Blog.

I admit that I’m just a little behind on keeping you guys up to date.  Ok, I’m really behind, but hopefully this will make up for it: Three sets of pictures to keep you guys happy…

First, Heather went to Seattle in May on business, but was able to sneak in a day of tourism.

Full Gallery HERE

Second, here’s a few more pics of Truman for all you dog lovers.

Click HERE for more.

And last, my parents spent a week with us recently, and we really loved having them here. Here are a few pictures of our adventures with them…

Full Gallery HERE.

So The last few weeks have been pretty crazy for Heather and me. We traveled to Texas for a week as many of you know for various reasons and saw most of the major cities while we were there. In addition to visiting my parents and friends in Madisonville / College Station, we buried the ashes of Heather’s grandmother with a small family gathering at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, and finished the week celebrating the marriage of our friends Abby and Justin in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Seeing how we flew into Houston and spent one night in Austin, we almost put 1000 miles on my parents Yukon! (Thanks Mom!) It was amazing how many people we were able to visit in that short amount of time, and it truly reminded us of how blessed we have been in our relationships over the years and how wonderful our friends and family are.

This past weekend we spent Saturday afternoon downtown with some friends of ours with the main attraction being the cherry blossoms around the tidal basin. Unfortunately, a storm rolled through the day before and wiped out the bulk of the blooms from the trees, but we still had a wonderful time. As an added bonus, we stopped in at one of the Art museums and enjoyed a bit of history.

Thanks for all your comments about our dog Truman! He really has become an additional member of the family and is a joy to have around. He definitely qualifies as the most spoiled out of all the dogs I’ve ever owned, lol…

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Without further adieu, allow me to introduce Truman, our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

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I’m long overdue for several posts, but I’ll get this out there so you guys have something to look at. Last Saturday Heather and I went with a couple of friends and their daughter to the National Zoo. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time. It was also the first time I got to test out our new Sigma 70-200mm lens we bought from a friend. With a couple exceptions, the lens did great, but as my friend that sold me the lens said today, “the biggest problem with my pictures originate from about 12 inches behind the camera”. True to that statement, some of the shots aren’t as good as they could be if I had remembered certain things like bringing the ISO back down from 1600 after I leave the dark indoors, but overall I had a great time attempting to be a photographer.

Click here for full gallery.

My wife was nice to me and let me buy a new guitar this Christmas, and I thought I would do a small review here…

After much deliberation and playing of every guitar in the place, the Takamine TAN16C won out and made its way home with me. There were only two other guitars in the place that I liked better, one a Martin 000-18 Golden Era (unbelievable tone) and the other a Taylor 914CE, both incredible guitars, but both almost 3 times the price of the Takamine. My first guitar was a (now 18 years old) Takamine EF341 (the link has the cutaway version) that was bought at a pawn shop, and it has held up wonderfully over the years. In my opinion, Takamine has unbelievable quality for incredible prices.

This guitar has a very open warm sound, much richer and fuller than the EF341, and is able to fill up most small rooms with ease acoustically, which is nice when you’re just jamming with friends, or doing a laid back acoustic worship session in a living room. The playability is definitely top notch and very fast, with low enough action to play easily throughout the entire fretboard, but not too low to produce buzzing. It has a split saddle, which really helps with superb intonation throughout the range of the guitar, and a peg-less bridge, which makes restringing the guitar a little bit easier.

The electronics are definitely unique, as it employs Takamine’s CTP-1 Cool Tube pickup system. There is an actual tube (a 12AU7 dual triode) inline with the EQ that can be fed into the mix with the equalizer, which gives it a very nice warmth and openness to the sound when plugged in. I recorded a quick demo to give you an idea of how much ambiance the tube gives to the sound of the guitar. I recorded two takes of these songs, (one with the tube, one without) then mixed them together so that it switches between the two every few measures in the song. Each time it starts without the tube, then alternates until the end of the song. The second song on the last “dust in the wind…” part of the chorus has both tracks mixed together. Check it out here. Takamine has a few more demonstrations on their site, played by guys much better than me if you want to check that out.

Here are the pics:

It has been quite awhile since an update, and for that, I apologize! Thank you to all my faithful viewers that keep coming back to check on me. Heather and I have been staying pretty busy with our jobs lately, and the holidays have kept us running around shopping and hosting friends and neighbors at our house for various occasions. Heather’s parents were in town several weeks ago, and we had a wonderful time getting to spend some time with them. It’s awesome to have two sets of incredible parents!

I’m almost done with the drums, the pictures below show them assembled, but I still need to do some finish sanding and buffing before they really shine. I had the opportunity to play them at a men’s breakfast last month, and they sound great.

It snowed almost 4 inches yesterday, and basically gridlocked the roads. Originally I thought the people up here would be more adept at dealing with the snow and bad weather, but apparently we’re not quite far enough north. It was almost as bad as traffic in Abilene, TX when it rains! Haha.

Another thing that I need a little feedback on: Occasionally, I get a few hits on the forum that I have hosted on my server. Originally, I intended to use it as a communication tool for Pipeline, but it never really caught on, so it has just sat there, with no activity for the last couple months. Would you guys be interested in using it for discussion? If there’s enough interest, I’ll keep it up and start expending more time to it, but it takes more people than me to make it work! Either comment on this post, or send me an email if you care one way or the other.

Last weekend, I attended a men’s retreat with the guys from my church, where I had the opportunity to play in the worship band, and to get to know many people that I had only briefly met before. The weekend was wholesome, relaxed, and a lot of fun. It was held at a resort in northwestern Maryland, if you’re wondering where the pictures are from…

The theme for the weekend was Discipleship. Real Discipleship. A term that the Western church has tamed, watered down, and a concept that is mostly ignored in practice. We talk about it, but we have lost the passion and devotion to carry out perhaps one of the most important commandments Jesus ever gave. The typical church today tends to “bring in” people, make sure they are saved, Baptize them, and then forget about them. Most new Christ followers are left eating baby food, hungering for substance, with no one to feed them.

To grasp the magnitude of the Great Commission, there must be some understanding of what a disciple is. A disciple is so much more than a student. A student just wants to know what the teacher knows. A Talmid, or disciple, wants to be “what the teacher IS“. If a believer in Christ just wants to know what God knows, or just wants to know what Jesus says about certain subjects, he / she is just a student. If that believer says “I want more than anything in the world to be JUST LIKE JESUS“, then he / she is a disciple. (see Ray Vander Laan Downloads for more on this) It is so much more than church on Sunday or a Bible study on Tuesday night; Being a disciple demands a passionate seeking to know everything possible about the life of Jesus, and a radical change of lifestyle where every breath taken is an effort to emulate the Savior.

So where do you stand? Are you a believer? A student? Or a disciple? Are you actively pouring your life into someone else, teaching them what it means to be a disciple of Christ? Do you have someone that’s pouring their life into you?

It’s been awhile since my last update, and I apologize, I’ve been pretty busy.

I took a 5 year break (thanks to Texas A&M College of Engineering) from anything remotely musical other than the A Capella quartet I traveled with and I recently realized how much I have missed having a musical outlet. If you know me (as most of you should, if you’re reading my blog) you know I’m passionate about music. From an early age, I have always had some kind of outlet for my music. I took piano lessons from age 5 till my teacher moved around age 12. It was around that time that I started drums/percussion in school, which continued through my junior year at ACU. (Including 1 year of being a music major) I picked up Guitar in 8th grade and while I have never regularly played guitar in a band, I would sometimes lead a small group praise night, or have jam sessions with a couple friends. From the time I was little, to the time I transfered to Texas A&M, there was always a reason to practice and strive to make myself better musically, whether it was a piano recital, a concert, or a percussion ensemble gig.  I didn’t realize at the time how much I had missed my music during my time at A&M until recently.

Heather and I have been attending a local church that we have decided to call home. Typical to my nature, I can’t call a church home and just sit in a ‘pew’ every Sunday. Therefore, I volunteered to help out with the worship band for Pipeline, the 18-30’s ministry of the church. They graciously invited me in and I started practicing / playing with this group as they started up this fall. In addition to Pipeline, I answered a note in the church bulletin asking for technical volunteers. I have considerable experience with audio/video/lighting and I thought I might be of some help. Over the next week, I had several conversations with the technical director (Glenn), who asked me to sit in on one of the main worship band’s rehearsals to see how they ran the technical side of the “show.” Through Glenn, I met the worship director, (Kay, who happens to be the main pastor’s wife) and through some rich conversation she finds out that I sing, and that I’m a percussionist. They were needing someone to play Auxiliary Percussion, and Kay asked me to come back the next week and “audition.” So I did. Funny how God works. I ended up auditioning every instrument I play except guitar, which was the one instrument I would have felt the most comfortable on. Long story short, the next week I was on stage singing! (Mostly harmony, some lead)

I have been singing/playing with them weekly since then, and I guess I am now one of “the band.” I went from no musical outlet to two bands and teaching guitar lessons. (1 student from Pipeline) The biggest challenge has been learning a ton of new music, which I’m still doing, and catching up on my instrumental skills. I have been asked to fill in for our pianist on Oct. 21, which is pretty nerve racking, but I’m excited about the challenge. I have a pretty large set of shoes to fill that day, as Cyndi is pretty talented.

In all of this, I have recently been thinking about past struggles with pride, and I pray constantly that I can be completely transparent and truly lead people to worship Christ. In this, I thank God for the musical talent He gave me, and I feel the responsibility to develop it and use it for His glory. If I am ever doing this for any reason other than that, I pray God removes me from the position he has put me in.

In other news, we (Me, Heather, and a couple friends) traveled 10-20 miles West of where we live to visit a couple winery’s a few weeks ago. The weather was beautiful (low 70’s), the wine was decent (it’s Virginia, our expectations weren’t very high), and the company was grand. We didn’t take many pictures, but we had a great time. The second winery (not pictured) was hosting a festival. It turns out that the owners were from Louisiana, which explained the Mardi Gras beads and the Zydeco band, complete with accordion.

Last weekend we adventured up to Baltimore to the inner harbor to visit the aquarium. We ate at a little Italian place for lunch, watched a steel band (Caribbean style) play for a little while, but spent most of our time gazing at sharks, turtles, frogs, dolphins, and a couple of Kookaburra’s (which are one of the loudest, most obnoxious birds that I’ve ever encountered) in the Australian exhibit. The lighting wasn’t the best for pictures, but we managed to get a few. We had a great time, but our favorite aquarium is still the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. If you like fish and sea-life but can’t afford to take a trip to Belize or Austrailia to see it live, the Shedd is the next best thing.

Gallery here.

So I received my first shipment of my new drumset. I’m going to finish the shells myself. These are the raw drums, and a couple teasers of how it will look when I’m done… (note to all you drummers that the Pearl pedal/hat stand are a temp solution from craigslist)

Gallery here.