April 2005 Archives

My son, Caleb, Age 5 got a Big Air Ball Tower for Christmas. It looks like a cool toy. You build this 3-5 foot tall contraption made out of K'nex (legos meets tinker toys) and when you are done it shoots balls out of a tube and down a track bouncing off a trampoline into a basket, and then back again. get the picture?

Well the BABT has sat on a shelf for the last few months waiting for my basement to be completed, there is really nowhere else in the house to put the thing. It is a pretty big tower and Ruth could easily smash it to pieces in a few seconds. So the basement has enough space for us to work on it and store it in a safe place. And now that the basement is mostly complete(there are still always a few detials) it is time for construction to begin.

Most websites that have reviews for the BABT say it can take 5-10 hours for 2 people to build properly. I am excited to build this with Caleb, he is a bit young, but he loves construction and building things. He has had other K'nex since Christmas and has built some pretty cool stuff, a motorcycle, car, surfboard boat thing. So even though this project as a whole is over Caleb's head it is still worth it and he is excited. So for the next week or for as long as it takes every free night we have we will spend and hour or two in the basement, just Caleb and I working on our project together.

I say all this to tell you that this is a big thing for me. Spending time with my family is not where it should be and needs to be in my life. I suppose in some ways you learn from example and without judging my father, I did not spend as much time with him growing up as I wish I would have. He had a hard job of farming which I have learned can be as time consuming as you would like it to be. Jobs around the farm could consume your whole life if you wanted them to. And now that I am older I have met farmers that control their work on the farm and others that allow it to consume them.

Actually I have also learned that farmers are not alone in this struggle. Any job if done right can consume you if you allow it. And for guys who don't have jobs that consume them, their hobbies can, and for some guys it is a mixture of both. So with this said, I crave a better relationship with my children than I had with my dad. But it is something i need to work on. It just doesn't come as natural to me as I would like.

I look to a few friends for role-models, not sure they know this. But one of them has a bigger busier job than me. But when I talk to him I can feel that his work is his work and his home time is his family time. And I feel when I talk to him that he can't wait to go home. I envy that. I also have another family I know who has more kids than mine with adult children and the respect and love they have for their parents is second to none. This obviously doesn't happen overnight. It takes years of time, love and relationship building and is a good example for me.

So pray for me and my efforts to be the Dad I want to be. To be able to break the generational curse that i believe has been in my family for decades of father and son relationships. It isn't easy for me and my job could easily consume my every last minute. I want all my children to feel like i had time to play with and snuggle them (not to mention my wife :) ) I want to be the Dad I wish I had and be the example for my children so they might not fall into the same rut that I struggle with.

Just wanted to share my free stuff with you!

I made a blog for my friend stacey and she has been writing for over a year now. Her blog is pretty normal except for one thing. Last year she wrote a blog about Extreme Home Makeover, a very short post of how she likes the show. Since then a handful of people have posted requests to her Blog asking her for help in getting a makeover. Very weird. I am not sure people are just that out there, or if they are pulling our legs. You decide.

Stacey's Blog

Just wanted you to know DHL was here and dropped off my 20gig iPod and my shuffle all in one fail swoop. Feeling good today. For the record it took 2 weeks to get my stuff since I completed all the requirements. My miniMac was approved last week, SO i am thinking by the beginning of May I will have my $600 puter(which i am giving as a gift).

So if you want to still get on the free stuff bandwagon here is your chance, I have several friends who I am now gonna help get some free stuff, follow the links below to sign up:

Free iPod: http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15498572

Free Shuffle: http://www.FreeiPodShuffle.com/?r=15766039

Free MiniMac: http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=15474556

Free iPod Photo: http://www.freephotoiPods.com/?r=16993477

Well we slept to the last moment today cause we are gonna need the rest. The goal is to do the booth thing till it closes at 3:30, pack up and head for home ASAP. There are a few things we could do tonight, but I am tired, I miss my wife and kids and Danny's Uncle has had some real medical problems and lays in the hospital clinging for life. So with those reasons in mind we head home to be with our families.

All in all GMA Week has proven to be successful in spite of all the curve balls that have been tossed our way. We have talked to at least a dozen promoters that are very excited about barcode tickets and that shall get us off to a good start. I talked to the guy from Acquire the fire today and we shall be setting up ticketing with them. Also our neighboring booth people, songtouch.com have proven to be a good sales lead, I think we have some cool things to offer them in their new venture.

Today we went to the greg oliver agency luncheon and saw some new bands. I missed a few cause i was in the lobby at the front desk trying to get our banner taken down so we could bring it home with us. The concerts were hosted by Mark Schultz a very funny man, he must be a hoot to hang out with. HE also ended the lunch with his song, Letters from War, with a video playing at the same time. Holy Smokes, powerful song put to video. Had tears in my eyes, and that is pretty rare(it shouldn't be, but it is)

Well 3 o'clock rolled around and we packed up our booth in no time. and I went to get the van. Ended up waiting in line to get into the loading dock for about 30 minutes and almost gave up hope when they finally let me in. Danny and I loaded that thing to the brim with stuff, holding boxes from falling as we slammed the doors. Then we were off.

We didn't stop until we were an hour or two out of Nashville. Our first major stop was at the fireworks store. We both blew some good money on fireworks.(it is worth it). After that the sun started to set and we had a 7-8 hour long conversation. The type you can only have late at night stuck in a van. Needless to say it was all good.

Got into Lebanon at 5:45am, we swung by the Quentin Haus looking for men form our church since it was prayer breakfast morning, but we were still a bit early and were too tired to wait. So we went to my house and went to sleep for a few hours until my kids woke us up. Then we cleaned the van out and took Danny home. Did not go back to sleep till late thursday night.

I shall call today Laurie Anderson day. Laurie Anderson stopped by the both and visited us for a bit. It was good to see her, She has been working hard and exercising and eating right. She was able to show off her new trimmer slimmer waistline. I am very happy for her.

William Morris Lunch had frozen coffee drinks, To be honest, I never had one before. I thought well if it is free it is worth a try. I had a frozen frap, very good. After finishing up at the booth, Anita Crawford, Bill, Nick, Danny & I went for Ribs at a local rib joint (the one from saturday). We had a good time and great food. When we got back we went to the ERACE foundation concert sponsored by True Artists. Hands down the best event of GMA, Holy smokes. I can't even begin to describe the things that I saw and heard. (people were calling their friends on cell phones and holding them int he air for their friends to listen to. Let me say that Phil Keaggy kicked butt. Tommy Simms was great. Nicole C. Mullen and her husband did a duet. And more and more and more followed by TobyMac in his Diverse City Glory. Was honored when Laurie let us sit at her reserved table at the front. Worth every second. Afterwards Danny went to the indie spirit showcase and I went to the room to pack so we could get out of town ASAP in the morning

Well we are starting to get into the groove of things. The booth didn't open till 9am today so we slept in as much as we could. After yesterday we needed it. I have the day all figured out and Danny has the night all figured out so here we go. Talked to a bunch of promoters today, ate with the ladies and man from Kingdom bound. Scanned numerous barcode tickets and gave away bags at our booth. Saw KJ-52 at lunch, he was the best.

Tonight is the CMT music awards, they are being held at the Gaylord Arena right next to the hotel. All the streets are blocked off they have a huge stage in the middle of the street, a red carpet area, grand stand seating for media. It is gonna be a circus. All i know is I am glad i do not have to drive into this town tonight. And I am a bit sad that I will probably need to walk a few blocks to avoid this mess today.

Bill & Nick came by and asked us if we wanted to go to the compassion dinner with them. We both agreed. The compassion dinner was held at the Country Music Hall of Fame in their great hall. The dinner was very formal and had great food. There were only about 100-150 people invited, mostly people in the music industry who have helped Compassion share their stories with thousands of people. We sat with Creation Festival who help compassion sponsor over 2000 children every year.
Their were a bunch of artists there too, Rebecca St James was honored for 10 years of work and Geoff Moore was honored for 20. Then Dr. Wes Stafford President of Compassion spoke and they brought up Pascal a now mid twenties man who had been a compassion child in Rwanda his whole life to share his testimony. All mind blowing to say the least.

My most embarrassing moment of the week came when my cell phone went off during the closing prayer at the compassion dinner. Reminded me of kurt at the Ryman during worship a few years back.

After a walk back to the hotel, talked to my wife and then went to the Hilton for the BEC/tooth & nail showcase. Wanted to see seventh day slumber, but missed them. Saw Falling Up, KJ-52 and was disappointed to find out i missed SDS. Went back to the hotel and chilled out for a few minutes, danny stayed till the end of the show and saw Kutless. When he came into the room we talked for an hour or so about church and the state of our youth group. All good conversation.

Well today got busy quick. For some Sunday is a day of rest, but not at GMA. We got up early and headed down to our booth to await the arrival of our first customers. It wasn't long till we were scanning barcodes and talking about our products. Many of the promoters that we work with during the year and only see at GMA were here. There were a few snafu's, most notably the GMA messed up our barcode that we had printed on entrants badges. The badge holder they designed for Gospel for Asia had a website logo that overlapped our barcode, so the people at GMA decided that they would cut our barcode in half. This messed with what I had originally agreed too, so after a nice talk with our friends at GMA we are going to be doing barcodes on next years badges and they will be done right.

The barcode badge issue was disapointing but our promotion where we scan tickets we placed in entrants bags still got our message across. Every entrant got a barcoded ticket in their bag with a unique barcode printed on it, only a handful when scanned rang up as winners of an iPod Shuffle.
Since the shuffle is a hot item to own, it was a bunch of fun to scan the tickets people brought to the booth. Danny was in charge of scanning, and did a fine job.

At 4pm we closed the booth down for the day, since we had not eaten anything all day we were both pretty hungry. We headed over to the Salem Fiesta Fun party at the Taco Company. We each got two tacos and a bunch of drink and all the chips & salsa we could eat. We sat with Bill & Kathy Graining who run Alive Festival in Ohio, listened to some acoustic sets which included Buddy Greene. After that we headed over to Graham Central Station for some rock show Danny wanted to see, spent an hour there then headed back tot he hotel changed and went to Sunday Night Worship.

Sunday Night Worship was lead by Micahel W. Smith & Darlene Zscheck & the girl from Watermark. Neddless to say like every year it has been the BEST WORSHIP service of my life. Smitty does worship well. And who wouldn't like to sing Shout to the Lord lead directly by it's writer. After that amazing experience we walked about 4 blocks down to rocketown, stopped by the Hilton to make sure our banner was up(which it was). The banner's hugeness over shadowed every other banner in the building. (nice)

Rocketown had two showcases going on at one time. Word of Mouth & See Spot Rock. To summerize, the best band of the night in my opinion was subseven, they had a great show, followed by Stellar kart, KJ-52, the rest of the bands were ok. Danny and I made off with $40 hoodies from see spot rock. After a disappointing set by The Wedding, I yawned and realized it was time for bed. I headed back to the room and left danny to watch the rest.

day two down the drain. and it was another interesting day. we left the room about 10am ish and headed to the GMA registration area. It never fails that every year I am really never sure where our badges, bags and booth info will be located. Is it in the MAPS line? The industry line? The customer service desk? I never pick the right one. This year I started in the MAPS line, got forwarded to customer service, they took me back to MAPS, then gave up and made us new badges.

When I saw the badges with the barcode on I became immediately worried, and have been fretting this situation all day. The GMA, who i like, somehow decided to put a Gospel for Asia in print over top of the right had bottom of our bar code. GMA also chopped our barcode in half from the one that i approved. I am not sure how this is going to go and I am pretty worried about it. The last thing I want to do is give a bad impression with the scanners. So we shall see what happens. (there is always some drama)

After getting our badges we headed down to look at our booth, Holy Smokes the bags that we ordered took up two skids and were blocking our booth off. What are we gonna do with all those bags??? Anyway So I walked back to the dock and talked to the freeman guys and they said we could store them in the hallway to the dock and get them as we need them. good news. They also mentioned that we could load in at 1pm. The schedule said 5pm, but i took the man at his word and got the van and had it to the convention garage door at 1pm. They let us in. Once we were parked on the laoding dock the guy started directing us to our booth. He thought we were with another company and had given us the wrong time. We were only supposed to be allowed in at 5pm, Anyway since we were they he let us unload. Danny and I laughed about that for the rest of the day.

Since the van was out of the parking garage we decided to run some errands, I needed bunch of batteries for a special light up sign and I wanted to buy some water bottles cause water bottles are not cheap at the hotel. So we ran to walmart. It was now 2:30 and we still had not eaten anything all day. So we stopped at this place next to walmart called nick & jim's bar-b-q. Hands down a great place to eat. They gave us tons of food for the money and I couldn't even finish.

We then returned tot he hotel and finished setting up the booth. I made danny put stickers on hundred of our bags and I set up the tethered scanner for tomorrow with the secret winning codes.
We then took a stroll down to the Hilton to look for our itickets sign. it wasn't up anywhere. hrm. not impressed, i will have to ask them when that is gonna happen.

After our stroll to the Hilton, we decided to check out the town. I have to inform Karen & Robin that Nashville is the place for engagement parties and bridal & bachelor parties. I can't even tell you how many parties we saw going on with the bride or groom wearing a wedding veil or sign or imprinted shirt and being marched around town by their friends.

Stacey, If i might suggest that you get karen a nice bridal head piece and decorate it and make her wear it for the whole night. :)

So we then walked around for what seemed like about 10-15 city blocks and check everything out. And when we were done I said, Hey lets go walk down to Rocket Town and see if anything is happening there. So we walked another 4-5 blocks to rocket town and they were having some local bands play. So we went in and watched. There were about 100 teenagers there moshing and having a great time. 2 out of the 4 bands that played were pretty good. I must say sitting in rocket town make me want to help build one in our area. Very cool, very, very cool.

It was now 10:30 and I needed to eat again, since i only ate once today. So we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for burgers. Then we walked back to the hotel. Tomorrow will start a very hectic 4 day schedule.
so who knows when i will write again. my link to live pix is below.

live pix

Well that phrase sums up my day yesterday. As my fellow traveler Danny pointed out it was a very amusing/interesting day. We left my house in Lebanon about 4:15am got about 5 minutes away then turned around and went back, I had left Danny's barcode shirts on the bench inside my front door. After correcting my mistake we were off.

The day was overcast for half the day and bright sunny for the other half with rain interspersed throughout. A few interesting things. 1). I got a speeding ticket in VA. (thank goodness they are cheaper than PA and no points) 2). An old lady and her husband almost ran the WJTL van off the road, I swerved into the shoulder of the road to avoid a fatal accident. 3). People from PA would beep and wave at the WJTL van no matter where we were. 4). We saw a motor home pulling a car, not unusual however, they had a stuffed clown with a mask sitting in the front seat of the car holding the steering wheel like he was driving it with a sign that read, be careful when passing me, I am pushing this motorhome.

We arrived in Nashville 11.5 hours later and turned our clocks back an hour making the trip only 10.5 hours. We got our room and moved in. However the room they gave us was only 2 in the whole hotel without internet. I figured this out in 30 seconds. We immediately changed rooms and all was right with the world. After a small rest time we drove around nash and ran an errand or two.

The thing that amuses me is I am only in nash once a year, it is amazing how many things change in a year. I guess I take that for granted in Lebanon. They are going to be bulldozing the NIpper's Theater where I used to watch movies when I lived in Nashville. It was brand new when Ji, Bruce & I moved to Nashville and now they are bulldozing it to build some store. go figure.

We came back to the hotel, I did my email(most of it). I also set up all the scanners in our room, buying a surge protector was a good idea. I also hated to mess up Pam's wrap job she did to all the cords in the box so I figured out how to plug them all in without unwrapping them. and took a nap. We then walked down to the row of shops down form the hotel, found a restaurant and ate some food.

We then walked back to the hotel and went to bed.

So far the trip has been good, Danny is a good guy to hang out with. After spending a few hours in the van we got to a discussion where it occurred to me that he wasn't around for half my life and is really 15 or so years younger than me. (like he was born after the space shuttle blew up, and after hands across america) It didn't feel that way. I then had to give some thought to is he just more mature for his age? or am i immature for mine? or perhaps it doesn't matter.

**The title comes from a billboard along the highway in TN. Just three words and a phone number. People are funny, who in their right mind would put that on a billboard? and my other thought is what man would do it?

i am quickly packing to go to GMA, we leave tomorrow AM. I will be setting up my webcam on the convention floor, seemed to amuse people last year. I quickly tested it out this morning. here is the link:

webcam

should be active on sat after 6pm -- wednesday afternoon

brian

So after a year without a hair cut I took the plunge today and got a clip job. I took my friend marty's advice and went to a place in Hershey. Needless to say it wasn't what i had hoped for but my hair is gone. Ok so where are the pix of the event? good question.