Melissa and I had an exciting week. We went with the MSM to Muirwood Park Wednesday for theEVENT. It was cold, but fun. This weekend I filmed a wedding in Grass Valley. Melissa and I went to Rocklin to stay with Nick. I will write about it later this week and post some pictures.
Tomorrow is our 2 year anniversary which is nuts! We are going to go to Santa Cruz and to dinner and will do some sorta overnight thing later in August.
I can't believe that it has already been 2 years! We have had a lot of fun and I grow to love the girl more and more every day! It's also weird to think that we will have a 6 month old child by the time our 3 year anniversary rolls around. Crazy!
As I have stated before, I recently finished reading Shane Claiborne's book, The Irresistible Revolution. In his book, he talks about what it looks like to live as a disciple of Christ in our present age and society. He helped establish a community called "The Simple Way" in an extremely poor part of Philadelphia. The Simple way provides housing, education, food, and support for those living in the community. It is a hippy-ish community of Christians trying to learn what it looks like to live like Christ. The singer for mewithoutYou, who is from Philly, lived there for a while as well.
Last night around midnight a 7-alarm fire destroyed The Simple Way and much of the surrounding neighborhood. The fire started in an abandoned factory warehouse and spread to the neighboring houses. It took over 200 firefighters to extinguish the blaze. No one was hurt in the fire, however, The Simple Way was a beacon of hope and a place of refuge in an extremely impoverished place and the effects of this fire will be long lasting.
This is extremely weird timing, having just finished the book last month and having just seen mewithoutYou. There were a lot of really great things going on in that neighborhood (and some tragic things as well) and it will be interesting to see how the recovery process goes. God will work through all of this and more than likely, The Simple Way and the Christians in that community will grow stronger because of it.
For more information about the fire and The Simple Way, check out their website. Pray for the members of The Simple Way community and those that lost their homes in the fire.
Sunday was Father's Day. This day held special significance to me for a number of reasons. Number one: I got to spend time with my family which is always a treat. Number two: Sunday was my first Father's Day as an almost father. That has to be worth something. However, the number three reason of significance was by far, the most significant. In 1980, Fuddruckers was established, Whole Foods was incorporated, the space shuttle was invented, and my dad began growing his mustache. All of these items are important and worthy of mention, however, in my household and in the homes of those I love, few inventions or landmarks hold a candle to my father's mustache. In fact, since my birth and the subsequent birth of my younger, olive-skinned, brother, a razor has never even skimmed the follicles secured north of my father's lip. He didn't want to shave it and, more importantly, my mom would not let him. All of this came to pass on Sunday. The pressure came slowly. Gradually increasing in persistence and measure, my brother, my wife, and various friends and family, began encouraging my father to shave off the stash, insisting the time had come for a change. At first he was worried, cried even. Then, little by little, he began to break. I saw it first in his eyes. A little glimmer of hope. The chance to finally evade the Borat-impersonator persona. You could see a little thought bubble appear above his head each time he saw a razor, picturing a day without looking like a guy with one of those sunglasses/nose/mustache disguises on. He could have a fresh start, a younger, hipper, more dapper him. And then, all of a sudden, on the eve of his 5oth year on this planet (over half of which living with the mustache), he was ready for the shave. The documentary below depicts the monumental moment, and those leading up to it, in all its glory.
Mandie and Melissa giggled, cried, and screamed as he shaved it. It was like we were all sharing a sacred moment together. Justin and I are still adjusting to our new father. It feels like we don't even know him anymore. My mom wasn't too happy about the new look. She prefers her man to have a stash, but few can argue that the man looks a good (and I mean good) 10 years younger. His mom (my grandma) stood up, hooted, hollered, and clapped at her son's new look. She said, and I quote, "I have my son back." Oh the baggage that that facial hair carried. He said that he is going to keep it shaved until at least his 50th birthday, July 11th, at which point he will re-evaluate his new found self and decide what the future of his face will be. Let's hope he chooses well.
This weekend was memorable for many reasons. Some of which I will get in to now and some of which I will divulge later. On Saturday, Mel and I went to the A's game with Jen and sat in ridiculously good seats. Jen gets "Diamond Level" tickets from her work. The seats are literally on the field, right behind home plate. They are amazing! Not only do you get to sit directly behind home plate, on the field, you get all-you-can-eat food as well....FOR FREE! A fat kids fantasy-baseball and food. The girls were shown on Diamond Vision (the big jumbotron screens) twice and I managed to make it on once. We were also on TV quite a bit because each time they would show someone warming up on deck or a play at the plate, our sweet little faces were cheering in the background. Mel got a bunch of the A's player's autographs (Piazza, Kotsay, Ellis, Crosby, etc.) and I got a couple Cardinals' people (Rolen and LaRussa). We bought a couple balls before the game so that we could give them to our child someday, because he or she will undoubtedly be a huge baseball fun. Thanks for the tickets Jen!
I just figured out how to upload videos from my phone to YouTube. Sheer genius! I can now share the footage of our young child's heartbeat. It was really weird the first time I heard it. We both (Mel and I) looked at each other and thought, "wow, there's really something alive in there." The doctor then explained to me that babies don't actually grow inside of the mother's stomach and that the whole stork process is in fact fiction. Fascinating.
Our child is destined to be the source of many stories, legends, and mysteries for years to come, and as such, he or she should be named accordingly. Due to my (and Melissa's) fascination with Chinese folk stories, Rikki Tikki Tem is the perfect name.
The nickname for Rikki Tikki Tem would be Rikki Tikki Tem-bo. When Melissa or I get mad at our child we could shout, "Rikki Tikki Tem-bo Nosarembo Charrie Barrie Ruchi Pip-Perry Pembo!" That way our child would know that we were serious and seriously passionate about Chinese folk stories, ergo killing two birds with one stone.
I felt the baby kick pretty hard yesterday. That was the first "real" kick that I have felt. Up until now I have been a bit of a baby-kick skeptic, constantly telling Melissa that I am feeling her stomach muscles tensing rather than the kick of our strong-legged fetus. Turns out I was wrong. The baby is indeed in there, just kickin' it.
In other news, I inspired Eli Mayerson to have his head shaved. I am honored.
Chris Clark, a good friend of my brother and I (and many of you), is a Marine Recon currently in Iraq. Last week his grandma passed away. He and his brother were pretty much raised by his grandparents. His parents were in to a lot of bad stuff and were incarcerated for a while, so his grandparents took him and his brother in. His grandpa (Hank) had no way of getting hold of Chris to give him the news. He called my mom to give her the news and to see if she had any contact with Chris. My mom and brother prayed that Chris would call in the next couple days so that they could get him in touch with his grandpa. Chris called Saturday at 5:00 am. Totally random. He told Justin that he is in Kuwait and about to begin a covert mission entering Iraq undercover. He told Justin that he was scared and asked him to have people pray for him. Justin then told him about his grandma. Chris then hung up and called his grandpa. Pray for the safety of Chris and his unit as they are probably doing this mission as you read this. Pray that he will be challenged to grow in the Lord as well and that people will be brought in to his life that know God and can encourage him.
Charlie requested that I post this ridiculous drama from last year's mission trip to the Rez. We were in charge of creating (no pun intended) a drama during our training sessions last summer and this is what we came up with. During the creative process we had no idea that I would be doped up on Hydrocodone when we actually performed the skit. It really brought the drama to a whole new level. My narrating, as you can see, was really top notch.
In the past week or so, Melissa has began to be able to feel the baby moving. She is 17 weeks along now (is my math right Lo Jo?) and according to the mounds of baby books that we have, some women can feel the baby move as early as 14 weeks. If they're pregnant that is! I have also been able to feel the baby as well. Not inside of me so much but when I put my hand on her stomach. It is really weird to think about how fast this baby is growing. It seems like yesterday he-she was as small as a pea!
I was looking at the Panfilio's blog and stole one of their ideas. If you look on the right hand side of this page you will see an Expect Net banner thingy. If you click it you can enter in your name and guess when the baby will be born, sex, length, weight, etc. Fill out your guesses today! The winner will receive my child's instant respect when it is born.
I just got off the phone with Melissa who just had a conversation with one of her co-workers about their puppy. They (her co-worker and her husband) had recently gotten a Golden Retriever puppy from the same breeder that we got Bauer from. The couple had been trying for months now to get their dog's papers from the breeder. When Mel and I got Bauer I got a really weird vibe from the breeder. He was kinda creepy and all of his puppies smelled like pee. He wouldn't let us go in to his house or see the puppy's parents. Not to mention the fact that Bauer had worms and fleas, a lovely piece of information that we found out at his first vet appointment. Anyway, Mel's friends kept going to the guys house to get the papers and he kept saying they were in the mail. They even threatened to return the puppy to the breeder. That's when the breeder told the truth. He was in fact a puppy broker. Meaning, he gets puppies from a breeder (in this case, a lovely dog-hatchery in Oregon) and sells them on their behalf. This explains a lot about Bauer. As a young pup, born and bred in Oregon, he was taken from his parents, placed on and airplane, and sent to the flea-infested, worm-laden, pee-hole, that the dog broker called home. So sketchy. Anyway, we are returning Bauer for a full refund. I wish! For Charlie: In other news, they are shutting down the Hershey factory in Oakdale and moving it to Monterey, Mexico. By 2010 the company will save $190 million but will lose over 10,000 American jobs. Pretty lame. Plus, as a pudgy child, I rather enjoyed touring the Hershey Factory, mainly due to the fact that I got free candy at the end.
I helped out in Mel's class today. I like going in there. The kids are pretty funny and it sorta makes me feel like a celebrity when I show up. Kids clamor to sit next to me, stare at me, ask me random questions, and think pretty much everything I do is cool. I picture a similar relationship with my yet-to-be-born child. Mel asked her students to give suggestions for baby names. Some of the highlights included, Spiderman, Loop (Pakistani suggestion), Star Wars, Anakin, and Joe. No joke. Those were real suggestions. Classic. I worked at one of the tables in the room helping students fill out a paper about their dad for father's day. The questions were pretty basic (dad's age, favorite thing to do, food, etc.) but the answers were classic. Most kids assume their dad's age is in the 80-90 range. I am pretty sure that is not accurate. One of the kid's dad spends a lot of time at the tapioca shop apparently, and if given the choice to have anything in the world, his dad would choose tapioca. I believe him.
Last night at the church a tree fell down. It was exciting. A bunch of high school students placed the tree in the back of Rob Calame's truck. We then tried to put the tree in Deej's car but someone tipped him off and he came out and caught us in the act.
Here is the church segment of the Immanuel Mission Promo DVD. It features clips from their basic church service in addition to some footage from Christmas time. Oh the splendor of it all.
Unfortunately, due to a lack of sign-ups and student motivation, I had to cancel the Middle School Ministry's Canada Day Camping Spectacular. That's the bad news. The good news is the the college and young adult ministries @ VBC have taken over the trip. Melissa and I will still be going. We are sorta heading it up alongside the Moog's and Charlie. Rollins Lake is a pretty fun place and I am pretty excited to go there at the end of the month.
I finished editing the Immanuel Mission promo DVD and I will post the various segments on here in the coming days. Today I will treat you to an amazing bit of nose-picking footage that I captured while on the Rez. It's priceless.
Melissa is beginning to show a little which is pretty exciting. I enjoy talking to her stomach, informing the fetus about how cool his (or her!) father is and how lucky they are to have me, and how cool they are going to be, and other inspirational stuff like that. The kinda uplifting stuff that Dr.'s recommend.
Now it's time to go destroy Jake in tennis. Wish me luck.
Last night I had the pleasure of attending the mewithoutYou show at Slim's with Tony and Jake. It was a treat. For starters, mewithoutYou aren't really like any other band out there right now. They are rather hippy-ish. They are all Christian dudes, and much in the spirit of Shane Claiborne and the like, are these communal, organic-eating, social justice-craving, Jesus loving, potluck enjoying, carrot devouring, spoken-word rocking, accordian and bell playing, weirdos. As complicated and lame as that description was, it is the best that I can do. The singer does this weird spoken word, dancing, stuttering, singing thing. They asked their fans (via their website) to bring food to the show to share as well as a non-guitar instrument if any of the fans would like to play with them on stage. Sadly no one brought any instruments. As you can see from the video below, people do bring instruments to their other shows.
Their bus (above) is powered using vegetable oil. No joke. Read an article here about veggie cars. There were 3 other bands as well (Manchester Orchestra, Piebald, and The Snake The Cross The Crown). I enjoyed all of them but Manchester was particularly good. The show was a lot of fun. We got back super late but it was worth it.
Mel went to the senior banquet at church. She said that it was a lot of fun. Before she was a middle school leader, she was a high school leader, and had been with this group of girls since they were freshman, so it was a good bit of closure for her. They had over 125 people at the banquet. What a splendid occasion!
As the glorious title of this post suggests, this is the my 100th post ever. That is quite the landmark and to celebrate I am going to go play tennis. Tonight the VBC softball team attempts to raise our dubious record to 2-5. We are currently 1-5 but we try hard and that has to be worth something. The game is at 9pm. Be there!
Today also marks the beginning of Melissa's 16th week of pregnancy. As Lauren noted on a previous post, my math has been a bit off throughout this pregnancy but rest assured, it is accurate now. This is officially the 4-month marker.
Here is another segment from the Immanuel Mission Promo DVD. I have been doing a ton of editing lately and I will continue to post things as I finish them. I just finished filming a video for Tyler Moxley's real estate stuff. It is riveting cinema but you will have to wait to see it until I am finished editing it.
On Sunday I get to go see mewithoutYou at Slim's with Jake. It is going to be incredible. I will tell you all more about it later. They truly are one of the most unique bands out there right now. If you get a chance, go on their site and read the section entitled, "Potlucks + Play With Us on Stage." I really can't do the article justice by paraphrasing it. Enjoy.
I just finished another segment for the Immanuel Mission Promo DVD. You can check it out if you would like.
Today I will probably end up destroying Jake in tennis yet again and will likely revel in my victory for an extended period of time before meeting Melissa for dinner. It's gonna be a good day.
"Rosham." This name comes courtesy of Maddie "Mary Madeleine" Flaig. Gotta give credit where credit is due. Though Rosham itself is a great name, I will skip straight to the nickname, "Rosham-bo." Brilliant, Maddie, brilliant.
Maddie obviously suggested this name due to the fact that young Rosham will likely be a voice of reason in a world of chaos and distress. During any playground dispute, corporate mishap, or global conflict, Rosham-bo will likely be called upon to settle the tumultuous situation. Rosham-bo will be the great equalizer in a world of unequality. All rocks, papers, and scissors, aside, this name is very fitting of the young peacemaker that will be, Rosham.
Melissa and I spent our first pregnant Memorial Day swimming at Tyler Moxley's pool with some of our closest pals. I swam a bajillion laps and now have a pretty bad sunburn. Melissa is now 14 weeks along and this (above, not Bauer) is essentially what our baby looks like right now (except a lot more handsome, obviously.) After the pool we headed over to the Robery's, who offered to host our young married's small group for a barbecue. It was a lot of fun. We played volleyball and ate burgers. Pretty great. Aaron and Amy Mayerson also announced that they are pregnant which is pretty dang exciting. Their baby will be due a couple months after Rosham. Congratulations Aaron and Amy!
On Saturday we had the middle schoolers out at our house for a rousing day of paintball, food, and festive fun. We had a ton of people out there and luckily not one got too hurt. There was definitely a few highlights of which I will now share.
Highlight 1: The kids played down in the creek in groups of 10 (5 on 5). Rob Calame and I set up various barricades in the water. The teams would start on opposite ends of the creek and make their ways toward one another, firing as they progressed, hoping to apply welts on the enemy combatants. I stood on the bank of the creek, up the hill a bit, and fired random shots at the kids down below. I hit one hit in the groin region, which made him a bit unhappy. When the round was over, he made his way to the exit point and began walking up the short hill out of the creek bed. As he made his way up he whined and complained about being shot and asked why I did it. Josh Perry was behind me and he told the kid (more like yelled at him) to shoot me. The kid was less than 3 feet away from me. He did. He shot me. Point blank. Straight up shot me. I was shocked. I told Josh to leave the area and asked the kid (in my angry voice) what he was thinking and told him that if he wanted to live, he would never ever ever do that again. He agreed and thus he is alive today.
Highlight #2: Nate Darnell showed up to helped barbecue. He also helped the teams with various combat strategies. Nate, an ex-Army Ranger, used rocks to diagram the course and showed the kids where they should hide, and the best attack points, in addition to each base's weaknesses. It was classic. He was getting in to it. The kids didn't exactly absorb his military insight. Most of the students ended up getting pretty banged up.
Middle school is going really well and it was cool to see that we had over 30 people (students and leaders) at yesterday's event. God has really blessed the ministry.
Mel is feeling well and she is starting to show a bit. It is weird to think that she is already 15 weeks along (last Friday). She really enjoyed picking kids off from the bank as they played in the creek. Looking all too innocent, she deviously shot the kids down below as they attempted to play. They had no idea where the shots were coming from. She was loving every minute of it. It was our baby's first paintball experience and I sure that he or she thought that it was magical.
This is a comment that my father left on the previous post. I felt that it was worthy of a full posting.
I have always loved the name "Budger." I am not certain where I first heard this name, or if I made it up, but it resonates deep within me.
I have been thinking that I wanted a dog named "Budger." There does not appear to support for this since our hope-to-be-German-Sheppard may be too majestic for such a charming name.
To date, my dream of having a relationship with Budger, awaits a loved-one upon which to place this delightful cognomen.
Lauren now calls me Budger, which I know is a show of affection, but it means I now have a relationship with a Budger who is myself and that is not how my dream should end up.
This brings me to the question at hand. What to name the unidentified new addition to the family.
I believe, "Budger" is a name worthy of full consideration. Since I may be the only person who has been in the development of this name (other than Lauren), I feel very strongly that it is appropriate and will work well. It can be used for either a boy or girl, it is delightful, charming, and happy in its sound... and... the meaning of the name is profound. To me it means: "Dear-one, overflowing with affection, full of joy."
"Gazi", or, "Gaze." (Gha-zee) Anyway, for a great while I have admired the studies and research of college student, Gazi Ayyad. I promise I didn't just Google the name "Gazi" and pick the first Gazi I found. Back to my story. Since I am such an avid anthropologist, what better way to honor my favorite branch of science, than naming my first child after one of anthropology's greatest young minds.
Lauren Wallace suggested that an excellent nickname for young Gazi would be, "Gazi-bo." I concur. Gazebos bring shelter in stormy weather, shade in extreme heat, and comfort in pretty much any condition. They also spend most of their time by a pool, which undoubtedly, young Gazi-bo will do as well.
On Monday, Robert F. Calame and I watched the season finale of 24. The season as a whole was kind of a letdown. They killed off Curtis, Palmer #2 is on his deathbed, and Audrey went crazy. Then, Jack almost offs himself. We get it, he has had a long day. Next season, try to make it more exciting. According to this article, that is what they have in mind.
Melissa is back from Las Vegas. Jake and I picked her up last night. Jake's friend, Brad, accompanied us on our journey. On our way we (mainly Brad) decided that it would be a funny idea to turn the heater on full blast and pretend that we didn't notice the heat when the girls got in the car. The girls got in the car and instantly commented on how hot it was and after we made several excuses as to why we had the heat on (Brad's rare medical condition that required high heat; the car was overheating, etc.), we reluctantly decided to turn the heater off.
Melissa had a great time on the trip and was really glad that she was able to go. She stayed up late last night telling me all of the trip's details and it sounded like she had a blast. She doesn't get to do stuff like that with her girlfriends (friends that are girls) very often so I am glad that she got to. They spent a lot of the time laying out by the pool and hanging out at their hotel and I suggested that they could've had a similar experience at the Pleasanton Hilton and could have saved some cash. She didn't like my suggestion.
I spent the weekend living up the life of bachelorhood. Kind of. On Friday a bunch of us went bowling at good ol' Earl Anthony's in Dublin. $13 for unlimited games. You can't beat that. I ended up bowling 6 games (top score: 141) and headed home around 1am. Hicks bowled one game over 180 and Charlie did really well too. Nerds. Melissa and the girls went bowling in Vegas as well. Melissa led all of the ladies, bowling a 105 (ok, she actually tied with Lacey, but still!)
I took the CSET on Saturday which was pretty horrible. It is a 4-part English test that I have to take for my credential. I will get the results sometime next month. We'll see what happens. That was not the highlight of my weekend.
Last week Moog and I had a revelation. We were at Comp USA for their "going out of business sale", and saw a bunch of digital camera docks for sale at 80% off. A steal (or so we thought). We checked EBAY and saw that we could easily triple our money by selling them, so we went back and bought six of them. I placed them on EBAY the following day, anxiously anticipating our lucrative payday. Unfortunately there was a reason that these things were on sale. Nobody wants them. We lost a combined $40 on the deal. You would think I would've learned a lesson from this. However, as you will soon read, I did not.
Today I listed several jackets on EBAY for my dear friends, Cody & Amy Moxley. This venture poses little risk for me, save getting beat up by Cody and Amy if they don't sell. But, with models like these fine gentlemen, how could they not sell! If you would like to view the items in all of their glory, click here. It will be well worth your time.
Mel leaves for Vegas today. Melissa can gamble, carouse, booze, and smoke with the best of them so this weekend should be nothing short of stellar for her. Wait...she's pregnant. WHY IS SHE GOING TO VEGAS!?!?!? Jen is turning 30 so a group of young ladies (12 of them and I use the word, "young", loosely) will be heading their to celebrate Jen's 30 years of life and will be staying at the Paris hotel in the heart of the strip. I am taking them to the airport this evening and will then begin my weekend of bachelorhood with Bauer. Actually, I am taking the CSET (a horrific state standardized test to be an English teacher) on Saturday so my weekend will probably be pretty uneventful. Pray that the ladies are safe and that they have a good time.
Muirwood Park Wednesday for theEVENT. It was cold, but fun.
I can't believe that it has already been 2 years! We have had a lot of fun and I grow to love the girl more and more every day! It's also weird to think that we will have a 6 month old child by the time our 3 year anniversary rolls around. Crazy!
