Oh yeah...

...I forgot to blog for a few weeks. Oops.

The truth is that I am beginning to rethink how and why I blog. I was thinking of erasing it all together, but instead I might start to transform it. Okay, the reality is that it has slowly been changing for over a year anyways. I guess it just changes as I change.

Anywho, the content of this blog was originally 90% theology/church and 10% on life and books. Basically, I think I will be flipping these statistics around starting now. It's funny, but now that I am done working in a church I just don't care about a lot of the things I cared about at the time. I don't want to argue or gripe or feel let down about any of that any more. I want to focus on what is good and beautiful and true, so I'm going to spend a lot less time talking about the church (yes, that statement was meant to be provocative) and more time talking about life and books.

LIFE: I just finished week three of landscaping. It is hard work. Some days it's a lot of fun. Other days it makes me grumpy. But every day I go home feeling like I have accomplished something. And, to sound archaic, I feel like a man. It is refreshing to do manual labor rather than sit in an office all day staring at a computer. Nobody at work knows I have a masters degree either, which is especially fun to keep under my hat. I spend my days thinking about a variety of things, though two recurring themes are stewardship (I wonder if well manicured lawns are what Genesis was referring to...) and Karl Marx and the absurdity of class distinctions (working hard to take care of rich people's stuff, while they lay out in the sun and look at the ocean...I shouldn't have read Nickle and Dimed right before I started this job).

Being a dad keeps my non-work hours especially busy. I come home from work and parent for most of the evening until Eleanor goes down. After she's asleep we clean up the house a bit, and on a good night I may get a full hour with Effie before bed. I don't read as much anymore, or watch as many movies, and rarely call people back, but it is a blast. Parenting is amazing. I regret not starting earlier.

I've been riding my bike to work at least four days a week (25 miles round trip). Plus, I go on long rides every Saturday morning. Last Saturday I did the three steepest hills I know in Bellingham. By the third, my legs were shaking so bad I couldn't go any further. But I need to keep pushing, because I only have two months until the Baker Hill Climb. I just found out they planned it to have 10,000 feet of elevation gain. Which translates into: much suckiness. I can't wait.

BOOKS: I recently read The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts by Louis De Bernieres. He also wrote Corelli's Mandolin and is one of the best storytellers alive today. I think I might even put him in my top five favorite all-time writers. This story is amazing and tells the truth about South America in a completely fictional narrative. If you want to know what that means, read the book and be blow away.

Currently I am almost half through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It is fabulous, especially for a former comic book enthusiast like myself (yes, I just admitted that I like to read comics). This is, quite frankly, a GOOD book. What more can I say?

Also, I am making my way through David Sedaris' new one, When You are Engulfed in Flames. Of course it's great; it's Sedaris! And lastly, I just started The Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm only 10 pages in, and it's already been quite thought-provoking.

That's it for now. I'll try to put something up again a little quicker than my current blogging rate.

Peace,
Matt