good German blood

On the subject of awesomeness, I was talking to my friend Jonba about Colville and my cousins up here.  I told him that we were all of good German blood and good workers and fairly athletic(I am by far the least athletic).

On this Jonba told me he had a ridiculous image in his head, which I think is entertaining enough to share.  He said he pictured 6 people who look exactly like me, wearing leiderhosen, and hanging out in a gym.  We were all either bench pressing kegs, or running in our leiderhosen on treadmills.

Pretty accurate description eh?

The Acorn

Chalk another experience down for my time in Colville!  Today I visited the Acorn Saloon for lunch.  The first thing you notice when you walk into the Acorn is the huge painting of a naked redheaded woman, with another painting of a naked woman on the wall next to my booth.  It was a little confusing, I thought I was in Europe for a second.

It had pretty typical small town saloon type food, nothing to write home about.  But the decorations made it worth a visit.  Aside from the people and the neon signs on the walls, the building could easily be from the 1920′s, and has an authentic feel to it.

Only a couple more days here in Colville before I get to head home!  I can’t wait.

observation from rendezvous

These were thoughts I wrote down during the battle of the bands at the Colville Rendezvous

Awesome:Song about Jesus, followed by song about getting drunk….

Even more awesome: those 2 songs followed by a song about going to restaurants because the girls that work there are hot.

Ridiculous: Oldies sounding song about AIDs…

If you know what song these lyrics are from, you get points.  I’ve never mentioned points before, so these must be elusive never-before-spoken-of theycallmepastorbryan points

everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people
meet me at the mission at midnight, we’ll divy it up there
everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people
but I’ve got the pistol, so I’ll keep the pesos
yeah that seems fair

Siren

Every day at noon it seems, Colville gives their fire siren a little test run…  you know just to make sure it’s still working and whatnot.  It usually signals when I go to lunch.

I think a siren goes off in my head whenever I open VisualBasic.  But hey it pays the bills, and it’s more fun that flipping burgers!  I actually like c0ding so it’s not that bad.

well, it’s lunch time.  Later I must tell the 3 people who read my blog about some of the amazing things I witnessed this weekend.

goodbai myspaze

Today I deleted my myspace account.  Something about it feels good, partly it makes me feel like I”m trying to grow up.

Mostly I was tired of checking it.

Time to go check out the Colville Rendezvous!

Losing brayne sells

One of the great things about working for Hachisoft is that almost everyone I work with is related. We have a tendency to travel in packs when we take breaks and strange jokes fly around a lot. Kristen is also working for hachisoft which adds to the family feel.

One of the things that we enjoi as a family is teasing each other and picking on each other a lot. It’s all in good fun and usually quite entertaining. Yesterday was one of those days where we all started picking on Kristen and she’s very good at reacting like she is really getting picked on to draw sympathy.

Yesterday in one of her sympathy drawing moments Mandee and I realized that if Hachisoft was the office, Kristen would be Dwight. I have attached a picture to illustrate this, but I’m also going to give you an interaction!

Kristen:I’m listening to the wall street journal podcast and learning about the FDA!
Me:laughing
Kristen:I’m getting smarter here! You’re just losing brain cells.

Compiling

Compiling c0de takes a long time on my laptop and my laptop already isn’t the most productive around, so I’m getting a fair amount of time to tinker with my iPhone.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy the problem solving aspect of c0ding. Specifically I am getting to deal with bugs, which is probably the best job possible for me in terms of not getting bored.

In some ways though I feel like being in Colville promotes some sort of duality because when I am here my primary roles are cousin and c0der whereas in Portland my primary roles are pastor and friend. Somewhere in between those is the person I probably am and somewhere else is the idea of who I want to become.

All that to say being here is good because it gives me cause to reflect about who I am and who I’m becoming and talk with some of the people who have known me the best for the longest. I do miss all my friends and acquaintences in Portland and am happy about the direction God is taking my life!

Warning: This post is literally going to be all over the place

Well, I made it through day one of work in Colville, 7 hrs in front of the computer… Sometimes it feels painstaking, but I know it’s good for me to do work and to get some hours in.

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I met with D&C today to talk about wedding stuff. I am remarkably calm, and not too worried about it. It should be fun, and it’s nice to be able to help them out. After we finished talking and the family moved on to other planning stuff, I got bombarded by my cousins children. Actually playing with the kids is probably one of my favorite things about being in Colville. That and staying with Elliott and Whitney, I always feel at home around them, which is a good thing!

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I spent some time reading the Message tonight. I feel like seminary students aren’t supposed to like the Message, but I really do. I read through 1 John tonight, and the message of it really jumped out at me, it seemed that over and over John kept emphasizing the need to Christians to love. That those who love Jesus also love people. That if they persist in hate and in purposeful, habitual sin, that they may not be saved because it is not the way of Christ.

This fits with what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, which is the overemphasis on salvation by faith, to the detriment of Christians showing their faith by their works. It changes Christianity from a way of life(how the early followers described it) to a system of right beliefs. It’s not that the right beliefs aren’t important, it’s just that it’s not just about belief. I know a lot of people who can say the right thing but could never do it. It was and is one of the things that worries me most about being a seminarian.

Along this same theme, I am trying to finish Brian McLaren’s The Final Word and the Word After That at first I was a little turned off on his treatment of hell, but now in the last section of the book, I am finding more what I agree with, like he purposely left it wide open to let me wrestle with the place of hell in Christianity. Maybe I will change my mind again before the end of the book though, I don’t know!