i said “hey! whats goin on?”

So there are some pretty big things going on in my life right now. Lets go over them class. My allergies are going insane, causing much the much hated post-nasal drip – which we all know leads to a nice gooey cough. Mucinex and Delsym have become my new best friends as of last night. And I’m sure the office plague didn’t help my case either. So if any of you readers out there have any good remedies for a nasty couch and chest congestion please send it my way.

Another thing that is happening is the on going search for a house. Right now we are looking into buying a house that is pretty damaged and basically rebuilding from the current structure. This is a pretty scary idea. We are going back tomorrow with our contractor to take measurements and do another walk through. If you have any guidance you know what to do with it.

Probably the best thing right now is that I have my first day off in 2 weeks this Saturday. I was in Minneapolis with work 2 weekends ago, and the youth winter retreat last weekend (which does not count as a day off), and church on Sundays, which take up the first half of my day (also not counting as a day off). I can’t wait until Saturday. If you want to hang out…too bad, I’m not doing anything. I may not even leave my house.

So there it is, my life in a two minute read. Nothing insightful today. Check back later for something more worthwhile.

addictions are bad

So right now I am coming down from a sugar high after devouring mints. Not your regular hard, round peppermint candy…oh no…a much more delicious treat indeed. May I present Bob’s Sweet Stripes. Not only do they provide your taste buds with minty goodness, they also melt in your mouth with the same delightfulness of those after dinner butter mints, only better! Am I ranting? I think I’m ranting, or maybe just rambling. Could be the sugar. Go to Sam’s Club and buy a tub of them. You won’t be sorry. Buy me one too!

do the shuffle

I’m stealing this idea from Travis, because I think its neat. You take your iPod, set it to shuffle and see what the first 10 songs are. Simple enough. Here we go:

1. 311 “I’ll Be Here Awhile”

2. Sister Hazel “All For You”

3. Linkin Park “From The Inside”

4. Fear Factory “Descent”

5. Audioslave “Heaven’s Dead”

6. Taking Back Sunday “The Union”

7. Maroon 5 “Back At Your Door”

8. Velvet Revolver “Set Me Free”

9. U2 “Beautiful Day”

10. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Love Rollercoaster”

Interesting assortment there. Go check out Travis and see what his played.

plague…cough cough

Its like a chronic disease ward in my office today.  I hear the coughs and sniffles from down the hall.  I can feel the germs heading my direction.  One can only pray, and overdose on vitamins, that the epidemic doesn’t spread into my currently somewhat healthy body.  I could sure use a visit from Tom Cruise today, because we all know that he is the only person that could truly help.

weekend recap

This past weekend was really long and tiring, but I wouldn’t take it back for any reason. Friday night at the Feather Sound Church’s winter retreat I got the opportunity to play a set of worship music for the youth group. They were really awesome. They had so much energy and excitement, it kind of made me jealous that our youth isn’t as fired up. I learned that night that I don’t like sleeping in a room full of middle school boys. I’m sure you can imagine how that night went. Saturday morning, after breakfast, we got to play another set for the youth. Justin even pulled out the infamous M&M’s guitar.

Saturday afternoon was where the day started getting interesting. Travis, Emily, and myself lead an open forum for the college students. We gave them all post-it note pads and had them write down any questions that they had about anything and stick the notes on the wall. We were expecting the basic church camp questions like “how do I grow closer to God?” and “how often should I read my Bible?”, but what we got blew us away. These students wanted to know about addictions, lust, marriage, homosexuality – some really edgy topics. I hope we didn’t offend anyone by the answers we gave, but I know that we really opened their eyes to some new ideas (the truth) that they had never been given the chance to hear before. Most of them even came up to us afterwards and thanked us for what we had talked to them about. I hope we made a difference.

Once again there was another music set that night. We blew it out. I haven’t had that much fun playing music in a long time. My bed has never been as comfortable as it was Saturday night.

One last note, if you are a college student from Feather Sound, I hope we disturbed you.  I hope we shook you up.  I hope we made you think.

big rig

So tonight after work the band from RidgePoint Church is heading out to play a fews worship sets for a winter youth retreat. It should be pretty fun. I am looking forward to playing guitar all weekend. This thing goes on tonight and tomorrow morning and night as well.

In case anyone cares, here is my setup. Over the two days I will be playing my Fender® Telecaster, my Hagstrom Deluxe F, and my Takamine EAN40C. All of these guitars will be run through my podXTlive. It all sounds pretty good. If you want to hear the Les Paul you should come check me out on Sunday morning, and give the church a shot as well.

mercury rising

Spicy tuna roll here I come! Yum! Don’t be jealous Emily.

definately the coolest city…not just the weather

First and foremost, Minneapolis is a miserably cold, frozen tundra of a place. However, it is beautiful and I had a blast. We got in on Friday and this is what it looked like on the streets outside of the airport.

Like I said, it was cold.  Luckily I had some good friends that let me borrow some warm accessories so that I could stay at a fiery 98.6 degrees.  I’m not going to bore you with all the mundane details of the trip so I will touch on some of my favorites, first being the Mall of America.  What a place.  I can’t really describe how impressive of a facility it is.  We went there to waste some time the first day, and to eat at Bubba Gumps.  The mall is a 4-story building with every kind of store you can imagine, it even had like 32 shoe stores (we counted on the directory).  In the middle was this huge, 3-story amusement park with a ferris wheel, roller coasters, merry-go-round, and other rides.

If you ever get the chance to make the trip, I highly recommend going to see this place.  I would fly back just to spend a couple of days here.  I wonder what its like the week of Christmas…

After dinner,  we headed over to the Minneapolis Convention Center to check out the auditorium we would be holding our even in.  This room was HUGE!!!  The sound system was pretty cool too.  We set up our equipment, tested everything out and even managed to snap a couple pictures before bedtime.

Saturday morning was day one of the auction. There was press all over the place, and a pretty nice crowd showed up for the sale.  I was in charge of managing the internet bidders.  Don’t feel like explaining all that but here is what I was doing online all day.

So thats what I was doing.  This is my boss doing what he does best.  You should hear him do his auction chant.

After the first day of selling was over, we went to lunch down the road at Brit’s Pub.  This was a really cool place.  There were fireplaces lit, couches, billiards, and they had really tasty food.  After lunch a couple of us decided to walk about 4 blocks and visit the Target.  I have never seen a 2-story Target before, but I found something even more interesting inside.  In the center of the store was an escalator equipped with a special center section for your carts to ride up in.  You placed your cart in at the bottom and got it at the top.

Downtown Minneapolis is a place I would have liked to have spent more time.  There are shops, businesses, and restaurants everywhere.

Later that night some of us decided to walk around for dinner.  One bad thing – it was only about 11 degrees outside.  Our remedy?  The skywalk.  On the second floor of the buildings downtown, there are these tube-like walkways that keep you out of the elements.  We walked inside from block to block.  Not only did this thing contain hotels and offices, it was practically a strip mall above the city.  I even saw a Gap and Banana Republic up there.  The only bad thing is that all the shops close at 8 and we almost got stuck in the Macy’s.  Long story for another time.  This is what it looked like in that thing.

The next day was spent at the convention center again, and then the airport.  At the airport I was going through security to get to our terminal.  I had already gone through the metal detector and was waiting for my bags to come off the conveyor.  My rolling luggage came out just fine, but when my backpack arrived a security guard immediately took it, grabbed me, and walked me over to this little table where he pulled out everything.  He confiscated my tooth paste and face soap.  Apparently he thought I was going to high jack the plane by cleaning the pilot’s pores and making his breath minty fresh (hopefully some of you found that one-liner amusing, because the security guard did not).  When we left Minneapolis I realized that flying at night was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.  To be above everything else and look down at the lit streets and buildings was like pulling open a computer and watching the circuit board light up and process all the actions and formulas you put in it.

I can’t wait until one day I can go back and spend some time leisurely.  Its an amazing place.  I hope I can do it again sometime.

more tom cruise

This video has made my day. We’ll see how long it lasts on the internet before it is pulled as well. Before watching this video you have to watch the Scientology Indoctrination video given by Tom Cruise. I had it on my blog but it got yanked by the Church of Scientology, go figure. Here is a link to the video that can’t be pulled. Here is a great parody by Jerry O’Connell. Like i said though, watch the original first.

***UPDATE*** they pulled this video too, so here’s the direct link to it!

minneapolis or bust

So its only a couple of days until I leave for my work trip to Minneapolis. I am going to run the computers and the technical side of of the sale, which I will get to eventually. For those of you who don’t know, I am a graphic designer for one of the largest real estate auction companies in the nation. This weekend, we will be selling by auction 200± homes in the Twin Cities area. This is where we will be. My purpose is mainly to run our live internet bidding feed. I practiced a mock auction yesterday with someone calling the auction with floor bids and another person (just one) bidding online. This was probably one of the most stressful experiences I have encountered since working here. Now imagine the real setting – 3000 people live and God knows how many registered internet bidders. I’ll let you know how it goes on Monday. If anyone wants me to bring them back something from Minneapolis I will be taking requests.