First off, if you are expecting some musings of old folks and their leg troubles, sorry, not what I had in mind. But since you are here, you might as well keep reading, or click on one of those ads on the right…

My thought today is directed at the ever changing world of design. What was cool 20 years ago was not cool 10 years ago and is starting to become cool again. My case in point is wallpaper. If you want to be ahead of the trend go ahead and start wrapping your walls in all their papered bliss. Maybe not you say? Take a look at web design today. I find it fascinating that trends on the web seems to mirror trends in life just at an extremely elevated pace. In our example of wallpaper, it was all the rage when people started figuring out that you could place graphics on web pages. In fact it got to be pretty ugly and it was a rare site you saw that knew how to use wallpaper or a graphical background correctly. Most of the time it was an offense to the eyes. That seemed to fall off and solid color or 2 or 3 colored backgrounds became the dominant force. But now, I am seeing on a lot of contemporary sites (developers and designers that have a voice in the community) the trend back to a graphical background. This time however, they are very subdued and classical. It is interesting how this very renaissance look can be so modern.

I think what I like about it so much is the fact that it is subtle enough not to overpower the content on the page, yet is intriguing enough to warrant a deeper look. I think the word “intrigue” probably describes it best. You will notice that in my efforts to “be with it” I also have this type of background for my pages. I have done quite a bit of searching for these specific types of backgrounds and have found very little. Most of the stuff along the same lines is very cheesy and doesn’t convey that specific sophisticated classical look. I did find one website that has quite a few of these. Here is the link. If you follow the link you need to scroll a little bit. The patterns in the examples on this page are great but you would still need to take the opacity down quite a bit in order for them to not overpower the content on the page.

So, if you are looking to lead the way, contact your nearest wallpaper store and have them print you some of those.

So here’s the deal…every week we get a mailer advertising 3 incredible deals for our local grocery store. A lot of the time its things like a gallon of milk for .99 or free bananas, etc. The last few weeks however there has been a coupon for .10 off each gallon of gas you purchase from the store’s gas station. Cool, right? Maybe not – at least for me… See when I realized I had saved a little over a dollar on my gas purchase I thought to myself…”hmm self, you could use a Gatorade right about now…and since you just saved a dollar you can go into the convenience store and get one for only .50!” Wow! That’s a great deal!!! So I did. Only later did I realize that I had been taken by the scam of getting me in the door.

See, today people pay at the pump more and more and rarely go inside. This, I believe is hurting a lot of gas stations. So they need some way to get you inside to see all of the high priced goodies. Enter the coupon that conveniently (or not) you have to use inside…and thus my flavored drink purchase. Pretty smart.

I finally had an opportunity to play my home town golf course and in the end I snuck back home with my tail between my legs. For some reason I have been on a golf binge the past week and a half. I have been to four different courses and shot pretty well on 3 of them. Of course, those three have wide fairways, little water and a lot of room for error. So the tendancy is to get a big head and to think that this game is not so hard after all.

But that all changed this afternoon when I played a real man’s course. At the Tournament Club of Iowa you can’t go left, you can’t go right, you can’t go short and yes you guessed it, you can’t go long… You pretty much have to put the ball in one place the entire course.
Number 2 at TCI
It is without a doubt the most beautiful golf course I have ever played and second only to Pebble Beach in terms of asthetic beauty. I did have a few highlights: I pared number 2, sunk a 50 foot putt on number 8 and hit a 300 yard drive on 18. Those are the shots that keep you coming back for more.

I was recently discussing with one of my Pastors why golf is such an addicting game. We came to the conclusion that every time you play, the average golfer has 80-100 chances to be a hero. Every shot is a new opportunity to do something great. Whether it’s a huge drive, an amazing approach, an incredible save from the sand, or an impossible putt, no matter the situation you can always hit the shot of your life. Case in point: I was burried pretty deep in the sand sitting about 20 yards from the pin with only a sliver of landing area. Not only do I have to get up out of the sand I have to land it in an area about the size of my big toe. And at that moment everything came together as I plucked it from the sand and set it gently 8 feet from the hole. Of course I missed the putt after, but that sand save overshadowed my horrible putt.

That is why golf is such a great game.

Well, just got finished with the Acadamy Award nominated film The Aviator. It wasn’t a bad movie but it’s one of those where about 2 hours into it you get up to look at the back of the dvd to see how much longer this thing is going to be… As it turned out we still had 50 minutes to go. Waaaay to long in my opinion. It was an interesting biopic about someone I really didn’t know anything about. I have heard the name Howard Hughes, been told about the Spruce Goose, and of course know of TWA and Katherine Hepburn, but now I know the whole story behind them… I guess in my opinion the only redeeming quality of the movie is that is based on a true story. I am a sucker for true stories. Tell me it’s based on fact and I will probably want to see it.

Leonardo DeCaprio did a very good job, so good in fact that I wanted to throw my pizza at the tv during his irritating insane spasms. I think they could have cut about all of those in half or completely out and the movie would be under 2 hours and a lot better.

But for all the irritating stuff I still found myself wondering how it will all turn out and I guess if I am still interested by the end I can’t complain too much. In fact Mickie (who does not like to stay up late for movies) had to see how it turned out. I won’t spoil the ending because there is nothing to spoil. It just ends, which was a little weird. I guess I expected him to commit suicide or something.

After doing some searching on Google – I learned the real truth behind Howard Hughes. The movie portrays him as a pioneer and a hero when it appears he was much much less. There is a good biography on this site.

So, if you are interested in learing a bit about American history and have a spare 3 hours on your hands you might want to see it – otherwise go watch some paint dry.

In the spirit of complete and utter plagiarism or possible flattery, this update of the newsletter is courtesy of Jeff Long. He introduced me to a fun new game I like to call “those wacky options.” Here is how you play. I will type a sentence and then leave several descriptive words for you to choose. Based on however you are feeling at the moment pick the word that fits best. Here is a sample. I am feeling:
[good, okay, bad, like I am in a human 'whack a mole' game]
Okay, which did you choose? That’s not so hard is it? Here we go for real.

Tonight we went to [Chilis, Applebees, Culvers] for dinner. It was really [tasty, bland, nasty]. Mickie and I split the Cajun Chicken Pasta. I wished that we could have had more bread. After that we went to the Marble Slab Creamery which my mom likes to call the “Flab Slab” and had [ice cream, sour cream, a giant butter cow]. It was definitely tasty.

Mia has been [jabbering, walking, sleeping, performing complex mathematical calculations] a lot lately. She is growing up so [fast, slow]. She has started to move her arms and legs when she is [on her stomach, in her swing, close to dad's face] and is beginning to start the process of crawling. We need to baby proof our house still. This was very evident when we had some friends over last [night, week, month] and their little [girl, monster, adorable munchkin] tore the place up.

I can’t believe I actually did this but last week I drank several diet cokes and [liked it, gagged, tolerated it because there was nothing else to drink, almost died]. Thankfully Nancy bought a fresh 24 pack of regular coke, one of which I am [drinking, cooking with, cleaning rust with]

It was a lot of [fun, pain, boredom] to have both mom’s and sisters here the past couple of [days, weeks, months, years]. They really [helped out, got in the way, slept in].

I saw the movie The Village last week and unlike most people I actually [liked it, want my money back, slept through it, cried because I was so scared]. All I have to say is “beware of the bad color for it attracts those we don’t speak of.” Unfortunately, it hasn’t been attracting much in the color of green.

Well, it is time to end this [charade, irritating update, fun game] and get on with [life, napping, counting down the days till football starts]. Hope everyone [enjoyed, was mildly amused, hated] this! If anything you get to be a part of our lives for a few paragraphs. This is interactive internet at its finest moment.

I’m [out, here, out, here, out, over there...]

The Lord blessed us with a new car this weekend. We were able to get a great deal from a friend of ours. It is a 2002 Chevy Impala LS. It has really low miles and has tons of room. Thanks for praying for us. No baby yet…

Well, here it is the middle of Spring Break and I haven’t really done anything productive except go to work today. I was lucky enough to catch the avalanche game last night on the internet and hear the shellacking (is that even a word?) they put on the Canucks. Too bad that goons like Bertuzzi exist. I hope that he is suspended for a long long time.

On a related note, girl scout cookies came today. 5 boxes of pure enjoyment.

Not like I need them. I wonder if the girl scouts make an Atkins friendly cookie? Everything else in the world is Atkins friendly-even this website is Atkins friendly-no carbs here…

I bought a range extender the other day for our home network. This will allow us to take the laptop anywhere in the house and be able to connect to the internet. We will even be able to be in the backyard and surf. No more gettin up and walkin to the computer…

I still haven’t seen The Passion yet. We are probably going to go on Friday. I can’t say that I am really excited but I am anticipating it in a weird way.

I landed a new contract with a church in Battle Creek MI to build their website and the GARBC is thinking about placing my link on their resources section. That would certainly help business. My desire would be to do this full time in the fall. Pray that the Lord might work in that direction.

If you ever get a chance log on to helives.com, do it. This is an incredible site that is having an incredible ministry. I spend most of my time on the teen forum answering questions. They can always use help, so feel free to log on and minister to hundreds of teens around the world!

I am tired so I think that I will go to bed now.

Out.

January-Mickie and I went to the Vision for Youth Conference In Ohio
February-I can’t remember anything about Feb, so it must have been a boring month…
March-One Sunday we decided we would go look at some houses and 2 weeks later we bought our first house!
April-A house wasn’t enough so I had to buy a motorcycle
May-I graduated with my MA in theology.
June-I roadtriped to CO to pick up some furniture and on the way back encountered some of the worst weather that soaked the 7 ft mountain in the back of my truck
July-We went on vacation to Colorado and found out we were pregnant-well, just Mickie is pregnant..
August-Mickie went on a all girl trip to Seattle and left me at home by myself
September-I started in the MDiv program at FBTS
October-I started my own web design firm
November-I was able to watch every Bronco game but 1
December-The final chapter in LOTR came out and me and my friend Matt saved seats four 4 hours…