Humble Musings of a Curious Man

Now before you go jumping to conclusions, no I’m not leaving Swiftyvillerton.  Jenn and I are reasonably happy here and don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.  The moving I’m talking about is moving blog homes.  You can find the link to my old blog, Humble Musings of a Curious Man, in the list of blogs called “blogroll”.

It’s kind of a weird feeling moving my online address.  It would seem that it shouldn’t be as big a deal as moving a real address, but I think this virtual move actually has me more anxious than my physical move from Regina to Swift Current last year.  In my real move I had to pack and move stuff in boxes to a new house 250km away.  How do you move something that doesn’t really physically exist though?  I can’t literally move my thoughts, my lists, and my pictures of from website to another.  I have to leave it behind.  It may be silly, but it is slightly traumatic to have to leave behind the thoughts and records of the past year of my life.  Physical stuff you can move, the abstract you can’t.  Technically I don’t have to fully leave it behind, it will still exist in perpetuity in it’s current place, but it won’t be where I call home now.  The links on my new page will take you to my book lists, music lists, and picture lists from my old site.  It’s just a lot easier to update those lists from where they are and quite frankly, it’s a little nicer looking to make the lists there because I don’t know how to code HTML.  It’s kind of a sad “see you later”, and not a total good-bye, but none the less I can’t help but feel a little emotional regarding my move to a new home.

 Well, I hope you all feel welcome to come and visit me in my new home on a regular basis.  The 3403 page views over the past year at my last home says that someone was visiting and reading on a regular basis, so I hope you enjoy my new residence here just as much.  I made the move for you!  That’s right, I didn’t move just because I wanted to move for the sake of it, I moved to the new site so that you could let me know that you were there to visit.  This new blog will allow you to leave comments on my posts without having to sign-up for anything or give all your personal information to Bill Co. (Microsoft).  I hope you will make use of this new feature and leave comments on my posts, otherwise this whole traumatic move will be for not.

Anyways, I’m glad I made the move.  I think this will be a good place to settle down for a long time.  Rest assured, I have no desire to go through this whole ordeal again anytime soon.  Have a good one, and come back to visit soon.  You can now find me at my new home at: Humble Musings of a Curious Man (Wordpress)

This may be a seemingly trivial post, and in reality it probably is, but this evening as I was perusing the blogs of friends of mine I was struck by the frustration of the limitations of my own blog.  Because my windows live space is controlled by the evil empire of Bill, they have made it so only people with windows live accounts (hotmail, etc.) can post comments on my blog.  This may seem small, but I think the "interaction" that you can get from people posting comments on your blog postings is an important part of the whole blogging experience.

I have contemplated starting a new blog elsewhere, on a site that would allow people to post their insightful or innocuous comments after my musings, but the fact that it would mean leaving behind what I've compiled over the past year on this blog is a major deterrent.  This site may not compare to Barth's "Church Dogmatics", it has become a place where I can compile my thoughts and my life.  I have never been a journaler before so this experience has been a stretch to start with, but I have really enjoyed it and I think it would be a shame to have to leave it all behind.

So I guess it comes down to this: What do you think?  I pose the question to you my loyal or unexpected readers.  Is it really worth all the trouble of leaving this all behind to gain the ability to let you the readers, the people in my life, leave comments and interact with my posts?  If Mr. T has the time to stop and pose for a picture looking thoughtful, the least I can do is take some time to actually think through it.  I'm pretty torn over the situation, so I'm looking for advice here.  Just leave a comment at the end of this post with your take on what I should do . . . oh that's right, you can't leave comments.  Anyways, you can always send me an email or a facebook message and try to counsel me through my insignificant crisis.  Thanks for your input.

It's hard to believe that it's been over 15 months since we moved here.  Time flies unbelievably fast the older I get, and am I getting old!  In that time since we moved here we have often been asked the question, "So how do you like Swift Current?"  Jenn and I have developed the standard answer for the standard question, "We like it, but it doesn't have a decent coffee shop."  This answer usually gets the same standard response, "What do you mean?  We have two Tim Horton's."  (Insert "sigh" here.)  Tim Horton's is all fine and dandy if you want a mediocre cup of coffee on the fly.  It's cheap and it has a drive through.  It needs to be understood though that Tim Horton's is not a coffee shop.  It is just a fast food joint that serves coffee.

Well, after 15 months of waiting and giving the standard answer to the standard question and then receiving the standard response, all the standards are going to have to be thrown out the window!  That's right, Swiftyvillerton is getting a real coffee shop!  Urban Ground opens on Monday and Jenn and I plan on being the first customers.  I am so excited about it I'm halfways tempted to sleep outside the front door as my brother did waiting for his Wii.  I miss real coffee so much.  I miss my medium, decaf, fat-free, triple latte.  Jenn misses her large, fat-free, sugar free, carmel machiatto.  If you don't know what that is, you don't know coffee.  This isn't a slight against your person, it just means that we live in different planes of existence in the coffee realm.

So like I said, all the standards get thrown out on the window on Monday.  I guess it means that I'm going to have to level with people totally and let them know that Swiftyvillerton is great, but in the end I still miss the hustle and bustle of Regina and the friends and family residing there.  I miss the sound of planes flying overhead at night and traffic on Ring Road.  Swiftyvillerton is great, and it even has a coffee shop now, but it still doesn't have everything.  I don't know if this small town is fully ready to embrace the coffee shop culture yet, but I'm going to do my best to prop up the business of Urban Ground single handedly if I have to.

Well in the last two weeks, it was the best of times and it was the worst of times.  This has been my life as the assistant coach and defensive co-ordinator of the Golden Gophers.  Two weeks ago we pitched our second straight defensive shutout, we scored our first touchdown of the year, we played hard through a driving rain in single digit temperatures that would make a grown man cry in agony, and of course our kids did too.  All of this happened on the way to winning our first game of the season.  The kids were starting to run and hit like real football players.  They seemed to finally get it!  It was so exciting that I lost my voice for a day or two afterwards.

 Then came the next week.  I wondered where our team went and who the kids wearing the yellow jersey's were.  The team was terrible.  The didn't run.  They didn't hit.  They didn't know the plays.  They looked like figure skaters with football jerseys on, minus the athleticism.  We got absolutely trounced.  It was honestly embarrassing.  It was a team we should have at least played closely if not beaten, and instead we were never really in it losing 12-0.  I love being their coach and all, but that was about as frustrated as I've been since . . . oh ya, since I watched Brian Griese play like Rex Grossman minus the arm strength earlier that afternoon.  All in all it was a terrible day for football.

Then it was just tonight it kind of realized that if the inconsistancy of my middle school boys minor football team frustrated me that much, how much more frustrating must it be for God to see the consistant incosistancy in our lives and in the life of the church.  We sometimes get things so right, and then turn around and blow it just as badly, often all within a given day!  If I'm going to get frustrated and make my team run wind sprints at practice after Sunday's game, than I should deal with myself with the same kind of conviction when I show that kind of inconsistancy.  All I can do is hope that the difficult practices lead to more consistancy for my team and in my life.

I'm a big music fan, but I can't say that I've ever been a major fan of a lot of music made before I was born.  Now you may think that makes me kind of a shallow music fan, but if you ask anyone who knows me they could easily prove to you that that isn't the case.  I have a deep appreciation for all kinds and genres of music, except swing and ska because they aren't real genres of music, just dreck.  To get to the point though, something that one of those groups making music before I was born wrote deals exactly with what I'm thinking right now.  Simon and Garfunkel performed a song called "I am a Rock" (written by Paul Simon) in which Paul Simon essentially espoused the idea that he had no need for friendship or love because they had the potential to cause pain, and he was perfectly content, alone, in his own hermetically sealed world.

Well, let me be the first to say - or at least one to say - that Paul Simon, although a gifted song writer, is not a great sociologist.  I've tried the whole "I am a rock, I am an island" thing before, and it's not all it's cracked up to be.  We all need friends.  We all need a support group of some kind.  We were never created to be all alone.  God created us to live in realtionship with him, within a family, within a church family, within a community.  The move to Swift Current has been a good one overall, but it has had its drawbacks too.  The church and community are great to live in, but making friends here certainly hasn't been easy.  I'm not so naive as to think a person can make best friends overnight, but it's been a year and a bit now, and I don't feel I'm much farther along in the process than I was a year and a bit ago.

I'll restate it again so there's no confusion, we love being here, but not having any real close friends or family here is not easy; especially on days off.  So to my friends and family, you know who you are, know you are loved and missed, and here's to hoping for another day off or long weekend soon when I can see some of you again.

Well, there isn't going to be a lot of substance here.  I'm starting to get tired, but I wanted to make sure I got this off my chest and into your collective conscious before I forget it.

I love my job.  We got youth started again tonight with a game of Mission Impossible with the youth group from Trailview.  It was a really good time.  You'd think that the thought that I won't have another Friday night off for the next 10 months would be kind of depressing, but in reality it's pretty exciting.  I enjoy spending time with the kids and having a part in helping them sort through and set their direction in life.  Ya, it gets tiring sometimes, but all in all a job that includes taking care of myself spiritually, helping other people, loving other people, playing games with kids and preaching every few weeks is a pretty sweet gig.  For the most part it doesn't even feel like work.  Obviously there is no perfect church or perfect job, but I think this is about as much as I had hoped for coming into it.  Fourteen months in now, I love my job.

I love coaching football.  Unfortunately, the Swift Plumbing and Heating Golden Gophers got their tails handed to  them in our first game last week, but with a few new defensive wrinkles thrown in this week I'm hoping for better results.  Either way, I love working with the kids, teaching them new skills, and acting like a real football coach even though it's small town minor pee-wee football.  I may not be Buddy Ryan yet, but I'm working on it.

 So at the possibility of losing all my credibility as a real sports fan, I feel the need to come out into the open and announce to the world my love for watching tennis.  I enjoy playing the sport too, but I love to watch tennis; men's or women's.

I've been loving watching the US Open for the past week and a half.  Some of the matches have been great to watch, even though my favourite player of all time, Goran Ivanisevic, retired a number of years ago.  Good old Goran, the perfect combination of size, speed, and power . . . and an awesome name to go along with it of course.

Anyways, it's been great husband/wife time for Jenn and I too because she loves watching tennis too.  There aren't a ton of things that Jenn and I both love watching on TV, so when one of the tennis Grand Slams rolls around it's good viewing for us both for two weeks.  The US Open is especially good because they actually play the matches at reasonable viewing hours because they are playing in North America instead of crazy places like England, France, or Australia.

Well, now that I've got that off my chest, I hope you can all accept me for who I am.  Here's to hoping that anyone other than a Williams sister or Roger Federer wins in the end.

Well it's been a lot of years in coming, but it's finally happened . . . I am a football coach.  The football bug bit me at a young age and I'd always been a big spectator fan.  I went to football camps in elementary and high school and really enjoyed them, but for whatever reason I just never committed to playing football (although I tried unsuccessfully a couple times).  I have been the owner and head coach of Benyamen's Bears of Reginas Best Fantasy League for five years now, but now I finally get my chance at the real thing.

I got a call with a contract offer this past Friday night (the pay's not great but it's a great opportunity), and I went to training camp on Saturday.  I had read my coaching manual by Bob Stoops (if you're a college football fan you'll know him), and I went in expecting to be working as the line coach for the Swift Current Golden Gophers of the Swift Current Minor Football Association, but by the end of only my first day I had been promoted to defensive              co-ordinator; not bad for my first day on the job.

Given my football affiliations you might be thinking that I would obviously opt for running a 46 defence in honor of the '85 Bears, but alas, there is no blitzing allowed in this league.  You have to remember my players are only 12 or 13 years old.  I would go into more of my strategy of how I hope to create pressure on the offence if I can't blitz, but I wouldn't want to give away my secrets in such a public forum where opposing coaches might be able to see them.  Suffice it to say though I'm hoping to get pretty creative.  If you need more details you can email me and I'll let you know what I'm planning on . . . after you sign the confidentiality agreement.

Anyways, I think it's fair to say that coaching the most fun that I have had in an awful long time.  After only a couple minutes out on the field it felt like I was just made to do this.  I'm looking forward to my rookie season as a coach, and the only thing that I'm a little disappointed with is the shortness of the season (5 games and 2 potential playoff games) as it's all done by thanksgiving.

Hopefully this is the first of many posts over the next few days to help get you all up to date on the many goings on in my life recently.  Until next time . . .

 P.S. I'm trying to decide whether I need to grow a moustache now (ie. Ditka) or whether just sticking with the goatee is enough facial hair to be a successful football coach.

I'm not dead, but I'm thinking.  I'm not dead, I just haven't had computer                                                  access lately.  I'm not dead, I'm just on  vacation.

I haven't had a lot of time lately to get to blogging it out, but I should have some worthwhile stuff to post in the near future . . . once I'm home from vacation.  I've been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of living, and a fair amount of reading.  I'm looking forward to letting you all into my head again in the near future.

For those of you loyal readers (you know who you are and I'm sure you have your reasons) don't fear, there will be posts worth reading in the near future.