Yesterday, I got a call from the Associate Pastor’s daughter. She had made a slideshow of pictures and movies that she took with her camera for this little league party, and she couldn’t get it on DVD. I went to her house, dumped it on my 8GB flash drive, built the DVD, and made her 13 copies to give out to the families. Apparently it was the hit of the party. It’s nice to help people out with their stuff.

Maren keeps climbing in bed with us in the middle of the night, so I end up sleeping on my arm or my hands or something. I have this weird ache in my hand right now.

Feels like we’re having a new season at the church. Our main office assistant is leaving, and between her new replacement, the new associate pastor, the 3 new youth interns and a new secretary, the environment has changed. I really like the new pastor. He’s 39, and he’s heading up the college ministry. Get this though, he used to be a cage fighter. Like, a no holds barred, mixed martial arts cage fighter. Pretty wild, huh? Anyway, he’s great fun, and he’s doing a great job kickstarting our college ministry into gear again.

We went to the Wednesday market yesterday. About this time of year, they start the local Wednesday and Saturday markets up, and they keep going until around October. Last year, we’d go down weekly and buy fresh veggies for something like 7 bucks, and make salads for a week. They have a cool assortment of local goods though, flowers, garden goods, local meats, local honey, and all sorts of fun places to eat. We had Island Noodles yesterday, which was a basic vegetarian stir-fry in massive woks, and they put them in to-go Chinese food containers instead of the paper plates that you usually get. That way, if you can’t eat it all, you can just close the box and take it with you, which is pretty cool.

Aaron wrote a song for his mom’s friend, whose husband passed away a year ago. The anniversary of his passing is on tuesday, so we’re trying to get the song all recorded and mixed before then. I’ll likely post it here for you to check out. We’re really starting to get the songs together nicely. we’re hoping to have a 5 song EP by the middle of summer, and we’ve already booked some shows. Ben hooked up with Sleeping At Last up in Seattle, and it looks like we might open for them when they come back through in August, which will be rad.

My lawn is a mess. The neighbor’s cat likes to sun in our yard, and this morning he looked like a lion stalking in the high grasses of the Sarangeti. Yeah, i need to mow it today.

Be praying for my shoulder, i managed to tweak it nicely about a week ago, and it’s a bit sore.

check for updates at http://www.morningstarmissions.com, i’ll be posting there for the next week.

So, Maren has started on her Two’s early. She’s got a mean streak and can get really cranky. She’s also really needy at nighttime; she’s got this new trend of getting up at 1:30am and staying up till like 4:00 because she can’t sleep. And she screams and thrashes. I’ll admit that can pretty much handle anything she throws at me, but when i’m that tired and it’s that early in the morning, it’s all that I can do to keep from wanting to go for a long drive off a short cliff. Fortunately, we live in valley.   She’s on a Blue’s Clues kick, so every morning is Blue’s Clues and breakfast. She’s at that imitation stage, and the other day I caught her wearing mom’s bling.

and another one while she was sneaking a cookie.

Silly kid. I really love her hair, it’s all wispy and long, though it’s kinda mulleting in the back. i’m tempted to cut it all even because she’s not much for putting it in piggies.

Well, today is our second to last practice for Panama. Only one week left, pretty much. Anyone still wanting to donate your $5, my deadline is tuesday morning. I’ve got most of it lined up, but I found out today that you have to get yellow fever vaccinations as well as malaria, so every little bit helps!

We got home today in time for me to unload everything and then go to the church and load up the drums and copy the performance songs from my laptop to the travel machine. unfortunately, this machien continues to give me problems, and I spent a chunk of time in practice trying to get the tracks going, and I reverted to using a different soundcard altogehter. sad. I can’t do that at the gig tomorrow night, it’s just got to work.

I got my dumb little part to fix my laptop, the guy was supposed to call me to schedule the repair but he hasn’t yet. i’m going to call them tomorrow and see if I can get them to get a move on with it.

I’m pooped. Going to bed.