So it doesn’t take much white stuff to get the kids out of school…or to break the sleds out! We got home from Orlando on Friday and were welcomed with 15 degrees and snowy/icy roads in the neighborhood! Annie was nervous and didn’t want to sled at first, but then she changed her mind when she found out she could wear her pink snowsuit. Total girl.
In the spirit of the last day of the year, settle into a comfy chair and check out comedic writer Dave Barry’s Year in Review 2009. Here’s a taste:
BAD NEWS: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.
GOOD NEWS: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista
The Teague family decided to take advantage of the price cut and snag a Nintendo Wii this Christmas! Annie loves to bowl and play Mario Kart! Katie is a champion sword fighter! I’m trying to beat 24 on the 3-point challenge, and I enjoy inviting Chris Jessen over to whip him in table tennis.
We love Sports Resort and Mario Kart, but I’m looking to add a couple more games to the repertoire. The challenge is that I’m not much of a gamer and we are brand new to the Wii community.
So…anyone want to recommend some games?
Watch around the 50 sec mark. We let her call it a weasel for an entire day because it was so funny – but then we corrected her so people wouldn’t think we gave our daughter one of these…
Katie and I went out for pizza and then to Fellowship Church to see Josh Wilson. He’s incredibly talented and fun to watch. Even did a couple Christmas tunes, which were really cool! Check out a couple videos.
Meet Hope. She’s my 14 month old daughter. Remember as a kid finding big bugs, like beetles, and flipping them over and watching them unsuccessfully and frantically try to roll back over?
Apparently she did this for a couple minutes before my friend started recording!
The countdown is on for the release of the new google-based Droid phone at Verizon on November 6th! I’ve read/heard some pretty good things about it. CNet has a good review on it.
I’m pretty much done with my blackberry. I wonder if this is going to be the answer. Or do I wait and wait and wait on iPhone to come to Verizon?
I’m trying to rid myself of Microsoft Entourage and dealing with the Microsoft Exchange server at work. I’m going totally google (other than my blog platform…sticking with wordpress for now).
I recently finished Donald Miller’s new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.
I have what some have called a “crush” on Donald Miller…his writing, that is. I find his writing incredibly thought-provoking and easy to read. A Million Miles is no exception. This is a story about living a story. The thread that is woven through the book is the story of two film directors who work with Miller to write a screenplay based on Miller’s memoir. Like his other books, there are great stories of road trips that sweep you away into the adventure until you’re ready to call up your buddies and hit the road or head off into the woods! And there are characters you wish you could have as friends. And all along the way you pick up little nuggets about life.
So here are a few things that struck me along A Million Miles…
“Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo and worked for years to get it. But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either. (from the Author’s Notes)
Miller goes to a 36hr lecture by Robert McKee to learn the elements of story. This was the big take-away:
A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. (p48)
“I wonder if…we were designed to live through something, rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us. The point of a story is the character arc, the change.” (p70)
“[watching Star Wars] made me wonder if the reasons our lives seem so muddled is because we keep walking into scenes in which we, along with the people around us, have no clear idea what we want.” (p113)
Take any good movie and you have a character who is after something – whether that’s a person, relationship, goal…the character is after something. But it’s not enough for that character to get it. There must be pain. There must be sacrificial commitment to the pursuit. It’s about what happens to the character along the way. That’s the character arc Miller writes about.
Miller writes about his trip on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu: “Why would the Incas make people take the long route? Because the emperor knew, Carlos said, the more painful the journey to Machu Picchu, the more the traveler would appreciate the city once he got there.” (p140)
So…you and I are living a story. I’m asking myself if my story is very interesting. Don’t get me wrong! I have an incredible life! But I want to clarify what it is that I want. And one of things that I want is to live an adventure; to see every day as an opportunity and to never back down from a potential challenge because it is the challenges that shape my character and therefore my story.
The Catalyst conference has a tradition of breaking records each year, so 2009 brought a guy named Professor Splash to the stage. This guy jumps off platforms into shallow water for a living. This one was from 35′9″ into 12″ of water. Ridiculous. Chris and I had great seats for this and I managed to catch it on my flip.
