It was hot. I mean like 29 degree hot (that's 90 Fahrenheit). I'm not sure what's going to happen when I move back to California. Most likely I'll melt.

Enjoy…

This horse has no legs. Yet it is equally dangerous.

After riding the horse they would do this "live-action" transfer to the patrol horses. Every time. Cowboys are basically like Batman.

Eventually it became clear that the only fun picture to take was the cowboys falling off of the horses.

sweet. Horse, 1; Cowboy, dirt.

Kids and sheep something something…

...I don't know 'cause I was too busy watching Josh try to make Naomi wear the hat.

this is Luke. Karen is it ok if I post this? This is my attempt to take off-center subject contrast photos. It's been a while since I took photo courses, so I don't really know what I'm doing anymore.

At this point I'm just taking pics of Luke because he's insanely photogenic.

trying to get artsy with a cow. It didn't work.

Generally cowboys are pretty cool. They're really short; but they're cool. Like Boian. Boian is basically a cowboy.

I find it interesting, of course, that now that I have plenty of free time to write whatever I want, I don't have anything to write about. This must change, and it must change. To quote the words of my pastor here,

"Danny, we must see this change. It must change Danny and we must do it!"

That could basically be implied to any situation. I'm really just pointing out that he likes to call me Danny and use the word "must".

Now. Let me make one thing clear:

You do not call me Danny. Nobody calls me that. Even my own father doesn't call me Danny. In general, I don't like it, and if you call me Danny and think you're being coy, I'll say something once or twice, and then secretly dislike you in my thoughts. Plus when it comes time for fun pranks, you'll be at the top of my list.

My pastor has somehow gotten around this, and my Mom, Aunts, and Grandma. So you need to be a small Mexican woman or a very confident South African; otherwise I think you should stick with Dan or Dan Ray. And it's fine. We're good.

Also:

Whistling:

Me and colleague Crystal are arguing about my facebook status, which says, "Dan just noticed that walking around the hallways whistling the "death star" theme evokes funny responses." I thought that was pretty funny, Crystal says I'm strange and that whistling is strange, especially whistling star wars. Lame.

Lame:

It occurs to me that lame is a great word to use to silence somebody or end an argument. I mean really, what can you say against lame? "Not lame?" Well that's lame too. How you say it makes all the difference, but if you just inflect it properly, nobody can come back from it. Try it. Try it on your kids…

Mom I don't wanna go to bed!

Go to bed!

No! I don't want to!

Why not?

Cause I want to stay up and watch more tv!

Lame…

Kid will be sleeping inside of 10 minutes, I guarantee. Some may disagree. Lame.

Construction:

The nice construction people at my work have decided that from about 8:30am to 4:30pm would be the perfect time to start drilling into the wall right next to my cubicle (and everyone else's) with a 40-foot-tall drilling machine. During this time I have:

• heard several people complain
  
• watched the Dean of the Business School run around frantically trying to get the construction workers to stop drilling with their 40-foot-tall drilling machine
  
• found out just how wonderful in-ear noise cancelling headphones truly are
  
• eaten a lot of bagels from solly's, with solly's fresh-made cream cheese, and
  
• asked several people over email, "hey do you hear a noise or anything? Is it raining outside?
  

Seriously though. It's really loud. Imagine if you took the biggest metal mixing bowl in your house, put it on your head, and then somebody stood on a chair behind you with a pair of chopsticks and a wooden spoon and they played drums on the bowl rapidly while screaming "African Drum Solo!" It's that loud.

Other Stuff:

• Bought a new (cheap used) bike. Giant size. Since I'm a giant. Anybody need a morning cycling partner? I'm thinking 5-10k rides.
  
• I've decided to learn how to play the djembe drum. My instructor will be youtube.
  
• I've been sending about 20-30 emails a day outside of my job. Why?
  
• I need a vacation. Anyone got any good ideas (trips to see family and friends in California don't really count as a "vacation")?
  
• I'm getting a lot of flak for not wearing a bike helmet. Including – but not limited to – obnoxious Canadian men coming up next to me in their cars and giving me a hard time about it. Do you think that's fair? I don't think it's fair.
  

- DK

Today I was riding on a bus, and in the middle of the bus (sorry this is taking so long to write, my fingers are frozen), there's this accordion section that bends and spins around when the bus is turning or when it goes over bumps. It's like an island in the middle of the bus that's kind of floating there.¹Needless to say, when I can, I like to ride in the accordian-y part of the bus. In the accordion circle, there are two benches, with two seats each. They are facing each other.

Since the students are now gone, there was nobody sitting in any of the seats. So I sat down on the one, and put my feet up on the other across from me.

You know what?

Perfect fit. I never knew that! I really like to sit with my feet up, in just about any situation where it's deemed acceptable. And lately I've been having awkward situations where the footrest is either too far from me, too close to me, has pointy sharp things that bug my legs, or off to one side which makes my torso hurt. I didn't realize it, but when I sat in the bus seats in the accordian section, I was reminded of how nice it is when you're sitting in a good seat with your feet up properly.

This begs the question, "Why is it sometimes deemed unacceptable to sit with your feet up?" Is there really anyone who would prefer to sit with their feet on the floor? I doubt it. I think there should be an option in every situation that involves seats to have your legs up on some kind of footrest or ottoman. How great would that be?

Imagine how much nicer Captain Picard would be if he could have put his feet up on the bridge of the Enterprise; Or how much happier toll booth operators and border patrol people would be if they could put their feet up. Students would do better, more people would come to church, and people driving in Vancouver would probably stop glaring so much.

This basic human rights stuff. We should fight for our dignity more often.

I guess this post went a little long. I'll write about the Spanish thing later.

DK

1. One time, when I had just arrived in Vancouver, I didn't realize how the bus worked, so I was sitting on one of those seats, and I got up to let someone else sit down right as the bus was turning. The seats are dead center of the double-long bus, so the centrifugal force was outrageous, and it threw me into the accordion side-wall and I got stuck in there and I think I almost died. Everyone laughed; it was not a happy day. I learned my lesson though. [ƒ]

uhh….

cheering?

Update after the Jump

For some reason this "done" feels better than other "dones" It may have something to do with that fact that I liked my classes. Maybe it was because it's actually sunny in april. Either way, I'm in a state of peace right now that will happily extend at least until july when I take summer school. Either way, It feels good. Now I have only have to worry about the "light" tasks of full time work, some part-time computer consulting, and a hodge-podge of various church stuff. Trust me, when you take 11 units of grad school out of the equation, anything sounds mellow. You could ask me to babysit your pet pit-bull and I'd think it was breakfast.

Interestly, I didn't stop blogging this time. I'm not sure why, but the stress seems to be a little less now. Maybe I'm acclimating or somehow turning this work/school/church/blog thing into more of a wholistic endeavor. Or maybe it's just that they had a mock doogie howser scened on how I met your mother and that gave me more peaceful energy. Maybe it's because I wisely stayed away from American Idol this year, or maybe it's just cause God like me.

You decide. I'm just happy. My chores are done, and now I want to go outside and play.

I also learned a lot of stuff this year. Maybe I'll share some of that here. If I don't forget it all. I even learned something today.

oh one more thing, that guitar. Re-listed. Yup. How dumb is that? And I don't even want it anymore.

DK

Point of Clarification. On the right side of my blog it says, "not THE CLAP!!!"

It occurs to me that out of context that could be taken in the wrong way.

So I'm going to clarify, point by point.

1. I was at a lecture last night when we had a very long and sometimes standing ovation for my professor, Mark Davies, who was giving his final lecture as a professor at Regent College.
2. As it went on, I started wondering to myself, "how does a long ovation (clap) like this ever come to an end. It seems like in theory, as people keep clapping other people keep clapping and it could concievably go on forever. But it usually doesn't.
3. Thus I wrote, last night, "What causes a clap to end?"
4. Then, this morning, I realized that could be taken the wrong way. In reponse I wrote, "not THE CLAP!!!"
5. Meaning here to emphasize the word "the" I should have written, "not THE clap". When I read it how I originally wrote it I realized that it could easily be seen as coming out of nowhere, as in, "oh no! not the clap!!!"
6. If read this way, I assume it would put all of you, the blog readers, in a state of curious confusion, "hmm, I wonder why dan just wrote that?"
7. I don't want you in this state of curious confusion, and since I'm way too lazy to simply log into my twitter account and fix the feed post, you get this blog entry.

1. Which, based on its logical flow and organized nature, I now assert that I am using it to prepare for my upcoming sytematic theology exam. I'm also trying to work on expressing things more clearly, because – obviously – that hasn't been going very well lately.

   DK

   ]]> http://draynet.com/396/good-gravy/feed/ 2 http://draynet.com/389/baby-montage/ http://draynet.com/389/baby-montage/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:22:53 +0000 dray http://draynet.com/389/baby-montage/ Well the time has finally come. And it's been a long time coming. The following is the long-anticipated, much looked forward to, baby montage that I've been talking about for the last 10 weeks. Interestingly enough, during those last 10 weeks new babies are being born like every week! Which is part of the reason I've kept putting it off. Now that Kyle and Sarah had their baby however, I'm calling a cease-fire on all births until tonight at 10:00pm by which time this blog will be finished. So if you have a baby between now (8:49) and 10pm I have to tell you I'm sorry, but your baby isn't going to be on this baby montage or the next baby montage on this blog. Your baby has been disqualified because he or she broke the cease fire and now will have to stand trial for war crimes.

   Since the internetic authority on the definition of "montage" is as follows A cinematic device used to show a series of scenes, all related and building to some conclusion it should be easy for you to see why I've referred to this constantly as a montage. It's going to be fun, and this will be the only time on the blog where you will see this many pictures of the blog author in one place. So single ladies, beware this post contains images of dan and babies and lots of images of dan holding babies. You probably better just move on and see what's going on here or maybe here.

   And now that that's all settled, I present to you, without further delay:
   

   THE DAN AT DRAYNET.COM BABY MONTAGE!!!

   
   Part 1: Welcome to Planet Earth: Ciara Alice Palmer

   Ciara was born a while back to my friends Vanya and Ryan. She's small and has lots and lots of black hair (insinuates nothing). When she's happy she makes neat little quacking sounds like a duck. For some reason she usually has a white tongue.

   I chose to start the montage with this picture of her and I because it demonstrates what a great relationship we have even when she was only 4 days old.

   
   Ciara loves uncle dan (the most?)

   
   Ciara wakes up to a new day

   
   She's just a few months away from an elusive modeling contract

   
   These are her proud parents showing of Ciara and her sweet designer car seat. If you think that's cool, you should see her stroller/monster truck bed thingy. It has better suspension than my car.

   
   Part 2: Naomi Grace Cramer

   I said before that Naomi gets priority and she definitely does. She's the best to watch because she has this gazing stare that just really makes a person feel like they are interesting. She gets this from her father. And her mother. Everybody loves to hold Naomi and often Shannon and I have to do battle for her, at least until the other kids show up and then we all get to be happy. Naomi holds the proud title of having spit up on me 4 times in one holding while pooping 3 times. After that holding I declared that I would never change a child's diaper until I had kids of my own. And let's be honest, they can change their own da*^ diapers.

   
   Naomi is sporting the good looks. I encouraged Josh and Grace to ground her one month for every time she cries in order to avoid having to ever deal with boys.

   
   This is Naomi and Phil. Phil is not Naomi's father Josh is.

   
   This is Naomi's mama Grace. Naomi often does cool things like chew on a bottle.

   
   This is me holding Naomi like a football. There you go andrew, My babi3z frienz p0wnz y04z. She always makes cool faces like this.

   
   Part 3: Welcome to the hood, Luke Daniel Nevens

   Aww yeah! It's on now. LD Nevens is my homie from another cronie. He's my bro and my bro's bro yo. He's the man. He did the roll at age .05 and he owns it. And he owns. I love this guy. And when he's pissed, he lets you know. I like. I expect him to beat me at basketball by age 3. It's been 2 months since I've seen him and if the guy can't play guitar by now you can call me yellow.

   
   Mom (gretchen) and Luke. Luke is clearly already planning world domination. He gets that from dad.

   
   This one's for all the ladies…

   
   Mike demonstrates the coolest way to hold a baby…

   
   And I find myself sufficiently instructed. Luke enjoys

   
   We were both tired after a long night of partying and wooing the women, so we decided to chill out and take a nap.

   
   Here's Uncle Luke with his namesake

   
   Most babies don't turn until 3 months. LD had it mastered by age six weeks. Mike and I were so proud that we tried to get him to do it several times in a row. This severely pissed him off.

   
   "I'm sorry little guy." Mike had to console him. Well done little man, well done.

   
   Part Gamma: Hannah Twombley

   Hannah was born to Jeremy and Jeralyn a little over a year ago. She doesn't really like me very much, as evidenced by the fact that every time I tried to hold her, this happened:

   
   Hannah. Not happy with Dan.

   
   To make things worse, I tried to hold Hannah and LD together. Disaster ensued.

   
   Part X: Anna Elaine Barber

   Dillon and Kristen gave birth to Anna and she is just utterly cute. Very much like her parents. She doesn't cry, she's always happy, and she's made of butterscotch and dandelions.

   
   Anna and Dad looking sharp.

   
   Anna and Dad posing

   
   Just plain cute…

   
   But also serious at times…

   
   My bosom makes babies sleep.

   
   Now she's out cold.

   
   But awake in time to play with her toys. Stay back fools!

   
   Part 5: Welcome to Vancouver, Christian Grey Ratzlaff

   Christian is just over a Year old and Heather and Derek adopted him a few months ago. As one person said in our church, Christian Ratzlaff just won the new parent lottery, 'cause Derek and Heather are as good as it gets.

   This little guy is beyond words. He's fun, smart, and happy, always present with a smile or mischievous grin. I generally like to hold him upside down until he laughs. We get along great. He doesn't talk yet, but if he did he'd say, "Dan Ray, you are so cool."

   
   Here he is planning something.

   
   But it seems that he got distracted by some food. What is it with the little ones and food?

   
   Part Alpha: Welcome to earth BENJAMIN WADE SPLINTER HALTON

   BWSH, or as I like to call him "swoosh" (dane, that's for constantly calling me "deep chocolate") is better than bread. And that's quite a compliment coming from me. He came into this world a little bit early, so he's been gaining ground ever since. I know Luke Daniel rules, but just to be fair, Ben Wade started rolling around at age negative 2 weeks. Yeah. This guy is going places. big places.

   He has been already in many ways a HUGE blessing and source of joy for Jane and Dane and their loved ones, so he basically started doing ministry the moment he was born. I love this guy.

   
   wtf?! What am I doing here? Ben was a little startled at his early arrival.

   
   But he acclimated quickly…

   
   I met him on this day. He commented on how nice that sweater looks on me.

   
   Here I gave Ben the "lion king" treatment, so that all the jungle animals could see who rules.

   
   Bow before king swoosh.

   
   This is Jane's favorite Ben picture. And consequently mine too. I suggest that he will be driving the car inside of 4 weeks.

   Check out Jane and Dane's blog for more pictures of Ben

   
   Part Omega: Welcome to Earth: Maia Charis Reid

   I haven't gotten to meet Maia yet, which is a point of contention for me. So trips must be planned and planes must be caught soon! She's gorgeous though, just like her parents Uncle Luke and Beth.

   
   Welcome Maia

   
   Good morning! Anything exciting planned for today?

   
   Proud parents Luke and Beth. We're fairly certain Maia won't have a beard, but with a dad like Luke, nothing is out of the question.

   
   Last minute Entry!
   Welcome to the World Addison Elizabeth Wilhelms!

   Addison was born seven days ago and she's a doll. Had to make sure that she was added. Congratulations to Kyle and Sarah, two of my very best friends and Addison's new parents. If you want to get a deeper understanding of who they are, check out the quote on the right side of the home page.

   
   Naked Addison: We definitely need more pictures of naked people on this blog. Seemed like a good place to start.

   
   Addison is looking for food. Apparently these babies aren't too particular about where their food comes from.

   
   This dude is one of my heroes. He's gonna be a great dad. As long as he doesn't sell his kids.

   
   Addison is all ready to go with a careful glare, and alien abduction protection?

   
   Part Revelation: Welcome to Earth, Daniel K. Ray

   And the Final Picture. Worth the price of admission. This is a picture of me, age nine, hanging out with some baby in a wagon. Isn't I cute!? Too bad I didn't have a beard then.

   
   The real question here is, which one is the baby?

   
   Seriously Though…

   Congratulations to all my dear friends and their new found joys. There's no way to adequately express the joy that we all feel with this much addition of new life, so I'm not even going to try. Hopefully this post will be an indicator though of how much all of this has blessed me and the many people (especially grandparents) that get to see their loved ones walk into this new phase of life. One day, I'll have my own kids, but in the meantime, I'll take great comfort in knowing that there are this many new people in the world who will grow up in loving, caring, Christ-centered homes. Blessings to all of you.

   I can't believe it. This monster post is finally done. On that note, I'll be taking a couple of weeks off. Watch for an update or two and lots of twitter feed updates. But other than that, it's finals time for me baby. Oh yeah.

   DK

   p.s. Additional Congrats to Nathan and Karen on the birth of Luke Daniels (confusing, I know) little brother Caleb. I don't have any pictures but will gladly update later.

   p.p.s. If you're a single girl who reads this blog and are now profusely in love with me, check out the about page for contact info or search the site profusely for the dating application. I'm sure it's on here somewhere.

   p.p.p.s. Seriously though. I don't really mean that.

   p.p.p.p.s. The cease fire is officially over. You can go back to birthing new babies.

   p.p.p.p.p.s. Special thanks to gmail search for all the middle names

   p.p.p.p.p.p.s. Three cheers for the laptop. Not one crash yet and it's soldiered through a weekend of powerpointing, 4 classes, and some online nintendo golf. I still got the skillz to pay the bills.

   ]]> http://draynet.com/389/baby-montage/feed/ 8 http://draynet.com/392/real-monday-morning-update/ http://draynet.com/392/real-monday-morning-update/#comments Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:05:35 +0000 dray http://draynet.com/392/real-monday-morning-update/ "So, do you think Marsupsniks is really retiring?"

   I was having a nice coversation with some colleagues when all of a sudden one of them threw out that phrase. I don't know who Masrapstalnik is or why he would be being trade, when it dawns on me…
   ...Oh yeah, I'm in Canada. I sometimes forget, but then I'll be in a conversation where three office workers, one who is a manger and a male, and two who are in completely different departments and are female start a conversation about somebody with some strange foreign sounding last name and they all know who they are talking about. This is not my experience of all things sports.

   For instance, I'm quite certain that had I gone to Sheryl Kerner, my former manager at another company I used to fork for in the U.S., and asked her, "Hey do you think Cal Ripken Jr. will retire?" Her response would be, "Who's that?"

   For those of you who don't know, Cal Ripken Jr.. is probably one of the top 10 most significant baseball players of the last 20 years, if not all time. Most american sports fans remember vividly the moment that he broke the record for consecutive games played in 1995, the event which some think saved baseball after the 1994 players strike. You get the point. There isn't an American sports fan alive that doesn't know who Cal Ripken Jr is.

   Even in light of that, I wouldn't be surprised that Sheryl didn't know who he was. Neither would I be surprised if a number of men and women in the office didn't know who he was. Some Americans just aren't interested in Sports. Likewise, a lot of Canadians aren't interested in sports, but that has nothing to do with hockey. In Canada, knowing about hockey is as central a daily concern as what one will eat, whether one will have a good day, or just the weather in general (which is a BIG daily concern here). Anyway you get the point. Somehow everyone who's Canadian is clued in. And I honestly don't know where they get their information. Maybe it's in the water. And maybe they drink special water that I don't drink. Either way, Canadians (even Canadians in "sunny" Vancouver) are crazy about hockey like…

   ...well like Canadians are crazy about hockey.

   That was supposed to be my Monday Morning Update. Um. I also went on a retreat this weekend. That was pretty fun. You can get info on that here. The baby post is done, but since I put it off, new babies are being born every day (Congrats Kyle & Sarah). I need to get two more picures and hopefully it's up tomorrow.

   DK

   For whatever it's worth, the hockey player in question was named Trevor Linden

   ]]> http://draynet.com/392/real-monday-morning-update/feed/ 3 http://draynet.com/374/monday-morning-update-2/ http://draynet.com/374/monday-morning-update-2/#comments Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:00:34 +0000 dray http://draynet.com/374/monday-morning-update-2/
   My favorite babies would totally beat up these babies. Anyway, if you know who the guy in the picture is, you totally win a prize

   All's Quiet on the Northwestern Front

   This is one of those weeks where all in my world seems to be filled with peace and free of trouble. Maybe I'm just feeling sentimental, maybe I'm on drugs. I'm not sure.

   Top of the good news is that Jane and Dane are finally home with Ben and officially "out of the woods." Now I can go meet Ben and get my picture taken with him, and the baby montage will be complete and ready for posting.

   I had a cold all weekend which stunk, but somehow the weekend was still able to be filled with fun and frolick. I also somehow managed to meet a bunch of new people, hang out with old friends, and even hang out with a really old (chico) friend who was in town visiting. That last one was my friend Meg Wolf who is visiting Vancouver from Southern California (northern mexico), but she'd get shy if I mentioned her name, so we'll just keep that between you and I.

   In my leisure (being sick) time, I've been reading books that are far too complicated for me to understand and watching old episodes of Star Trek – DS9. This, combined with a foggy head from a stuffed up nasal passages makes for some pretty interesting dreams. Think commander Worf on the Bridge of the Defiant travelling through time while speculating on the extent to which Christological events may be efficable on our eternal redemption.

   If Worf was a preacher, I would totally go to that church.

   I had good conversations at Fun City. This is nothing new. But particularly Lynsey and I got into a couple of topics that I think are pretty interesting and crucial (apologetics – blogging about it now). Fun City's pretty much the greatest. The difference between my house and the Friends house is that none of us sleep with each other and Friends is lame.

   Other than that and the fact that every conversation last week and this weekend were about the white people blog, that's pretty much it. Oh yeah, TAL was good this week, as always.

   DK

   ]]> http://draynet.com/374/monday-morning-update-2/feed/ 0 http://draynet.com/350/its-really-hot-today/ http://draynet.com/350/its-really-hot-today/#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:15:28 +0000 dray http://draynet.com/350/its-really-hot-today/ I've learned a few things since moving here. One. Apparently starting your car and letting it run for 10 minutes before you drive anywhere is not the "most efficient" method for removing ice from your windshield. Apparently people use something called an "ice scraper". I don't have one of those, so I started using my trusty snowboard wax scraper, which seems to be working well and is completely available as I don't have a snowboard nor have I used one for several years. Two. "Freezing" is a really accurate, effective word. During the winter months (august-june) it's usually around 0 degrees celcius (freezing) at some point during each day. When you're outside and the temperature is freezing, you can really see how the word manages to capture the environment. You immediately are prompted to think, and or say, "it's freezing out here." Then you quickly apply that condition to yourself, "I'm freezing".

   Eventually you begin to associate the weather to your inner being, as if you could feel the process of "freezing" taking place on it's most sub-atomic level, going even beyond your physiology to your thoughts and emotions. Whatever freezing is, it slowly encapsulates your whole being, shutting you down. Freezing is kind of like the beginning of dying.

   Three. The sun is a precious gift. I think there are a lot of people in the world who take the presence of the giant gas ball in the sky for granted. Having lived in two sun deprived cities, it doesn't surprise me anymore that so many people throughout history have tried to worship the sun. When one lives in a oft-cloudy city like those in the pacific northwest, a day where the sun looks to peek out is a completely different experience than otherwise. On the one hand, a normal, cloudy, dreary, and shutter-shutting cold day is like waking up and expecting that, at best, you're going to be given a meal, some light torture, and maybe some chalk or a sharp rock to express some morbid creativity on the wall of your light-less cell in the musty prison into which you incarcerated yourself when you moved this far north. On the other hand, a sunny day is like…

   ...a sunny day. It's just that good.

   I for one welcome our non-sentient helium overlords

   DK

   ]]> http://draynet.com/350/its-really-hot-today/feed/ 3 http://draynet.com/338/sabbath/ http://draynet.com/338/sabbath/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:10:25 +0000 dray http://draynet.com/338/sabbath/ The President of my seminary today, in the opening chapel address to the students (which happened to be on the topic of Sabbath), first referenced the phenomenal story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel found in 1 Kings 18:16-40 and then spat out the following quote in summation,

   "My God requires sabbath, but He never sleeps"

   (this is in reference to the taunting by Elijah to the 450 prophets of Baal, whether their god was asleep)

   Reflect.

   ]]> http://draynet.com/338/sabbath/feed/ 3