// newmodernscience

Boy, so much has happened in the last few months. I keep thinking that I’m going to find the time to write it all down, and then I find myself having to prioritize. Let’s see, what’s happening in our universe?

We moved into a house. Loving it. It’s got some issues that we’re working through, gutters need to fixed, some outer door damage, window screens, etc. But it’s nice to have our own rooms and not having to worry about disturbing the neighbors.

I’m working 2 jobs, and still doing a lot of freelance. Still working at the church, but now I’m working at the Nazarene church in town as well. They don’t have anyone on staff for IT or even for production, so I’m working a number of facets, including some of their web design, media and production and computer systems. I’m in the process of installing wireless AP’s in half of their building, which is quite a challenge. Their building is super old, 60 years or something? Lots of REAL firewalls, solid brick, and if I’m lucky, 3/4″ sheet rock, which I have to chop through in most cases. Luckily their attic is high enough to stand in and I only have to lay single Ethernet cables. Anyway, it’s really nice that they’re so trusting of me; I didn’t give them a resume or anything, they just know my by reputation. Which is a really nice feeling. They’re letting me order thousands of dollars of networking appliances and potentially a $20,000 digital console for their main auditorium. It’s been really cool to see how another church runs and to be able to help them out. I’ve been helping a few other churches too. Nice to know that there isn’t this feeling of competition out there between churches.

What else? I’ve been working on a number of freelance websites, one which I can’t talk about (non-disclosure agreement) and some music projects. Just finished http://www.melaniemansfield.com, a wedding photography website for a friend, and I just finished a couple of highly customized Wordpress installations for a church over in Spokane. Now, I’m looking forward to getting back into some music. I’ve taken over a small corner of the living room and turned it into a recording studio. Every week, I’m having different people over to record, and I spend late/early hours tinkering on song bits. I’ve had this sort of creative spirit welling up lately, and I feel like something fantastic is coming. I’ve already recorded a few reworked worship pieces and I’ve got bits of original stuff just waiting to be pieced together and completed.

Carey and Maren are doing well. Maren had her 2^nd birthday, and is daily adding words to her vocab and is starting to understand how to piece them together. She knows her alphabet and her 1-10, and can mostly say them all. You can ask her a letter and she’ll point it out to you. Leaps and bounds now, she’s more fun than ever to chase around and play hide and seek with. And she loves singing, she’ll pick up on different little songs while watching Playhouse Disney. One of her favorite songs is the Manamana song from the old Muppet show. I’ve been on YouTube looking for little muppet show clips and she just LOVES to watch that one. What’s really neat about the internet these days is that there’s a lot of learning material out there, and we’re hooked up with a couple of services that are interactive preschool learning tools that actually get her interested in her letters and numbers and shapes and things without having to sit her in front of the TV all the time. She still loves Blue’s Clues though, and a Canadian show called The Doodlebops is her favorite right now. She also is really attached to Disney movies, particularly Finding Nemo and the princess movies (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc) but her favorite favorite is My Neighbor Totoro which is a Japanese anime for children. It’s got 2 little sisters that play with each other and run around in the forest. Very cute.