Diet and Exercise

February 11, 2009

So my one month of Mountain Dew fast is over. I cheated a total of three times. After February 6th I fell off the wagon a little but I am back, focused and serious about having less Mountain Dew. I may still have one on Sundays to celebrate the Sabbath (Hail Jehovah, he's our Man, if He can't do it, we're all SCREWED). I mentioned earlier that I have been watching my weight and body fat percentage. I weigh myself about three times a day. Beckah says that is unhealthy. I suppose it can be if your obsessing. But I don't think I'm obsessing. I want to see how it changes directly based on my diet and level of activity. I can tell you that before my Mountain Dew fast I weight 168-169 pounds. As of now I weigh 165-166 pounds and I am consistently at 15-17% body fat.

But I'm not done yet. In early 2004 I became committed to working out at the gym in the condominium and I was doing it pretty consistently. This made Paul proud, but then I re-met Beckah and we got married and weight training fell from the priority list so I lost the little bit of momentum I had. So four and a half years later I am getting focused again. Eddie mentioned in passing that his weight set was taking up space so I suggested that he let me borrow it. He agreed and so as of last week I have a weight set in my basement. That means I have to use it. And if I'm going to use it I should do it efficiently as possible, which means changing my diet, setting goals. The whole schlamoodle.

I spoke with Paul who is acting as my Personal Trainer, working at an exceptionally low cost I might add. I mentioned my goal was to see my stomach muscles, not necessarily to bulk up. He said that my body fat should be under 10% to have visible stomach muscles. We talked about diet too. I generally eat a bowl of Captain Crunch (I don't care what anyone says, it's "Captain" not "Capn") or a bagel for breakfast, two microwave burritos for lunch and dinner is usually hamburger or chicken or pasta with a vegetable followed off with a lovely cup of chocolate milk as a night cap. Paul was very disappointed in my diet. He said too many processed carbohydrates.

His goals are different than mine. He exists to maintain bulk. I basically just want to tone and lose fat. He said he starts his day with a 800 calorie protein shake, followed by oatmeal, fruit and cottage cheese throughout the day and finishes his day by bench pressing a few small skyscrapers. I don't want that. Paul said that changing a diet and lifestyle doesn't just happen overnight. You just work into something, find something that is comfortable and stick with it as best you can. I can swallow that.

So I looked in the our food stores and realized that the pantry is full of white bread, carbohydrates, pasta and the like. In my head I am more cheap than I am healthy, so I'm not going to throw away the food. I talked with Beckah and we are going to finish out the food we have and all future shopping trips will be healthier. Eggs, tuna, chicken, no cereal, no chocolate milk, no bagels.

I'm going to try this whole weight thing out. This morning I had a one cup bowl of honest to God oatmeal. Mom will be proud. I also had a banana and a bagel. For lunch I had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I think are ok. I have been working out for around 30 minutes a night this past week. Nothing extreme I realize, but like Paul said, introduce what feels normal and go from there. Paul said I need to do cardio and the only cardio that is fun to me is bike riding, which is hard to do in February. He suggested jumping rope so that's what I've been doing. It's inside, low cost and quite effective.

I hope my body still thinks I am in my mid 20s and the fat falls off. Honestly I don't feel fat or anything like that. I think what scared me is when I tried on jeans with a 32" waist and I liked them. That bothered me, which launched this little topic in my life. I don't intend to go overboard with it. If ever I seriously say to anyone, "Dude, I totally blasted my quads last night," then I give them permission to put a steel rivet in the base of my neck, glue my nostrils shut, and poke holes in the nipples of all my shirts. (A trifecta of punishment if you asked me.)

In other news I am planning on playing guitar at the coffee house on Thursday night. I will play "This World" by Caedmon's Call, and "Spoiled" by Carousel. I might also play "Baby Smile" by Craig and Beckah Greenwood and maybe "Carousel of Emotions" by Carousel. Those are on the top of my play list this week. I'd love to squeeze in "Kathy's Song" by Paul Simon but I can't decide if that's the right crowd.

In closing, I had a thought today. Mexican-American relations have been strained because of a number of factors. Immigration, drug trafficking, etc. But why? How could one country be relatively prosperous and right next to it another that seems to be suffering? Why couldn't we have one country with no borders? Everyone stays where they are and they work and they be economically successful. I realize that's oversimplifying everything. But what if we had a New Mexico? We have one of those actually. How about a Next Mexico? Nextico we'll call it. Of course Nexti-CO means "Next to Colorado" and that's Utah, and we have one of those too. I think its obvious that the solution to the problem is Utah, somehow. I just can't make it all work.

(The previous paragraph only served the purpose of linking Mexico to Utah.)

Mexico/New Mexico/Next Mexico/Nextico/ Next to CO/Utah. Trust me. It's funny.

Guitar Gig

January 30, 2009

A few weeks ago Beckah and I found a coffee house literally down the road from where we live. I caught a bug and wanted to research if playing guitar there would be possible. I went in and discovered they do an open mike night every Thursday. I wanted to check it out before I committed myself. So I drug Beckah and London out the next Thursday and the place was packed. Most of the people were younger, high school age. I'm sure they live in the area and go to nearby Riverton High School. I thought, "I don't really belong here". The typical crowd member's body weight was comprised primarily of hair, scarves, earrings, and a fine coat of tobacco smoke.

But I felt compelled to play there because I figured, where else can I find something this easy and low pressure? If they hate me and boo me off the stage it won't be a total embarrassment because I could just never do it again and feel fine with my life. We listened to a few acts that night. It brought back many memories of playing coffee houses in college and Nashville. There was a guy who read a discourse he wrote Performers did a few guitar songs. One guy did a blues song that was pretty good.

We left early but I had a feel for the place because London was falling asleep. My only question was which songs should I play? Each performer did anywhere from one to three songs, so that was my range. I selected three songs. One by Paul Colman called "Run". I also played a song called "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen which I discovered because my friend Jaimyn Lund at church liked the song. It's really a song about sex abtractly disguised as religion. I figured, no way a bunch of high school students will have heard this. The last song I chose was something I wrote for Beckah a few months ago called "Better Off" but she had never heard it because I had no chords for it until recently.

I told Eddie and Brittany about my plan and they said they would come, so it was nice to have their additional support. Plus I asked to use Eddie's guitar which is better than mine. When the next available Thursday night came we all walked in to the coffee place and I was nervous. I hadn't done this kind of thing since I lived in Nashville. When my place in line came I walked up and played "Run" while the crowed talked amongst themselves. I thought, "They not really listening, and that's fine. This one is fast and loud and its just breaking my voice in." The song went well, probably the best I've ever played it actually. They politely clapped. Then I announced that I was dedicating the next song to my wife, which I wrote in secret. The whole crowd went, "Awwwww." I knew that I had their attention. I played "Better Off" which I'm proud of because my goal was to not use a standard chord fingerings. It wasn't exactly art-nouveaux or anything. Just some darker chords is all. But it went well, especially for never having played it out loud in front of anyone. Then I played "Hallelujah" and I'm telling you, I was convinced no one would know it. I didn't know my audience well. As soon as I played the second chord I heard someone say, "I love this song!" I thought, "Shut up, you don't know what I'm going to do!" Then the entire coffee house started singing with me. I took this as good and bad. It was good to build a connection, but I didn't want to bore them trying to measure up to a well known song. There is an interested history behind the song, and it has been used often. But you can research that on your own. Anyway, they all seemed to love it and clapped and it was a really great feeling.

Having played my songs I made my way off the stage and put the guitar away. A gentleman complimented me on the guitar. We stayed for 20 minutes or so while others played which was good. When we did leave I was told that I had kicked serious posterior by another performer (who earlier played a very good version of "Girl" by The Beatles). When we got half way across the parking lot a young man chased me down, shook my hand and said that I now have one fan and that I should come back next week. I left very pleased.

That said, I think I did average at best. My voice is not great, my guitar playing is not creative. It's bland and straight forward. I think I sell it with confidence and volume but that's it. If you're going to play guitar you should be Bebo Norman, Jon Foreman, or Nuno Bettencourt. Bebo and Jon are amazing and I could never achieve what they do, but I can physically comprehend what they do on the guitar. Nuno is otherworldly. (Funny how all their names are bizarre. Go figure.) My writing is embarrassing too. If you're going to write songs you should be Steve Taylor or Natalie Merchant. I come up with one line and the rest of the songs I write are just me going, "What rhymes with that?"

With my humility now stated, I would be a fool to deny my ego. You can't write songs, pack up your family to a strange place, get in front of a microphone and perform and not have some level of ego. The very act says, "My talents and voice are worthy to be heard by other people and I think they will approve." So I fully admit that is a piece of me, as is my humility.

I don't know why I did it though. There is no money in what I did, it does not alter my life. I'm not hoping to get signed to a deal and be a rock star. I just, wanted to. Because I like doing something on my own sometimes. I don't know if I will go back. I could. I could seek out other coffee houses and really try. It's free. It's low cost. But I'm basically trying to find a second job right now. Does this make sense to cram this into my life right now?

Diet and Work

January 27, 2009

I have only cheated on my Mountain Dew Fast twice, neither time do I feel guilty about. One was on my dad's birthday. It was a celebration, we went to a restaurant called Buca di Beppo's and they served Pepsi, so you see, really my hands were tied. The other time was on a Sunday afternoon and I just succumbed to temptation. Maybe I feel partially guilty about that one.

But the real point is that in my quest to stop drinking it, I have cut back. Those two times are the only time. Other than that, I've been drinking lots of water. 4-5 bottles of 24 ounces each per day. I have some milk and chocolate milk as well.

The result is that I lost five pounds within days. My inspiration is my mother in law, Waltyne, who quit smoking in the past year, after smoking since age 14. If she can do it, I can.

Saving money by not buying soda is a good thing. Not being addicted to caffeine is great. The addiction part was easy this time, because my will was very high, and I don't know exactly why. I had one day where I had a headache but that was about it. I've wanted to have Mountain Dew but just dismissed it when the temptation came (except for the two times mentioned above). But should I continue to alter my diet? Should I work out and gain muscle or go for stamina so I can ride my bike longer? Or should I just maintain and by happy that I have much less sugar in my diet?

I would like to get my blood checked. Last time I did I was told my sugar was high and my triglycerides were unmeasurable. But I had sugar cereal for breakfast and had a Mountain Dew later that day. So I would like to get a clean reading of my blood.

I still drink chocolate milk and on comparing the label its practically as bad as Mountain Dew. But I used to drink Mountain Dew and have a chocolate milk. No matter how I look at it, my sugar intake is way lower and I can't help but feel good about that.

That said, I plan to have an easing of my own rules after one month. I'm not sure how I will ease up. Maybe the rule will be that I can have a Mountain Dew as long as I don't buy it. My own cheapness would keep me off it forever. I've had doctors tell me that one a day is not a big deal. So if I could have one a week I think I would be ok with that.

In other news, and without going into too much detail, I am job hunting. My contract at American Express is set to end March 31st. I have some very promising things happening, interviews and the like, but nothing specific yet. It boggles my mind how complex life can be but the solutions to life are really simple

For example, I once worked at American Express when I was 17 years old. I left to go to school, which was a good thing. But I've basically been job hunting ever since. Had I stayed, who knows what I'd be doing, but there are people there now who started around that time and still work there. Some are in upper management and have secure jobs, having climbed the corporate ladder. They have an identity with their jobs.

That is partially enviable in that it would be nice to wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and know exactly who you are, with no question. "I am a bean counter. Bean counting is what I do." I however wake up and check my bank account to see if I can put a full tank of gas in the car. Well, that is an exaggeration. There is always enough, but recently its been just barely. Beckah says I stress out about money too often. On the other hand, how drab would it be to know what you do? To have only worked at one business my entire career would show a life of no adventure. I want a mix of adventure with a strong dash of security.

The life of a contractor has filled its purpose. But I tire of working nearly a year with no vacation time. Not that I want to take time off, but when a holiday comes it would be nice to take advantage of it like a normal person instead of going into emergency mode and squeezing in 40 hours of work into 4 days. I digress. I'm lucky to have a job, and Beckah is right. God always takes care of us. But as a provider I wanted to capture some of the stress on this journal so I can remember the thick and thin of life.

Weight Concerns

January 9, 2009

And so, the boy started weighing himself every day. And his scale was fancy and told him not only weight, but also body fat percentage. At first it was a novelty but daily he saw his numbers climb. Perplexed, but not deterred, nothing changed.

But then one day he got a new pair of jeans. And the jeans were good. They fit comfortably and allowed a full range of movement. But, alas, they were also one inch larger than any of his jeans had ever been. Thirty-two inches! For the first time ever his jeans were wider than they were long. This was a problem.

The boy didn't like this at all. The boy saw images of middle age, bald people floating through his head. People who looked like Frank Layden. The people he saw were laughing at the television and eating potato chips and the crumbs from the chips fell not to the ground. They rested on their bellies, which were a shelf. The boy did not want to become this at age 32, 42, or ever. Terrifying.

And so, the boy stopped drinking his one vice, Mountain Dew, sweet nectar of the gods, syrup of salvation, as of January 8th. His last Mountain Dew was bought some weeks before at the Reams on 4700 S. and 2700 W. and it was consumed on January 7th, 2009.

The boy had headaches and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. The boy will probably fail in his quest to reach his God-fearing weight and morally correct waist size. But he will try.

The I Survey

January 6, 2009

My sister, Ashli, tagged me, which means she posted a list of questions on her blog, and then obligated several others to reply on their blog (or in my case, journal). It's the online equivalent to a chain letter. I normally don't participate in such things, but for the sake of making a post and reaching across the aisle to my sister (who for every practical purpose under the sun is not only in my aisle, but also in my seat) I post the following statements. I tag no one else though.

*I am Craig Greenwood, merely a man, rarely a guy, sometimes a child, forever flawed.
*I want to make my wife smile, watch my daughter grow up, to be a highly paid and sought after professional anything, but specifically a drummer/guitarist/songwriter or a Webpage designer, to be so wealthy that other people get confused and disgusted when they hear of my value, to shatter people’s current world views, to go to London, England and the rest of the UK as well as the Amazon, Japan, Africa, scuba diving, among many other things.
*I have little drive or time to accomplish the above, making me at best mediocre. 
*I miss the feeling you get when you’re playing drums and everything works and the planets align and the sound is perfect and everyone is in tune and being creative and the audience is totally into it and the sound is perfect.  It is an other-worldly feeling, out of body experience that I have only experienced maybe 4 or 5 times in my life.
*I fear failure, which keeps my targets within reach usually (not always).  I fear being laughed at on accident.  I love being laughed at on purpose.  I fear for the length of the life span of anyone who intentionally and significantly hurts my daughter because it will probably be very short.
*I hear, which in itself is odd because I should be deaf with all the drumming I have done.  But I still hear birds chirp, and when my daughter coughs in the next room, or when the air conditioner vent rattles and it interrupts the Simpsons episode I am watching.
*I search for all kinds of random things.  Some things I shouldn’t search for but I do anyway.  Some things I should search for but I don’t.  I hate to admit, but sometimes I am stereotypically male.  I can tell you about a Norwegian Assault on a Nazi power plant to interrupt their supply of heavy water, but sometimes I have to genuinely think to remember my own age.
*I wonder how science and religion actually mix to create a single truth.  How do we have an earth that is 6,000 years old, but dinosaurs and cavemen that date back hundreds of thousands of years?  I wonder why God created such beauty in the universe but made it only visible to the Hubble telescope. 
*I regret my answer to this question.  Sometimes I regret minute details like the shoes I purchased in middle school, sometimes I regret large decisions like which college to attend.  Usually I regret nothing and I am very satisfied with my life.
*I love my family, my wife, my daughter, my parents and my siblings and my friends.  The rest of the world can burn, you can trash my credit rating, take my belongings, and invade my homeland.  As long as I have my family the rest of life is very minute details.  I regret that I focus on the details so much that I forget that sometimes.
*I forgive the kids that tormented me in middle school.  I remember them and think about them often—probably more often than I should.  I forgive them even though its very hard. I also forgive Hitler, Saddam, Osama, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great. I have pity for Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate. I think Christ called to forgive them all so I do.
*I ache rarely. 
*I always drive to work the same route even though I believe one should take different routes simply for the sake of different routes. Smell the roses. But I don't. It's very boring and dry and repetitive. But my route is the most efficient in terms of time and gallons per mile, so at least I'm economic. 
*I try to make sure my clothes all get worn an equal amount of time.  I have even created a database to log my wardrobe so I can look back and plan my future wardrobe accordingly.  No joke.  Everyone is at least a little OCD, and this is one place where it surfaces in me. Annie Caparuscio laughed at me once when I mentioned that I alternated my jeans each day. I've never breathed a word about it since then until now.
*I seem aloof, cocky, and angry, or so I have been told by others.  I’m actually terrified by every step I take in public, and I'm childishly gullible.
*I know that I should know more.  I read lots of historical trivia and that makes me feel smarter than I am because there is so much that it all gets mixed up in my brain.  For example, while watching the movie Saving Private Ryan  I told my wife that the invasion of Normandy took weeks and I truly believed it because I thought I knew it.  Suffice to say, that was wrong.  It took a day. 
*I feel selfish and small and little and scared. 
*I dance for only two reasons: to amuse children and to mock other people.  I understand dancing is an art form and I respect those who devote their lives to learning ballet and ballroom dancing and the like.  But people who dance in clubs for only recreation, I have no respect for.
*I dream that I can fly all the time.  I also dream that I am running for my life but my legs are paralyzed.  Sometimes I dream that I am in school and about to graduate but it turns out I forgot to attend one class the whole semester and it’s a highly stressful situation.
*I give not enough. 
*I listen to a plethora of music.  My playlist on my MP3 player will play George Winston and Natalie Merchant followed by Nickelback and Extreme back to back.
*I sing, but I shouldn’t.
*I laugh like a child at the simplest things. I think I'm hilarious.
*I can't stand sports commentators.  I can't stand prime time TV. I can’t concentrate unless I have lots of time in a very controlled environment. 
*I cry at some movies which makes my wife laugh at me. I'm not talking about open weeping or anything. I'm just saying that when emotional stress is resolved on the big screen, my eyes have been known to moisten. I play it off well and I rarely get caught.
*I sleep about 8 hours a night, very soundly.  If I don’t get enough sleep I get very grumpy and my wife feels the effects of that.
*I see this list on a computer monitor, obviously.  But in a broader sense I see things on the road of life ahead of me and try to plan around them. Sometimes it works, sometimes...not so much.
*I need remarkably little compared to how much I want.  I’d like to think I need more, but when I analyze what I truly need, its very little.  My family, a couple of burritos for lunch.
*I should sell all I my possessions and follow Christ.  Instead I am the camel looking doubtfully at the needle’s eye.

Christmas Happens

December 26, 2008

Christmas has come. Honestly I think this was the best Christmas I have ever lived through so far. The most significant contributor to that was London and the fact that it was her first Christmas. In addition the O'Connell family was in Utah which was fantastic. It also snowed about ten inches on Christmas day. In fact the power went out which caused us to all to open presents by candle light. But before I get into all that let's start at the beginning.

I must say I am a little disappointed in my readers for failing to enter my poetry contest. I had only one entry aside from my own. I have a few thoughts about it. First, my Website doesn't have the traffic it once did. I need to maximize my public outreach efforts. I should be emailing my friends and family on each new journal entry. I've known this for ages but haven't done it because this page is for me and my family to look back, but I do want it to succeed as a Webpage, not just be read by a few people. I want strangers to find it and come back on a regular basis. In addition to that, I need to make it more Search Engine Optimized (SEO) which I used to have but with the PHP redesign I lost a bit of that.

I am debating whether or not I will post the poetry I received. I never considered myself a poet of any kind, I just thought it would be cool if I had a handful of entries to compare. I will say that of the one I did receive and mine, the topics are very similar, which makes sense because the last words were mandated. I still think its a fun and easy exercise but some said it was too long, and too much work.

Christmas was great, and since its only Canadian Boxing Day today, its technically not all over. But Ashli and her family came in on Wednesday, and her daughters are five and ten years old which is a great age. Everyone melted over London. Earlier I found a little science experiment on a science Website and wanted to try it out with the girls. I got some dry ice and borrowed my dad's pressure cooker and we made carbonated fruit! (Watch the video at the link above.) It worked, it was healthy, and tasty and it fizzed. We carbonated apples, bananas, pears, and kiwi. Of all the fruit, the kiwi was the most carbonated, then the bananas, apples and finally the pear which received almost no carbonation. It was easy, cheap and fun and the girls enjoyed it.

Christmas day was so great. We woke up and Craig, Beckah and London opened our gifts at our house and then we headed to Grandma and Grandpa Greenwood's house. But it had snowed about ten inches, and the roads were not plowed and it was slippery and I am amazed we made it with no problems or accidents. When we got there we found the power was out and we couldn't get into their gated community. So I parked at a nearby school. It was still snowing and when we left there was two feet of drifts around the car and I couldn't pull out to pick up Beckah, so I dug the snow away and finally got out of the parking lot.

The gifting was great. Everyone got fun gifts and everyone was excited at some point over their stuff. I received a number of CDs that I wanted and an air compressor and some nature DVDs. The O'Connell family made a book for dad that was awesome. They took some simple poems that dad wrote about birds, Abby drew pictures for each bird and they had a bound book created that looks like a kids book. It's a great showcase of Dad's and Abby's talents and I think it should be published and distributed world wide.

After the gifting Dad made the famous biscuit and gravy breakfast, and I video taped (digital disced?) the whole process. We all took naps except for poor little Beckah who somehow got stuck with babysitting duty. We went home and collapsed and it was a great day all the way around.

Now, I have been noting to myself all season that I haven't done anything for my fellow man in quite a long time. Christmas got me thinking about it, but really my motivation has nothing to do with Christmas. Christ called us to love everyone, and lately all I've done is love my family. The Bible says something like "even your enemies love their neighbors," meaning, anyone can love people that are close to them, its another matter to love strangers. I want to do more of that. And not just around Christmas. I want to volunteer at homeless shelters, and feed the naked and dress the blind. I want to reach out, with no gain to myself and I want to do so on a regular basis, not just once a year. I don't know how to make all that happen but that's my goal for 2009 and beyond--to do something outside of my self to help people I don't know. Call it a ministry if you want, call it a self laid guilt trip, call it me wanting to be an example to my daughter.

Happy new year.

A Poetry Challenge

November 21, 2008

Beckah is away from home this week. She left to Tennessee early with London for Thanksgiving. I have to stay behind because I have a job, and as a contractor I have no vacation time. It's a mixed cup of benefits and drawbacks. I miss my wife and daughter, I miss the noise they make, I miss solving the quirky little problems they find. I miss running errands, I miss making Beckah laugh (even though she claims my jokes only deserve pity laughter, but she laughs anyway and I think she's lying. I think I'm hilarious.)

I like coming home and the house being clean. I like being able to go anywhere and do anything without checking where everyone is and what everyone is doing and if I'm allowed to do to one thing or another. I like eating exactly at the moment I want, not a moment sooner or later. I like being able to take care of odd ball projects like cleaning things in the house that I never clean because they lack importance in the larger scheme (dusting the tops of doors, or disinfecting chair seats [I'm totally weird, I know]). If it was warmer outside I'd wash the cars and clean the garage, and in fact I may do that even though it's cold.

But Beckah was very kind to me before she left and gave me a number of things to do. Puzzle books, movies, models and even a wood burning kit of all things. She also left me some notebooks with specific writing assignments. They are fun, and there is one I'd like to share with everyone in the form of a contest.

Here are the rules: All readers are invited to participate and enter as many times as they want. One month from today I will post the entries and votes will be tallied and the winner will get...um...probably a firm handshake. Here is the specific assignment:

Write a poem. The poem can be about anything you want but it must be 30 lines long and the last word of each line must be the following words in the table below. You can add plurals to these if you need but you must use the words in this order:

say sway stride pride give live pry try breath seethe

train strain pray stray grow tow maze daze fly die

day stay knife life cry sigh doubt shout praise graze

You must email me your entry by December 21st, 2008. At that time entries will be posted anonymously for all to read. After all votes are tallied the writers of all the poems will be revealed and the winner will be proclaimed.

Good luck.

Birthday for Beckah

November 16, 2008

Today is Beckah's birthday. She is 26. Twenty-six. The lady at Walmart said she looked twenty-three. But in fact she is 26. We had a great birthday celebration. I made a ice-cream swirl cake from scratch and covered it with chocolate chips.

London also had a good day. At one point I was taking care of her and checking my email and she was sitting on my lap. She looked interested in the keyboard so I positioned her on my lap so she could type on it and she started banging away. I opened Notepad and recorded what she wrote. So I wanted to present what her first ever document was here. This will go down in history. Ready? I think it's profound. Notice that my little girl is far above the spellcheck feature.

nbbhghghhhhj p........../////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////'ioi.l0i.,l, mmmmmmmmmmmmj m5t 4`///

That's my little girl! Daddy is so proud

American President

November 5, 2008

And so it comes to this. Obama is now the President of the United States. Always the optimist that I am, I will comment on some things that are promising about Obama's reign. It will be interesting to see what he does with healthcare. He said he could offer options that basically lower the cost of healthcare for everyone. I'm no fool. I would like that, I really would. Healthcare costs are crazy, and it is an item a family simply cannot do without. So if he can do it, I'm open. I hope he does not turn the healthcare system into one that resembles Canada, or any European country. There they end up waiting sometimes weeks to see a doctor, I've heard their health insurance can just cancel them whenever they want for whatever reason they want.

His idea of talking to unfriendly foreign nations is intriguing to me as well. What if the leaders of Iran did talk with Obama and he was able to suggest, "Hey, let's all just get along," and it worked! Never mind the anti-Christ parallels that jump to mind, but that would be cool. What if there was peace in the middle east based solely on Barak's popularity? In other words, all the foreign countries liked him so much that they listened to him and made changes on his suggestions. That is promising. Gas prices could continue to go down. Imagine that!

The taxes could be an improvement too. I mean, I don't want anyone over taxed, and oil companies making that much profit does seem wrong. On the surface it does make sense to raise taxes on the rich. I'm not rich, I'm certainly not making $250,000 a year, which was Obama's definition of rich. So his tax increases won't directly affect my income. Maybe pieces of socialism in American isn't all bad. We already have social security. Society wide standards for taxes is at least enticing on the surface.

I voted, so I do reserve the right to complain if Barak fails. But I'm not going to whine and pout. If America voted him in as they seem to have done, then let's stand back and see what he can do.

Neverending Love

September 25, 2008

Among the many things I aspire to be, a musician is one of them. Many of you know that I actively play drums and guitar when I can. I don't get to play music very much outside of church once a week. I have basically been complacent with that. Every once in a blue moon I will get with Eddie and we will try to create music. We have done a handful of projects over the last ten years and some of them came out pretty good actually. But there is always something about our projects that make them sound a little two dimensional. In a way it's been good because during the rare times that we actually do record I keep pressing to do something different and dramatic, which does add life to our sessions, but it still is a little, well, bland.

Not to mention that fact that he and I both get bogged down in the technical aspects and blow all our time working on one measure, so many of our songs are unfinished and missing parts (no drums, no bass, no lyrics, etc.) I sort of figured it was just a(nother) talent I didn't have and it made me respect those who do have the studio/musician talent all the more.

However, recently I got a bug up my butt, was motivated to try again. As stated above I've been playing drums for Freedom Worship Center for five years or so and that has provided a musical outlet for me. But in any church gig, (based on my experience) there is so much music you have to be on top of from week to week that you only explore it as much as you have time to do so, and there is never enough time to do anything too specific because there is a Sunday School Class pushing for time in the sanctuary. (That note alone makes me have great respect for worship bands that are producing very tight music.)

Here is how it started. London was born and Eddie wrote a song for her, which was very sweet. I thought to myself, "I'm the freaking dad! I should write a song for London." As always I hit writer's block and turned to Beckah and she wrote a poem. I added a verse, we both tweaked it around a little and I applied some simple chords to it and I thought, "Ok, now I have something." I got with Eddie, we recorded a basic version, and in the studio I decided my voice is not doing the song justice, let's send this song out to other people who we know are good artists and get them to make their own interpretations of the song. I emailed the song to a few people Eddie and I know and it basically went nowhere.

Then my friend Jojo came back into town. I met Jojo about three years ago filling in some drums for a Worship gig arranged by our mutual friend, Joshua Dixon. Jojo was open to recording a version. So this started things churning in me and I thought, "Let's do two songs." That means I needed another song. I have always wanted to write my own worship song, for several reasons. First, if I am going to a Christian musician then I must turn that gift back to God. No option for me there. Second, I have played so many worship songs that are nice, but after 500 times they are uninteresting, bland, always played the same way and generally lifeless. Worship music should be full of life. A person should get chills listening to worship music. That means solid words, extremely good music and a song that is doable by anyone with basic knowledge of their instrument.

That said, I wrote this worship song with a very sincere spirit of worship, but I also wrote it to be as commercial as possible. That means I wanted it to be unique (not just a I, IV, V pattern repeated ad nauseam), simple (so that many churches could perform the song no matter what the caliber of musician), and hooky (so that people would walk away from worship singing the song and wanting to hear it again).

As I wrote the song I tried to draw from what I felt were solid worship songs and I intentionally did not write music--the first time I've ever done that. Usually lyrics are the last thing on my mind. But this time lyrics were first. I knew I wanted the song to feel like Billy Joel's "Allentown", Caedmon's Call's "Who You Are", Everything Counting Crows has ever thought about, and a dash of Jars of Clay.

In about thirty minutes I had the basic song structure and lyrics. I took it to Jojo and we talked about the inspiration and the ideas and he created the chord progression in about five whole seconds. It was all I asked for: simple, unique, hooky. This is when I started getting really excited, and every time I get excited I push with everything in me. I contacted some other musicians, Dago Moreno and Paul (last name?), who play bass and guitar periodically at Freedom Worship Center. I arranged dates, times and places and the short of it is that IT WORKED.

We tracked (recorded) both songs in roughly nine hours, which is a little longer than ideal, but I didn't mind reaching for a worthy goal. The song is called "Neverending Love". You will have to wait a bit for a downloadable clip though. The song still needs to be mixed for volumes and effects. I am extremely satisfied with the outcome. So far it's unlike anything Eddie and I have ever done, meaning its actually a full, complete band with decent sound on all instruments, a solid groove, creative changes peppered throughout the song. Suffice to say, I'm very proud of it. I need to thank all the folks above for their time. I will make sure a copy of the song is on the journal when available.

Now that the song has come this far, I am going to push it out to sea and see what happens. I am going to send it to a few contacts I still have in Nashville and I'd be thrilled even if one of them said, "We listened to your song and it sucks. Why don't you stick to mowing your lawn?"