StumpTown Blog

My Dad is a big man and has been as long as I’ve known him. He’s not NFL offensive line big or anything like that and he’s only 6’1”. But he’s one of those guys who seems even bigger than he is. When I was young he was, of course, the strongest man in the entire world. I remember that I couldn’t even lift my “Green Machine” pedal car and yet he could pick it up and carry it up stairs with only one hand. In his younger years he had been a real-life, actual lumber jack working in the woods in northern California and the tales of his strength and ferocity from these years were the thing of myth for me and my brothers growing up. We heard stories of car doors ripped off their hinges, forks being stabbed through people’s hands that dared to play at stealing my Dad’s dessert and on and on. In truth, my Dad is not a violent man at all. To my knowledge he has never been in a fist fight since I’ve been alive and I don’t recall hearing any stories from his younger days of actual fights. B...

If you don't mind, click over to my entertainment blog and put in your 2 cents (unless you have more) in response to the question posed there. Thanks. Also, speaking of cents. Why is it that people everywhere lazily pronounce fifty (50) as "fitty" (as in rapper 50 Cent) and yet no one says "sitty" when saying sixty. Very strange I think. These are the kinds of things I think about when I'm trying to block out that odor while commuting on MAX.

My lovely and mactastic wife informed me that today is national “talk like a pirate day.” The reasons our nation needs this day and that we celebrate it on September 19 are too numerous to mention and to obvious to be worth noting, so let’s move on and dig deeper into the true meaning of this holiday. My biggest complaint about TLAP day is that it has become so commercialized that we have lost the original meaning. I mean, we have big budget movies staring the worlds girliest men wearing more eye makeup than Courtney Love (the popularity of those movies so diminishes my faith in humanity it is nearly enough for me to denounce democracy). We have amusement park rides about pirates, endless pirate toys, sports teams named for pirates. It is all too much. Once upon a time, talking like a pirate really meant something. It meant lots of growling and bad English accents. It meant repeating non-sensical phrases like “shiver me timbers” and “blow me down” and “poop deck” (you’re giggling right...

Greetings all. I’m back from Turlock with a correction to make. In fairness to Turlock I need to mention one of its best points that I forgot in my previous post – the Lewis family. Big Mike and his folks did time in Turlock and they are just downright good people who I am proud to know and who Turlock should be proud to have had. Great trip all around. My work went well and quickly which is all I could ask. I got to hang out with my friends Randy and Beth and their two great kids. I got to hang out and watch a ton of football with my brothers Caleb and Enoch and Caleb’s wife and kids. And the 49ers won their home opener against the hated Rams. Good times. For more on the Niners victory and a recap of this weekend’s sports offerings, check out my sportsblog. Also, assuming I get the time to write it, be on the watch on my entertainment blog for reviews of Little Miss Sunshine and Invincible. Both movies were very good, but I’ll lay it out there later. The best part of my trip...

Greetings everyone from Turlock, CA. Here are my favorite things about Turlock so far: 1. It smells like a port-a-potty used mostly by cows 2. There are no signs for Turlock, anywhere. It’s like its existence is some kind of secret or something. No this many miles until… signs. No “welcome to” sign. No “Turlock Market” or the like. Only people who really want to can find Turlock and I can’t find any reasons why there would be any such people 3. My hotel stay has produced the following conversations: Late Night Hotel Guy: Hello, front desk Me: Yeah, I’m trying to watch TV in my room and I can’t get a signal. The TV comes on, but the signal seems to be scrambled and it is unwatchable. LNHG: Ummm…yeah, I don’t know what to tell you about that. Me: Well, I mean, is there some problem with the cable? Is there some setting I need to change? Is this just my room or a hotel wide problem? LNHG: Well, I’ve never watched TV in the rooms so I...

Just a quick note while a couple things are on my mind here at about 2 in the am while I take a break from work for a moment. First, we focused our worship service at Church this morning around prayers for our school kids and our teachers who have just begun a new year. One of the reasons I love my Church family here at Westside is how they embrace these sorts of “special” services that don’t follow a traditional pattern or format, but take a break to address some timely issue or concern. Especially with my oldest starting school this year, today was especially meaningful. So, here is a reminder to pray for our kids and our teachers. I know I will be and I know it will make a difference. Second, my Dad is doing the preaching these days at Westside. Not what he set out to do when choosing a career in ministry, but he is wonderfully gifted at it (yes I’m bias, so what, I’m still right so there), and I’m enjoying this time getting to hear him preach on a regular basis. A couple week...

Sorry for the strange post, but I'm only posting this to try to fix my picture problem. My picture problem is that I look bad in pictures. But the problem I'm trying to fix with blogger (until they offer plastic surgery) is that it won't let me post pictures to my blogs. What is even stranger is that it allows me to post pictures about 1 out of every 15 times I try without any noticable pattern. I have asked for help and none of the suggested "fixes" work. So I'm striking out on my own. If you have advice, please share. So, if this new attempt works, you should see a picture of what two young boys look like after a 3 mile hike which is up hill all the way.

Just a quick note today. I have finally updated the links on this site to feature some of the blogs that I have been reading and whose authors have been visiting and commenting here. So, Greg, Steve, John, Cecil and Bobby, this is your official welcome. To anyone else reading this, I encourage you to check out these other blogs as they are a good combination of humor and insight and theology. Plus, as these guys sometimes comment here at my blog, it is a way for you to check out who these folks are and what they are up to. Of course the real reason for the links is just that now it is more convenient for me to visit them since it is, as you might as well know, all about me. Also, this seems a good time to thank Greg for the link on the origin of playing cards which is in the comments of my previous posts.. It sounds like the origin isn't really known with any certainty and that's a little comforting as it partially explains why know one seems to know the answer. This made me th...

I know I am. Check out my sports blog for 10 things that will absolutely positively happen this weekend in the NFL and feel free to wager on them. I wouldn't want you thinking it was just for entertainment purposes. A couple quick things before I have to run off to pick Gibson up from school. 1. Gibson started first grade on Tuesday and after two days is loving it. It is 100% spanish immersion, but he is understanding enough of it to enjoy it. Keep him in your prayers 2. Here's something I've always wanted to know. Does our modern deck of playing cards come from a particular game? How did they come about in this form? I hear people say they're from China or Ireland or whatever, but I mean, why the 4 suits and the face cards, etc. Was there some original game that these cards were designed for? Why didn't it last? Why doesn't anyone know this? 3. I think there might be some signs that we may see a trend toward simplicity in our culture. In the masses of punked o...

It took me so long to complete my recap of my backpacking trip earlier this summer, that I am committed to doing this one all in one shot. Interestingly, that means that I will complete the recap of one trip before completing the first one which happened months ago, but there you have it. So, with out much further ado, here is the recap of my most recent backpacking trip. Enjoy. September 1, 2006. Around the time of the trip I’ve been blogging about that I took to Three Sisters with my lovely wife Tanya and my brother Enoch, we asked my oldest son Gibson what he wanted for his 6th birthday. I think he was feeling a bit left out at the time as he doesn’t believe we should ever do anything without him except for maybe eat vegetables. Anyway, he told us that he wanted to go backpacking for his birthday without even having the first clue what that meant. Nevertheless, both Tanya and I believe that the best way to raise children is to give them whatever they ask for without exception so...

I can’t believe this is already my 100th Blog post. Amazing. I’m not sure what that means, and I’m not sure I want to know. Oh well, on to the post…. When my oldest son Gibson was born a lot of people asked me if having a kid made me feel old. I think people are really just waiting for me to finally grow up and stop listening to rap and wearing my facial hair funny and wearing Jordans (and calling Nike Air Jordan basketball shoes “Jordans,”) and still believing I can play ball and caring just a bit too much about my fantasy sports teams and still being able to spend hours just sitting around with my friends talking about nothing while cracking ourselves up for reasons no one else could understand. Reasonable people, still holding out hope for my seemingly inevitable maturity, understandably believed that becoming a father would send a strong message that I am not in college any more and it is just no longer acceptable to spend hours trying a figure out a way to get vaulted ceiling...