Remodel almost complete

The remodel has taken longer than planned, but I'm almost done. The big hang up has been the doors. I had to order them. What was supposed to be finished "inside of two weeks" is not approaching 4 weeks and has not been delivered. Until I get them, I can't do any more. I've finished everything else, though.

Here's what I've done since the last entry:

• finished the drywall work (with the help of Scott)
• patched the popcorn ceiling where it had been scraped.
• textured the closet walls and blended in texture for the exterior (green) walls
• primed and painted the inside of the closet
• painted the green wall
• built and stained the television stand
• built in the closet shelves above the tv

And the results:

I've very happy with everything so far. Once the doors arrive, I'll need to paint and install them. Then I can have a new piece of carpet cut, stretched, and seamed with the room carpet (I have some extra), and I'll be done.

Technorati Tags: house, remodel

Time with my son

I'm off work this week. So, while my wife is working, I am staying home with my son. I'm looking forward to it, but am a bit intimidated as well. Today was the first day (she was off yesterday for Christmas) and I had some family in town with me. The next 3 days are just me and him!

Cerebral mush, here I come!

Well, after 29 years of access to 5 channels and getting up to move rabbit ears each time I click the remote, I've finally decided to take the plunge into the world of satellite TV. The DIRECTV man is installing the dish right now.

It's kind of a sad day for me in a way. I grew up watching little or no television. We didn't even own a TV until I was 8, and that one was only because I got a new computer - a TI 994a - that required a monitor. I convinced my parents to let my grandma buy the TV for it for Christmas and that I only wanted it so I could use my new computer. I'm sure they knew the truth of what they were getting into, but they obliged. So began my trek into the mind-numbing world of television.

Now, it's the year 21 A.T. (after television). In lo those 21 years, I've lived my life as the rebel insisting that network was more than enough television for anyone. Who needs all those channels? We already watch TV too much as it is! That was my mantra, and still is to some degree.

So, how did I breakdown and take this plunge? Well . . .our old TV is about to bite the dust so we treated ourselves to a new one for Christmas. It's a fine looking 42 inch HDTV. It's beautiful. We're even making a lovely new home for it in our den (see my Remodel post, which I'm going to add an update to as soon as the doors I ordered get here and I install them). We were so excited when we brought it home from our after-Thanksgiving sale shopping trip. We opened it up and quickly grabbed the faithful bunny ears from the old TV to connect to this new beauty. It was easy to set-up, much less trouble than this install guy is having right now at my house. But then the moment of truth arrived. It was time to turn on this lovely work of art to see the beauty it could produce. The results . . .

Yes, dancing through what should have been a glorious image was larger, more accentuated snow. Sure, we could see the actors moving around on the screen, but what was once just a nuisance on our small television had now become an unignorable mess.

What had we done? All that money invested for a worse picture. We couldn't have that. We had to make a change. This new TV has driven us to the dark side. Now, instead of 5 snowy channels, we should soon have 150 digitally clear channels for us to peruse as our brains slowly turn into mush. Oh well. It's just part of the American Dream, right?

Technorati Tags : satellite, television

"A Happy Agnostic?" update

I emailed Dr. Ehrman regarding my last post about his npr interview and received the following response, which answers my question but opens another issue to discuss: the age old problem of a world with pain and suffering if there is a good and omnipotent God.

Dr. Ehrman's response:

Nathan,

Thanks for your note. Yes, you're right -- I didn't want to say (did I say?) that it was my changed view of the Bible that turned me into an agnostic; that *would* be a very strange leap! More problematic for me, in the long run, was the problem of the pain and suffering in the world. I have trouble believing in a good God who is in control: every time I look around, I'm sorry to say (and notice) it looks like it just ain't so....

Best wishes,

-- Bart Ehrman

Technorati Tags : christianity, agnoticism, NPR

"A Happy Agnostic?"

I was listening to Fresh Air on npr yesterday . . .

side note: how many times do you hear that from a Bible-belt Evangelical Christian? Yes, I like npr - that liberal snore of a radio station, which I think is often enlightening and almost always very interesting, even when I don't agree with the running commentary at the moment.

Anyway, I was listening to Terry Gross interview Bart Ehrman - chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and most recently the author of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. This little book of his "explores how scribes -- through both omission and intention -- changed the Bible (see npr synopsis of the Fresh Air interview and book description here)."

His little discussion was interesting, but what really made me go "huh?" was when he started talking about how he lived most all of his life as an Evangelical Christian but in the last few years had decided he no longer chooses to believe the lies and has become a "happy agnostic." However, he never really said why he no longer believes there is a god (or perhaps the more correct definition would be that he believes it is impossible to know whether there is a god). Instead, he backed up this statement by talking about no longer believing that the Bible as we have it today is the infallible Word of God. To me, that's quite a difference, especially as he continued saying that he believes the teachings in the Bible to be truths that we are right to follow. I really wanted to call him up and ask how he made the jump, but it wasn't a live show.

I recognize that people can claim discrepancies in Bible and even make cases for mistranslations and misinterpretations. I can even stretch on out there and say that if someone doesn't believe that the Bible we have today is the infallible word of God he can still be a Christian. The Bible was written by men. Men are not infallible. Unless the Holy Spirit placed all the original writers and then all the succeeding scribes in trances so that they were just puppets holding quills moved by the hand of God himself, there could possibly be the slightest bit of room for the slim chance of an error or modification. In my mind, there's nothing wrong with that line of questioning, or questioning in general. I've questioned quite a bit, especially in the past years, and it has helped to solidify my faith. However, I feel bad for the man who seemingly was let down when he decided that our current scriptures may not be as they were originally and may disagree with each other in different places and from this had to leap to the conclusion that it must therefore be impossible to know if God exists or not.

Dr. Ehrman claims that unlike most agnostics, he is a "happy agnostic" - content in his belief that it's impossible for him to ever know if there's a god, much less take the opportunity given to him to actually get to know God. He may think he's happy, but that saddens me.

Technorati Tags : christianity, agnoticism, NPR

Huntin'

Last weekend, I was invited to go hunting with some friends. I've never been hunting before this, so I was excited and I guess you could say a little nervous. I grew up out in a development where everyone had a least 5 acres in an area protected from hunting. So, I've been a deer watcher all my life and had lots of fun "tracking deer" on our land growing up. Since I had never hunted before and did not have a license or anything, I went as a "goer" and not a "hunter". But, I had a blast. I think I caught the bug. We went on 3 hunts. I played the role of spotter with a friend of mine who was hunting. We got 3 whitetail deer in the first 2 hunts, and I was pumped. I really wanted to take a shot myself and my friend suggested that I give it a try on our third and last hunt. As fate would have it, however, we didn't see anything that morning, so I missed my chance. Oh well.

The trip was still a blast. The hunting excursions were almost a side note to the time of eating and playing poker or dominoes....just your basic male bonding. If I get invited again next season, I'm going to be sure and get a license and a little rifle use and safety training beforehand.

Technorati Tags : hunting

Take that!

I found this fun little item today.

Ever need a good put down but can't find the words to say? Try this out and you can "smite your enemy with the help of the hard men of the Old Testament."

Here's a fun example:

Take heed, O ye whose name is but dung, for you will become as popular as a boil on the king's backside!

Technorati Tags : biblical, curse, generator

Welcome, Nick!

My brother-in-law, Nick just started his own blog. He's a worship leader and band member out in west Texas.

Check it out!

Technorati Tags : blog

faith

My wife and I are studying James right now with a few other couples. We really enjoy this group because it is multi-denominational. Currently we have Church of God, Bible Church, Methodist, and sometimes Episcopalian. Within the group there are also some former Catholics, so all in all it makes for nice discussion.

This week we looked at James 2:21-26 -- the "faith without works is dead" section. However, we got off on a trail discussing our strength of faith to do "great" things or more specifically suffer "great" persecutions - like die, suffer, etc. The comment was made that we don't really know if our faith is strong enough to endure these or not until the time comes, which I guess is true. So, I guess we have to have faith that we'll have that faith. But, if faith is the "evidence of things not seen" (Heb 11:1), then it is our proof that should that opportunity to do a great work or to be persecuted arise we will be able to respond. But, if faith without works is dead, then is this kind of "faith" that should great moments arise we'll be able to respond greatly just idle ponderings . . . sort of like this post has become ?

Faith is blowing my mind today.

Technorati Tags : faith, James

Remodel

I spent the entire day yesterday working on a remodel for our study. You can see that in the study, we had 4 small closets lining one wall. The second from the left was set up to be a media closest, but as you can see even a moderately sized television wouldn't fit inside. So, we decided to combine the two left-most closets and create one large media closet out of them.

This wasn't supposed to be that big of a job, but these sort of things seem to never be as simple as I expect them to be.

My friend Scott, who is a home builder came over to help me with demolition. "It'll just take 30 minutes." Well, 30 minutes turned into all day. The two closets had originally been an after thought it turns out because there was no proper head board and frame above them. This means we had to tear out all the way to the ceiling, then build down a new frame and header, hang sheet rock, and then tape and float everything again.

I'm actually proud of all we did. We got a lot accomplished in 8 hours, which included several small breaks to do some work that we were actually supposed to be getting done that day. I'm very grateful to Scott for his help.

As you can guess, these are pictures of before and during. I need to float the dry wall again to smooth out all the joints, add a little texture and repaint the green walls, then build out shelves to go inside the closet. The doors are being ordered today and should come next week.

All in all, the day was fun. I enjoy a little creative work where you get your hands dirty every once in a while and you don't have to think about any of the normal day's troubles that come with my regular job.

I'll post again as work progresses. I definitely plan to be done by Christmas, but hope to finish much sooner.

Technorati Tags : house, remodel