Friday, February 12 2021

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone! Happy Friday. Only an hour or so into the morning, and things are off to a weird start. Normally after brewing coffee, I take a mug to the corner of the living room and kick off the day with some reading and prayer. But today instead of picking up the Bible, I was diving into an article outlining the recent four month long investigation into the private life of the late Pastor Ravi Zacharias. If you know of him, I'd encourage you to read about it too.

This one stings. Ravi was one of the best speaking pastors I've ever heard. I remember he visited our church once. I used to listen to his weekly podcast while commuting to my first software job in Rockford. Self-control, discipline, and holiness were recurring themes in his messages.

Pray for his victims. Pray for everyone else hearing the news today. Pray for the people that are still serving at RZIM who will have to face some big questions going forward. What do you even do now going forward?

Bit of a sad start, today huh? Now that it's out of the way, how about we reset. I think it's time for a sip of coffee and a short break.

Sip. Nothing clears the head like a good cup of coffee. Especially when that coffee was poured out of your real coffee machine. This morning, our house was reunited with our sorely missed coffee machine. It just arrived yesterday from it's voyage across the Atlantic where it was repaired at the Technivorm headquarters, which I can only imagine is just like a Dutch coffee themed version of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Perhaps there were little orange men giving tours of the factory. Maybe a fat little Dutch boy fell into a coffee river there and, like what happened to our machine, got stuck in a much larger copper coil.

If I didn't know any better, I'd think they just threw it away and sent us a new machine. The machine I took out of the box yesterday was almost unrecognizable. The metal was polished. The plastic was smudge free. The water reservoir was as clear and clean as a contact lens.

The timing was almost perfect. I ordered another six pound bag of beans last week in hopes that the return of the coffee king would also coincide with a fresh batch of coffee. It didn't get here yet, so we're celebrating with a slightly funky scoop of beans from the very bottom of a three week old bag.

Hamilton Beach, you are relieved of duty. You were adequate. Your coffee was hot and brown in a time of need. Now, you will live in a dark corner of our basement until the unthinkable happens again and I swiftly call on your mediocre services.

Sip. Yesterday was a good day. I got all my work done, and in-between a day chock full of meetings I was still able to thread the needle with a perfectly timed power nap. I deployed Rodney as a human alarm clock. Exactly 30 minutes from when I told him, he came bouncing into my room chirping it's time for your meeting.

Yesterday we had a visit from Papa. He dropped off some pots they no longer needed as well as some toys for Rodney and Miles. Rodney made quick work of the wrapping paper and ran off with his new little building toys.

The new toy sent Rodney into a building binge. After assembling the new toys into what looked like a car, he dove into his standby k'nex pile. He made an eight blade helicopter witch mechanical rotors.

Later he used his magnetiles, dominos, and playing cards to make a racetrack. Pushing a small car through the contraption, he followed from behind with his "camera" mimicking the intro to a new Dude Perfect video we just watched.

An than there's Teeng Tong. Teeng Tong is a stick figure. As I snapped a picture, Rodney went on to explain Teeng Tong's nice personality and distinguishing features, like his "grey hankins", his "long arms", and his "white butt".

"Teeng Tong has a white butt," explained Rodney. "He has a little white butt right here, and he's doesn't wear pants." Clearly the white butt is important to the character.

Anyway, shall we retro?

Keep riding the bike. The newness of the stationary bike has already worn off. Even in the comfort of my own home with all of YouTube to entertain me, exercise always gets boring. But it feels good to get the heart pumping again while it's so cold outside. I feel like it's given me more energy to get through the week.

Add new coffee beens.

Less Nashville hot chicken sandwiches from the Great Dane. It tastes good going down, but this morning I'd consider myself a victim of a condition I call Nashville hot stomach.

More advice. I hit kind of a low this week. I reached out to a trusted, experienced mentor at work and got some good perspective on some doubts I was having. It was a much needed rallying cry in the middle of the week.

More power naps. That was the best idea I had all week.

More small grocery trips. This week we experimented with doing smaller grocery trips instead of a big one in the middle of the week. I think the shoppers at Hy-Vee like that a little more, and it's easier to keep the house stocked when you have more chances to get something on the list.

More puppies. We're working on it.

That's what I got today, everyone. Have a wonderful Friday.