the 3 f-words

i hope everyone had a great thanksgiving and had as much delicious food as i did. thanksgiving is probably one of my favorite holidays. besides the fact that it's usually not over commercialized (except for black friday) i just love the whole weekend. my favorite parts are what i call the 3 f-words.

family-is at the top of my list. it's also what i love about Christmas... having everyone get together and spend quality time playing games and just enjoying each others company. it has definitely gotten interesting now that i am married since i have two families to visit. while at a glance the planning can be a bit stressful at first... it ultimately has made thanksgiving even better. i've always had my parents, my brother and my grandparents as well as my uncle from colorado as of the last few years to look forward to seeing, but by marrying andrea, i've more than quadrupled my family to visit. andrea comes from a larger family, something that at first intimidated me, but after meeting them i've grown to love seeing each and every one of them. it's great that she has cousins in our age group who are married and have so much in common with us. i have to say though... the highlight was watching donna and cathy (andrea's mom and aunt) rock out on guitar hero.


food-is next and actually has gotten better due to the larger family group. i've always loved turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and everything else that comes with thanksgiving. any meal that you can swirl together and have it still taste awesome is my kind of meal. and now i get to have two of those wonderful meals not to mention the plethora of pumpkin pie and other deserts we get to liberally consume without feeling guilty. this year it was good old turkey and the works at donna and ken's (andrea's parents) and cornish game hens off the traeger at my folks' house. yum followed by more yum.

football/film-both are staples of the thanksgiving weekend and this year didn't disappoint. my family has the tradition of seeing a movie thanksgiving weekend (usually on that thursday after we've eaten) which tends to be either a star trek film or a bond movie - as they tend to be released around that time of year... sometimes it's lord of the rings but there were only 3 of those. this year it was the latest bond film quantum of solace. i give it 3.5 bond girls out of 5. as for football... thanks to the ducks that was a great experience as well. i think the beavs were hoping to have some duck to follow up on their turkey, but then again i guess this makes up for last year's civil war game right?

i think though this thanksgiving was especially great since i was actually home for it and got to celebrate my first married thanksgiving *with* andrea. we all have so much to be thankful for and it's nice to reflect on that... and why not have a holiday filled with family and food to help remind us of it?

thanks for reading... and i hope your holiday was a good one.

now off to the treadmills!

one home down... one to go

for those who don't know (which shouldn't be too many as i'm sure i have about two readers besides the wife) andrea and i have been looking for a couple of homes in salem. the first being a house to live in and stop torching our money on rent... the second being a new church. we're still looking for that "right" home but we believe we've found our church home. more on that in a bit.

i don't know if anyone else has ever had to leave their hometown church and go through the process of finding something to feel at home at... but it is very difficult. i especially had a hard time because i only recently became a Christian and calvary fellowship in eugene was my first true church as a believer. because of this i will always have a special biased leaning toward that church and since danny o'neil, the pastor there, did our marriage counseling and the actually marrying of us, i will always remember calvary in a very happy and awesome way.

so getting past all of this religious baggage (for lack of a better term) we have had the daunting task of church shopping. as there are hundreds of churches in the salem area... we went off recommendations from family, friends and coworkers. but having never had to look for the right church, as calvary just fit right off the bat, how do you narrow down your options and finally settle down at the right church. it's surprisingly a lot like looking for the right home. you have a list of things you want in a church - good worship, great message through sermon, ways to plug in and feel like a part of the fellowship and most importantly the Godly values you believe in.

the trick is realizing you need to find the best church for you... not the perfect church since that probably doesn't exist.

we tried a few out but one would be terrible worship but a good message and a huge congregation... while another would have good worship but the church is going through finding a new pastor and seems only focused on that task. so it was hard weighing those differences and much like finding a house, deciding which things were deal breakers and which ones we could let go in order to settle in.

after months of searching... we tried out salem alliance. while it is much larger than we thought we'd be comfortable with... there are enough services and programs get into we feel confident we'll be able to plug into to the program. we love the uplifting worship that mixes old hymns of tradition with newer songs by artists like chris tomlin and the message has been great too. the church is also very active in community outreach. not to convert people... but to simply support folks in need and offer to pray for them. being someone who has never really been into the idea of Bible thumping or good deeds for the purpose of conversion rather than simply to do good deeds... this really appeals to me. the only downside so far is we've yet to have the same pastor in 3 weeks of attendance... but this could be due to the main pastor being sick.

on a more personal note: i'm not one to usually admit to feeling God or being open about the emotional side to my beliefs... but i will admit that our first visit to salem alliance had me on the verge of tears. i believe this is due to two reasons... one; it was beginning to feel like we weren't going to find a church we liked and would just have to settle for one that only kind of felt right... and two; during the worship i felt like i was where God wanted me. i can't explain it in words but i'm sure fellow believers know what i'm talking about.

so hopefully this is it.

better?

after that last one... here's something that will hopefully make up for it.


-chuck norris puts the laughter in manslaughter.










p.s. tee hee hee

walla walla rocknrolla

the title pretty much sums up my week.

monday i headed to the far east... of oregon... where i was set to do a little video work for a documentary the national guard is putting together. my boss and i drove out to milton freewater on monday.
while she stayed with her grandma there, i took our sweet soccer mom van of a ride to walla walla, wa to stay the night in the holiday inn express there. by the way, if you're ever heading out there either change your mind because there's nothing to really do or still go but stay at the walla walla holiday inn express... best one i've ever been in. this was found after taking the wrong turn into a part of rural oregon that looked a lot more like where jeepers creepers hangs out than where cows and potatoes live in harmony.

after a restless night in the fabulous hi-ex (my new term for holiday inn express, patented) i picked up my boss and headed to lovely la grande for our interview. did i mention winter has officially hit out there? we had snow and we're still driving this crappy van that i don't feel comfortable driving through a wal-mart parking lot (although that may be for other reasons). on our way to la grande we saw this kia sorento on the side of the road facing the wrong way with tire tracks up the snowy embankment and sharply curved back around... basically a bad day for this person. there was also a u-haul stopped 50 meters past with it's hazards on. i decided to stop and see if i could help. the driver was from florida and wearing a t-shirt and shorts with flip flops in the snow. i tried to help him out but instead watched him spin farther into the embankment. i was pretty close to just asking him to let me drive but he was kind of a cocky prick, so i wished him luck and bounced. unfortunately my good samaritan powers only work with nice people.

as for the interview... we had a great time and it was awesome hearing all kinds of interesting stories from an 88 year old vet who was a recon photographer during world war 2. he's written a book that seems pretty interesting. check it out if you feel inclined. banana splits followed and an unfortunately long drive home.




as for the rest of the title of this poorly constructed and boring blog... andrea and i watched the latest guy ritchie flick 'rocknrolla' last night. it was really good actually... especially if you really like his other films like lock stock and snatch (not swept away). the downside was realizing what movies cost these days ($19!!!!). i always forget and then feel old when i want to say "back in my day these moving picture things were only about $5." basically i'm just old and too poor to go to movies at the regular theater. insert shameless plug for northern lights here.

hopefully my next blog will be less mind-numbing and with even more links that take you to random sites or images.