Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all you mind, and with all your strength.

This is the lyric of a song I’m listening to right now and
that we’re singing on Sunday at church (and tonight’s rehearsal).

That is really hard to do sometimes, especially when you’re
grumpy like I am today. Hopefully soon I’ll get out of my funk, but just count
yourself forewarned about my grumpiness (if it’s Thursday, that is). However,
grumpiness is not an excuse to ignore or forget about the greatest commandment
given in the Bible, or even more tangibly, to ignore the second commandment
that Christ says is equal to the first—Love your neighbor as yourself. This
basically just translates to LOVE OTHER
PEOPLE, no matter who they are.

It is the days that you (or maybe, hypothetically speaking,
me) are grumpy that it is the hardest to do this. I find it extremely difficult
to exude patience and courteousness when I am only thinking about myself and my
lack of sleep or how much I’d like to have one of those brownie bites, but
can’t. Sound overly simple? Yeah, it is—if we are so distracted by our own
world that we forget about the people around us, we won’t show them love.  In the same way, if we’re thinking about
ourselves, we won’t be focused on Christ (first commandment).

I think this is the reason that I made that outrageously
uncharacteristic statement a few weeks back about selfishness:

 

There is no greater
tragedy in human nature than the condition of selfishness.

 

I feel like selfishness really is the root of all our
problems. We take from others because we want for ourselves. We’re prideful and
mean because we think we’re right and we want recognition. There are a hundred
things that I could trace back to the basic condition of being self-centered
(which itself is rooted in selfishness). This is really the opposite of love,
not hate.

I was leaving school last night with so much thankfulness in
my heart. I was thinking about how thankful I was to be getting a great
education (I love my classes this
quarter!), how thankful I was to have a comfortable car to drive home, and
a home to go with a beautiful family. Then I started thinking about how
thankful I was for my friendships, and the opportunities I am constantly
getting in the music industry, and so on…It was at this point—the attitude of
thankfulness—that I felt some of the most wonderful emotions about life that I
have in a long time. Not that I am not happy about life regularly—because I
am—these emotions were just much more extreme.

Well, that’s all my brain can muster right now. Otherwise,
it might shut down and have to reboot. Back to the world of data entry…

We’re moving on OCT 21st!
I’m so excited!

I am writing this from the living room. I know, not  a big deal for you, but it is for me! I am using my laptop to do powerpoint in the family space as opposed to being stuck in my bedroom away from everybody. I’m pretty stoked. We are very thankful for our church. Not just because they got me a really great computer, but because they are being very kind and loving. They already offered to help us move, and the interaction and meetings I’ve had with the Senior Pastor have been very good. He’s very open to ideas and new things, and has a great heart for the Lord and for his people. I really am enjoying it.

IEP was today, and it went pretty much as we expected. Not very bright on the horizon, but we are trusting the Lord in regards to Noah’s future. There’s not much else we can do. We are going to get our lawyer involved ASAP, and we’ll see how things go from there. We are hopeful, mostly because we have hope that Noah’s life is in God’s hands. I really cannot imagine how people without any hope go through all of this. If all of my hope was in getting the school to fund the Lovaas therapy, and then it didn’t happen, I’m sure I would feel like my child’s future (and mine) were over. However, neither Christy or I feel like that at all. We’ve heard the stories of parents that are so hopeless they take their child and jump off a bridge or drive their car with their kid in it off a cliff. We’re no where near that point, and I know we never will be, because we have hope. Not hope that Noah will get better, or hope that the school will fix him, or that Lovaas will fix him–or goodness–not even that God will necessarily do a miracle and Noah will be healed. We DO however have hope that Noah will be just the way God wants him to be. That’s it. Plain and simple. Maybe it’s childish–but I think that’s the point…

back to powerpoint…

Not eating sweets is very, very hard. This week I have succesfully resisted APU’s famous choc-chip cookies (a slew of them! The really good ones!), a pazookie at BJ’s, a thousand other candies at my work, pumkin pie, coffee bean  (I love their caramel ice blended drink more than anything at Starbucks–I know, it’s heresy), ten million other desserts that I can’t think of, and tonight–my biggest tempation yet–candy corn pumkins. I love those candy corn pumkins. I don’t know why, but I totally almost broke my little deal to have some…but I did not.

I think this second week will be a breeze…or it will be harder…I’m not sure yet…

Games at Heidi’s house was fun. I won, a lot-I think.

I love my laptop. I’m currently cleaning it up and deleting stuff I don’t/won’t need on it to save the hard drive space for other future needs. I went through today and deleted all of my San Diego contacts out of the address book. It was a little walk down memory lane. There was a good two hundred of them, at least. But never fear, you’re information is not lost forever-I printed to adobe pdf a copy of the entire thing before I deleted anything so I could reference it if I ever had to. You are not lost forever…

Wow.  There is a lot to talk about. I will list it, rather than write paragraph after paragraph…

-The church bought me a laptop. It’s incredible. Apple Mac Book Pro-17″ 2.16 GHz Intel Duo Core processor with 1GB of RAM and built in iSight camera, etc, etc, etc…it’s amazing. I set it up on Wednesday night and haven’t even had a chance to play around with it much. I’m very excited about the possibilites of doing stuff at school and while traveling. My feelings about the subject are best summed up in a desktop wallpaper that I found on google and have made my own at work…

-School starts Tuesday for me, although classes officially began tonight on campus. I’m taking Music Business & Commercial Songwriting. The latter class utterly terrifies me, frankly. I’m not comfortable writing/performing original songs. All my lyrics end up sounding like a bad Dr. Suess book, and everything goes downhill from there…

-I was asked to apply for a full-time position as a professor of music at CalBaptist University in Riverside. The position would start next fall, so we are currently reviewing this option. It is very far away (at least an hour each way) and I would be directing more than one choir and teaching composition/arranging classes. One of the choirs would have a concert every Sunday night, so essentially I’d be working at least 6 days a week. Also, I don’t have my Master’s Degree yet, so to be able to teach at a university, the dude that wants me to apply would have to pull some major strings to get them to hire me. Anyways, we are looking into it and praying about it, but don’t feel too strongly one way or another about it. I’m excited at the prospect, but leary of the time involved. Well, there goes my list…

-After several months of looking, we have found a house to rent in the area. It is very cool because it is actually a price we could afford and it is not a dump. Even the dumps and shacks around here have been going for upwards of 2400 to 2500 a month. It’s ridiculous. This is a lot cheaper and would fit our needs pretty perfectly. We feel incredibly blessed to have finally found a place to live! We are hoping to move (if everything goes to plan) towards the middle to end of October. We’ll have room for our grand piano again! And a garage! Yipee!

-The Office premiere tonight was totally incredible. The show totally deserved the Emmy for best comedy before this, and then they came up with possibly their funniest episode to date. I won’t spoil it for you, but you should download it from iTunes and watch it if you haven’t seen it. Or if you’re in my office, you can watch it through my iTunes library through the wonderful world of sharing…

-Noah’s IEP is on Monday, and we’re asking for many prayers for the people we’ll be meeting with and that whole process. It’s like the thing that we’ve known has been coming for almost a year now…everything revolves around what goes on at Monday’s meeting and how we respond. I’m sure Christy can (and should) tell you more…

-Church is busy, but great. We had a very good rehearsal tonight and I’m getting positive feedback from a lot of choir members, so things are great for now!

-I’m up late because I was doing a small project for my old friend Chris Marsden. I miss him and Erica! They were our dear friends in San Diego, and we enjoyed their friendship and company very much. Chris and I really connected in many regards, but mostly in our feelings toward music and our views on excellence. I have many great memories of riding bikes around the Bonita golf course with Chris at 6AM in the morning…we had some great talks, and great exercise on those rides…

-In closing, and going with the “I LOVE APPLE” theme, I leave you with some cool pics…

Hmmm, a full-screen iPod. A good idea, but I don’t think would ever happen. I thought I heard rumors of a touch-screen version, but nothing ever came of it.

Just in case the iPod Shuffle was a little too much for you….

Yeah right. But it IS funny…

A good breakfast snack…

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

EDIT ADD: I need a drummer for Thursday/Sunday. I tried the two people I know, and they can’t do it. Any ideas? I’m hoping for someone I kinda know…

---

Last night we watched Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and it was killer. I really enjoyed it a lot. It’s written by the same guy that created/wrote The West Wing, so it  definitely has that level of excellence in storytelling and pace. It is worth watching–or at least it was last night. Kudos to Matthew Perry for being quite funny, but not like Chandler much at all–props to him for good acting chops.  Side note: it was weird turning off Studio 60 and having the channel be showing a Friends rerun…eery.

How I Met Your Mother was great, too. Yay.

Well, I’m pretty tickled right now.

I lead worship from the piano. I sit at the piano, play and
sing and lead from there. For a long time I really felt like that style of
leading worship was pretty “old school”. Most people were leading from an acoustic
guitar and piano was a little too traditional of a sound—at least in the 90’s/early
2000’s. Now I’m listening to Coldplay, Keane, and (today) The Fray, and they
all have piano as a pretty main part of their sound. It is awesome! I’m totally
back in! And not only am I “in”, I’m hip!
I feel very trendy…so now high-schoolers think that leading worship from a
piano is pretty sweet, I guess, as long as the overall style of the worship isn’t
too traditional sounding—which we’re not…

So, yes, I’m tickled. Quite tickled. Yay for the piano!

If you haven’t stopped by my actual page recently, you should. There is a cool Adam Sandler “Red-Hooded Sweatshirt” song you can watch. It’s one of my all-time favs.

Also, you should join my blogring for M. Night Shyamalan fans. I’ve tried to invite folks but it says that feature is currently unavailable. Ok…

Church was great today. People are really catching on and getting in the groove faster than I thought. There were some really tight moments with the band today, and I think people are worshipping in the congregation. I could really hear people singing–that rarely happened at Midway–no offense, it might have just been the room or something. I just can hear this congregation a lot louder than I’ve ever heard any before and it’s encouraging. Props to the Chancel Choir for a long choir camp yesterday. They did very well. I’m proud of them!

I’m flying to San Fran in a few weeks to do some recording for a day. I’m excited. I arranged two original songs that this guy wrote, and we’ll be laying down the tracks on a Saturday coming up.

And in closing…I love it that the new iTunes is blue. So cool.

What a great day!

Well, actually there was nothing remarkable about the day, as much as it was the night that was really cool–and yes, it is 1 a.m. and I’m still awake–I’m not sure how.

Today was Heidi’s birthday, so it was filled with some very fun activities. Heidi doesn’t work in my same office, but the office she works in at APU serves the same function for the accelerated degree students as our office serves to the traditional undergrad students. I know, it’s all very exciting, and don’t lie–I know you read that last sentence at least twice. The first abnormal activity of the day was a trip to Chipotle for lunch. Chipotle is all the way down towards our apartment, so Christy was able to pop over between therapy sessions for Noah and eat with all of the office-folk that were celebrating. Let me just say, Chipotle is delicious, and their food is very filling, too. It was super fun. I think even Erin, my office-mate, liked it–it was her first time eating there.

Then, more work, some coffee to keep me awake, and off to Choir and Worship Team rehearsal (that’s not necessarily part of the festivities, but Heidi does play in our orchestra, so she was there even on her own birthday!). I must say, these folks are really coming along. I think this might have been our best rehearsal so far. We had fun. We worked hard. We laughed. We were focused (most of the time) and I think we’re getting used to each other at this point. Everybody leads with a different style. Some leaders are more of a pushover than others. Some leaders aren’t prepared, and just go with the flow and do whatever comes up. Some leaders are very strict and detail-oriented, and so on and so forth. People take time to adapt to change, and I think they are adapting quickly to my leadership style, whatever it is. I was pleased with the rehearsals tonight and am proud of the people that have been working hard to make it happen. Thanks!

So, more fun. It was off to Starbucks after choir for a quick treat on the way home to watch Survivor and celebrate Heidi’s b-day at our apartment. Leanne came, Joe was there, Mike came with his brand new awesome car. It looks like a spaceship. Joe happened to drive to Glendale (28 miles each way) to get Pat & Oscars breadsticks. Thanks Joe, they were tasty! Leanne got an ice-cream cake, and we stuffed our faces and watched Survivor. Oh yeah, and I had dessert for the first time since Sunday. Shh, don’t tell anyone. They’re probably not reading this far into the blog or paragraph to notice. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen, and move on. Move on to the next week and two days that I’m still not going to eat sweets. No one will know because lets face it, this is a semi-long paragraph, not to mention a pretty long blog entry.

Then I happened to find the coolest episode of SNL. It was the episode that influenced me to start watching the show—the episode with the Red-Hooded Sweatshirt song. I’m telling you, once I saw Adam Sandler singing that song and saw the rest of the funny skits on that episode, I was sold forever. I’ve been pretty die-hard since then, with the exception of a few years during college when I didn’t have much opportunity to watch TV at all. When I discovered that I had taped this episode, I was so stoked. I have a lot of it on my iTunes now, and stored on my hard drive so I can watch it for years to come.

Yes, it was a cool day. I should hit the hay.

I just read about the new Apple products, they are amazing! I am so proud of this company–really. There are few others out there that continue to be so innovative and creative, while making their products even more practical to the consumer. It is astonishing!

Now you can purchase full-length movies and games from the iTunes music store!

The games are only playable on the iPod 5th-generation though, and not on any previous models OR on your computer through iTunes. But they have Tetris!! I’m pretty excited about it all…definitely go check it out!