YouTube – Faith : The Two-Legged Dog!

A friend of mine asks me sarcastically last week, "does your iphone have a feature where it turns of your 6:30 alarm clock on weekends?" Meaning that it stinks when you forget to turn off your alarm and it rips you out of bed on a Saturday.

That's humorous on several levels. First of all because the iphone does have that feature. Secondly because I gave the coy response that when MY alarm goes off at 6:30 on a day-off I just sleep through it and incorporate the sound into my fun dreams (see sleepy karl).

Of course this morning, my last real day off for a long while, my iphone alarm goes off at 6:17, because it's a Friday and not a Saturday and I forgot to turn it off. And I would have slept right through it too, except that I knew it was on my desk, and my desk is only nearly-level, not actually level. So historically phones with vibrators have vibrated off the desk after an extended amount of time of vibrating, like say, during the alarm cycle. And of course my phone was vibrating and alarming this morning, and so – for the sake of protecting my iphone – I let it rip me out of bed this morning, on my last day off in a long while.

After I was up, I though, "hey I'll use the washroom real quick and then go to bed." But my roommate was taking a shower. So I thought, "hey I'll have a leftover piece of pizza". I was working on the pizza when my roommates buddy devon walked in – at 6:19 – which was confusing because I was still half asleep and I mistook him for a character from the show my name is earl. This is weird because I don't watch that show.

Once I realized it was devon I remembered that he and my roommate and a couple of their buddies were loading the soapbox racer this morning for a tv interview on CityTV. CityTV is like the Fox of Canada, except for the shows aren't very good and they show gratuitous nudity and have swearing.

A couple of minutes later I was out taking photos of the completed soapbox racer that the boys will be racing Sunday at the big Red Bull Soapbox Racing event, which is kind of a big deal, which is why they're going to be on TV. They've been working on it for weeks now, and it's actually really cool. We're all proud of them. More photos of the event to follow.

So then I thought, "hey I'll go get gas." Because everybody needs gas at 6:30 in the morning, and it's especially fun when gas costs $5.50 a gallon like it does here. To make myself feel better I squeegeed my window.

And now I'm blogging. And I'm about to go upstairs and turn the tv on, because hey what better way to spend 7am on your day off than watching video documentary of soapbox racers on CityTV.

So yeah, my iphone really does have that great super-cool feature. Which is why I'm up taking pictures and blogging at 7am. But it's cool, I have a meeting at 11:30.

DK

This is the sign of a person obsessed

InterfaceLIFT Wallpaper: Rangitoto

Just in case you forgot!

This American Life

Well this is convenient.

Teen daughter of GOP VP pick is pregnant – CNN.com

Wow.

McCain Shoots himself in the foot?  Or a Stroke of Pure Genius?

McCain Chooses Palin as Running Mate – NYTimes.com

Hooray?

Muppet Show to return to TV after 27 years – Telegraph

About 11 years ago I started working for a decent-sized California summer ministry called Sonshine. While I was there I met a girl named Jane who had carrot-colored hair and was into things like social justice, recycling, swimming and running. We became instant friends (even though I wasn't into ANY of those things, but her name was Jane and there was a Dave Matthew's Band song called, "the song that Jane likes". So that pretty much guaranteed that we'd get along). We stayed friends, and eventually Jane moved to Vancouver to go to Regent College. Then eventually I moved to Vancouver to go to Regent College. When I got there Jane was all excited to have me meet this boy named Dane who she was dating. She was really excited about him, and he was really excited about, well, ninja turtles. Seriously, he even had tattoos of ninja turtles. He also liked Rocky a little bit.

As they welcomed me to Vancouver we did fun stuff together, including a weekend trip to Victoria where our friend Jess caught on fire. I played the piano and went shopping for movies, nearly crashing Jane's car off of a slippery road, but somehow I recovered and there was no crash, so they don't know about that even to this day. We drove to California and went a little crazy in the car.

One day Jane called me and said, we need to have a chat. For absolutely no reason I panicked, thinking something was wrong. Maybe something had gone down with Dane? Maybe Jane was pregnant? That was it for sure. I was sure she was pregnant!

It turns out that she and Dane had decided to get married and I'm waaaay too dramatic.

I rejoiced in my heart at the news. Jane was one of my best friends and Dane was good. I knew she had the right guy.

They had a wedding officiated by the best preacher in the known universe and a really handsome guy sang a worship song with his guitar. Also, it was the one day that summer that it didn't rain, I think. It was kind of cool, because I told God, "listen, if it rains on Jane and Dane's wedding, you and I are going to have problems."

Just writing that last sentence makes me feel like a dufus. I'm sorry God. But I did say that.

Then they were married and we stayed close. I got to become better friends with Dane, and it turns out not only does he like ninja turtles, but he's one of the deepest, most caring guys around. And for reasons that go beyond comprehension, he even volunteered – of his own accord – to go rollerblading with me every now and then.

That's a real man in my book. Real men cry, and real men aren't afraid to be seen in rollerblades.

A little while later Jane got pregnant and had Ben. So now Jane and Dane and Ben are three of my favorite people.

And Jane and Dane and Ben are good people. And I don't throw that term around lightly. It's not appropriate for me to go into detail here about why they are good people, but let me just say that they are people of Character. They are true followers of Christ and I've been blessed by their friendship, care, and love over these last three years. They even had me for dinner two nights ago, which was a great pick-me-up in light of the crappy-week-ness (read: week 2 continues to be crappy, but I think things are picking up).

They are some of the most others centred people I know. They are the kind of people who influence everyone around them for the better. These days, I'm greatly concerned about things like social-justice, care for the environment, and I even spend a fair amount of time swimming and running (not so much Dave Matthews). Jane is even going to be my triathlon coach in the future here if I can convince her to let me do it with and ipod. Dane is my rollerblading "coach" and he teaches me the things about Bible that Regent forgets. He can do that because he's a high-school Bible teacher.

Thanks you guys, for continued friendship. And sorry about making your anniversary card public, but hey these are the times we live in. May your next year (and years) be blessed like never before.

- Dan

p.s. Jane and Dane would love for you to head over to their blog read all about Ben, and leave a comment wishing them a happy anniversary. Worth the price of admission.

Here are more photos I stole from their facebook page.

two things you will always see in close proximity to Jane: Ben and a Diet Coke

no caption can do this picture justice

the word "meat" comes to mind.

I thought this article raised some pertinent issues

Racism is the only reason Obama might lose. – By Jacob Weisberg – Slate Magazine

It's been a long time, but with the school season starting around the corner, I thought I'd throw one of these out there. Last week, I'm pretty sure I can say, was easily the worst week of the year. I'm not even 100% sure why, but at the very least, and most obvious.

I hope this isn't too negative for you. It's therapeutic for me. If you don't like rundowns of crappy weeks, I suggest you skip this post.

• I got in a near-fight with a friend about something stupid.
  
• I had "relational" issues with someone else.
  
• It pretty much rained, all week. Often my car windows were down.
  
• I didn't get hardly anything done on my to-do list.
  
• I felt tired and crabby all week.
  
• I put left-over lasagna in the back of my car and the one thing happened that one always fears will happen but never actually happens – it spilled out into the seat and accumulated at the crack in a little pool. Oh well, at least my seats are pretty much the same color as the lasagna sauce.
  
• Every time I type lasagna MS Word turns it into lasagne.
  
• Construction workers and their doggone drills right under my feet at work all week.
  
• I talked out of my, um, rear parts, in almost every casual conversation I had and felt bad about it afterward.
  
• My bike broke, I took it apart and then realized I couldn't figure out how to put it back together (luckily i had some spare parts, so I can ride it now, albeit in a hobbled state).
  
• To cap off the great week, last night I was going to cook food for the week, and I started by sharpening my cook's knife. On the first stroke I lazily missed the sharpening steel completely and chopped the knife right into the knuckle on my thumb. Of course this led to me not sleeping very well (thanks for the vicodin, Andrew, but I didn't use it), and I'm pretty sure when I woke up and saw the semi-healed cut I almost had a panic attack. Some of us aren't used to physical pain and I'm one of "some of us". I've never broken a bone and only had stitches once, so I'm kind of a big baby when it comes to blood (at least MY blood).
  

Special props to my roommates Andrew, Beth, Wendy, and Lynsey who were in good spirits this week, knew I was having a crappy week and still hung out with me anyway. Beth even told me what to do when I cut my thumb open because apparently she cut her finger once in the same place, but even worse.

The theme word of the week was "of course".

• "Of course I just spilled lasagna in my car."
  
• "Of course I just spilled soda in my room and then knocked over a coffee carafe in the living room on the way to get a towel to clean up the soda."
  
• "Of course it's raining and my car windows are down."
  
• "Of course I just got in a fight with my friend and now he's run away."
  
• "Of course I just cut off my thumb."
  

Don't get me wrong. I'm not really in that bad of a mood and I'm not irritated. I'm not mad. I'm not even complaining. I'm just in the middle of that "of course" time of the year. I'm not sure if it's over yet, either. I hope so though. It's funny, I think, when the forces of nature and irony turn against one person for a short time. The object of that humour just happens to be me for the time being.

And – I don't believe in this stuff – but if you have a voodoo doll of me and you read this blog, will you please stop poking the back of my left shoulder? The constant twitching is driving me nuts.

DK

p.s. all the fights and relational issues are resolved. That's important.