The Countdown is Close

After months of waiting and staring out the window, baseball is about to start again. A fresh start for every major league club. Every team starts on the same footing. Every team is an equal number of games away from the pennant. After Monday, that all goes out the window. Teams will win and lose, some closer to the pennant, other closer to the cellar. Buy everyone gets that fresh start. Much like the Grace of God through Christ, we are all equal again. This weekend also marks the most important Christian holiday (sorry Reformation Day). The day that Jesus rose again. The day he beat back death and opened the door for all to be restored to the Father. So come Easter, come. Celebrate the resurrection as we celebrate the new baseball season, only this celebration is eternal.

Nostalgia

I have expanded my photography interests as of late. I recently got a Holga 120N for Christmas from my wife. The Holga is essentially a toy camera. It was designed as a cheap camera for anyone to be able to purchase and use. Then film changed and everyone switched to 35mm instead of 120mm. The Holga has only a few basic settings: Aperture (which doesn't actually work), Focus (four basic settings), and Bulb (quick shutter speed or long shutter). There is a hotshoe for a flash, but I don't have one so I don't use that. The back sometimes falls off so I hear so I've put a rubberband around it so it will stay on. There's also a lot of customizations you can do for it which are referred to as hacks. I'll let you know if I try any of them. So the Holga is basic and I am pretty excited about this. It's sort of like going back to my high school days of shooting photos. Back when you were on a leash in regards to how many shots you could take in a day. Back before digital took over. Not that I'm against digital. I have a Nikon D40 and I love it. But there's something about using film, especially 120 film and only having 12 shots per roll. I'm planning on getting some developing equipment and really take it back to high school photo days. The photo included here is literally the first picture I took with the Holga. Overall I feel it turned out ok. I like the results you get with film. I scanned this on my home printer/copier/scanner, so quality is less than ideal. Hopefully I can continue to afford the film and developing and get some more prints on here.

A Passing

I got the news the other night that my grandfather, Stanley Hudson Westlund had passed away. While most people would see this as horrible news, I am quite happy about it. Before you break out the mat and "jump to conclusions" (see it's a mat and you can 'jump' to conclusions-sorry, Office Space reference) know that I had a wonderful relationship with my grandfather. He was pretty much the awesomest guy ever. On a scale of 1 to godly, I think that only Jesus beat him. When it came to loving someone regardless of who they were or what they had done he was also awesome at it. So now he gets to go home. He gets to meet his Savior face to face. In fact, a few times this last year he had to be revived and was quite upset about it. He was ready to head home. So now we'll head down to California and celebrate with hundreds of other people. We'll celebrate that Grandpa Stan is home. We'll celebrate the countless lives he affected. We'll celebrate the life he lived and think about how we all want to be as awesome as he was.

10 months

It's been almost ten months since I've posted on this thing. Since then I've had a son, moved, started taking a lot more pictures (over 3000 actuations since March), and done some other stuff. It's amazing how fast time passes. When I was a kid, summer's lasted forever. I would play baseball in the street every day and it seemed to never end. Now, summer's pass in the blink of an eye. This is probably due to the longer I am alive, the shorter percentage of my life three months is. That and having a job kind of kills the summer vacation thing. Perhaps I should figure out a way to just be a professional student. Anyone want to pay me to do that? If so, email me. Thanks.

Updates

So, my basement is slowly coming along.  I'm hoping to finish up the mud on the sheetrock and texture it tomorrow.  It hasn't taken too much work, I just haven't had the time to work on it.  For some reason my job prefers me to show up sometimes?  I know, I don't get it either.  Speaking of work, our new building is about to open.  It's only about a year overdue, so really in construction timelines, we're a little early.  It's amazing how something like a building can be such a pain.  We supposedly hired a company that knows how to build these things in a timely manner.  Timely meaning way longer and way more expensive than was originally intended.  Basically the general contractor sucks.  So I've been offering up some precatory prayers for him.  If David can offer them up, then I can offer them up.  I reckon that God will take care of all the little things in due time, but it never hurts to remind him of what's going on.  That is what happens in Revelation, with both angels and people crying out for justice.  So I've been crying out for justice on occasion.  

As long as we're talking about jobs, at least I am, there's some other good news.  I realized the other day that it actually hasn't felt like I was going to "work" since January of 08, which was when I finished working construction.  So basically, for almost a year now I have been going to a place of employment, putting in hours and accomplishing various tasks that I am paid to accomplish and oversee, and it hasn't felt like I was actually going to work.  I guess that is the point in life where you have found your "calling".  So that's a big relief.  I was getting pretty tired of going to work.  Oh yeah, go to materialchurchnw.com and check it out.  And buy stuff through our links.  Thanks.

Awesomeness.

I found this on failblog.org.  This is pretty awesome.  Every girls dream.

Reconstruction

I reckon that I am a bored man, or a very foolish one. I have decided to remodel part of the basement of the house I live in which I finished remodeling just under a year ago. The primary reason is because this will give us more living space, which we need; and one less bedroom, which we don't necessarily need. Hopefully people will like this as we will be listing our house on the market again in the spring. So Obama had better make some changes and people need to continue in their American Way of overspending and racking up debt. After all, credit is the American Way right? I saw something at adventconspiracy.org that was interesting. Americans spent like 450 billion on Christmas each year. 450 billion. Wow. That number is really staggering. Especially when the best gift one could receive at Christmas is free. In order to show people that that gift is worth it and that we like them, I guess we have to spend 450 billion dollars. I wonder how much of that 450 billion is put on credit cards and not immediately paid off? I would imagine most of it if I know America at all.
So I'm off topic. My basement remodel will hopefully allow my house to sell quickly in the spring and make at least enough to cover the cost of it. If I'm really lucky perhaps I'll even come out on top so that the hundreds of hours spent finishing it last year will come to fruition. So, wish me well...