New Theater...

The church I go to has been busting at the seams to the tune of people sitting on the floor at some of our services. To help ease the overflow we decided to build a 250 seat theater. The cool thing is that we have a group of professionals that go to the church so we were able to save some money by taking care of the AV install ourselves.
Bill Terrilll (one of our best drummers) took on the task of designing and project managing the install. My buddy Steve and I were given the job of terminating the stage connectors and the front of house rack. Steve took the stage and I took the rack. There are 3 12K lumen projectors supporting the media in this room. This is going to be a very good room, very excited.

electricity...

Man do I take that stuff for granted!
We are part of the "no power" crowd for the 3rd day now. Remember in the movie "Batman" with Jack Nicholson where the entire city was afraid to take showers or use makeup? that's how everyone in my neighborhood looks like now with me as the head "eeewww"

On the plus side I bought my first chainsaw yesterday. I now now what it's really like to be a man(insert grunt). Our whole area is covered by downed trees. After making some order of our property we went over to Kim's retired priest's house where he has 10+ trees down. After that Kim and I went out to my church where I was terminating audio connections for our new theater. Kim took advantage of the showers we have there and felt human again.

So Saturday is here and they are expecting a few more days of outage. I hope they fix it soon, I'm running out of things to talk about with Kim! (kidding) no seriously.

Hope the people here a Panera don't get sick looking at my bed head while eating their muffins... sorry folks.

*Update as of 8am*
Kim just called and said 3 trucks from Toledo Edison pulled up in front of our house.
They are saying the grid we are on is really really bad. They will try and have it up by tomorrow.
God Bless Ohio!

Brought to you by the fine folks over at Panera Bread and their free internet...

*Update 6pm*
Toldeo Edison just pulled away leaving us with full power...Gotta love Ohio sparkies!

Church Media...

Kind of cool...
Our church's media team made it on to MSNBC via the story on GodTube.
We did about 6 or 7 versions of the Apple commercial.

Quite the evening...

I took a little trip over to St. Joseph MI to see my dad and Claudia Hommel play a show to benefit The Box Factory.
Once upon a time it was literally a box factory now turned into studio space for dozens of local artists. My sister and her husband Dennis live in St. Joe and I must say it's a great place and I need to spend more time exploring it more at some point. My other sister Donna and her friend Cecilia Drove over from IL. My mom was also there and she graciously paid for my ticket, how could I pass that up. Appetizers and local wine started off the event. Here's where I get owned. I have to say I am a snob. A wine snob to be more exact. IL,IN,MI,WI all produce wine but they are mostly known for fruit wines or late harvest (sweet) wines. I have tasted many Cabs and Merlots and none of them good. Well tonight I had a 05 Cab-Franc blend from Tabor Hill that was really quite good. I wonder if it goes good with crow cause that's what I'm eating...
Dinner was nice and Claudia did two 45 minute sets. The crowd loved the music. It was fantastic to know the event was sold out... right on. Here's the line of the evening. Claudia and the bass player did a wonderful soulful duet. Dad and the cellist sat that song out. At the end of the song Claudia says "wasn't that nice?" Dad's reply??? "Too much Bass" The crowd (including myself) was on the floor. Good one Pop!
Family, good wine, good food, good music...how can you beat that?

Check out a few pics (click to see a bigger version)

Dennis and Paula









A little maniacle?