jasonackerman.com

things that sucked this week:
- rockies getting swept in the world series
- there not being a game 5, to which i had tickets
- my brother spending a large amount of money on a plane ticket to come to aforementioned game 5
- not being able to get a ticket to the broncos game to replace missed WS game
- the broncos losing in heartwrenching fashion in said game
- showing up after a harrowing commute (45 minute drive, 2 mile walk) to find another instructor teaching the class i was scheduled for due to a scheduling error

things that didn’t suck this week:
- having my brother in town, despite expensive ticket
- not spending many many many dollars on sporting event tickets
- having an unexpected day to kick it downtown catching up on writing

basically, i’m stuck downtown until i decide how i want to get home. i think i might experiment with using the bus system to get part of the way home, just because it would be handy to know.

the rockies thing was disappointing, for sure, but it was nice to have matt in town. we decided it would be fun to head downtown and see if we could buy a few tickets for the broncos monday night game. we knew it would be tough, what with there being 50,000 people who had rockies tickets and were looking for something to do, but between that and the monday night game, and it being the packers, there were hundreds more buyers than there were sellers, and there were enough buyers willing to spend significantly more than we were, so that left us without a ticket. perhaps it’s for the best, we would have spent a lot of money just to see a heartbreaking loss.

so this morning, i had a class to teach. i hate tuesday classes, because we have one car and it conflicts with the girls’ schoolday. so we all got up at the buttcrack of dawn, loaded into the car and drove me all the way downtown. i hopped off at the coffeeshop, and the family went back to get the kids to school. i got my coffee, and walked 2 miles to the computer training center to teach my class. i walked in to see another instructor all prepared to teach. the school double booked us. so i let the other instructor keep the class, and walked 2 miles BACK to the coffeeshop, where i now sit plotting out my day. ugh. i guess it’s nothing more than inconvenient. the money would have been nice, but whatever.

i’m going to head back up to eagle next week mid-week (tuesday and wednesday). hopefully i’ll come back with a plan for being involved there for the next several months. i’m excited about that.

totally unrelated note: i played bass at discovery on sunday, which was really fun. i haven’t touched a bass in at least 7 or 8 months, so that was interesting. it was pretty cool though, and i only honked a couple notes all morning. it helps when most of the songs are in the key of G.

another totally unrelated note: i got a new phone. verizon just started offering the samsung juke, it’s a little itty-bitty mp3 player/phone. it qualified for my free upgrade, so i ordered it. the jury is still out. it’s definitely high on the fashion scale, and weighted toward the mp3 side. this is fine with me, since i no longer own an ipod, and dont’ plan to buy one. the mp3 software on it is rather handicapped by poor functionality, though, which is a bummer. the phone works just fine. i’ve got a few weeks before my 30-day guarantee is up. we’ll see if i keep it. i’m still undecided on that.

the denver post put up these great little cutouts of the rockies lineup. now, in order to bring the best of luck, the lineup graces our living room just above the tv. (click for a larger version..)

From left to right (in proper batting order): Dinger (the mascot – yes he’s a purple dinosaur. Shut up.), Manager Clint Hurdle, CF Willy Taveras, 2B Kaz Matsui, LF Matt Holliday, 1B Todd Helton, 3B Garrett Atkins, RF Brad Hawpe, SS Troy Tulowitzki, C Yorvit Torrealba, P Ubaldo Jimenez (starting tonight’s game).

I mean really. You wouldn’t want to be the opposing pitcher having to face the heart of this batting order, would you?

I’m going to the World Series!

well, i’ve changed the design. it’s a wordpress theme that i designed from scratch, it’s called “Cityscapes: Denver Sky”… there’s still some bugs in it, but i’m almost done. i’ll be doing a companion version for seattle, san francisco, portland, and perhaps nyc – but nyc is so overdone.

anyhow, it’s a bit of an experiment, and i’m not sure i dig everything on the layout yet, but once it’s done and the bugs are worked out, i’ll make the group available for public release. let me know what you think, or any suggestions you might have. i can’t promise i’ll use the suggestion, but i appreciate it nonetheless.

so we ventured up to eagle again yesterday. what a nifty place. of course, to get to eagle, which is on the west end of the vail valley, you have to go over two mountain passes, loveland pass at almost 12,000 feet, and vail pass at just over 10,000 feet. not just that, but after you cross the vail pass, you drop clear down to 6600 feet where the town of eagle sits. so imagine the fun when the first storm of the winter blew through. eagle had nothing but some good hard rain. the loveland pass, however, had some serious winter conditions – 8-10 inches of snow accumulation, and all the driving fun that comes with it.

the purpose for going up was that i was invited again to speak and lead worship at the c&m.a. church in eagle. it’s currently a small group (less than 30)… but it was still a great time. last time we went up, i pulled out one of my five sermons from compass. this time, none of the previous ones felt right, so i wrote a new one, which reminded me how much work really needs to go into those things. i could have probably taken another 3 or 4 hours to practice the thing out loud, and i would have found some glaring content issues, things that could have been either left out or moved around for better thought flow… but it still came out well. the beauty of preaching is that when it comes time to deliver the talk, God will do his thing and hopefully that leaves the preacher pretty much out of the loop. i spoke on i john 3, the part about loving with actions not words. it’s one of those basic things that we all know but rarely do, so the application part of it was a piece of cake. everyone seemed to track with me pretty well. it’s been fun to teach again, i really wish i could have done more of it at compass. perhaps i’ll get a chance to do more. we’ll see what happens.

this week, a friend from vancouver (you know who you are!) is coming to hang with us for a few days. we’re excited about that… i’ll need to buckle down and get some work done, rather than vacation for the week… and i’ll also have to show restraint and not spend a gazillion dollars showing off all the cool restaurants we’ve found. that being said, we’re excited for a friendly vancouver face to hang out with for a while.

just a quick note… no photo. we’re heading up to eagle again tomorrow morning to speak/lead worship, and the weather forecast is predicting 6-10 inches of snow on the mountain passes… we’re going to head through anyhow, so anyone who’s inclined would be more than welcome to pray for safe travels. i’m not expecting it to be too harrowing, unlike my moving adventure of last april. you might remember we were surprised by a big ol’ snow and crazy windstorm bringing the moving truck over the mountains. i don’t think it will be like that, but anytime it’s cold and snowy there’s a bit of inherent danger to being on the road. so prayer would be appreciated. we’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning and coming back sometime in the afternoon.

5 days between blog posts is better than 30, yes?

tomorrow marks an occasion colorado has never seen… the rockies (baseball team, not the mountains) play in the national league championship series. i think they match up pretty well against the diamondbacks of arizona… thing is, they’re both young, exciting teams… it could be intense, world-class baseball, or it could all fall apart and get ugly for either side real quick. we’ll see. what’s funny, is that the week we moved here in may, when the season was young and rocks still sucked, we went to a game against the d-backs. little did we know. it feels weird to be looking ahead, and so against the philosophy of this team, but we’re sending nick to stand in line for the lottery for world series tickets next week… it seems silly to be trying so hard to get tickets to a series they haven’t even made it to yet, but this is big time. i’ve always wanted to go to a world series game, and this could be the chance.

in other news, we’re heading back to eagle on sunday. it should be tons of fun… although i’ve not been super diligent on preparing a message for sunday morning. i need to get on that. like today.

i figured i should probably write in this thing today, in order that we won’t have a month pass since my last blogging effort. it was pointed out in an email a while back that i’m not so much of a prolific blogger, and at that moment i resolved to write much more regularly. my resolutions don’t seem to carry much weight. i’ve been fighting with myself on how much (or how little) i blog since the opening day of my first livejournal, august of 2001. i’ve since come to terms with the fact that i don’t blog much.

i upgraded to wordpress 2.3– i haven’t had any problems so far. i haven’t really tested all the plugins yet. i’m toying with changing the design (yet again!) of this blog… not for any reason other than i feel like i’ve finally developed my css skills to a point where i think i can design a custom layout from scratch. i did just that for a design client, a church plant in kansas. we did the design first, then backwards-engineered a wordpress layout to integrate into the site. it was fun, if not a bit frustrating at times.

i’ve done a little blogging over at prosportscolorado.com, what with the rockies being in the playoffs and all. it’s so nice to be back in a sports town. portland/vancouver/seattle et al. just doesn’t get it when it comes to being a sports town. speaking of a sports town… listen to this weekend’s schedule in Denver: Saturday – CU Buffaloes, Rockies game in the evening. Sunday – Broncos at 2pm, Avalanche at 5pm, Rockies (maybe) at 8pm, all the while it’s Oktoberfest downtown. it’s going to be INSANE down there.

it looks like i’ll be teaching an “integrated web design” class at compuskills soon… it’s a course of my own design. i proposed the class after teaching in some areas of individual focus, but realizing that web design really should be taught as an integrated discipline, at least from an overview level, before teaching the advanced specifics of various topics (html, css, flash, wysiwyg editing, design principles, etc). it should be fun.

i was invited a couple weeks back to speak/lead worship at a church in eagle, colorado. you might remember eagle from being the place that kobe bryant got into some “trouble” a couple years back. anyhow, eagle sets in the vail valley, just 30 minutes from vail. the whole county is a resort community, by and large. what a beautiful place… it looks like we might have some opportunity for some extended involvement at the church. not sure what that looks like yet, but it’s exciting, and any prayer you can contribute for what that might turn out to be would be appreciated. it would be different from where we’ve been… it’s 150 miles away, up into the mountains, not exactly the ‘urban’ setting we’ve been looking for. regardless, there’s some exciting stuff going on up there, and it would be cool to be a part of it. the picture at the top of this post is one we took from the car on the way up… the aspen trees are turning gold in full force.

there ya go. that’s the wrap up. hopefully i’ll write again before a month is up.