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?

Hard to describe...

Just when you think you can't possibly have any more room for love, your heart just grows more...

As most of you know I love my daughter very very much and have fought to have her close to me over the years. Along comes her daughter Amelia and I am blown away with what I wouldn't do for this kid. Jim and Laura wanted to catch a flick tonight so with Kim in Italy, I'm solo. We went shopping for an outfit and I found her a Chicago White Sox jumper...cute. We then got some chicken and headed for home. We played in the back yard for a bit and it seems that last week she decided that walking on grass wasn't as traumatic as it had been in the past. Fearless is her middle name now. She went right for the pond, climbed the rocks and waded in. She then played with our chicken, this one is so raw it's still running around, we named it "Nugget". After a few hours of play time she let me know it was bed time with the old rubbing the eyes routine. Went down without uttering a peep. Sitting down to look at today's pictures got me all weepy thinking how much I love this one. More than Laura? nope, just different.

Hard to describe.

Wish I wrote it...

I must have watched this acoustic version about a million times...

well, maybe 5 or 6

and....the return

Not quite sure how to reply to Mark's latest post
I didn't know (remember more like it) those pics existed. What a treat to see the past. I have nothing but fond memories of those days with Mark. Thanks for the images bud...
Here's the only pic I have digitized...