Over the hump...

...of my work marathon before we leave on vacation this Wednesday.

Yesterday morning Kimberly and I got up bright and early in order to get to Rocking Horse Studio in Pittsfield, NH by 9:00AM. I delivered some 1032A speakers that they purchased from us and measured and calibrated them in their control room. Though I'm quite familiar with our MLS software, this was the first time that I visited a client for a calibration by myself (Kimberly was my lovely assistant). Everything went well and it was great to put my acoustics knowledge to practice and show the engineers there how their speakers were interacting with their control room.


After we finished up there we went a couple of towns up to Tilton, to the Tilt'n Diner and then the outlet stores. I got a new light jacket at Wilson's for a wicked deal, and Kimberly got some new dressy shirts for the conference.

Today I got up bright and early once again and went to worship band practice and church. After second service I stopped by the house to pick up some food and then went down to Acton to the Wellspring Sound for a recording session. I engineered a three song demo for a young operatic tenor with his teacher accompanying on piano. It was a ton of fun to be back in the studio, especially after taking a half hour or so to refamiliarize myself with the nuances of the setup there.

So now I have two working days before our vacation to Pittsburgh, and I'm expecting them to be long ones. Since all of our freight for our next trade show in April will be shipping the week that I get back, I have to have everything packed before I leave on Tuesday, which is no small task. I'm feeling much better after finishing everything exciting and stressful I had lined up this weekend though.

In other news, our ram overlords are closer than you might think.

Back to the blog.

So it's been a while since I've had an entry. I'm not sure if I ever deluded myself by thinking that I would have the discipline to update my blog regularly. I think that the past six or seven years of my life has been a steady battle against the unmotivated person I was by nature and nurture. That being said, I'm much more proactive than I was back in the dark woods of Maine...

Things are going well lately. I've been running just about every day since joining the school gym a couple of weeks ago. At work I'm gearing up for the first big trade show of the year. Still diligently learning what it means to be a leader in our small group. Kimberly and I are always a bit too busy, but we're doing well to capture those moments of togetherness that dot our weeks.

I just finished The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, which was one of my favorite Lewis books (though there are a dozen great pieces by him that could contend for that honor). Tony and I had a great discussion about Christian influence on the world and how C.S. Lewis set such a unique example for those of us who are in no way extroverted. Tony pointed out that Lewis reached more unbelievers with his message that almost any other Christian of the last century, but he used none of the methods that are commonly taught to evangelical congregations. Rather than engaging strangers and acquaintances with a verbal appeal to faith, Lewis spent much of his life alone, becoming a greater and greater scholar, never ceasing to study, to think, to learn, to write. Through the perfection of his skills, so many have been and continue to be touched and moved.

So as I make plans with Kimberly and the Havens to begin a study on influence with unbelievers with my small group, I find myself very sensitive to these new insights. I'm not sure how this will influence our curriculum, but be sure that there will be no all-too-familiar discouraging talks on how we should be as bold as Peter when God made some of us to be influential in a totally different way.

Yay

I'm filled to the brim with a sense of self-worth:

Feeling renewed

Yesterday I paid for a three month membership to the UMass Lowell rec center and Kimberly and I worked out there. I even went back today after church while Kimberly went to go copy-edit the school newspaper. Over the past few weeks I've been bundling up and running outside sporadically, but since we got a bunch of snow that blocked parts of my normal route, I've been uninspired. The imperative of having paid for the privilege to work out should be a nice boost of incentive.

I'm also feeling a sense of renewal in other areas of my life. I've practiced the bass nearly every day this past week, working on scales, jazz lines, and some James Jamerson transcriptions. Kimberly and I also had a very spiritually revitalizing time at the prayer and worship night at the church on Friday night. Having the chance to pray in groups with other believers for the unity and well-being of our church body was amazing.

Of course, with every period of refocus, some things that had been going well get taxed. I've had trouble finding time to read lately, and I have about twenty pages left of "The God Who is There" by Francis Schaeffer. I don't think that God ever intended for us to settle so much into routine that we feel as though we're achieving every beneficial activity that we could be pursuing. Time management, sacrifice, and prioritization are continual disciplines that we must practice all our lives.