55159 Day 364

good_gifts


i'm old. just past 30 to be exact. being that old means that a good portion of my life has been recorded on film and stored in a medium known as "slides". to see my life from the age of 0 to about 14 (and even beyond that to a point) requires lugging out a screen and a projector and then clicking away (which is actually really fun to do when all the equipment works).


a couple weeks ago i posted about some old journals and items from the past i discovered. going through that stuff made me regret a little bit not having access to those slides, especially since my wife has not been able to see a lot of the pictures (the projector broke around age 3, if i remember correctly).


well, little did i know, my mother was hard at work for the last seven months archiving well over a thousand slides in a digital format, and today i got the final product: a flash drive with all the pics and a cool book with about 300 of the highlights.  amazing!


thank you so much mom!!!

55059 Day 363

get_busy


between new people at reunion and yesterday's freshman splash event at boston university, we have somewhere between 75-100 new students to connect with...and that's with a lot of folks not back in town yet and several campuses yet to get started!  but it is a great problem to have...we're going to be meeting a ton of people this year and that is a fantastic thing!

54959 Day 362

seth


said goodbye to our old friend (and old roommate) seth robins today.  seth has always been a very tangible reminder of my time in durango and the awesomeness that was my experience with CTK.  so, in some ways seeing seth leave boston is the final step in being fully integrated to life here.  however you look at it, it is pretty hard to see him go (especially since he is going to california!). we'll miss you seth!  

54859 Day 361

jackson_browne


my wonderful friend, the great steve comer, has been working on various tours with musicians for years...so it's always exciting when he comes to town and we can catch up with him (and enjoy a free concert!).  a couple summers ago we got to catch jack johnson...this year: jackson browne.  great show, old crowd =)


picture of me rocking out on the tour bus.

picture of me with some of jackson's guitars (he brings over 60 on tour with him!)

backstage!

steve comer is the man

comer, doing his thing

in the light and sound booth after the show

54759 Day 360

community


42 leaders together tonight for community group leader training. excited for the ways these people will be making missional disciples this year!

54659 Day 359

walk_home


not the best pic ever, but the sunset over the city on my walk home is pretty cool.

54559 Day 358

visitor


my brother-in-law's sister, anna, used to work in slovenia with the josiah venture. one of the girls she got to know over there is now going to BU and will be staying with us for a few days while she finds a place to live.


(ps we have had a lot of people stay with us since moving to eastie...must be our awesome house...or maybe the proximity to the airport).


anyway, good to be a home for ziva while she makes her transition to boston.

54459 Day 357

rain


crazy rain in boston over the last 24 hours. back to the "every-day-is-something-different" weather.

54359 Day 356

running


in an attempt to inspired to get back into running i picked up this book. this guy is crazy.


some great lines though.  like this: "running has taught me that the pursuit of a passion matters more than the passion itself. immerse yourself in something deeply and with heartfelt intensity--continually improve, never give up--this is fulfillment, this is success...


...most people never get there. They're afraid or unwilling to demand enough of themselves and take the easy road, the path of least resistance. But struggling and suffering [are] the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not constantly demanding more from yourself--expanding and learning as you go--you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip." 

54259 Day 355

city


view of the city at night from piers park.

54159 Day 354

pool


this is where we swim now

54059 Day 353

artists

reunion artists gallery tonight...awesome to see the all the creative people in our church community get together and show off their talents. a few shout outs: quinton (tim's son, sojourn's director) showed some of his photos and they were amazing, anna painted a picture of a mother and child that made me cry, gerald displayed some of his incredible digital art, and lucas played four songs he wrote which we are all fantastic (part of one you can watch in this video). nice work everyone!

53959 Day 352

new_shoes


time to start running again! finally bought some running shoes that will be good on the road and on the trail. i'm going to be starting a running page soon on this blog to brag about my exploits =)

having recently turned 30 i feel the need to get back into some kind of shape...more importantly into a rhythm of exercise, something that has been sorely lacking since i moved to boston. also, it is time for a huge physical challenge...more on that later...

53859 Day 351

community_center


amy and i are hoping to become volunteers here soon (perhaps as soon as monday). i have to admit that it was pretty weird walking in the other day...eerily similar to bird street in the layout, feel, and characters.

got to love boston's community centers!

53759 Day 350

days

8 days left at sbux

15 days left of the blog

19 days until sojourn kickoff

53659 Day 349

intern

dustin, our newest graduate intern is here! welcome back to boston to dustin. he'll be involved in the action at umass and northeastern this year.

53559 Day 348

boxes


i've been lugging five boxes of stuff around ever since i left california.  ok, so, of course i have way more than five boxes worth of stuff, but i'm talking about the kind of boxes that you never unpack, that you throw in your friend's garage (in durango) or in the basement (in boston).  five boxes from salinas to durango to a storage unit to granger street to another storage unit to juliette street and now to lexington street.

in our new place we have more space and more storage so i thought a good project would be to go through them and see what the heck i've been carrying around all this time.  i found:

1) old college notes
2) all my summer school teaching materials from alisal high (summer of '05 and '06)
3) old hats 
4) my "free love" uniform (if you don't know about this, ask me, it's awesome) 
5) tons of notes from people i was with in IV while at pacific, mount hermon, the nexus, and svcc
6) plenty of other randomness 
7) OLD JOURNALS.  i used to write stuff down in journals (in the days before this blog).  this was the find of the day, especially, a journal i kept that ran from late 2004 to when i moved to colorado.  what follows are a few interesting selections:

page 1 (september 29, 2004): in nine months i will be done with seminary...not sure what comes after that but i want it to be crazy and different.  some of my ideas include: move to boston, work at a college, get a phd, move to india, start a church. 

page 61 (march 22, 2005...during my visit to boston after a phd interview at bc): i want to impact the lives of college students but there are so many stupid hoops you have to jump through to get to that point [having a phd and able to teach what you want] a phd is a huge commitment...is that the one i am willing to make?

page 69 (march 25, 2005)...on my way to see beth...now that all the walking is over, i think i really like boston...i could see myself going back.

alright, not the most scintillating writing ever, but this was over FIVE YEARS AGO.  incredible to be able to look back and see how this has all unfolded.  crazy!

53459 Day 347

grapes


we have these grape vines that grow all over our back deck.  make for a cool, naturally, shade canopy.  but now the grapes are ripening and falling all over the place which means=new chore!  fun!


actually, today was filled with a lot of fun.  sleeping in, bbq in dorchester, hanging with bobby and christina, good food, good drinks, lots of laughing.  good stuff!


ps. next year, i want to figure out how to do something useful with the grapes if you know what i mean.

53359 Day 346

ET


saw this classic tonight.  it's probably been close to 20 years since i've seen it, which is somewhat amazing because my family owns it and i have seen it several times (standard boutry family sick day viewing).  anyway, boston does free friday movies on the esplanade and we have not been able to take advantage yet, so tonight was the night.  good times!

53259 Day 345

watermelon


little watermelons in the csa share this week!

53159 Day 344

dixit


our new favorite game...played tonight with caleb, kaitlin, and jenna.

53059 Day 343

sweet_victory


all that really happened today is that 
Amy passed her national board exam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yesssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


so, this was celebrated with a delightful bottle of bonterra organic chardonnay yum

52959 Day 342

monday!


squirrel in the back yard.


also, today we welcomed bob bacon to our staff team.  bob will be getting us organized as our executive director and brings 12+ years of ministry experience to our team, both of which are awesome, needed, and appreciated.  can't wait to get to know him better.


finally, we welcomed back bobby from his honeymoon, and it is good to have the team together!

52859 Day 341

garden_work


amy got a lot done yesterday!

52759 Day 340

old_married_couple

today may have been the most traditional married day of our lives.  amy and i rose fairly early, for a saturday, and drove over to south boston to eat sticky buns at flour (i actually woke up half an hour before the alarm and couldn't fall back to sleep because i was so excited). while we were there we also drank coffee, read the globe, and complained about the state of the world =)

back home, amy spent the rest of the morning gardening while i hung pictures and screwed in the braces for a set of curtains.

the early afternoon involved reading, a shower, then watching the red sox (for me) while flipping over the us nationals (swimming) in california (for amy). 

then we made dinner and played cribbage on the back porch.

we are officially an old married couple! 

52659 Day 339

mazel

today included the following: spent the morning shooting footage for our final leadership training video. i enjoy the process of creating video, so it's always fun to get to do this.

the early afternoon involved "working" on the jeep with nate the great.  by "working" i mean that nate did all the work while i stood there and looked concerned...in fact if you drove past us you might have thought i was about to do something really useful but i would have tricked you! in the end it turns out there was a bad battery connection that required some cleaning, but not a big deal after all.  nice.

finally, amy and i, in our working car, drove over to home depot to use a gift card our resource team gave us to get some gardening supplies (this is the pic, ps). amy is stoked to get to work in the garden (which can be seen beyond the deck) in the coolness of tomorrow morning.

good things!

52559 Day 338

blessings_and_broken_cars


amazing the highs and lows of even one day.  this morning i discovered that some new donors have been extremely generous towards us!  fantastic news...birds were chirping, sun shinning, all right with the world.  then the rains came (literally), and the day got much darker (metaphorically...and literally).  we drove our car over to a friend's house to help paint and on the way there gauges began to act funny and lights started turning on and dials spun this way and that and when we arrived and turned the car off the darned thing would not turn back on.  so we painted for a while and tried again and it came back to life but the ride home was filled with more wild demons in the dashboard...the depths of despair, the cursing of fates, the wringing of hands.  again, this is all one day.  oh, for maturity.

52459 Day 337

angela's


this is our new favorite place to eat in eastie. and it is right at the end of our block...dangerously close.  we ate here tonight to celebrate amy taking her national board exam (be a few days before we know the results).  angela's is so incredible that you must be careful not to look at its luminescent awesomeness directly lest you burn your corneas.










it is that good.

52359 Day 336

bremen


trying to post a little more about the neighborhood here in the next couple of weeks...these are pics of bremen park, which i walk through everyday to get to the T.  these days a lot of people hang out here and the kids love the water!

52259 Day 335

slow_fade


came across this book today thanks to tim hawkins.  added to the que!


also, here's a blog post summary.

52159 Day 334

meals


lucas and evelyn took us to one of their favorite spots and helped amy and i partake in our first real brazilian meal.  we ate here, and it was awesome.  and lucas and evelyn are awesome too...super talented and humble and using their gifts to serve the church in great ways.  thanks guys!