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Ashley and I are moving to another new place in Fremont again. It seems as if ever since we moved out of the house on Davis St. we haven’t been able to get ourselves settled in anywhere. We are nearly finished with the first half (getting our stuff out) of this most recent move, but the second half (settling in) is looming and it looks as if it is going to be a long process.

Most moves are stressful. If for no other reason, the organization and process of the move frustrates me greatly. However, I think I’ve been finding that in-city moves like our most recent three moves are way more stressful than ones that draw us to a new city, region or even a new state. Big moves build up to a single point in which the movers load and move what is owned into a new place. In-city moves stretch out and extend over way to long of a period.

Ashley and I have been in the middle of this move for more than three weeks! Everyday there is one more thing to transport or one more thing to clean… It’s quite frustrating.

We should be able to finish the last piece of our move out tonight. Then the long process of finding room for all of our stuff begins. Wish us luck as we stretch that out into the next move!

Recent Life Developments:

• Major Retreat with NSM
• New College small group in San Francisco: iLLuminate
• New College small group in Fremont
• Joined House Studio Street Team, will be doing some book reviews on the website.
• Moved out of apartment
• Moved into room at mom and dad’s place
• Working on a new Bible Study
• Getting ready to review College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture
• Trying to make babies

And that’s about it. I’ve lost some weight but I’ve largely put it all back on, so starting tomorrow (my favorite expression) I will be back on track to hitting 180lbs. 

A while back my wife and I moved into a new place. It’s an apartment so you can imagine the amount of room that we have to move in it. We’ve been married for a few years now but in all the time that we’ve been together we have always had a house with a front yard and back yard to stretch out in.

Needless to say, this has been a transition.

Personally, I like to be able to grow some things in order to be able to think that I’m self sufficient on some level but living in an apartment has really limited my ability to grow anything. We’re on the second floor so we don’t have any ground to play with so I’m stuck trying to find ways to grow things in planters.

We have a few folks in our church who have used these things called Topsy Turvey’s in the past. Basically they work like this: You find a place to hang the Topsey Turveym choose a plant that you want to grow (tomato in my case) and you place the small plant that you’ve choosen into the topsy turvey. Then you flip the whole thing upside down, fill it with soil, hang it with the plant shooting out of the bottom and then you water the plant. The plant grows upside down so we don’t have to worry about putting it into the ground, which means with tomatoes that we don’t have to stake them. It also means that there is less of a chance that pest will get at them (at least not the traditional ones).

We haven’t gotten any tomatoes just yet and I’m not sure that we will because we get late day sun and not morning sun. But the second there is an edible tomato I’ll have that satisfaction one gets when they’ve made something on their own. That tomato always taste’s the best!

Check out this website: www.newstartsf.org

This is the website of the third church in our church cluster. Pastor Joe and myself are pulling double duty right now as we are preaching and teaching and leading a multi-cultural, multi-congregational and now multi-campus church!

The congregation meets in San Francisco’s Sunset district on 38th Ave. and Moraga. It’s an extremely young church that is active and full of energy. I’m very excited that they are joining us in this process of building God’s kingdom!

Check out the website (put together by Jackie Phung) and let me know what you think!

Its 4-3 in the top of the 7th and my Giants are up. Let’s keep it up boys, we need to shut this offense down!

I started weighing myself in the mornings so don’t get to excited by the drop on the number up there. Apparently you are always lighter in the mornings because of digestion, using the bathroom etc. so my weight dropped quite a bit from the 213 to 208.

Dad bought tickets to the NLCS home games (3,4 and 5) and at the time I was excited because I’d get to go watch some good postseason baseball…

Then I looked at the calendar and realized I had all sorts of events scheduled on the same days and at the same times as each of the games. And doubly unfortunate for me, they are the kind of events that I can’t reschedule! Bummer.

So I’ll be watching the entire NLCS from home. Let’s go Giants and make it into the World Series! I want to see that parade!

I am trying something new. I’m going to try and lose some weight. Over the past three years, I’ve made a transition in my life from work that is primarily physical to work that is done in a study, behind a desk or at a computer. The result is an ever expanding gut that has me weighing over 200 lbs.

I’m not a happy camper.

So instead of complaining about it I am getting active. I will start recording my weight as I start to work out and change my eating habits. I’ll add the weight into the title of each post like I did with this one just to keep track of where I’m at.

At my fittest I weighed in at 160lbs. now I am at 217lbs. Something has got to change… it might as well happen now.

Wish me luck as I set off to lose this weight. I know I’ll need it! Is it strange to think that I could get get back down to 160lbs? we shall see.

I am dudded up in my Orange Friday gear and I’m ready to see my San Francisco Giants clinch the NL West. Better get it done now and not wait for the weekend!

I’ve added a couple quick posts to my blog www.theintentionalconversation.com. One about Sabbath and another about living communally.

Enjoy and Good Luck Giants!!!

Update: Giants did win the west (though they didn’t do it that night… or the next night… to which I also had tickets). They waited in typical Torture Fashion to wait until the final day of the season to get the job done. Go Giants!!!

What do we think? Yes? No? I’m not sure that I like the color yet. I wish that I could find something similar to this with a white background. Black backgrounds make for such tough reading conditions!!!