The older I get, the more I find that the saying is true: It’s the little things in life that bring the most happiness. I love the new AwK site that a group of friends and I have been contributing to. When I find that I’m in a blah mood or feeling unhappy about the stress of my life, I turn to AwK. Writing a short blip about some stupid thing I cooked somehow brings me an enormous amount of happiness. Not only do I get to write, but I get to write about something that I really enjoy: Food.

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed a recipe that I dug up in an old Bon Appetit magazine, called Sweet & Sour Tangerine Chicken Stir Fry. I made it again last night and was so thrilled with the results. The recipe is a two-serving dish and, for minimal effort, anyone can put a nutritious meal on the table. I even made a little extra tangerine sauce and drowned my rice in it. It was so good that I can’t stop thinking about it.

Now that I have declared “State of Awesomeness,” something is bound to go wrong. At the moment however, things are pretty good.

After I posted about how I was doing badly, my phone started ringing as friends rallied to give me pep talks and I even got an offer to help with the kitchen face lift. When I logged into WoW, I got more pep talks. It’s good to be loved, and I appreciate my friends more than ever for the support I received. It really did help. The new school semester is really what sent me over the edge as there is so much less time and energy to do all of the things that I absolutely have to get done. And just the thought of the time it takes to get all these things done is overwhelming.

As much as it kills me to say it, I thrive in a loosely scheduled environment. I’ve lived with no schedule at all and my life sort of fell apart because I was so overwhelmed with the things that needed to be done that I ended up accomplishing absolutely nothing. I was too daunted by the supposed list of things that I didn’t know where to start and, if I did, I didn’t think it would ever get finished up. Getting myself back into a basic routine has always been my sort of salvation, something Tom will never really understand, but if I don’t try to stay on top of at least half of this stuff, I fly apart at the seams. So, I’m back in a schedule, at least until the end of the semester.

As the second semester of Interior Design 121 (Basic Architectural Drafting) is really kicking in, I’m starting to enjoy it. We’re drawing rooms in two-point perspective, being allowed to pick out our own furniture and accessories, and do the rooms the way we envision. I’m really excited with the way everything is turning out so far.

The house face-lift is coming along. Everything in the downstairs bathroom is pretty much finished, except for some touch up paint on my fierce blue accent wall, some of the paint needs to be scrubbed off around the edge, and I need to have a mirror put up. The kitchen is coming, and probably won’t be done in time for my mom to get here, but it’s looking good. And, last but certainly not least, I put a good coat of primer over the walls of the master bedroom, finally hiding that lovely shade of urine that coated the walls. Seriously, I don’t know what the previous owner was thinking. Even with just the primer it looks so much better, but I doubt I’ll be able to get to the actual painting until after Mom’s gone. The kitchen is more important.

Writing… Now that I have the guild website, my personal blog and the new food blog (totally loving AwK, by the way), my other projects have sort of taken a back seat. This has been bumming me out. I’ve been trying to write my “novel” type stuff at work but to no avail. This, too, has been put into a schedule. My blogs get written at work, and the story I was writing for my friends gets worked on at home. I’ve started making an effort to give myself 1 hour of writing time at night. This is the primary reason for the bedroom face lift: A serene feeling has been given to the bedroom, and I have moved all bookshelves in there for a laid back reading zone. It’s perfect. I make tea, grab the laptop, leave the door open a crack so the cats can join me, and I write. My only concern at this point is that the chapters I put out are few and far between. Because of this, I have reinstated my original goal of having two chapters done at a time. Chapters 10 and 11 have both been started, and I am excited about both. I’m trying not to rush myself to put them out, because I want to get into a routine. Maybe I’ll cut back and say that I’ll put out one chapter a month and when school is out I can focus on it more. Who knows. At least I’m still enjoying the whole process of writing.

The book that I had originally started - the one that inspired me to start this crazy process of becoming a better fictional writer - has taken a backseat. I haven’t touched it in about six months. I’m sad about that, and I think about the story every day. Every day it grows in my head. Every day in my head, the characters live. But I have to choose, and the other things that are dominating my life take priority.

There’s more good stuff happening, but this post is long enough.

IWatchStuff.com is featuring the new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

While I thought most of the one-liners were forced and corny and much of the action was a little much, it’s freakin’ Indiana Jones!!!

Well, I finally did it. This past Saturday I did my first recording session at my friend Andy’s house. The night before, I learned the song he wanted me to sing, called “Leave,” a quaint pop song that an old bandmate wrote days before that band broke up.

First things first about Andy: Forget modern technology and computers - he’s not a computer guy. He’s got all kinds of crazy equipment that we would lovingly call “vintage” - including reel-to-reel. Here, in his upstairs second bedroom, he’s at home in the wall-to-wall cacophony of instruments and strange mechanisms that make an album. In his mind, if some of the best albums of all time could be recorded with this stuff, then he can use it, too. When I first walked into the room, I got the feeling that he was a little afraid I’d be taken aback by the old stuff in there, but when I explained that my dad’s a fanatic about keeping all his old stereo equipment (including a Teac reel-to-reel), he looked relieved. So I felt quite at home and, while Andy was tinkering around with the equipment, they handed me some interior design magazines to keep myself occupied.

In the back corner of the room, the small clothing closet was turned into a recording booth - nothing you can stand in, but there’s some sort of insulation covering all walls and a carpet on the floor. The door had been removed so I was able to stand in the doorway, in front of the microphone.

Then we recorded. I didn’t really know what to expect. Professional singers have been known to say how much they love hearing their voice played back to them, so I wondered if I would have a similar experience.

I didn’t! LOL

It’s been a long time since anyone’s recorded my voice in this way - around 15 years. In that time, my voice has changed quite a bit and the only recent (in the past 6 years) recordings that I’ve had were live with three-hundred or more people singing along with you, so it’s not the same. He played my voice back to me — and I immediately begged him to turn it off. I couldn’t even get through the first verse, I was so embarrassed by the sound of my voice. I looked at him, horrified and said, “Is that what I really sound like?” I realize this is repetitive to keep saying it, but the sound really was horrific to me. Of course he thought I was crazy, but no matter how many times I listen to my voice being played back, I cringe. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.

The first recording was also a bad recording, because I just sang it straight instead of owning it. So we scrapped it and I gave him a few more recordings of the song. All through the process he seemed really thrilled with what I was giving him, and that makes me happy because my fear was that I would go in and do this song injustice - the point was to give him something he’d be happy with, regardless of what I thought of it. So, at the end of the day, even though I didn’t like the sound of my voice (still don’t) he was very happy. I got there around 10:00 and we wrapped up around 2:00. Overall, I have to say it was a lot of fun and, if asked, I’d do it again.

And before you ask, no I’m not sharing the recording with you because my voice is horrifying! LOL

AmateurswithKnives.com is up and running. Hope you love it as much as we do.

The food blog I mentioned a few days ago is coming together. We’ve got Ken and Rich lined up to help write for it, Ed’s even volunteered to do a monthly segment on wine, and we’re still searching for more. As I said previously, my only criteria is that if you volunteer to become a contributor, you have to agree to write consistently. If that means writing weekly, every other week, or monthly, so be it - I just don’t want someone coming in with the best intentions, writing one post, and then disappearing completely from the site.

In order to get a site going, you need a site name. After much discussion, some disagreement, and many virtual shrugs, Ken came up with the following:

AmateursWithKnives.com

I was smitten. The name was available for purchase so Tom bought it for us last night. We should have a blank site up and running by this weekend, and I’ll keep you posted on the kickoff. We want to have a new recipe site attached to it, and I’m thinking about getting a subscription RecipeZaar.com, as they also have a nutritional calculator for recipes. We’ll let you know. I’m very excited. If you’re interested in being a contributor, or know of someone who is, shoot me an email or post below!

I’m burning the candle at both ends and some in the middle. School has only been back in session for two weeks and I’m already struggling. Working until 6:00 at night is starting to get the best of me, as well as a gaming schedule that I haven’t tapered back on — which leaves all of my other extra-curricular activities vying for any spare minutes I can possibly give them. The kitchen face-lift has to be done before my parents fly out in April, and I only have a few hours on Saturdays to do it — and that’s going to change since a friend wants me to start recording my vocals to his songs, and that will take place on Saturdays, as it’s my only free day. Needless to say, there’s no way I can get the kitchen done without paying someone to come in and help me, but I think that’s out of the question. Writing has completely fallen off my radar. I don’t even pretend that I’m going to get time to write anymore. To make myself feel better about not writing, I tell myself that I don’t like it and that I suck at it. It’s working (sort of). My pumpkin-time, which is the hard stop that I reach every night and head up to bed, was formerly 10:00 pm. Now it is “whenever.”

I can always tell when I am reaching the point of exhaustion, because I say the opposite of everything I am thinking, and this is been becoming more and more frequent. “Widen” becomes “narrow” and “hard” becomes “soft” and “north” becomes “south” — you get the picture. Tom has been correcting me a lot these past few days. “Did you mean to say (insert word here), honey?” He will ask. Now I am to the point where I can no longer speak my thoughts coherently, and it’s getting worse. Late last week, while I was emailing someone, I realized I had started doing it in my typing. I’m no longer coherent.

I’m crashing and burning. I can feel it. It’s in the headache I’ve had every morning for the past week. Not sure what I am going to do. The obvious answer is to start cutting back or completely cut things off of my schedule, but I’m pretty passionate about everything that is on my plate, even the gaming. I want to keep the gaming on my schedule because I have worked so hard for this guild and making sure there are events and people are happy. But then, a close friend of mine said to me a few weeks ago that Ed would be the perfect guild leader. I asked, “Is there something wrong with the way I have been doing things?” He said no, because we absolutely need someone to schedule things, but Ed would just be perfect…”

So I’m the guild secretary. How quaint. Now that I have this hurtful comment to deal with, I think I should just cancel my WoW subscription until school is over in June. I don’t know, maybe I’m just feeling unappreciated again.

I’ll get back to you. For now, I’m drowning and there’s no rescue in sight.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about group blogs and how much I would love to be a part of one. I did try it once, but the topics on that particular blog were so varied I felt like there was no real place for me. So what I’d like to do is contribute to a blog that revolved around one subject. There are a couple of subjects I could really sink my teeth into, but I just wasn’t sure who I could get to do this with me, and what their interests would be. After a drawn out discussion with Ken, we agreed that we would do a food blog.

Group food blogs aren’t unheard of. There are a bunch and I subscribe to some of them. The only thing that really bugs me about group blogs is that there will be 50 posts in one day because there are so many writers. I don’t have time to read 50 lengthy posts in one day. What I end up doing is glossing them over just so I can mark them read.

I do think that to be a successful blog (and by “successful” I mean something I can be proud of, not that we have thousands of readers) there should regular posts, and a few of those having actual substance. There has to be a balance between long and short posts, a variety of humor posts mixed with serious recipes and the gadget reviews. As for long posts, I’m not usually a big fan of them unless they’re broken up with pictures or the subject is really interesting - and that’s ironic since my posts are usually long. I don’t know why that is.

This blog should reflect the writers - so there would have to be a great deal of humor involved. If someone isn’t exactly a foodie and they can’t really cook but would like to write funny reviews of food television shows, I’d be all for that. It can be short and funny with photos, and that’s fine. Or, if a non-foodie friend wants to be the writer of the “horrors” of cooking ingredients - such as frozen, canned or boxed food, I’d be all for it. “Do NOT eat this, people!”

This will mean that my food posts will all go to a different site, and I can focus this site to be something else. What that else will be, I have yet to decide. It will still be a general blog, but I’d like to focus it a little more and put the food elsewhere.

I’m still looking for friends who want to participate and write for the food blog. My only criteria at this moment is that if someone wants to participate they need to agree to write on a regular basis - whether it is weekly, every other week, whatever - I just don’t want to find myself trying to support yet another blog alone. Too often do friends have good intentions and then mysteriously disappear after committing… I have this site and LoO to support; the last thing I need is one more site to put on my shoulders. If anyone out there thinks they can be a contributor, let me know…

We also need a name for the blog. If you have any ideas, post them in the comments section below. When the site goes up, I’ll let you know!

LOVE THIS!

A couple of months ago I was searching around the internet for some ideas on a creative Christmas Eve service. What I didn’t want was the standard fare: Stale Christmas Carols with the usual candlelight, the same passages of scripture that are read every year and, after an uneventful hour, everyone goes home to something more interesting. What I wanted was something more creative that still had the presence of God at the center. Honestly, if I was asked to attend the same old Christmas Eve service that I’ve been to before, I would make an excuse so I wouldn’t have to attend. With this in mind, my art-degree pastor and I set out to come up with something interesting for our church.

When starting out with a newer church, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when providing these sorts of extra services. First, you will almost always have (dramatically) less attendance on anything that is NOT a Sunday morning service. Don’t panic. This is quite normal for a newer church. You should never, ever take this to mean the following:

1. You screwed up and this is God’s way of telling you.
2. You suck and no one likes your church.
3. Your church will fail in the next year because you can’t keep a reasonable headcount.
4. All of the above.

There are a lot of reasons for the dramatic drop in attendance of what I consider to be “extra-curricular” services. Most of the time it’s simply chalked up to having other commitments and conflicts. This isn’t always the case, either.

In newer churches, there are a lot of other things happening. A couple of months ago I mentioned the foundation that is laid in a new church. The foundational period is absolutely critical. Not only is there a spiritual foundation being laid, but a communal one as well. Depressingly enough, it takes a while to develop a strong bond of community, as well as getting people interested and excited in what’s happening in the church. Often times people like hearing that their organization/church is active, but they are reluctant to have their lives inconvenienced by attending any of it. It takes a while to develop.

This is hard for pastors because they want so much to bring people together through fun events - it’s just how God made them. Pastors have a million things they want to do in the community and among the body, and it can be discouraging when so much time and effort is put into something for a small handful of people who show up.

If you are currently in this situation, don’t give up. It’s all just a part of the process of church planting and building. Remember to take joy in the small victories - the ones we see through God’s eyes. Okay, so you didn’t hit 100 church members this year like you aspired to. I’m sure God has done other things with the 30 strong you now have. Okay, maybe you can’t quit your job and become a full time pastor because your church isn’t great at tithing. Ask God to show you where His victories have been this past year.

So, while searching for ideas on a Christmas Eve service, I came across a blog called “Creative Leading.” Coincidentally enough, it’s written by some dude who is from Seattle, loves coffee, and is a worship leader out in the middle of nowhere in Illinois.

Ok, I really don’t know if he’s living in the middle of nowhere, but it’s Illinois so I have no real reason to believe otherwise. Either way, what are the odds that I’ve found another person with these things in common as myself? I decided to plug his blog into my Google Reader.

One big difference between our situations is that it appears he is paid to be the worship director at a large church. I am not. How it usually works is God tells me I have to go to some dinky start up church and slave away day after day, training future leaders for little to no reward, and I go. If I don’t go then I end up absolutely miserable wherever I am currently at. By now I know God well enough to know that I do not argue. If He says “you will go to the martial arts church” then that’s what I do: I go. I do no not pass GO, I do not collect $200. And so, this was how I ended up at my current church.

I remember being a worship leader in a larger church. Those were the days, dudes. It was inspirational. The groundwork was laid and people showed up for the extra services with bells on. Nightly services were the best ones to lead worship at because the people who show up for those are the ones who have come with an expectancy of God’s presence. It’s not like a Sunday morning service, which can be more of a mixed bag - more on this in a later worship volume.

Anyway, I read his blurb about his wonderfully awesome Christmas Eve service. Five hundred people showed up to what was probably a big production. The worship team (apparently he’s got enough people that he rotates worship team members six months on and six months off - my thoughts on this in a later worship volume) rehearsed for two and a half hours. That’s right, two and a half hours.

Yeah, I remember what that was like.

Sometimes we, as human beings, have a very goofy way of looking at Kingdom successes. There are very polished churches out there with huge productions and we look at that as if it’s what we should aspire to, often forgetting that God doesn’t always grow us into big churches. We’re obsessed with church growth — walk into your local Christian bookstore and take a look around. Entire sections are devoted to the “formula” it takes to grow a church. It’s tough being small. It can be depressing being small. Those in leadership feel ever so alone. We want to be bigger. We think success means lots of people and this isn’t always the case.

So in comparison to this worship dude at the bigger church: Do I think what God has me doing is any less relevant? No, not at all. I’m in the trenches with the best of ‘em, raising up the spiritual leaders of tomorrow. It isn’t easy raising up leaders, but I’ll tell you something — at the end of my life when I am called to account, I don’t want to be the one who refused to raise up the leaders God had given me to train. I’ve trained many people now, and everyone is a new ball of issues to tackle. Worship practices usually comprise of having to teach the basics of leading worship — and feeling a tremendous win when your guitarist turns to you and says, “I actually worshiped during that.” You can’t help but get all excited because people are actually starting to GET IT.

Remember, take joy in the little victories.

And now, without further ado, I wish to recap my first Christmas Eve leading worship at my current church. Please make sure you are not drinking anything, as you will probably shoot your drink out of your nose. I’ve already told a couple of my friends this story, so if you’ve already heard it, you can skip it. Unless you’re one of those who enjoys to revel in my misfortune, then by all means, continue.

I got sick on Christmas Eve day. That sucked because I really needed the entire day to get ready for the service. After I managed to throw up a couple of times (you’re welcome for the visual), I was feeling slightly better and was able to do a last minute scramble.

I had asked my guitarist and his wife (who was the previous worship leader) to play an instrumental duet of “O Holy Night” during communion. She plays a recorder, and I liked the idea of juxtaposing the raspy recorder with the picking of an electric guitar. I had given them a month to rehearse.

I had asked them to show up at 5:30 (the service started at 7:00) so we could run through the songs. When I get there, they were already there, practicing. It was a bit spotty, but I was very encouraging. I just hoped it would be “okay” and not “horrible.”

They also had their two year old son with them. Since 12:00 they had been out at the local Catholic church, because they also contribute to the music efforts there, and had been a part of their afternoon Christmas Eve service. So it’s now about 5:30 and they hadn’t been home yet, or eaten. This includes their two-year old.

Those of you with children can already see the train wreck this is heading for. I don’t have kids, but my spidey senses are tingling. Still, I rely on people to manage their children and I figure it will be fine.

After I let those two practice their duet for 45 minutes (wtf) I finally interrupt, apologize, and say I will need to end their rehearsal in 3 minutes. They are OK with that. My guitarist and I rip through the songs. The last two songs require fast chord changes, so I inform him that I will play those alone. If he would like to sing with me during the songs, it was optional - he had set up a mic for himself on his own volition.

Then his wife starts to play a hand drum. I tell her she’s more than welcome to stay and play it during the service if she wants, and she happily says she would love to.

I rush my pastor into the back of the building and we pray.

The service starts. The two-year old is hungry and tired and wants someone to play with him. As soon as the first prayer ends and I start the song, the kid JUMPS UP OUT OF HIS CHAIR, RUNS UP TO THE FRONT OF THE ROOM WHERE WE’RE PLAYING, THROWS HIMSELF ON THE GROUND AND STARTS SCREAMING.

So you hear: “Come, now is the time to worsh — WAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

I’m sick, exhausted, we have another church in the building, and a two year old is screaming on the floor in front of me.

The song is completed and I switch gears into “The Heart of Worship” ala whining, crying and occasional screaming. Funnily enough, the Spirit of God showed up for this, so I was most grateful.

After the first two worship songs, we go to communion. This is when the instrumental duet of “O Holy Night” is supposed to take place. The two parents are looking at me, pleadingly.

Ok. I stand up from the keyboard, feeling all eyes on me. I walk around to the front and offer my hand to the kid. Immediately he stops, stands up and takes my hand. He was like the perfect little gentleman. I take him over to the Sunday School room, which happens to be the first room off of the main room. I hand him Mr. Potato Head. He takes it, plops down on the floor happily, and starts to play. I sit down with him. He hands me arms, legs, two choices of feet, a nose…

Then I hear a bit of the instrumental duet happening outside.

I have no idea what happened out there with the duet because I turned my back on this 2-year old for one second. While my back was turned, he had found some noisy toy that started playing some crazy loud song, and I had to lay on top of it in order to muffle the noise. This is no exaggeration.

As soon as the communion is over, I have to run back outside to the service. I open the door, tell the boy that his mom is coming into the room and I motion her to get her butt in the room. She nods back at me in what I thought was understanding. Apparently not because she went into the room, brings her kid out, and sits him back down at the front of the room, expecting that for some reason he will suddenly decide to be quiet.

He isn’t.

I start to lead “Gloria, In Excelsis Deo.” Again, the kid runs to the front of the room, flings himself down on the floor and starts screaming. After that carol, my guitarist gives me a sympathetic look. I nod back and excuse him from the rest of the service. He takes his wife and screaming kid out of there and I did the rest of the service on my own.

I was fine with that.

Tom and I stayed late to help clean up the church with my pastor, then I went home, made Tom a grilled cheese sandwich and some soup, did the dishes, and then passed out on the couch while he watched Food Network.

This service goes in my Hall of Fame as one of the Top 10 Funkiest Church Services ever.