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Zoe is getting her hippie on here. She’s taking a guitar class at her homeschool connection this fall, and so I hit up craigslist, and craig came through by hooking me up with a dude in Boulder selling this little 3/4 classical guitar for cheap. Zoe and I went to pick it up, and she can’t play a lick yet, but just loves sitting for hours and strumming the strings, regardless of the dissonance. It’s fun to hear her ask to play her guitar. For a while, at least until lessons started, I tuned it to an open chord so the constant strumming at least sounded half-way intentional. Her first class was today.

You know, I never would have thought I would be taking on so many teaching projects. It’s odd that teaching web design in a formal setting is never something I considered doing, but seems to be about half of my income right now. Maybe I just didn’t have the chops until now, but there’s plenty of people looking to learn this skill. The beauty of it, is that just like any other discipline, you can’t take a 2-day class and come out the other side an expert. So oftentimes, I still get the design work once the student realizes that to do this right, and to do it well, isn’t as easy as throwing open dreamweaver and calling yourself a web designer. Anyone can write a book… not everyone can do it well enough to make a profession out of it. Although it does make me wonder how professional songwriters must view hacks like me who engage in the craft that they make a living out of, but can’t seem to do it well enough to really take it on as a profession.

Plenty of church planting thoughts in my head. Realizing that now is the time to go through an assessment, and fearing the fallout if we don’t come out of it with overwhelming positive results. I’ve set my eyes pretty firmly on planting a church, and I don’t feel I’ve been short-sighted about it. It would be a hard pill to swallow if it turns out we are still years (or more!) away from that ultimate goal. Not that an assessment is the voice of God… but still.

I’ve been chatting with a friend via email (you know who you are) more about the campus/multisite thing. I’ve kinda wearied of thinking about it, but I have to clarify my thoughts on it because outside of the assessment process that’s the next big question to answer. It’s good to bounce the questions off of someone who is bringing less baggage (or at least different baggage) to the conversation than I am. I like that we can ask the questions, with more regard for the process and less regard for the answer.

And to wrap up my bloggity-bloggarifficness for the day, I am playing a show next Friday at Forza Coffee in Westminster with my good buddy Dan. Dan and I have gotten to know each other playing in the band together at church, and so we thought it would be fun to go all co-op on a show and just work to build up our chops a little bit. So if you’re one my Denver area readers, feel free to come on by… the details are available at my Facebook (see link to the right), or Myspace (see link to the right).

The more time I spend on this blog, the more I itch to redesign it. Because, you know, I really need another non-paying project to dive into. But I did update my design portfolio! Check it out! I’ll leave you with that.

In other words, you can actually see his eyes without having to move his hair. Both Sam and Zoe have new haircuts… the cuteness in our house is pretty intense right now.

Welcome to my newfound commitment to blogging! I’m writing today from the brand spanking-new Compuskills facility in Lowry – a reclaimed Air Force base that is a cutting edge urban redevelopment project. So the buildings are old, but the facility is new. I’m teaching a Dreamweaver class… as I have mentioned in the past, I’m not the biggest DW fan, but the second day of the DW class is very fun, because I set the students loose on a project and we just go for it… so I don’t have to be up front ‘teaching’ all day… the students just ask questions, and I get to watch them be creative.

Yesterday was the first day off for me in quite some time- a quick look at the calendar shows 2 full weeks since a day off. I don’t remember what we did that Sunday, so maybe not even that. It was difficult to force the rest when there was much web-designey stuff I could have been doing, but the lazy day was much needed. Of course, then I couldn’t really fall asleep last night. So I pulled into the parking lot this morning, realized how early I was (traffic was minimal), so I tilted back the seat and promptly fell asleep. I awoke to the next hour’s weather report and a very creaky neck.

Played a bit of poker Saturday night after church… I’ve figured this group of guys out pretty well, but they aren’t helping me better my skills. I’ve taken home at least double what I started with each of the last two times I’ve played. (granted, we start with $5, so it’s micro-stakes) I did manage to get lucky on one hand with double me up to $10. I’ll spare you the details, but it involved winning a hand where my odds of winning the hand hovered around 10 or 15%. I’d like to play a game that takes on a slightly more serious tone… this game is a blast, but it is only for nickels and dimes, which makes the quality of the play suffer – mine included.

Very little else on the map for me today. One of these days, I’m going to leave the grid entirely for a day or two. I haven’t done that in a while. Until then, my dependence on the flow of digital information into our house continues (would that be called binary addiction?).

there is for the moment a 5-string bass living in my office. i got it out to noodle with, and sam decided to throw down some smoking bass lines. it was fun.

a good friend is in town for a barista competition. he’ll be judging, i’ll just be going to enjoy the sights/sounds/smells and hopefully the occasional taste. i’ve been trying to keep control on the things that have been triggering my acid reflux for the past several months. it’s been ranging from mild to really painful over the last 12-16 months. i’ve just recently been able to narrow down the triggers, and i’ve been keeping a tight reign (mostly) on those things. thankfully, it seems that caffeine and alcohol (ie, coffee and beer, aka, my two favoritest things in the world) are only triggers when i’ve already pushed the edge with some other things, so if i’m good, the occasional beer or espresso (or pipeline porter, if you want to put those things together) won’t send me crying to my room in pain.

this weekend marks my first official weekend at jacob’s well. there are still some details to work out, and the official meeting with the leadership team, but that will come in time. it’s exciting to get hopping on this. there’s so much to be done. for instance, i currently have a large amount of sound gear, functional and non-functional, living in my garage. they moved out of their office, so i’m hanging on to all this extra stuff until we can evaluate its worth, and either keep it or sell it. i’m aiming to sell most of it, so we can buy an aviom system.

some weird stuff going down at the computer school. without going into details, i’m beginning to see why they cycle through instructors so much. there’s some serious passive-aggressive stuff going on. i think it will all work out ok… but the jury is still out on that.

today is the first full day i’ve taken off since february 10th. for those doing the math, that’s almost three weeks. i’ve had days that had some relaxing time, but it’s been that long since i’ve done all day with no work stuff. being near my computer is bad, i’ve almost worked several times today. in reality, i did send off some files first thing this morning, but outside of that, i’m resisting the urge to dive into some projects. there’s enough going on, that it feels like i should be making more money than i really am. it’s a little discouraging to be working a lot and not making all that much. back when i was not working so much, it felt natural to be broke all the time. it was like a trade-off. yeah, i’m broke, but the relaxed lifestyle is nice… only now i’m working much harder and i’m just as broke. that’s not the way it should be. but, that’s how it is right now. and today, i plan on lounging out on our new-to-us couch and reading a bit. i picked up surprised by hope, the latest book by nt wright. he’s basically laying out the theology of heaven and the resurrection, one that is grossly misundertood by christians in general today. i’m only a couple chapters is, and so far it is a very gripping book. once i’m through it, i think i’ll write a chapter by chapter review… it’s worth it and requires more than a passing paragraph. in something completely opposite to that, i also plan on reading through a bit of super/system (a course in power poker!) today as well.

its taken me all morning to wind down and begin to relax. i hope it stays that way…

i’m currently teaching a web design class, and the students are diligently working through a project, so i thought i’d complain/brag/comment about the weather. no photo today due to me not being at either of my own computers. check this page, it’s a camera pretty close to where i am now.

it’s cold. frickin’ cold. it’s currently 7 degrees with a wind chill of -5. it’s snowing ever so lightly. i gotta say, winter here is fun. it is cold, which makes driving hard sometimes, and heating bills are high… but it’s a fun kind of winter. it actually FEELS like winter, unlike much of the NW winter, which feels like spring. and fall. and summer.

so the class i’m teaching is a Dreamweaver class… which i don’t like. Dreamweaver is a great tool, but i just don’t really use it that much. it lets too many people design web pages who have no business doing so. that being said, i’ve worked with the folks at the school here to actually flip the web design curriculum over, and do it more logically. students will start with an “integrated web design” class (which i’m writing!), that covers html/css, image optimization, design principles, as well as an overview of cms, blogging platforms, design tools, etc. then once they understand the CRAFT of web design, they can proceed and use some of the TOOLS of web design, like dreamweaver, flash, stuff like that. then, students coming into the dreamweaver class won’t be completely clueless about web design. just mostly clueless, like me.

curriculum issues aside, this teaching thing is fun. i’ve enjoyed it quite a bit… what’s funny, is my most enjoyable classes have been the uber-basic– the mostly older folks who have next to no experience using computers at all… it requires more patience, but it’s so much more fun than the more advanced classes.

led worship at a church in thornton last week– there’s some long term possibilities at this church. i’ll know more later in the week. i’m leading again this weekend. they do a saturday night service only, so after that i busted it up to eagle to lead sunday morning, which was not a good idea. my voice was completely trashed, and i was tired… it worked out fine, but i won’t be doing that on a consistent basis, thankfully.

i’m hoping the students choose an hour-long lunch break (i offer the choice of 30 minutes and an earlier release to help beat traffic, or an hour for lunch and normal release) so i can go back over to the coffeeshop and get the latte i was denied by them being closed when i showed up due to the holiday. the sign on the window said they would open at 8, i had to stop waiting by 8:15 and get to class.