suck?” Even though he’s a self-described liberal humanist, Radosh argues “no” and lists some very compelling songs by Christian bands to support his argument. In addition, he posts a video of a debate between himself and another cultural critic about the above question. If you know me at all, you know I have several ready-made tirades against the majority of the Christian music industry and the worldviews that fuel it, so I was naturally very interested in the outcome of the debate. It’s crude in places, and Radosh’s assessment of Christianity (what current Christians make it, versus what it really is: propositional, historical, revealed truth) is off, but I was pleasantly surprised at how correctly he describes the mindset of a genuine, culturally-engaged (but not saturated) believer. It’s free from most of the usual cliches and stereotypes proffered by many humanists. Good listen.

As mentioned a few entries down, Luke is very near to going through that phase nearly every boy does–being passionately interested in dinosaurs. It’s mainly on account of them being emblazoned on his new big-boy underwear, but really, dinosaurs has all the earmarks of a perfect interest for him even without being on his undies: big, exciting animals and lots of different kinds and configurations to memorize. I’ve been running with it, drawing dinosaurs with the sidewalk chalk while outside and making dinosaurs from Play-Doh when we play indoors. Today I made, among other things, a Stegosaurus, and made it do a few things. One of Luke’s favorite Play-Doh games is when Daddy makes something go potty, and he was enthralled to see the Stegosaurus go. Later in the evening, he and I were at Lowes shopping for some yard supplies and he was wound up and excited as we recalled the experience of watching the Play-Doh dinosaur go potty. He was giggling as I made the sound effect of going potty, and as I mimicked the voice of the Stegosaurus saying “There’s my caca,” he yelled out at the top of his voice “THEY WERE ALL FLOATERS!” Ahh, Luke…

Mom and Dad visited yesterday and we finished the fence in the backyard. It was wonderful to see them and work and eat and talk and share. The rain was intermittent, and late in the day we were treated to a nearly complete rainbow arcing across the sky in the east. It reminded me very much of the ones I used to see in Florida after spring and summer rains. We could barely see the reverse rainbow a bit above the main one.

Penelope is really developing her own personality; meaning, she’s starting to come up with many of her own expressions. Late in the afternoon she devoured some banana baby food (her favorite flavor) and inhaled some carrot juice from Mommy, all while giggling and laughing like a 60 year old French stereotype. Diane and I were crying we were laughing so hard. Her mouth is alternately “box-shaped” and triangular when she smiles and laughs. She’s absolutely beautiful. It’s like she’s just discovered laughing and is really living it to the hilt. Diane puts a lot of effort (well, at least some intention) into the single curl that sits atop her head; she is the very definition of “baby.”

Most expressions and idioms in other languages don’t translate directly; that is, word for word. But interestingly, the English expression “That’s a piece of cake,” referring to the ease with which something is performed, does translate directly: “C’est du gateau.” Well, nearly enough at least; the French literally means “That’s cake,” but the difference is negligible.

For all you Hem and Over the Rhine fans out there, check out Say I Am You by The Weepies. It’s an unfortunate band name, but the neo-folk they craft is literate, meticulous and uses metaphors that sound like they haven’t been recycled from other songs. Some favorites are “Gotta Have You,” “Citywide Rodeo,” “Living in Twilight” and “Stars.” The band, a husband and wife team much like OtR, is democratic about singing duties. The husband handles most of the downtempo, more contemplative fare, whereas the wife (who has a particularly charming voice) takes care of the less brooding songs. Recommended.

Luke is almost fully potty-trained. We ceremonially disposed of all his remaining diapers on the night of his birthday last Thursday, something he had known was coming for several months. Diane bought him a few packs of brand new underwear (one set is dinosaur-themed, which he likes very much), and we told him that from that day forward there would be no more diapers, but only big-boy underwear. Anticipating a nightly disaster scene, we lined his bed and set out an emergency cleanup kit. But to date, knock on wood, we haven’t needed it. He goes right before bedtime, is suitably rewarded with a gumball (to be phased out eventually) and stays dry all night long. We’re so proud of him. This is an answer to prayer, besides which, as Diane’s mom says, it’s an incredible sense of accomplishment to have potty trained our child. The remaining “basic life skills” seem pretty simple to impart in comparison.

Luke’s 4th birthday is today! He woke this morning to a decorated house and a little birthday cake we picked up from Whole Foods yesterday. It’s a coconut cream cake he inhaled a hunk of in addition to his regular breakfast. He got a few gifts from Grandpa and Nana on Sunday (a construction set he loves and a book) and today unwrapped a Slip ‘n’ Slide for the summer, along with a big storybook and an array of Play-Doh toys. He also received a playground for the backyard that his Granddad and I have to try to assemble this weekend, if it doesn’t rain. More festivities tonight…

I’ve known Luke fully half his life. Diane and I started dating when he was almost 2, and we celebrated his 2-year-old birthday the same day I earned my private pilot’s license. The Lord has placed us together, in His wisdom, and I am and will always be his daddy. He is himself and I am always proud of him, no matter what he does or doesn’t do, achieves or doesn’t achieve. But we’ve been blessed with similar temperaments (either that or he takes after me) and we understand each other a good deal. He is a challenge, a blessing, a gift and a joy.

Diane and I had our first date in who knows how long last night. Luke visits his local grandparents almost every Thursday evening and we have some time then, but since Penelope’s been born haven’t been able to leave the house to go out, and even when we could, before Pen, we were expecting and our thoughts were appropriately preoccupied. So last night Granddad, Grandma, Uncle Josh and Aunt Maralyn came over and babysat Luke and Pen while we went out. It was wonderful to be able to get away for a couple of hours to a nice restaurant then to Barnes & Noble. Diane was lovely and the quality of much of our conversation reminded me of that of our honeymoon.

I checked out the “recreational reading” (read: bargain) section of Barnes & Noble. There are always lots of books about military history or cats or cooking or travel; just a lot of coffee table books. Many of them are books of the sort I used to collect: airplane books. Flipping through an “All the World’s Fighter Aircraft” or a “Classic Supermarine Spitfire” reminded me of how much I enjoyed my collection, how meticulously I would arrange them, and how many hours I spent poring over engine thrust ratings of F-14A versus F-14D models or comparing the maximum Mach numbers of the F-4 and MiG-23, among other things. I really did (and do) enjoy it.

After more than a few discarded iterations, Diane and I agreed that it’s probably better to have something, anything up rather than that placeholder. So expect this spare framework to expand in the weeks and months to come, as we have time to supply content, always the foundation of a site. The links above aren’t functional at the moment; they will come online in time, but for now just think of them as exciting little teasers of what’s to come. Or not.

In any event, this is just a test post to ensure the blog is embedded properly. More to come!

Out with the old and busted; make way for the new hotness:

At work, that is. Got it in yesterday; just got it set up and everything transferred over today. I use two computers at work: a Mac, for about 90% of the design work that I do, and a PC for using Solidworks (mainly instruction sheets). Each computer has a monitor, one a flatscreen and one a CRT, and I place them side-by-side on my desk. Today I discovered the video card on the new Mac happens to have two video inputs, and it came with adapters. After a little finagling I rigged the monitors so that the Mac can use both simultaneously. So the 90% of the time that I use the Mac I will have one double-wide monitor. I don’t know if I could go back…

Luke’s first soccer practice was Tuesday evening. The coach planned it for 5:40 p.m., a good time for him but lousy for us. Still, with some creative rearranging we can make it. This week Diane stayed home with Penelope, and Luke and I went. His Coach Mark handed out t-shirts to him and the ten or so kids on his team. They’re blue, he’s no.2, and they decided to call themselves “The Blue Dolphins” (a decision he had no interest in, by the way). About half of Luke’s teammates are 4, the rest 3 years old like himself. The boy/girl ratio is similar. Most of the 4-year-olds seem to know what the deal is, or at least have a grasp of some of the social concepts that playing soccer entails. I mentioned to Diane after we returned home how many things we take for granted as adults, things many of the kids have no experience with, like standing in a line, or teamwork, or deference to an authority figure like a coach.

But good gosh, was it fun to watch, and fun for Luke too. He chased the ball around, nearly got stampeded by his teammates during warm-up drills, actually kicked the ball in the goal during one drill and loved wearing his uniform.

His first actual “game” is tomorrow afternoon. His mommy outfitted him with shin guards and new shoes, among other things. Pictures and video to follow soon.

I remember flying in weather much like this, albeit a little less windy. The clouds were low and nearly overcast, with patchy openings here and there. I remember one Saturday morning in particular, when I probably shouldn’t have been up there. Posted about it here.

As I walked out the car this morning I heard the whine of a pair of turboprops and looked up just in time to see a King Air shoot between the cloud banks, quickly climbing out of Smith-Reynolds downtown. It was obviously on a IFR flight plan, not only because of the weather but if you had a King Air, why would you fly VFR anyway? Any flights above 18,000 ft have to be IFR, and flying below that in a King Air is like driving 35 mph in a Porsche on the Autobahn… In any case, it’s a beautiful airplane, and seeing it tear between the clouds like that brought back memories of lunch at the airport last year. I sat on the bench in front of the flight school, facing the ramp as a King Air taxied leisurely not 40 ft in front of me, PT6A turboprops pumping out noise and spinning the scimitar-like propellers in impossibly fast arcs. I’d like to do that again soon.

For lunch most days, I bring leftovers from the night before into work. Today, after devouring the remains of our seasoned chicken, brown rice and broccoli meal from yesterday’s dinner, I am resoundingly full. Diane is an incredible cook–she has a perfect touch with food and everything she makes turns out well. I take this for granted far too often, but being able to cook so well, and doing it so faithfully is a wonderful thing, and a great skill. She has true talent that way, as real and valid as her other abilities or any of mine.

We experienced a “snow thunderstorm” last night. It didn’t actually thunder, but the intensity of the snowfall definitely echoed that of a summer thunderstorm. It covered the ground and the roads with an inch or so and ended as quickly as it began. We woke Luke and he and Diane sat in the front doorway and watched while I made a quick trip to the grocery store. He was enchanted, of course, and kept describing all the things he would do in the snow and what would happen to Granddad when he threw a snowball at him, among other things, in his very cute manner. Diane made a short video and I took a few photos of the event. Will post them soon.

My emotions are so fickle. In response to some of my previous posts, which discussed the necessity of aligning our desires with God’s for us, and “not wanting anything He hasn’t chosen to give us,” I have been praying for the diligence to curb yearnings for an automotive project. I’ve found, though, as soon as my desire for that wanes, a longing for other things appears in its place, specifically flying and for things aviation-related. Sizing up the situation, I would be tempted to conclude that the resilience and versatility of the feelings for an area of interest indicates that they’re something intrinsic, something I need, and by extension their object, whether it be a project car or flying lessons or what have you–a hobby–is something I need as well. But that would be a false deduction. The heart will desire anything except the things of God, the place God has for it; it will do anything to resist contentment. And the enemy will certainly fan the flames of any desire that would supplant God’s position as our affection’s central focus. Again, I stress that these things, and even these longings are in no way wrong per se, but they must always occupy their rightful place in the hierarchy of desire, and be assessed with Scripture and wisdom.

Quick video of Pen gazing at Mommy. We both went into her room when she woke this morning and she would hardly even acknowledge Daddy, instead being totally focused on Mommy.

Note: Video will be back up soon! She’s come a long way from barely being able to hold her head up… Next comes mobility!

Also, why does our daughter persist in resembling older, round-headed men? It’s uncanny:

Grandpa and Nana came to visit today, as they often do. Grandpa and I worked on the kitchen, almost finishing it (just a few odds and ends), while Nana and Diane and Pen hung out. Luke floated between everyone, thoroughly enjoying himself.

Grandpa and Luke practicing tricycle skills. Luke is getting competent, but has trouble pedaling and steering at the same time. I think he just needs a parking lot or some other wide area to rove around in.

I was convicted today with regard to my previous post, specifically in the area of desire. I’ve been going through a devotional on Matthew lately, and earlier in the week read a commentary on Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. It emphasized His complete commitment to doing His Father’s will, to the point where Jesus effectively replied to Satan, “If My Father doesn’t want me to have it, I don’t want it.” This was demonstrated in all three attempts by the enemy to corrupt Jesus. God had made it very clear through circumstances (and other means) that Jesus was not to have things (food, safety, glory, honor, worship) before a certain time, and He was completely content and submissive in that. The application is, of course, how often are my desires not surrendered, especially in areas I think are innocuous? Just to cite one example, God’s made it quite clear through my circumstances that it’s not time for me to have a project car to tinker on. But how often have my emotions rested on the desire to have one? How many times have I told myself, “Oh, they’re just emotions; they come and go as they please; there’s no harm in indulging them as long I don’t actually do anything…” But that’s not right. Not only are my emotions and motivations not submitted, I am less available not only to Him but also to my family and the things my feelings should rightly be invested in. So something like trolling eBay ads or car buildup sites, harmless in and of themselves (“adiaphora” is the theological term), might be off limits for me for a while.

With that, though, there’s always the caveat that it’s not wrong to plan for the future and even desire things or places or situations, provided it meshes with the context of the things I should be emotionally invested in, in the here and now. It takes discernment and wisdom, and I am slowly, by His grace, coming into that.

I was listening to BT earlier today, the few songs that I have off his Movement in Still Life album, specifically “Smartbomb,” and it reminded me very much of days in Florida. I was only there for six months, and they were lonely days, by and large, the only bright spot being the church I attended. But even it was a 45-minute drive north to Jacksonville, which put a damper on any attempts to become involved in the college and grad social scene, not that I really had any idea how to go about doing that anyway, being a very recent graduate and accustomed to the ready-made and close-at-hand social entities present in college. The distance did give me ample time to reflect on my situation there, to pray, and on a more prosaic level, to enjoy the recent acquisition of my car at that time, the white Supra.

The song today reminded me very much of the experience of driving it, since, as cheesy as it sounds, I had hand-picked songs to play in the car as I drove it back from Atlanta, where I purchased it, and the bulk of the songs I played in it thereafter were BT compositions. I remember just going for drives along the oceanfront highway, A1A, late in the evening, smelling the salt spray with the top removed and feeling the heater against my feet. It was a large sports car, technically with four seats, the overwhelming emphasis being on the front ones, positioning itself as a kind of “personal luxury car,” and as such the interior design and overall focus of the car made it feel very companion-like.

I miss that car. I put a lot of thought into its purchase, more than any other car I’ve acquired, and I remember going through lists of must-haves and pros and cons before settling on a Supra. All my other cars “just happened” in comparison. My record with extensive car modification isn’t stellar: the engine mishaps with the RX-7, the transmission woes of the Taurus, but the Supra truly is “the one that got away,” as it were. To this day, when I think about the engine I swapped into it, the 1JZ, I can think of a single thing I’d change about it. Even the most brilliant cars have qualities I would change: RX-7’s recirculating-ball steering and live axle, parts of the Z’s interior and its engine’s non-crossflow head, and even the Supra itself was far too heavy, not to mention the steering’s relative softness, but the engine, the 1JZ… Absolute perfection.

There’s nothing like an inline-6, that inline-6. It splits the difference perfectly between the annoying but fast-revving blatt of a 4-cylinder and the more ponderous dissonance of a V8. The engine is harmonically balanced so with a fully counterweighted crankshaft the power delivery is absolutely smooth. And the sound, the sound, especially from the 1JZ–like a muffled Formula 1 engine, but more substantial even than that. I wouldn’t alter a thing: not the coil-on-plug ignition, not the intake piping, not the displacement, not the twin-turbo setup, not even the appearance of the engine in the bay. Flawless.

Don’t mind me; I’m just getting verbose about a car that came and went, and while I dearly love the project Z-car that’s sitting at parents’ house waiting for me to come work on it, right now I feel that if I had to choose one car to be content with, it would be the Supra I owned, with the engine I swapped, running. I was so close, and what happened happened as it should have, but some days I remember fondly.

I did most of our 2008 tentative budget last night. I told Diane every time I attempt to put together something workable in that regard I’m almost overwhelmed with a sense of despair and futility. I think there really is a lot of truth to my dad’s observation that budgeting and finances is fundamentally a spiritual issue for me. Jesus preached more than a few parables about money and being a proper steward of our resources, money included. He certainly sees it as a spiritual issue, and when He sees things a certain way that basically silences any dissent. As I’ve probably mentioned before, the challenge for me comes not in the actual budgeting, although that can be hard enough, but in the accounting and record-keeping, the connection of the “theoretical” budget to the actual day-to-day spending patterns of our family. If I can master that, by His grace, I think we’ll be in good shape.

It’s been a quiet week here at work. The Web site is live and I’ve just been tweaking and streamlining here and there. I used some PHP to standardize the top pull-down navigation element throughout the site, and in so doing got excited about the possibilities inherent in learning PHP. I have a bias against Javascript; I don’t really know why, but if I’m going to learn a Web programming language, I’d much rather learn PHP. It will be said, though, they’re apples and oranges, since Javascript is client-side and PHP is server-side, so the features and issues they’re best-suited for or even able to accomplish at all are quite different. I think if I knew both PHP and JS, along with my present knowledge of XHTML and CSS, not mention graphic design chops and a thorough knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator, and I had a few sites under my belt, I’d be a force to be reckoned with in the Web design world. But do I want that? More significantly, do I have time for that? We shall see.

In other news, earlier this week Diane signed Luke up to play soccer at the Y. He starts next week and has one practice during the week, with a game on Saturdays. Can I say how excited I am about this? It will get him outside, tromping around where he belongs, burning off that boy energy and playing with other kids, not to mention having fun. Diane requested that he be put on the same team as his friend Malachi, one of our Sunday school friends’ kids whose birthday party Luke recently attended. I have no delusions of Pelé-like prowess right off the bat; the typical activity at 3-4 years old involves clustering around the ball, if that, with much pride taken in the wearing of the uniform. Many pictures to come, for sure.

I got to work on the car a little bit over the weekend. It was a profoundly refreshing experience. I changed the oil in the Volvo, something I’d put off for a month or so, and took the opportunity to rinse the salt off the outside and to clean out the idle speed control valve, in hopes of curing a loping idle problem that manifested itself when the car was warming up. The problem is fixed and the car runs very well indeed. I told Diane that I got a double sense of satisfaction–first from completing the job properly and second from experiencing the intuitive, sturdy and thoughtful construction of the car itself. Everything was easy to access, used familiar fasteners and came apart smoothly. I won’t use my experience with various makes of cars to comprehensively rate ease of maintenance between them, but suffice it to say that most European and Japanese makes place in the upper half of the rankings, and my endeavors with the Volvo bolstered that slant.

It makes me itch for more tinkering, and listening to the Car Talk podcast at work this morning (as I do most Mondays) doesn’t help. I want to do so many different things, and among the many is vision of a small corner repair shop, specializing in two or three makes, and how much fun it would be to own it and live that life, rearranging talents engaged in hobbies and professions to bring the former to bear in an occupation. There would be aggravations, sure, but I think a lot of those could be avoided by keeping the scope of ambition small and being selective as one could be about a customer base without alienating folks. I love to work with my hands in that manner. Not only that, but there’s something fundamentally unpretentious about that kind of quasi-blue collar work that’s very appealing. We’ll see what God has in store.

The website went “live” this morning. It’s still very much in a state of flux, but it’s the official ImageWorks website now.

Happy February, all! Here is a new video of some of Penelope’s antics:

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She is almost able to crawl now and loves faces and talking, whether it be to Mommy, to herself, just in general…

I’ve been working like a crazy person on the ImageWorks website during the past week, and although because of FTP issues it isn’t yet up (or “live”, as they say), it’s all but ready. You can preview it here, all entirely hand-coded:

http://www.boldulysses.com/old/jobs/home.php

For the record, Charlie took the great photographs and I wrote little of the verbiage, only edited it obsessively. None of my display designs have made it to the portfolio pages yet, but one in particular was very close. Soon, soon…

I’ve been all but sucked into the world of HTML and CSS Web design here at work… I’m putting together a prospective website for our company, and it’s reached the point where I actually spend time (just a little time, mind you) in the evenings and on the weekends tweaking the design. The previously ironclad bifurcation between work and home life has opened momentarily. But it’ll close again soon enough. And I’ll display my handiwork, but not before I resolve compatibility issues with a certain browser, one that I’m sure many (most?) of you use: Internet Explorer. A brief troll of forums and how-to sites will clue you in on how much it’s reviled by Web designers, and should be reviled by users for its sieve-like security. If you use it for the bulk of your browsing, you really should upgrade to Firefox, Opera or Konqueror.

I’ve been teaching Sunday school the past four Sundays. I was given carte blanche on a topic, and I deliberated for a while before settling on defending your faith and apologetics. I wanted to show people the necessity, especially these days, of knowing how to defending what you believe, and having answers for questions people have about the cultural events they encounter. Also, I wanted to give folks an introduction to some of the core beliefs of major worldviews, and show they how to put it all into a meaningful system. I hope I did the subject justice in an understandable way.

Admittedly, this past Sunday was difficult. I had decided the week before to do a sort of Q&A; similar to those which take place at worldview and apologetics conferences, where the keynote speakers will take the stage together and field pre-screened questions from attendees. Not having the intellectual resources of an R.C. Sproul or a Ravi Zacharias, I decided to have people write down their questions on slips of paper so that Diane and I could have a week to research answers. This past Sunday was then devoted entirely to our answers to questions people posed. The questions could have been about anything Bible- or worldview-related. We received more than I thought we would, and Diane and I had a lot of fun researching and discussing answers over the course of the week. When it came time to answer then in class, though, my presentation style left a lot of be desired. I don’t know whether it was due to the structure of that particular class, being more of a back-and-forth dialogue, or whether it was just something in the air, but I was very disappointed in my delivery that day. However, the feedback about that lesson and especially the four-week series in general has been very positive, so Diane and I hope and pray people will be motivated to think about, know and understand Christianity, and in so doing glorify the One in Whose image they are created.

A couple of recent pictures:

Luke in the backyard during the snow sprinkle (doesn’t really deserve to be called a “snowfall”) on Saturday.

Penelope smiling up at her mommy a few weeks ago.

Can I say we’re enjoying the camera? One of its best qualities is its ability to take rapid series of shots, very useful with young kids who smile for a fraction of a second at the most. I can’t say I quite know how to use all its other features, but a little experimentation goes a long way. A major strength of digital cameras comes from being able to take as many throwaway shots as needed without having to worry about wasting film. It really gives one an idea of what each twist of a knob or push of a button is doing.

I had a wonderful birthday celebration on Tuesday. Diane made Salisbury steak, one of my favorite meals (and did a fantastic job), put up streamers and balloons and made some birthday cupcakes. I received a couple of Over the Rhine albums, Snow Angels and The Trumpet Child. Love them.

Work has been a little slow lately, which means at least a couple of the designers (out of three) are relegated to working on the website redesign. Trying to achieve the exact look we want, Charlie has been relearning Flash, downloading a Flash template to modify it to our needs, and I’ve been taking the more bare-bones route in teaching myself (really teaching this time) HTML and CSS. It’s been a lot of fun so far, albeit frustrating at times. I love the ability to separate content from style, something I’ve always wanted to do with my webpages. The more streamlined, the simpler the better. And just to hand-code a whole page and see my creation in a browser, with the ability to tweak just about any element with a freedom unencumbered by the knowledge that some GUI-oriented web design program (i.e. Dreamweaver) is writing 60% more code than the page actually needs… It’s great.

I’ve really been enjoying Imogen Heap lately, specifically her album Speak for Yourself. It’s beautifully crafted electronic pop with an offbeat lyrical style–many of her songs sound like they are drawn verbatim from conversations. And the music… It one-ups BT’s envelope-pushing efforts in This Binary Universe by giving his quasi-classical soundscapes a more human element.

Snow is forecast for tomorrow morning. We’ll see if it holds out. Luke is spending the night at his grandparents’ in Lewisville. Diane and I took advantage of the free evening to watch Paris Je T’Aime, a film comprised of a dozen and a half short vignettes sketching characters and relationships in each of the Parisian neighborhoods, or arrondissements. Very good movie, and several of the segments are very moving. I told Diane, though, it wasn’t the nostalgia trip I thought it might be. For one thing, although I’ve visited Paris three or four times, we never lived there, and besides, it’s a fundamentally urban setting, one that I have little experience beyond a week or two in a hotel. The Cote D’Azur, while sharing a basic French-ness with Paris, is still very different, and my affections for France bend toward the particularities of our environment in the south, on the Mediterranean. Even before we watched the movie I thought about roads and directions in the region we lived for five years, and how, given the opportunity to return, I wouldn’t need a map to get from Vence to Monaco or from Coursegoules to Antibes or anywhere we needed to go. I know all those roads, and little changes from year to year in that corner of the Old World.

It’s a slow day here at work. Dave and Charlie and I are leaving shortly to do a “store check,” one of things we do to occupy ourselves when there’s little to do around the office. We’ll visit a few stores, usually larger retail chains, and surreptitiously photograph new and interesting displays. We usually do lunch together as well, so today it’s a good thing I didn’t bring mine.

I haven’t posted in a while. New year’s was a lot of fun. We drove to my parents’ in Chapel Hill for a few days, and in so doing took Penelope on her first “long” car trip. Both there and back we timed it to coincide with her happy time in the morning, after her nap and topped off food-wise. She did wonderfully, just looking around a chirping a little bit in the back seat, and dozing off near the end of both legs of the trip. Luke is a seasoned traveler and generally just needs a couple of books and snacks at regular intervals to be completely content. We may yet have a couple of world travelers on our hands.

It’s been difficult to segue back into our weekly routines after the pleasant disruption that is the holidays. Nevermind the stereotypical letdown after the buildup and release of expectations that surrounds Christmas, a lot has been happening, overlapping, in our lives and it’s only by the grace of God, always, that we’re thriving. Penelope, of course, is growing so quickly (85% percentile in height and 95% in weight at her recent checkup), challenging us to learn her and understand her almost every day. But it’s amazing to see the seeds of “little girl-ness” emerge and grow and manifest themselves from the pure “baby-ness” of her first few months. She’s relational and dramatic and completely beautiful.

Luke is still in the midst of potty training. He’s mastered the fine art of controlling no.1; it’s just no.2 that’s an ongoing challenge. He wore “big boy underwear” to church for the first time on Sunday and even went in the church’s restroom before his Sunday School class. I was very proud of him. On a related note, I’ve officially found the single most messy candy known to man: cordial cherries. Luke receives one as a reward for either having gone peepee five times in one day, or for going no.2 on the potty (which to date has only happened twice). Always more interested in possession than consumption, he’ll fondle his candy for about 10 minutes before picking it apart and devouring it, in the process strewing sticky entrails all over himself and anything within a 3-foot radius (I try to keep it contained). But goodness… It smells vile and he requires a full-on shower almost every time. I think we’re going to rethink that particular reward.

He’s very interested in his “counting book” at the moment, a Richard Scarry book he brought home from Grandpa and Nana’a house. Each page illustrates successively larger numbers through a simple narrative of a boy bunny experiencing suitably random events all around him. It’s cute.

Diane’s 30th birthday was this past Monday. I didn’t throw nearly as extensive a celebration as I should have, but her parents, sister and sister’s fiancé came over Sunday night, and we had cake and opened presents. I got takeout from the Village Tavern and the birthday girl ate her favorite chicken Caesar salad with a glass of Pouilly Fuissé, an excellent white wine. She received a few kitchen things, some jewelry made by her sister and a couple of Theodore Dalrymple books that she’d been wanting. Diane was 28 when we married in the fall of ’06, and it’s fun to think that our marriage has already spanned 3 years of her life (even though we’ve only just celebrated our first anniversary). She is lovelier every day and a wonderful mother to our kids. Happy 30th, love.

Merry belated Christmas, all. I knew earlier in the week that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to post during the stretch of days that span Christmas, and I neglected to extend our well-wishes then. We hope everyone had a warm day close to friends and family, remembering the Incarnation of the Son of God that led to our justification and continued sanctification, all to the praise of His glory.

Thinking back on our experience of the holiday, it’s all somewhat of a blur. This is my first day back at work (I work tomorrow as well) and perhaps it’s the change of setting that impedes recollection. Monday was low-key; Diane and I re-cleaned the house in anticipation of company. Christmas morning Luke woke up at his regular time (around 6:30) and we whisked him through the living room into the kitchen with a blanket over his head to prevent him from seeing presents until after breakfast. Armed with a full stomach (which helps the steadiness of anyone’s nerves), we emptied out stockings and handed each other presents. Luke had a grand time, but certainly treated the process of handing gifts to others for them to open of much lesser importance than discovering what he got. I was a little disappointed by that, but I think that’s something unrelated to the number or value of the presents received, but simply must be taught and learned though daily life the rest of the year and successive key opportunities at Christmastime. In other words, that attitude isn’t necessarily a sign that the glut of commercialism has successfully infiltrated our home, but simply that generosity and altruism are qualities kids don’t innately grasp, and that Luke hasn’t fully learned yet (do we ever?).

Actually, as Diane and I mused later that morning after the dust had settled, the quantity and quality of the gifts involved this year was just about right. None of us got everything what we wanted, but what we received was thoughtful and special, and Luke wasn’t deluged with gifts like last year (our own fault). Diane thought to pack away most of his existing toys and many of the smaller toys he received for Christmas, for a more progressive dispensation through the months to come, which I think is brilliant.

Luke’s major presents were a set of cardboard blocks, a magnetic construction set and a Snoopy snow cone maker (from us); a Brio-like car and train table with trundle drawers (from Diane’s parents); and a world map rug, several puzzles and a kids’ Bible (from my parents). Penelope received many new outfits, a teething ring and a playmat-like structure with little doodads hanging from a semicircular arch she lies underneath. Diane’s gifts included knick knacks for around the house, a copy of the His Dark Materials trilogy for reading and critiquing, a red Kitchen Aid hand mixer and some jewelery. I got, among other things, The Consequences of Ideas (an R.C. Sproul book covering philosophy), many new and needed articles of clothing, books of crossword puzzles, a Canon Digital Rebel XTi DSLR camera and a huge framed print of The School of Athens (the last two were more “family gifts”).

We’re so thankful for family and for each other, and for the material blessings we received. We pray for the diligence to reinvest these things for His glory and to fulfill the cultural mandate.

Here’s another clip of the kids. Penelope smiles, talks to her brother, we get a glimpse of the future between them, Luke recites a seasonally-appropriate Bible verse and both of them display their knowledge of the world:

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Our sibling Christmas party was tonight. Diane’s younger brother and sister, with their respective significant others, visited, like last year. We had a great time, snacking on an appetizer-ish dinner with a variety of Christmas sweets afterward. We exchanged gag gifts and “real” gifts. Diane got an assortment of toiletry products and I received an assortment of car care and repair products. So we’re set in those ways, and thankful.

We were just conversing about how different Christmas is beginning to feel this year. Beyond just the acceleration of the days, where the month used to drag like no other, the quality of the festivities and conventions has assumed a different tone. I remarked that Christmas really is about the kids. We’re moving into that latter period in life where the excitement and “magic,” as it were, belongs to them for a little while–and we’re both quite comfortable with that. I don’t want–I’ve never wanted–mountains of goodies on Christmas morning, and I’m beyond satisfied with practical gifts, or clothing, or anything, really. It’s another passing of the generation baton.

With that, though, comes the realization that it’s our responsibility, by and large, to shape our children’s conception and expectations of Christmas. These are crucial years for them both, especially Luke as he’s starting to realize what goes on and can anticipate the holiday. What we do now will set them up for years that follow, and provides a good opportunity for lessons about expectations and weathering the ups and downs of life in general.

Luke has had pinkeye yesterday and today. Poor guy. He’s been taking more and more supplements and medications lately to stave off various illnesses and allergies, and I feel bad for him. He soldiers through it all, though. One of the positive aspects of not being very self-aware is his ability to plow through illness without moping around too much, although he does get reasonably clingy and weepy. Pray for him.

We’ve put together a few home videos already, but here’s the first official one. In it, Penelope gives a speech and does some exercises before getting tired of the whole thing:

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* * * * * *

The ImageWorks Christmas party was last Saturday night. My parents came into town to visit and to babysit Luke and Pen while Diane and I went. I think it was the most lavish party I’ve ever been to, with dinner, live music, an open bar, expensive door prizes and a roving magician, among other things. To top it all, management decided to make it a casino night, so there were blackjack tables, roulette and poker as well. We had a great time. Seating for the dinner was apparently random (i.e. they didn’t seat departments together), and we ended up sitting next to the president of the company, Don, and his wife. We talked about politics and worldview, always a safe subject for us but risky at dinner parties. Fortunately Don shares many of our convictions and political stances, which not only smoothed out the conversation, but also endeared the company to us even more, having a man with such persuasions at the top.

Diane’s away at her weekly Bible study. It’s cold and dry and I can hear the wind whipping around the house now that the kids are asleep. The room is quiet except for the low rumble of the heater and the click of the keys on what David Watkins called “the noisiest keyboard ever.” I’ll believe it.

Reread some random journal entries from a few years ago. I’m glad I kept that. Just reading it, even if it does provoke a twinge of conviction that I might be mining the past (even though I rarely revisit those entries), at least momentarily widens my scope of the present. It’s like going from a 4mm to a 20mm lens in the telescope–the field of view opens up and I take in the context of the part of the sky under observation.

I need to save all my old journal entries to my hard drive, or burn them to a cd, or print them out, even. I’ve flirted with the idea of compiling them and submitting them for publication, but I’m pessimistic that readers would be able to relate to something so disjointed. I never made much of an effort to record my day-to-day activity, and in most cases the subject of a given post had absolutely nothing to do with my daily routine. But perhaps that’s a selling point? If I pitched it as a sort of “free verse journal,” maybe folks who like to speculate over unanswered questions in what they’re reading would find it appealing. Whatever the case, I haven’t even read the whole thing from start to finish, so who knows? Perhaps the continuity actually exists and my revisiting has been too random to pick up on it.

* * * * * *

Check out the reviews for these products if you get a chance. Had me doubled over last night:

(first) (second)

Everyone’s over their colds, for the most part. Luke had a persistent cough, but Diane took him to the doctor and got a prescription that seems to be working very well. We’re thankful for that.

Diane and I have been researching Mormonism quite a bit lately in light of Romney’s candidacy and speech last week. Delving into theology, philosophy, cults, sects and different strains of belief, along with cultural studies isn’t exactly new territory for us as a couple, but our emphasis on such things does vary in focus from time to time in response to cultural developments. We watched most of the recent PBS series on Mormonism, and I have been a fan of Walter Martin’s excellent book The Kingdom of the Cults (which includes an extensive examination of Mormon history and theology). Our study has led us to the conclusion that Romney’s Mormonism most definitely does matter in the context of his run for the Republican nomination.

The whole affair is made all the more tricky since Diane and I agree with most of his political views and positions as they currently stand. And while we certainly agree that a person’s specific religion, inasmuch as it is merely a label, shouldn’t have any bearing on the person’s eligibility to become president, we would contend that religious views cannot be isolated from a person’s worldview and character. They impinge on everything to a degree or another. And as far as the history of his religion’s founding is shrouded in deceit, mystery and conspiracy, along with the Mormon leadership’s eager willingness to rewrite “inspired” theological positions for the sake of PR, make the candidate’s claims worth a second look. Joel Belz, in an excellent recent column in World Magazine, sums it up nicely:

…How does a person’s Mormonism affect his or her possible role as president of the United States?

But just because I’m obliged to ask the question carefully doesn’t mean I’m out of bounds in asking the question. I applauded when Romney stressed: “[Some] would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do.” Nor should he; that is part of his personal character.

But this integral and holistic nature of the person is also exactly what makes it not just right, but necessary, to ask—even in detail—just how what this man believes “religiously” affects all the rest of his behavior.

So it’s not bigotry for Americans to ask of Mormons they know: “Why so secretive? Why the necessity to hide so much?” One of the hallmarks of the historic Christian faith—as opposed to some of the cults it has spun off—is its eagerness to say: “Check us out! We may have embarrassing moments in our past, but we have no secrets.” We’re like Jesus saying to Thomas: “Feel the nail prints. Thrust your hand into my side!”

And in the same way it’s not bigotry for Americans in general to ask that of Mormons they know, it’s not bigotry to ask the same question of the man who this year is Mormonism’s most prominent and celebrated member.

* * * * * *

The R.C. Sproul video lecture a couple of days ago pitted Aquinas’ philosophy against Kant’s, and after I wrote Diane recommending the lecture, she found this. Geeky, yes, but cute :)

Our Christmas tree has fallen down. Twice. Both times in the middle of the night. It’s never happened before. I swear I tightened down the screws on our tree stand, but it didn’t stop the tree from toppling. In the interest of a more permanent solution, two days ago I tethered it to one of the living room closet door hinges. That should work. Nevertheless, there are few more pathetic sights than waking to a *whump* in the middle of the night and springing out of bed only to find the lovingly decorated tree lying facedown on the carpet. At least it’s watered. It can’t complain of abuse on that front.

Lately, I’ve really been profiting by, and enjoying, R.C. Sproul’s video lectures in the series “Defending Your Faith.” He systematically goes through some of the major battlegrounds between believers and atheists, among them the Law of Non-contradiction, the Law of Causality, the basic reliability of sense perception, and the analogical use of language. He says usually when a non-believer decides to attack the Christian worldview they will decide to try to undermine one of those underpinnings of the faith and indeed, reason itself. Highly recommended series. We may just have to buy it.

By the way, Diane and I figured out how to connect the camcorder to the computer, and over the weekend made a couple of movies. We have a clip of Pen in the Bumbo Seat, and one consisting of some dancing in the living room to Christmas music along with a spontaneous “interpretive dance” performed by Luke. We might have to get out own YouTube page–if we can control access to it, that is. We don’t want just anyone viewing videos of our kids.

Penelope got an early Christmas present:

For those of you unfamiliar with the Bumbo™ Seat, it’s a firm rubber seat with a high, upright back and enclosing sides which enable her to sit upright and look around. She liked it this morning, but that’s generally her happy time of the day, so I’m not sure how indicative that will be. Diane can comment more authoritatively on that subject than I can, now having spent most of the day with her. Pen’s head control isn’t perfect yet so it does wobble around somewhat (we call her Harry Caray after Will Ferrell’s SNL impression), but her penchant for standing up has strengthened her neck muscles to the point where we feel like the Bumbo™ Seat is doable. If nothing else it will be an alternative to her little pink chair.

She’s all smiles these days. She’s very expressive, from Diane’s description more than Luke was, perhaps a combination of her gender and temperament? She’s desperate to be able to communicate, and whenever Diane and I engage her she makes a faint two-syllable, wet-sounding “a-goo.” Faces and voices fascinate her, and she definitely recognizes all the important people in her life. She’s absolutely beautiful and pretty much the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

Some neat video clips about Project Orion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1vKMTYa40A (a “re-imagining”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Lxx2VAYi8 (BBC documentary)

One day, maybe, we’ll see at least some aspects of this visionary program become reality. It boggles the mind that the technology to make this possible was available in 1960 and we didn’t take advantage of it. I’ve written before about the travesty that was, though the specific entry eludes me at the moment.

On a completely unrelated note, I should mention that yesterday, for the first time entirely of his own volition, Luke pooped in the toilet! This is a huge victory in the struggle to get him potty-trained. He had been giving us the impression that he was apprehensive about going no.2, but during the day yesterday he approached Mommy and told her he had to go potty. She accompanied him, expecting him to pee, something he’s almost mastered by this point. But lo, she heard a few plops in the water and was elated to see brown things at the bottom of the bowl. It’s been said before but it’s worth reiterating: Until you have kids, you never realize just how exciting bodily functions can be. Yay for poop!

Al Mohler, on his blog and also his radio program, has a commendably astute take on the new movie The Golden Compass and the series of books that inspired it. He argues that a boycott of the film and censoring of the books, which many Christian groups have called for, is essentially the dumbest thing we could do. It would inflame publicity for the book and film, drive up sales, caricature us in exactly the same way the books do and most importantly, be an oblique admission that our worldview can’t hold up in the marketplace of ideas. Christianity and the truth of the Gospel have absolutely nothing to fear from the book or the movie and their agenda, disturbing as it is. The kinds of things proffered by them (which Mohler’s article goes into more depth than I’m going to address here) are exactly the same man-is-basically-good and self-actualization-is-the-highest-goal pap that have been circulating since the Garden. For the record, Diane and I plan to see the movie and possibly read the books, and *gasp* let our children experience them, if they so desire (granted, not before they’re in their teen years).

I’ve been leaning toward Huckabee recently, provided his stand against illegal immigration remains strong. He’s less fiscally conservative than I’d like, but the way his worldview seems to inform his convictions and his platform, rather than the other way around, is very attractive. I have to admit, though, that I’m a little concerned with the electability of, well, his name. It’s not that bad, the way “Tancredo,” “Kucinich” or “Gore” are, but it’s still not quite as presidential as, say, “McCain” or “Romney” or, dare I say it, “Clinton.” There really seems to be something to this, all the more in our age of shallowness, marketing appeal and sound bites. I wrote more about it a while ago. I’ll never say that’s the way it should be, but describing something that seems to be a factor in the way people decide is useful, I think.

“[I’m] looking in the Christmas tree.”

“You are? What do you see in the Christmas tree? Needles?”

“Bare spots.”

We bought our Christmas tree yesterday. Pictures soon. We decorated it that evening, Daddy doing the traditionally frustrating light arrangement, Mommy handling the garlands and tree skirt, and all three of us contributing some ornaments. Daddy hoisted Luke to “put the star on the very top,” an achievement he’s rightly proud of and hasn’t stopped repeating since yesterday (he had been anticipating this for months).

It’s been wonderful to have the video camera. We recorded the tree decoration process, along with other odds and ends like Penelope getting a bath (her favorite thing) and Luke dancing (!) to Christmas music. I’m on the lookout for software and hardware that will allow me to put video clips online. As I understand it all I need is the right cable and some video editing software. So that might be up and running soon.