Tag Archives: dad

Communication Is Hard

Posted on by

At least that’s what they tell me.  If you tell someone something enough times your job as a communicator will either get infinitely easier because they’ll finally get it.  Or it’ll get much, much harder because the repetition causes the pith helmets and ear plugs to be put into place.  I tell my daughters, “Think before you act,” about a bazillion times a month.  I’m pretty sure they think it’s some mantra that my parents told me.  It isn’t.  My dad told me, “it is your mother and I’s responsibility to raise you to be an adult when you’re 18.”  That worked out pretty well because I was a kid who was just looking for a place, a time, and a thing to be scared about.  At 17 and 365 days I was scared of 18 because it meat adulthood.

I hope that my children one day learn to think before they act.  I suspect it’ll be a lesson they learn throughout their lives.  I also hope that when they turn 17 and 365 days they don’t panic like I did – because if there’s one thing I’ve learned it is that I have more than one thing to learn.

Evie is Tying Her Shoes Now

Posted on by

Evie can tie her shoes now.  It does take her a bit of time, but she can do it by herself.  As her dad who has watched her grow up it blows my mind that the ‘baby’ of the family is able to read simple words and books, and she can tie her shoes.  We can’t turn back the hands of time, but my hope is that we’ll be able to spend as much time as we can until next year when she starts in at Vanguard like her older sister.  Who is also able to tie her shoes.

I sure am thankful for my little-but-getting-bigger girls.

Guitars, Guitars, Guitars

Posted on by

I have 6 guitars.  I’m not saying that to brag because I know folks with way more guitars than that.  I’m just going to start out with that information so I can tell you the story of how I acquired those guitars.  There are some fun stories behind a few of them, and frankly, they’ve all been gifts of one form or another.

The oldest guitar I have is my bass guitar.  I got that when I was about 15 because we needed a bass player at church and I volunteered to learn to play the bass.  I saved up some money and through a good deal that I worked with my youth group leader the guitar was purchased for about $200.  I loved  having a bass guitar, it was the best after having fiddled with my dad’s acoustic guitar.  I’ve worked on the electrical wiring, and it still gets the job done as needed.  That being said, I’d love to have a 5 string for those extra low notes.

The second oldest guitar I have is a 12 string Yamaha I bought from a co-workers husband when I was about 17.  It is impossible to keep in tune and it hangs on my wall collecting dust.  I interrupted worship at church a few times just to tune it because it was so out.  Yes, I was that tacky.

Third is my Washburn 6 string.  I saved up my money from work for a few months and purchased this guitar because at that point in time I wanted to be a worship leader professionally and that required a good guitar.  After some work and such I had about $900 invested in it and it is singly the most expensive guitar I have and all of the other guitars together didn’t cost that much.  Even with that much money it’s still not an expensive guitar by today’s standards.  I lead worship with that guitar and have so for about 14 years now.  I don’t lead worship professionally, so I guess that didn’t pan out 😉  I did manage to record this and this though. There’s also this historical Texas number.

Next is the Washburn 6 string electric I got the first year for Christmas from my family.  Jessica orchestrated to have everyone pitch in and I got the red burst electric.  I really wanted a solid color guitar, but Jessica didn’t know and my first reaction was to be sad that it looked “too country and western” and not enough “Nirvana”.  I play it semi-regularly and I’ve recorded with it for a long time.  It’s a great guitar and I’m over the country & western thing, and instead remember how proud my wife was to get it for me that first Christmas.

Several Christmases ago I picked up my acoustic bass.  It was really cheap and it has some fret buzzing on the upper frets, but it doesn’t require an amplifier and it sounds pretty good for the most part.  I wanted to be able to play with friends (namely my friend Brad Maston at the time) and it seemed like a good idea.  It probably wasn’t 😉

Lastly is the classical guitar that my friend Mike gave me last year.  It was in his closet and he asked me if I wanted it.  Excitedly I said yes.  I really dig the classical guitar, the sound, the feel, and the playability of the classical guitar are really engaging.  I’ve recorded with it a few times, too.  I’m grateful for the gift, and I’m glad that I can use it – I’m hoping to use it at church soon to do a Willie Nelson-like number I’m writing.  Yes, that’s very silly.

I have told Jessica a few times, “I’d like to get another guitar.” She rolls her eyes and laughs at me because let’s face it: 6 guitars is a lot of guitars.  Just in case you wonder how I could want another guitar here’s why: each one is unique and has its own sound and feel and stylistic quality.  I would like a dobro guitar (also known as a resophonic) because they’re classic blues guitars.  I would also like to get a fretless bass guitar – because they’re super smooth sounding and jazzy.

I’m glad that when I asked my dad when I was 12 (yes, that was 21 years ago) if he would show me how to play the guitar that he said yes and he showed me the C and G chords.  It took me months to get those chords down smoothly and I could barely play a song when I foolishly told my youth group leader, “I’d like to play the guitar for worship tonight.”  I did HORRIBLE!  That being said I’ve written a number of worship songs, a number of silly songs, and a number of impromptu songs over the years.  I don’t take the guitars for granted and if you want to hear the differences in the guitars let me know in the comments and I’ll try to record something that lets each one of them shine in context.

Why I Quit Facebook

Posted on by

I realized today that Facebook was not really my problem, but as a symptom I needed to move on.  We had a good fling, me and Facebook.  I realized I was not blogging in part because of Twitter & Facebook.  For various reasons I’m keeping Twitter active (most of them professional).  I also realized I was heavily distracted throughout my time as a dad, a husband, and as a brother-in-law (since my Sister-in-law has lived with us).

I was writing comments or responses to various folks, but then deleting them so as to not offend people who I had ‘friended.’  Therein lies the rub: if someone is your friend you want to care about them, but some folks were not friends, but acquaintances and I still didn’t want their facebook experience to be marred by my interjections on the site.  Here on my blog I can be forthright, opinionated, and even make mistakes, but it is in my sandbox.

I should be blogging more now and I should be my usual spouting self, but I’m going to warn folks: I may reign all of my blogs into one central blog and quit the split personalities.  That’ll mean religion, beer, food, programming and so forth in one place.  I may even switch away from WordPress to experiment with other platforms.

I quit facebook so I could start relating with a few people more, rather than more people just a little.  I’m back and I’m going to make an effort to spin things up to crazy, silly, funny, and personal.  I don’t think anyone else should leave Facebook because I did, I’m just doing this for my own focus and purposes.