Point - Counterpoint

So a member of my recent former church tried to make a comment on my previous post.  He could not post it because the Facebook sharing app I use "Networked Blogs" interferes with the comments part if you follow the link from Facebook.  So he just emailed me the comment.  I answered it in email but I thought I would share the points and my responses.  It seems very fair.

Point 1:

 (1) Based on your comments, I agree that you should leave the church and synod. You spoke of a conscience issue, and you must follow your conscience, even if it should be erring or misinformed.

Response 1:

1.)  you are 100% correct.

Point 2:

 (2) I hope you see the irony here. You cite postmodernism and relativism as major enemies to be confronted, yet you based your action on your personal feelings, impressions, and opinions rather than on any doctrine grounded in revealed, absolute truth. You made yourself a kind of poster child for postmodernism by not basing your severing of confessional fellowship on divine truth or established departures from biblical truth, but on your subjective feelings and opinions on adiaphora. (Adiaphora in fact, not an empty word as you say.) 

Response 2:

2.)  I will make sure I am more clear next time. To some degree you are correct based on the information I presented.  I should have been sharper.  After writing what turned out to be a very very long post I took out the doctrinal and confessional points as they sort of became a post of their own but I should have adjusted and added disclaimers to what remained.  I have not posted this other post yet as it needs work. However it would have at least helped to note that I didn't leave the synod based on individual practices.  I left Votl based on individual practices.  I left the synod for doctrinal reasons. If adiaphora were all that was involved I could have just moved to a WELS church near my house.  However I think you are justified in noting that what I presented was ...well...poorly presented.  At a minimum I should have positioned what I wrote as a commentary on where and why I think error is creeping in with a promise that I would expound on the actual errors in the future.  As I think about it...I think I will post a retraction and restate my position.  For the very reason you noted (posterboy...)I do not want to convey the wrong message.

Point 3

(3) Finally, I pray you acknowledge and confess your ethical lapse in throwing out the name "Time of Grace" and accusing it of having "lax doctrinal structure" (whatever that means, it is contextually pejorative) without any substantiation of that. That is slander by Bible standards and contrary to the Eighth Commandment. May you be granted swift repentance and enjoy anew the amazing truth that with God there is full and free forgiveness because of the perfect atoning work of Jesus Christ.

Response 3

3.) Unfortunately on this point there would be no such thing.  I've been dormant in the blogging world for awhile..I did hear this here and there in the past.  I have to admit this is the fastest the 8th commandment card has been whipped out but I will add it to the list.  I didn't know we had to cite substantiation with our accusations but I will do that here AND make sure I correct such things online. It's my mistake for assuming that the ways of PMJ were not in the public domain.  its rare I find someone who sticks up for it.

My Time of Grace Points

1.) The LCMS RSO thing.  You can spin this however you want, finagle the wording, get special dispensations on the rules from LCMS, but it all boils down to a supreme effort to skirt the rules of fellowship.  It was noticed enough to get reasonable support for a memorial against it at the convention.  Alas we gave ToG a mulligan on that one.  I suppose it doesn't matter now since the LCMS ended the RSO status anyways.

2.) Change or Die:  So now not only does PMJ participate in this ecumenical conference of ministry with ELCA and LCMS, now he and ToG are sponsoring it.  Even though the COP specifically told the first WELS participants the first time they participated that they should back out. (two did...) PMJ did not.  Again this is not a free conference and seems to show the world that we can all share and participate in ministry together.  I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some lesbian ELCA pastor/spirit guide has a presentation on ministering to the Inner city of San Francisco.  Can't wait.

3.)Here are some Facebook posts from ToG: 

• August 5: "When we choose to believe Jesus, we release his blessings into our lives and miracles happen all over again. -PJM"
• August 13:"God's there for us when we need him. When we trust in him, we give him the chance to make even an illness work for us and his glory.- PMJ"
• September 2: "Guess what? God guides your daily walk. He cares enough about your life to help you deal with life's toughest questions. Do you feel surrounded by darkness and unsure of what to do? Let him speak to you.- PMJ"
• September 15:"Today, focus on letting God work in your heart-and don't be so suspicious of his motives.-PMJ"
• September 16: "Only the love of Christ heals wounds. Only YOU can decide to let Christ calm your spirit and speak gently about what's hurting you.- PMJ"
• December 10: "Something to focus on this Christmas season-are you one of the INN crowd or one of the STABLE few? Will you make room for Jesus?"

If you'd like I can find more... 

in order to state some more authoritative text in case we even need to do that:

• Augsburg Confession article XVIII.: "it (man's free will) has no power, without the Holy Ghost, to work the righteousness of God, that is, spiritual righteousness."
• Explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles' Creed:  "I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him."

So since I was contextually pejorative with the term "doctrinally lax"  Hopefully this will put some context around it and what I meant by that.  Even if you can wiggle yourself out of each and every single statement and situation with some explanation that just might make it marginally ok...I would say that stretching the bounds of propriety that often is at best not wise and at worst just a sleazy way to ignore doctrine.  So consider my statement as a kind interpretation because my personal opinion is that ToG is complete and utter crap.

*************************

Here is some additional information.  This is from Feb 6th on ToG facebook:  "Moms, it is you who make God believable and real to small children."  And all this time I thought it was the Holy Spirit.  Best Moms can do is make Santa Clause believable perhaps.

In conclusion however, I would like to say that I will post another post just on doctrinal issues.  The first post will remain as a commentary on the sum potential danger that lurks about in modern trends within the church waiting to spring and diminish the gospel. From now on I will aim to be more accurate in my statements.  If any of my readership of now 4 people feel I need to make it any clearer that I did not leave the church and synod due to some personal feelings of style, content, format, etc therefore shifting my shared understanding to a different relationship and thusly espousing my obvious leadership in the post-modern world...please speak up.  I will put more effort in my non-relative Truth post to help those with bated breath.

What Did You Do!?!?

I decided to write a post that I could just point people to whenever someone asks why I left my church and synod.  Not that anyone really knows I left yet, as I walked away relatively quietly and without any fuss.  However it had become a matter of conscience to the point that there really was no other option.  So this serves as my public statement on the matter, I guess.

I will start from the top down.  It is clear that modern society has embraced post-modernism.  Pop culture, media, academia, etc. have all helped to proliferate an evil mindset.  In short, it is the idea that truth is relative and we can only relate to people on the basis of a shared understanding.  My truth may not be your truth and everything is fine.  We just need to relate in some shared way and truth is irrelevant.  There hardly is a more dangerous philosophy for the church to deal with in my opinion.  It allows the Truth of the Word to be reduced down to only what is relevant to an individual. Absolute Truth becomes Truth a-la-carte that caters to the lowest common denominator.

This mindset is slowly and insidiously creeping into the synod and not just my former synod of WELS, but all the others as well to varying degrees.  In the church, the word adiaphora is often used to justify what is just a compromise to the world in an effort to make the church relevant to the masses, whom live and die in the post-modern age of thought.

The examples of this continue to mount and begin with good intentions but ultimately lead to the aforementioned “lowest common denominator” Should I list the one’s I have noticed?  Is it valuable? Perhaps you can comment with your examples.  Here is just one WELS example of good intentions gone horribly, horribly wrong:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZglqrBqlL7Y

Additionally, this trend becomes apparent not only in the beginnings of the effort to create synodical versions of evangelical non-dom’s that are relevant and relational, but also in the effort to usher in a new relevant and relational Bible (NNIV 2011), or to condone the lax doctrinal structure of synod-affiliated organizations such as “Time of Grace”.  That’s low hanging fruit but I’m certain you can provide numerous examples as well.

I do not react generally to individual examples.   I don’t leave my church and synod because someone in particular went too far here or overboard there, or someone just threw common sense out the window.  I left because when the whole “package” crosses your personal line of tolerance, or conscience, you need to take action. One should not pretend there is a way to fix the direction of the synod.  That is laughable. I have a story of a guy named Sisyphus for you if you think that is the way to go.  In that regards, you may as well suggest that Congress can control spending or that the Vikings could win a Super Bowl.  There is no particular “need” for a synod anymore particularly after it has “Jumped the Shark”. For me I will just examine each congregation one at a time.  You might be surprised what you find.

So, I will now go forward in helping an independent confessional congregation here in Milwaukee in rebuilding the church.  I will be more prolific in posting and sharing and making sure people know there is a home for them when their conscience is violated as well.  Whereas sin can never be avoided, we want to make sure we do what is possible to prevent the erosion of Truth not give in to the world.  No person or plan is perfect, but it is time for me to re-focus on the Theology of the Cross and leave behind the Theology of Glory.

Early release of NNIV 2015 Picture Bible

I had recently discovered that they are already working on the NNIV 2015 Bible in a quest to be relevant and relational.  WELS is already evaluating it for readability and its importance to relating to all Bro's.  Here is an excerpt:

I Was Wrong!

There I said it.  I have decided it is important to finally declare it on this blog.  This blog started as a vehicle to mostly defend contemporary worship as a legitimate and beneficial style of worship.  I defended it as worthy of the effort to start a mission that could reach the unchurched.  I have been active in that effort for over 6 years and now...I have to say, I was wrong.

If I wanted to be thorough, I could go out there into the blogosphere and find all the quotes from others who warned me.  I'm not going to though, because it is not necessary.  The point is that this blog has a long running history of me trying to make arguments that at best were unwise to being just plain foolish.

Some time ago a blogger once said, "Tim is in a position to see where the best of intentions lead." Well he couldn't have been more correct.  I see a slippery slope at multiple levels and I have decided I am tired of navigating slippery slopes.  There are slippery slopes in society, government, synod and congregation.  I can only address that which I can control directly and that is only myself.  I have spent 3.5 to 4 years studying, learning and digesting but now its time to execute.

I am not making any promises to resume my blogging in any regular fashion as I tried a year ago and failed to do miserably.  Work is too busy to allow me to be regular in my writing.  However, I will try.  I will just make my posts shorter and sweeter perhaps and that might make a return that much easier.

Tim - Lutheran 3.0

Contemporary Worship

I will have to admit that I have certainly changed over the last 5 years in regards to my thoughts on worship.  I started out as a gung-ho advocate of contemporary worship and exploring all kinds of worship options to coming around 165 degrees on those ideas.  Now I find myself instead of being a gung-ho advocate to hopefully being a more conservative watchdog on practice and doctrine. 
After debating for so many years on the subject, many warnings and pitfalls were espoused to me over those early years.  I tended to imagine that they were the warnings and pitfalls of worry-warts and pessimists.   However over time I am seeing that the dangers are real.  Other congregations in the WELS have in my opinion gone over the top (jumped the Lutheran shark if you will) and left the realm of the reasonable and prudent.  They should just declare themselves a non-dom and then at least their confessions will match their practice. 

I have noted some of the dangers that have been noted in the blogosphere in the past do crop up here and there at Victory.  With so many new Christians in the church the spiritual maturity is just not there and left unchecked that could steer a church in the wrong direction.  I stay at Victory because I believe the Pastor keeps a good doctrinal discipline even in the face of a large number of members who are not very doctrinally astute.  Victory also prominently and regularly provides the sacraments, has confession and absolution, a rock solid message with a good balance of Law and Gospel, and uses traditional hymns (albeit in contemporized form of a band) in its service.
 
I will admit that of the warnings and such I have heard over the years there are a few things I just don’t worry about.  On-screen projection of the order of service, hymns, readings,  etc are not a problem.  They are quite helpful.  I don’t care if it is for a smells and bells traditional service or a contemporary service.  It’s just a good way to guide people through.  Yes they can use the front of the hymnal.  Yes they can use it listed in the bulletin and Yes, it can be on the screen.  I will admit that I like that our Pastor does NOT put up graphics in his sermons except very very rarely.  I think this makes a big difference in how his messages come across and minimizes distraction.

The second thing I just can’t get worked up about is contemporizing hymns.  I don’t think playing classic Lutheran hymns by a band makes the music “evangelical” or anthropomorphic or less focused on Christ as the center of worship.  I suppose there is always someone or some artsy fartsy person who is “feeling” the music or someone noticing the devil’s chords or deciding that distortion on a guitar in some interlude is taking the focus off of Christ.  But for me personally, I don’t see the difference in the song being played by a band or a church organ.  It’s the words that count..not the style. I’ll be honest here, although I recognize the dangers in the warnings of music style affecting worship, I believe the problem of letting this happen is simply weakness or Christian immaturity.

However, this leads me to what I have come to dislike a decent amount and that is in finding good modern songs. So I have no problems with modern styles but I have a growing problem with modern song content.  Except for a few modern songs we do that I totally dislike for their over sanctified messages( with no reference to the justification that would prompt such sanctified activities) , the songs we play are reasonably acceptable in content (yet certainly not rich in content…but they don’t totally fail).  However I think I dislike the praise song format more and more.  The endless refrains and repetition…OMG.  Is it bad if the sound guy loses track of where we are and just is waiting for a song to mercifully end? Yeah if I never heard another song in church written after say…1940 I would be happy.  I would love to transform Victory to play band versions of TLH.  That would be sort of Koine-like I suppose.  I know I am in the minority at Victory on this as I get older and more curmudgeon-like.  I hear people asking for more modern content and asking the questions why we keep those old hymns in there.  Sigh.  The irony is that I have been in traditional services where the music is focused and on message but the sermon was often poorly focused.  Here I get great sermons but our music is poorly focused.

In another post I will put down my thoughts on larger debates within the WELS as I have also transformed a bit on some of these brewing issues as well.

Victory Update

To refresh your memories, just over 5 years ago we left our large congregation of St. Paul’s Lutheran in Muskego to join a small band of people which was about 12 in size at the time to start a mission congregation in Franklin, WI.  This congregation was started as a daughter congregation of St. Paul’s and is a bit different from most other congregation starts in the WELS.  The first goal was that this church would not be the typical daughter congregation which simply became a new regionally convenient church for existing WELS members.  This mission was chartered to be a church trying to reach the unchurched in a rapidly growing suburban area.  This mission was started with only a few people and hardly any money.  We called a pastor who had hardly anyone or anything as resources to help him get going. 

However God has blessed this mission and it is growing and doing what it has been chartered to do.  The list of weird things that can happen to a nomadic mission church is becoming ever longer. The Polonia Soccer Club provided many such stories involving sewage, furnaces, power outages, and the dealings with the aftermath of countless Quinceañera’s.  Now we have been meeting in Showtime Cinema for a couple of years and our troubles are different.  Now we have to change our Bible class time because of the theater’s contractual obligations to show JarJar Binks the proper number of times per day.  Seriously..who needs to see JarJar Binks at 11:30 on a Sunday….or ever.

I continue to help with the sound system control and more recently in beginning our webcast streaming. It was unfortunate that right when I was beginning the streaming, that Marcus Cinema’s bought Showtime and discontinued the internet connection. So now I am creating a webcast after the fact and posting it instead of being able to stream it live. Oh well. I still host and maintain the website and podcasts etc. Katie is an active member of the Bible Quest team at least for seven more weeks.

However the congregation continues to evolve.  We have been self-supporting for the last three years. We have added a half-time pastor and a half-time Children’s Ministry Director.  We have roughly 200 members and even our 270 person theater is getting more and more crowded each Sunday.  We have incorporated and are in the process of separating our books from big mamma St. Paul’s, Muskego who has graciously been providing bookkeeping and office staff support for us all this time.  We are in the midst of finalizing a 17 acre land purchase at the intersection of Loomis and Ryan Road.  This will be exciting to begin the next phase in finding a permanent home.  Honestly it is tough to find space to accommodate this many people in southwestern Franklin.  Also it will be nice to not have to pull out an entire church from behind the screens and setup up everything every Sunday morning and then take it all down after the service.  However I’m sure the building part will still be another 5 years away if I was to guess. 

The Children

The oldest got married last February as noted in the post, "The Wedding".  Zach married his high school sweetheart after 5 years of annoying her.  There were a couple of years in there where they were not dating, but you'd hardly know it from the phone minutes and long conversations at the weekly parties etc.  I would note several ironic points in this period of "not dating" is that even when Zach made a few attempts with other girls in his circle they would tell them "Oh I couldn't date you, You and Chrissy aren't done yet."  Well their prediction came true and they are now married.  They live in Jacksonville, NC where Zach is still stationed at New River Air Station.  Chrissy is a daycare teacher at a local daycare. They have a nice duplex there which is now filled with the sounds of a baby....kitten.  Well and also Momma Cat, the stray cat that adopted them and likes to produce kittens.  We got to visit with our grandcat and great grandkitten over Christmas as they came with Zach and Chrissy for the holidays.  Zach has 1.75 years left with the Marine Corps and is looking forward to getting out.  He is working on an entrepreneurial venture that I think has some promise and hope that he can launch right into it.

The middle child.  Oh good Lord, the middle child.  Since Katie graduated she has been working as a daycare teacher.  First she was at a large daycare center in Muskego and now is at the School of Early Learning at St. Paul, Muskego,  the latter situation being a much more pleasant environment.  She has been much happier at SOEL and the higher standards, more attentive ratios, and just overall dedication to the kids there.  However these positions have only been a temporary stepping stone to Katie's choice for a future.  On March 27th, Katie is leaving for Basic Training for the Air Force in San Antonio, TX.  She has been waiting for the right career within the Air Force to open up and she finally got it.  Her position will be as a Linguist.  We don't find out the language she will be assigned until just before going to the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, CA after Basic training is done.  It is a tough school and position.  Depending on the language she could be there for a year to up to 20 months for the most difficult languages.  She tested very high so she could get any of the top tier (difficult) languages such as Korean, Chinese, or Arabic.  Arabic has been the most common assignment out of those three, but Korean might be a significant focus these days. After Katie is done with school she will fulfill a 6 year obligation sitting somewhere in the world, or in an airplane above the world, listening and reading conversations and translating them for Air Force intelligence.  I have said this before that God created something that naturally tells both the child and the parents when they need to leave the house.  That time is now.  For Zach it was 3 months before he graduated from high school.  I realize that in modern society children don't leave well and they come back etc..modern society is stupid.  In any case I'm proud of Katie for sorting out what she wants and taking control of her future and just going for it.  It is nice to have a multi-branch family as well.  There are more marathons to run now.

Ike with his ever present Michelle, a Psuedo child of ours and

Ike's best friend in the world

The baby has been on cruise control.  He continues his online high school.  It is going well. There is always a little butt kicking needed to make sure everything is in by the last day of the semester but in general it is going well.  We accelerated his classes so that he can finish high school in three years.  That means that this year he is a Junior.  This also catches him up a bit to his age group and all his friends who are Juniors and Seniors as well.  He has worked at a sports card shop for a while and now is a dishwasher at a nice restaurant in Hales Corners.  When not working or doing school he spends a ton of time with his friends.  For a kid who is not in a brick and mortar school, he far exceeds the other kids in his social interaction.  He had a girlfriend there for a while but he is a picky and particular person and only the right person will do.  Ike is planning on joining the military as well after high school.  However he should not exceed God's natural desire for him to leave the house at the appointed time.  That time is no later than July 15th, 2013.  The question will be which branch will he join.  I don't think it will be the Marines but it might.  It might be a toss-up between Air Force and Army based on which has the best career paths. The Marines might make it in there even if Zach is a negative Nancy on the concept of the military life in general and Marines specifically.  It is true that a passive aggressive, technical minded person who is not a "Moto-Marine" may not appreciate the structure they provide for the common jarhead, however, Ike is a different animal in this respect and very well may be more Marine-like. However if Ordnance Disposal doesn't work out perhaps he can work as the activities director on a cruise ship.

Further Thoughts on Corporate IS

NM is a great company.  I won't deny them that.  However, in the nearly 10 years I was there the majority of IS has changed  into a very heavy, process driven, risk averse, department that is greatly hampered by their consensus driven approach to development. There are pockets of some "entrepreneurial" software development and experimental projects and of course the Architect group itself that I would have liked to get into but these positions are few and far in-between.  Ultimately you are still part of a larger organization that is becoming sloth-like and fat.

I think a big thing for me was that philosophically I was not anywhere close to where NM has gone.  NM IS has gone totally post-modern.  If you want to talk about the art of framing conversations and understanding one another by creating a shared understanding well This is the place for you.  There is no right or wrong (but you are wrong if you act without a shared understanding) and hence decisions cannot be made unless the entire team has come to a common understanding.  That's at the project level.  This drives me insane.  If we were agile we could make the call, get something out there and iteratively improve the idea as it is flushed out or change it if needed.  Instead we talk about it for weeks till we all feel warm and fuzzy inside. 

At the IS management level it includes coming to a common understanding on the process we follow.  They tried "healthy Conflict" as an IS virtue for a while but that was squashed quickly along with the new innovative VP they brought in who was advocating it.  So depending on the manager of course you either go with the flow of this happy land of consensus building and creating shared understandings or you are not onboard with the program and anathema to IS.  I had some good managers in the past that appreciated the "healthy conflict" I brought to the table but those managers have all but disappeared.  What I ended up with was a dyed in the wool, 100% post-modern loving, company woman who just got her masters in something as well.  Being a new manager, she only read the company line out of the manual.  We did not have a shared understanding.  So it was just as well I moved on because there would be no joy in continuing our relationship.  I understand the kind of person I am.  I know I was not what NM IS wanted and was continually forced to decide whether I should just play the game or not. 

I am what a small shop wants because they need to make a profit and meet deadlines on limited budget.  I like to surround myself with people who are opposite myself and argumentative.  No shrinking violets and wallflowers please.  No one who is timid, shy, or intimidated and for heaven's sake...this is software development...it's not personal. You don't need to cry if we don't like your idea or we change it or shred it. Better luck next time.  One of the best development situations I had at NM was with a friend of mine from Russia.  He is cantankerous, blunt, and very talented.  He had no problems telling it like it was.  I can always hear him in my head in his Russian accent saying "That's just stupid.. you should design it this way..."  In another conversation with a Manager and a Director in the room he said something to the effect of, "Let me make this simple so a manager can understand..."  It was beautiful.  I think the accent is what I need.  I could say anything with an accent and then I'm just eccentric.

I guess it goes to my nature that you should stand for what you believe in.  There is right and there is wrong.  When something needs to be done...the most important thing is to do something.  If it fails, I'm fine with that and I'll take responsibility if it needs to be taken but then go forward and try it again and learn from your mistakes and keep trying. Everything is not personal.  You don't need to make me feel warm and fuzzy to go ahead with something.  Actually, I find that the best people in the various roles are the ones I dislike the most and would totally hire myself.  That project manager who bugs the crap out of you for statuses and updates yet has a handle on every deliverable and dependency?  Love that PM even if I hide from her and physically cringe when she pops up at the desk.  Combative App Engineer who tells you your designs are flawed?  Love it.  However I think the large corporate atmosphere is totally self-absorbed into the post-modern thought and these kinds of things literally blow their minds in an era where we should be about toleration, consensus and accepting.

Well in keeping with the theme, the most important part is that I'm happy right? ;-)  Well I am and it really has made a difference in how I feel.

The Job

2011 was a big change for me in the career front.  Well the change was really only for the last two months but changing jobs was a big deal. For the last 9.5 years I have been working at Northwestern Mutual in essentially 3 different roles.  The first 3 years I worked in Enterprise Business Intelligence designing large enterprise data warehouses and reporting databases.  The next 3 years I spent reverse engineering, re-engineering and improving an enterprise content management system consisting of a diverse mix of technology making it intricate and almost exciting.  The last 3.5 years I spent as an application architect/application engineer working on various projects from batch run web services, and a number of Websphere applications.

Although those last 3.5 years started out promising with interesting web apps to create with a good amount of autonomy and even a touch of cutting edge that was quickly derailed when the economy tanked.  NML froze most every new project I was to be working on.  As a way to preserve local employees, they sent a few hundred contractors back to India and diverted resources such as myself, who had no projects to work on anymore, to fill the gaps left by departed contractors.  This started a 2.5 year slide into software development doldrums.  I got some roles that were not a great fit for an Application Architect and subsequently lost a lot of interest in the field.  For a while there, I would have taken a job at Walmart and been happier.  Add on all the new direction for IS, the little box I was relegated to with the use of "Career Frameworks" and the heavy move to what I guess adds up to any standard big company process driven overhead BS, and I just was dying inside.

So after years of being hidden away and never having a thought of looking for another job, a former acquaintance hooked me up with a company looking for a .NET Web Solutions Architect.  It sounded great but I had one phone interview and hadn't heard anything for a while.  The thought that I could look elsewhere did fuel my interest in checking out the job market and seeing what was out there.  Well in the realm of technology there is not a job shortage.  I put a resume out there and I was getting calls daily for contracting positions in various technologies.  I applied for a few permanent positions at the behest of various headhunters and had some phone interviews for a few of them.  This was handy because I was going to be picky and I didn't want to settle plus I needed the interview practice.  I found that often the job as initially presented is not what the job really is.  The position at Kohls was just NM but even more limited in scope. The position at Heiler, although work from home and well-paying,  really was nothing than a road warrior java coder. The position at nVisia seemed decent but I was interviewed by the Java guy for a .Net position.

In any case, the first position I interviewed for called back and we arranged several more interviews and after another long wait I finally got the call while I was out in Washington DC for the Marine Corps Marathon.  In getting to know this company, I realized it was exactly what I was looking for and that I would be able to yank my career right back to where I had wanted it to be in the first place.  I now have an architect position,  I am free from most corporate BS.  I am rated on my ability to deliver on scope schedule and cost and I have the decision making authority to make the call and it...it just happens.  It still blows me away after two months.  It shows the level of how entrenched I was becoming that it is like a new miracle every day that what I do directly impacts a project or that I can just make the call and it is acted upon.  Such a great relief.

Ghetto Running

My winter routine this year is that each day I run the 7 miles from my downtown Milwaukee office to home.  Most of this run is through a questionable part of town which gradually improves as I increase the street numbers.  Early in my run, I was amused when I apparently quite stealthily ran around three teenage girls in the Third Ward and one of them screamed a piercing scream as only a teenage girl can.  The other two just laughed.  I laughed too.

However, midway home I had my first incident in two years of running/biking this route.  As strange as it may sound, a stereotypical ghetto car came along and a stereotypical gentleman with traditional ghetto garb that seriously lacked a belt, leaned out and whipped something at me.  It hit me squarely in the back of my backpack thankfully and bounced off.  He was not aware that I am aptly protected by my tablet and I'm pretty sure my laptop can stop bullets. 

I give my less than civil, small minded ethnic friend 3 points for the well placed hit.  Nailing a target from a moving vehicle to that degree of accuracy was admirable and they might consider any offers the Brewers might make to augment their pitching staff.  However, I have to deduct 5 points for using his welfare baby's gerber peas as the projectile of choice.  So I salute you my friend and tonight I will toast your future with a 40oz and a bucket o' chicken as you so carefully pelt those who excercise with your baby's food.

The Health

Continuing my recap of 2011 I wanted to cover my hobby that consumes the most time which is running and biking. I had started the process of losing 65lbs on March 15th, 2010. On September 15th, 2010, I accomplished that goal. Since that time, I have been maintaining my running and biking habits. From April to December I bike 100-140 miles a week. I run year-round about 35 miles a week unless I'm training for a marathon. I have become partial to doing Duathlons which is a combination of running and biking but I also do fun runs and a winter running series of 10K's. In May of 2011 I ran the Madison Half Marathon. In July I did a 175 mile bike ride for Lymphoma. In October, I completed the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC.

I am now two races into the 5 race Winter running series but am not performing as well as last year due to some recurring calf pulls that come and go ever since the marathon. In any case, I am staying in the routine and maintaining my weight around 180 and my health numbers are all great. Here and there I throw in the snowboarding and this year I would like to get that in a bit more. It feels good to reclaim my health, and breath, and energy but I can tell the moment I stop it will not go well. Guess I need to keep it up for life.

The Wedding

So one of the big events occupying the first part of this year was my eldest son’s wedding. I know I previously posted back around Easter 2010 that Zach proposed to Chrissy at the beautiful Orton Plantation. Although I have a lot of pictures of the plantation you might want to watch Firestarter with a very young Drew Barrymore and note that the compound she blows up and destroys at the end of the movie is Orton Plantation. You will be shocked to learn that she didn’t actually blow it up with fire created in her mind.

I must admit that I pleasantly avoided most parts of wedding planning. From what I observed this is a grueling exercise and should not be attempted by men. I simply needed to recover from the carpal tunnel created by checkwriting. I advised Zach to stay away in Jacksonville and avoid as much input as possible. I'd have to say that other than answering the question as to whether she looks fat in those jeans that offering wedding plan input is the next worse trap.

The wedding was February 26th and of course it snowed a couple of inches that day. There were no real hitches though and everything was beautiful. The service was great, the flowers were beautiful, the food was awesome, and my dance moves were the envy of the room. I apologize to all the people I did not really talk to. I admit that I spent most of the time on the dance floor and not mingling and chatting which is highly unusual for me. I wanted to enjoy the party though and I did fully. After the reception, I of course went to George Webb’s for a breakfast skillet and coffee with friends to help sober up before going to bed at 5:00am.

The next weekend, Ike and I as well as Chrissy’s brother-in-law Chris, assisted loading up all of Zach and Chrissy’s belongings and furniture in a trailer, pickup, and two cars. We headed out as a caravan to Jacksonville, NC where Zach had secured a duplex. It was an adventure in moving as of course it started raining from 3 hours before we left covering the entire route to NC until about an hour from Jacksonville. This forced us to use a tarp on the pickup to cover the furniture and it also caused a good 4 hour delay in travel time stopping to fix the tarps as they came loose so many times. Then of course there is Zach’s OCD car window cleaning problem and gas filling organizational issues that made for an extra hour of travel time. We did make it there and get them all moved in. Within a couple of days the house was in pretty good shape. I shall simply state that Zach didn’t exactly prepare the duplex for a fitting presentation for his new bride. I’d say his presentation resembled more of what you’d imagine if all of a Marine’s belongings were thrown in a blender and then dumped in various piles throughout the rooms. Chrissy was able to turn what looked like an Afghanistan land mine field into a home quickly.

Seven weeks later Karen and I visited for a long Easter weekend. The house was fixed up very nicely and we had a good time. Karen and I drove down in two cars. Karen drove the new used car we were bringing to Zach and Chrissy because Chrissy’s car had blown its engine a few short weeks after being there. I drove the 4Runner pulling Zach’s RX7 on a car dolly. This is where I comment on the little piece of joy one finds when their children move out and take their stuff with them. That car had occupied a space in my garage for 4 years. NOW that space was cleared up for Katie to park her car in the garage. Sigh.

I'm Back?? Yes I'm Back!

Okay, so this blog has fallen into severe disrepair. It needs a resurrection. I have to admit the last two years I have been a bit more in a funk than even I was aware of. Life seemed humdrum and on cruise control. If you were to ask me what’s new I’m not sure I could come up with anything. I think my career was weighing heavily on me. Now that my career has taken a new direction I am feeling very different. So now I feel like moderately returning to spewing various bits of randomness. This last year really has contained enough life changes to get one thinking again. So I believe the next posts will be the year in review. However, I will post them in little topical bits and not one large and long post. It’s good to be back!!

Cool Droid Apps

As most of you know I am a technogeek. I have been exploring the new and exciting land of Droid and the many apps available to Droid smart phones. Here are a few apps I have found that are useful and cool.

Uverse (for those who are ATT Uverse subscribers). - set your DVR for shows anytime or visit the library to download certain shows to your phone to watch.

LogMeIn Ignition - this is an app that allows you a remote desktop connection to your home computer both through the web in a browser window bit also with this nifty Droid app on your phone. This works real well if I ever need to do a quick support task on my web server or access pictures or files on the personal pc.

BeyondPod - This app consolidates RSS feeds for news, blogs, and video and audio podcasts. One of the best apps for feed consolidation where it can handle all the feed activities without having to send you directly to the site.

There are other apps such as ShopSavy that scans bar codes and searchs for the same product online to find the lowest prices. Pretty handy on big electronic purchases. So far though these are the apps that have been useful to me. I guess just the fact that I am entering this blog post from my Droid is a bog deal compared to the old days.

Happy geeking out!!!

Crusader Update???

Alright I have been silent for many months in the area of debating those I affectionately named the Confessional Crusaders. It has been a lesson about be careful the terms you coin, you just might become one.

I have spent the time still observing debates but moreso just studying and absorbing than participating. I would like to announce that my views are quite a bit different and muted than they used to be when I took up the supposed arguments. So to update those who may care, here is a more revised statement on the issues I used to fight for so much in the past.

Contemporary Worship

Indeed we still participate at Victory and are active there. We are active there because I believe Victory is still true to its Lutheran origin. We work hard to maintain our Lutheran hymns in worship despite their being done in a contemporary way. We stick with the basic CW liturgy. We visibly and regularly promote the Sacraments and pastor still gives law/gospel sermons of his own creation (not hijacked from some non-dom site like lifechurch or groeschel). However, I will confess this, as the church grows the dangers of evangelicalism and non-dom’s that many have warned of are there and continually and increasingly require attention. Increasingly I hear comments by newer members who want to reduce the number of hymns and replace it with that ewwy gooey modern crap that use endless refrains to say absolutely nothing. Members who want to be even more contemporary than we are. Basically new Christians (praise God) that want the more emotion based worship (sigh!!) Now we are working on calling a second pastor and hopefully the introduction of a pastor that can work with new members and lead bible studies and congregation education can add more meat and potatoes to the new Christians we are gaining. This is ever so important so as not to develop a church that has no knowledge of what it means to be Lutheran.

Doctrines and Trends

This is my biggest fear. That if the vigor of maintaining Lutheranism ever waned at Victory, that it too will fall the way of other WELS churches that seem to be caving in totally to the non-dom or emergent church model. It is sad enough to see some relatives fall away from the doctrinal soundness of the confessions, and forgoing the benefits of the sacraments, the dangers of decision theology, and focusing on all the sanctified living kind of thing of a Baptist non-dom but at least it is clear because it is a non-dom. You expect a kind of “feel good” church light in doctrine and heavy on goo when you think of that model. It is so much worse if a Lutheran church pretends to be Lutheran but in its essence is a non-dom. That is the sad part of what I have been observing more recently in some WELS experiments.

I think that a number of WELS churches and ministries are starting to cross the lines of Lutheranism. It is sad that we are not doing more to draw some lines in the sand. I have heard some sermons at some of the oft cited synod “bad boys” churches and have to admit they were poor. Basically more about sanctified living and vague gospel notions. No law…very light on the proclamation of the gospel work of Christ as a response to the preaching of the law. I think it is unfortunate these kinds of churches are not called on the carpet more often. There is no excuse for borrowing from other denominations for sermon series. There is no excuse for preaching a watered down message filled with sanctification and “goodness”. It is sad that a church who I think does traditional Lutheran music in a contemporary way probably the best as can be done, then blows it big time with a sermon that is filled with blehhh. However it’s not just the churches the WELS is cropping up all kinds of ministries…particularly on campuses…that if adopted to the WELS mainstream will put the confessional stance of the synod in serious jeopardy.

There is a particular debate that continues nearly non-stop regarding universal objective justification that I must say I have learned a lot about and definitely feel the synod should clean up its position on. Their statements on this doctrine are sloppy and misleading for some. I think most people like me who were confirmed 30 years ago (using the old brown KJV Luther’s catechism from days of yor ) the doctrine is clear and often in the debates we are all arguing for the same thing using different definitions for terms trying to find a way to make the current statement on justification from the WELS fit the doctrines we learned years ago. In this department I have appreciated the debate and the clarification of terms. I regret many of my statements of two years ago and I will say that I have grown a lot in this area. I have elected Joe Krohn to be my spokesman in this area and rarely need to add more.

To one degree I wonder what difference the minute distinctions being made effect the day-to-day life of the WELS churches as so far I have not seen a WELS church take the implications of a poor understanding of UOJ to the ultimate extreme warned about and illustrated in the Blogosphere. However I guess I do see it illustrated in what is loosely called a Lutheran (or even Christian) church, the ELCA. So whereas I don’t see the WELS sloppiness on the issue leading to such dire consequences…it is something to watch out for… just like those members who want to take the church the non-dom route. I guess as I read out there somewhere “What is the harm of clarifying this one up all nice and tidy?”

What does this sum up to? I am definitely a more cautious individual and I scrutinize a lot more. If I hear a song played in worship that reeks of sanctification I call it out. If a sermon is weak in law or gospel I make a note of it. I want to promote the sacraments more. I am studying a lot more and am more cautious about a blanket endorsement of all things contemporary. Restraint and respect for Lutheran doctrine are still necessary and even moreso today. We need to police ourselves better and resist the urge of ecumenism and doctrinal compromise. To undo the statement of Groeshel who said “we must do everything short of sinning to reach people.” I say not true as ignoring doctrine in order to reach people is not doing any Christian a service. So I guess when I use the term Confessional Crusader these days I don’t mean it with derision as I use to. I have found it is indeed something we need to keep close and study or indeed we will lose the truth restored to us at the reformation one little piece at a time.

A Niedfeldt Update

Ahhh…It has been a long time. However I am not writing this today to make any new commitments to blogging more. I doubt my current trend will improve. First and foremost is that I just don’t have the free time to blog. I do have time to ponder things but rarely have the time put them online. Work has been extremely busy the last year. I have also taken on some personal projects that take more free time out of my day.

My main “project” has been my personal health. On March 15th I restarted running after an abbreviated return to running in the fall of 2009 when I re-injured my Achilles (after partially tearing it in the spring of 2009) I ran in the mornings with the track team and added an additional run at night. In June I added biking to work. Followed by running at night. In July I started doing fun runs, and in August Duathlons. I also coach CC at St. Marcus and at HOPE High School to Mid-October. I bike about 120-140 miles a week. I run about 35 miles a week. I have a schedule of fun runs including two half marathons coming up for the winter. When I finally have to put the bike away for winter, I will keep running but will spend more time in the weight room. I have realized now that all the fat is gone that I actually have no upper body muscle. A big throw back to high school days for sure.

All this athletic training has taken up some time to be sure. However, the results have been dramatic. I have lost 66 pounds as of today. I am 4 pounds from my goal of getting to 170. I hope to have this goal accomplished by November 1st. I have changed my diet too to eliminate excessive fat and sugar. Nothing crazy, most of my diet is to avoid the obvious bad stuff and keep the portions in a reasonable amount. These results have been good too in that my cholesterol has dropped from 232 down to 178. My blood pressure is 109/66. My heart rate is 49. My BMI is 24 is in the middle of normal weight.

So now that the weight and health goals are close to where I want them, I have been focusing on the competition of running and the Duathlons (running and biking). I have been improving and placing in the top 10 percent of the races I’ve been in. My best official 5K time is 18:54 where I finished 26th out of 350, although I got 17:53 at the 3 mile mark of the Briggs and Al’s run last week. My best Duathlon has been 1:24:45 where I finished 37th out of 791 but I finished 9th overall last weekend at the Pewaukee Duathlon with a time of 1:10:44 on a smaller bike distance. My goals for next summer are to achieve under 30 minutes for 5 miles. 4:45 for one mile. And 1:17 for a 2/20/2 Duathlon.

The most recent family events have just been Zach being home for two weeks on leave after he completed a 1 month long exercise out at sea. It was a nice visit. He got his RX7 running again after being stored in the garage for two years. We got the turbo in the Volvo fixed from my epic vacation in June. My car had been sitting in the garage unused as I am on my bike for everything. That was a fun repair to do. He finally was able to do the engagement pictures with Chrissy. We also tested a restaurant for the rehearsal dinner. Although Chrissy is dealing with the brunt of the wedding planning, it is definitely a fun thing going on in our lives. I find it fun of course as my role is limited.

Kt is working full-time as a preK4 assistant teacher at a daycare center in Muskego. She works with Chrissy actually. It is a challenging job and Kt spends a lot of evenings napping to recover. She will be attending classes in the Spring semester as well working on early childhood education. Kt and her friend Bonnie are working on a plan to get an apartment together and live some adventures. Right now they are saving money and maybe by summer they will be able to execute their plan.

Ike has been taking to his virtual online high school. He has all A’s and a B right now. That’s a big deal!! He is also on pace and taking responsibility for his assignments. He has said he sort of misses having the social parts of school readily available to him like passing times, lunch, goofing off in study hall, etc.. However he says the education part of it is far better. He is filling in social time by visiting his various friends from various schools and packing it in on the weekends. He also likes being able to do school at night, weekends, stay up late sometimes, wake up at 9:00am or whenever basically. He can run and get a snack whenever he likes or even sit in a “lecture” in his underwear while chewing gum if he so chooses. Ike said the best part has been that he has the time he needs to complete all his assignments. Often his problems in the past were not a product of understanding but more a result of time limits. So far this has been a good thing. It does strip out a lot of the “nonsense” of school and focuses just on the education. There is no dealing with dress codes, tardies, unexcused absences, scheduling, computer labs, cell phone use, teacher access (in virtual school they are available 9 hours a day…and even longer by multiple methods such as email, text, or chat), etc. Even if he is “talking” in an online lecture through chat or voice when he is not supposed to…the teacher can simply disable him and voila …classroom is controlled. In General this choice seems to be working out very well.

So that will have to do for an update for now. Perhaps by Christmas I’ll have another one.

Busy Summer

Summer has become very busy all of the sudden.  The 4th of July weekend was jam packed.  I now need my work weeks to relax from the weekend.  Saturday I went for a 60 mile bike ride.  I thought it might be a stretch but I felt great afterwards.  I had been looking forward to it all week from when I invited myself along on a ride with Ron.  The Drumlin trail was a pretty sweet trail and it was a pleasant change from the Milwaukee roads I have been riding on. 

After that ride we scooted out to Madison for the Rhythm and Booms fireworks in Madison.  They are the "Best in the Midwest" for a reason.  I experimented taking pictures this year.  A few of them turned out pretty good and you can check them out here.  We left Karen in Madison with her parents so she could head up to theLake house with them in the morning.  Kt, Chrissy and I headed back to Milwaukee. 

Sunday morning I picked up Ike at 6:45am and then headed to Wind Lake to pick up a generator from Ron.  This is the generator that powers the Victory of the Lamb band float.  I did my usual routine of setting up at church in the morning at Showtime Cinema and then afterwards we had to take things down and get some sound equipment on the float for the Franklin 4th of July Parade.  This is the 4th year I have been in the parade and it is a lot of fun.  I don't have to do too much except make sure tha generator stays on and there is no feedback or harsh tones.

After the parade, we headed up to the Lake house to relax a bit.  As we got within 3 miles of the house it began to rain and became overcast.  Oh well.  I did sleep on the porch so I could listen to the rain.  It served a dual purpose of being good for my back that has been sore due to bike hunching and fat man running.

My running and biking are producing some results now.  I have lost 40lbs since March 15th from a high of 240lbs.  That makes my excercise a lot easier these days.  It also makes my clothes fit.  I still have a goal of 25 more by February 26th.  I'm sure I can make it much earlier than that...I just need to keep my level of excercise up in the winter months.  My goal was to be able to get to a level of fitness that would be fitting for a CC coach as well as match the charts as to what my ideal weight should be.  That would include a wedding and a 25th High School reunion next year to stay trim for.  I have been working on reducing portions on my eating. My goal is just to keep the excercise/diet balance going. 

In the short term though I am training for a 5K on July 24th and a 10K on July 25th.  Then we'll see about maybe a Bike ride like the Best Damn Bike ride or something.  I think the coaching CC at Hope School will make for a very physical fall. without trying to add additional runs in.

The 8th and Final Day of My Summer Vacation

6:45AM,  I awake, bu not as lively as in the past.  It was only 5 hours of sleep.  I go downstairs and say hi to Eric and Luke, his middle child.  Eric offered food but we had to get going and I didn't want to put him out.  He said he'd make pancakes.  Instead I declined but I promised Luke that his dad would make him pancakes.

7:30AM,  I prepare to turn on the car and smoke up the entire northwestern quadrant of Broomfield.  Nothing...hmmmm.  Perhaps the car just needs time to warm up.  My mission was to drive to WalMart first and get enough oil to last the day.  It was killing me buying individual quarts at $4 each.  I pull into what was perhaps the largest Super Walmart I've ever seen.  As is my luck, I enter the store the precise longest distance from the Auto department.  A mile later or so I get to the oil aisle,  This is not to be confused with the oil isle in the Gulf.  I purchase three 5 quart containers of oil.  In the parking lot I top off the oil with one of my last two remaining quart bottles.  We head off.  Curiously though I still see no smoke from our car.  Not even the little cloud bursts on acceleration.

9:30AM,  I stop to check the oil after 130 miles.  It is down a quarter of a quart.  God bless America...well and Sweden in this case.

10:30AM,  We stop one more time.  I check the oil.  No movement.  We are at the border of Nebraska and I hand the reigns over to Ike.  He's a man now and I give him the distinct pleasure, honor and privilege of driving across Nebraska. From this point forward I will describe my impression of Nebraska:   zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

2:30PM,  I wake up as we need gas.  I check the oil.  It's down a half a quart.  Our car is healing itself.  Later on we decide it is a combo of the sealant taking some effect overnight along with a change in altitude making the turbo not blow so much oil.  Back to Nebraska...Ike continues the honor of driving. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

5:30PM,  Omaha, NE and we gas up again.  This time I take over driving because I am SUPER excited to get Iowa and Illinois for my shift.  I will now describe driving through Iowa:


12:15AM,  Screw it, I can't come up with anything.  A zombie could've driven that stretch.  I arrive home.  The car made it.  I am tired.  Karen has arrived home before me from her class in Iowa.  She worked herself into a sweat cleaning up all the cat boxes and messes the cats made while we were gone.  I unload the car but I will wait until after church in the morning to start on laundry, house cleaning and yardwork.  Honestly it will be a welcome change from vacation.  If you need some oil, I've got 15 quarts in the back of my car.  I'll fix the turbo in a couple of weeks. 

1:30AM,  I go to bed.  I wonder what Bob is doing right now.  Will the creepy beach stalker ever find a girl of legal age that likes him?  I hope Lisa can survive another year in Cedar City.  What is the percentage of Prius owners in California?  Are the people stuck on the freeway in Victorville even home yet?  I might just have to take a road trip soon and visit all my friends to find out.

The 7th Day of My Summer Vacation

4:17AM,  The alarm goes off.  It is early....and dark....and early.  I get up and start loading the Silverado.  I take a few things for the car food wise but leave as much as I can for the girls.  Ike is somewhat surly getting up.  However for at least 6-7 years there hasn't been one morning where he hasn't been surly so actually this is not unique.  I get Kt up too as she has to come with us down to San Diego Airport to rent her a car to use for the next 4 days.  Bonnie had purchased a danish coffee cake thing from the store which I take half of.  I am finally up early ...but it is too early for inferior waffles.

4:40AM,  Zooming into San Diego.  Not a lot of traffic now.  There are cars on the road though.  They are just Priuses.

5:00AM,  We check in to rent the car.  I get the insurance and was prepared to pay the "young driver fee" to add Kt as a second driver.  That of course keeps everything covered for liability and such.  However a "young driver" for Thrifty is only down to 21 years old.  So Kt could not be a legal second driver on the car.  For a moment, I pondered the risk of what I'd be liable for if she smashed it or got hit and I wasn't driving the car....but then I figured "Hey what could possibly go wrong for a Niedfeldt?"  So I drove it out of the lot into the very next driveway to the "Evil Gas Station from Hell".  There I handed a....wait for it....wait for it...HYUNDAI Sonata over to her ever so cautious 18 year old hands.

The Evil Gas Station from Hell was a risky place to transfer this car to Kt.  In this lot a mere 18 months before, nearly to the day, we filled a rental car with gas to return to Thrifty right next door.  Literally 20 feet separated our rental car and the Thrifty lot.  After filling our gas tank to return the car, my wife backed up from the pump and mysteriously a pylon protecting the Natural Gas filling station rammed itself into the back of our car.  After a week sitting quite unimpressed in the American shoddiness of a Chrysler 300 we returned it with its bumper maligned and tailight broken.  Thank God for having a legal second driver and the optional insurance.  In retrospect I think that was a good indicator of the future direction of Chrysler.

5:20AM,  Ike and I head out to return our truck to Cedar City by 1:00pm Mountain time.  Can't afford any delays.  Ike is not aware that we have headed out.  He slept through the drive into San Diego, the car rental, and actually most all of California and wakes up around the Nevada border.

8:00AM, We pass Victorville, CA where an accident on the West bound lanes has closed the highway because of a death.  The wanted to open it by 8:00am but that hasn't happened.  All the cars are exiting at an offramp.  I start watching the odometer for the distance.  9.5 miles later I see the end of the backup with plenty more cars adding on. 

9:00AM,  I hear another report about how they hope to have the highway open soon.  Wow, I believe had I been going that direction that this nice little truck would have been doing some desert offroading.  Insanity.

10:30AM, We are rolling into Las Vegas,  we have 145 miles to Cedar city and two hours to get there.  However, I sure wish I had a Prius because we needed gas. $70 of gas later and two egg Mcmuffins and we were headed eastbound and down loaded up and truckin. Ah we gonna do what they say can't be done. We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there, I'm eastbound just watch old bandit run. 

12:00PM (MDT)  We hit the 29 miles of AZ.  I love God's creation but the AZ DOT has put down some crazy windy roads through canyons with nice drop-offs and they are not as zippy as I would like.

1:02PM we pull up to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Cedar City, UT.  There is a HYUNDAI ACCENT...now wouldn't that have been nice to have... sitting next to the office with a vacuum cleaner running near it, and a radio, cleaning supplies, and the car has two doors open, the keys are in it and the car is RUNNING.  The sign on the office door says "Be back in 20 minutes"  Now needless to say people do not leave their cars open, running, with their vacuums running, in Milwaukee very often.  This town seems different that way.  The temptation was that if I left them the pickup perhaps they would not remember there was a Hyundai in its place.  I was thinking of how excited Bob would be about my new Hyundai.

1:18PM,  Lisa shows up having taken another car through the car wash.  She was dressed quite nicely and looked about 21.  She had long blonde hair and lots of jewelry.  She was essentially....hot. Basically there was hardly one thing that made this girl look like she belonged in Cedar City, UT.  So as she took us back to Superior Auto to pick up the Volvo I asked her if she was from around here.  She said, "Nooooooo, I'm from San Mateo, CA and I'm just here while my husband finishes up college."  Her look of despair at being trapped in this little town in god-forsaken nowhere said a lot.  She said that when he graduates next May they are moving back to CA.  She did not like the weather or the lack of....everything.  I told that back home in San Mateo I bet that Hyundai would have been Gone, Baby gone.  The only thing more attractive would've been a Prius.

2:00PM,  I go to the office to pay for the car.  HOLY CRAP!  $300 bucks for...wait for it...plugs, wires, and an oil change with air cleaner and oil filter of course.  I guess there is an advantage to being in the middle of nowhere.  That took care of the misfiring.  However there was one problem we had to nurse the car home,  They could not fix one remaining problem and it was the one that blew all the white smoke.  I had blown an oil seal on the turbo and scads of oil was getting blown into the exhaust.  Although the misfiring had been fixed by my replacing my nearly burnt away spark plugs and affected wires, there was still significant power loss from my weakened turbo.  With enough oil we could get the car home without cracking the engine block because it used all the oil.

2:40PM,  We went 60 miles.  We are putting up enough smoke that even BP can't burn that much oil off the Gulf.  I check the oil.  Down 3 quarts.  Holy crap.  This is going to be expensive.

3:20PM, We went another 70 miles.  Down 3 quarts.  I find a product called STP Stop Leak. A thick goopy oil that is supposed to moisterize and gunk up your seals to fill leaks.  Only 450 miles to go...TODAY!!  Cars now drop far back from us because visibility is poor.  When we go up hills the car lacking power often slows to a top speed of 35mph.  Cars are careening off mountain passes due to lack of ability to see the road.

4:20PM,  Another 70 miles.  Down 2.5 quarts.  We finally get to a very long stretch of highway with mild hills and stretches in the valleys of the basin.  This eases the stress from long climbs up mountains.

5:10PM, We go almost 90 miles.  Car is only down 2 quarts.  Now the car is relatively smoke free in overdrive and only puts out colorful bursts of smoke on downshifting or upshifting. I felt like a silver, noxious cigar driving down the highway.

6:40PM, 120 miles this time.  just under 2 quarts.  Looking good as we are about to enter Colorado.

9:00PM,  We had some nice valleys to travel in but we are now hitting some of the more aggressive parts of the Rockies.  Lots of long mountain highways and we literally crawl over some of them at a top speed of 25mph.

9:20PM,  I notice two State Patrol cars have two different people pulled over on this windy mountain stretch.  Interesting considering how little police are in the west.  A few miles later I see two State Patrol cars with people pulled over on the other side.   As I notice this I see a State Patrol in my rearview mirror.  I move over to the right hand lane to let him pass only to see him pull behind me.  Oh brother.  I have a feeling that the problem will be my rolling environmental disaster.  Corporal Anderson was a big boy.  I call him Corporal Anderson because his title was a Corporal. I called him Anderson because he he looked exactly like Louie Anderson.  I swear to God I could have killed the man and ended the entire stop simply by throwing a donut over the side of the mountain.  His little partner goes screaming by to catch yet another motorist.  Cpl Anderson had two important points to make.  First he said, "You were driving in the left lane."  I said "Yep" (I have been driving in the left lane for 4000 miles up to this point or more than 500,000 miles in 26 years but who's counting)  He said, "Were you aware that that is passing lane and you have to move over by law?"  I said, "Nope" (Well of course I know thats a law...and if my turbo was working, passing is all I'd be doing to people and you'd be stopping me for speeding.  Plus my wife has pointed out your concern to me for ...26 years...about that very issue).  He said, "Do you know your car is also belching a lot of smoke?"  "Yep"  Cpl Anderson asks, "Where are you headed?"  "Denver. Sleeping overnight at a friends.  Only an hour and half left."  Again his concern is overwhelming, "How long have you been driving?" "We have been on the road for 16 hours."  "Are you two switching off driving?"  Without missing a beat my son chimes in "Yessir!" (I had not let him drive as I was very pre-occupied babysitting the car and negotiating mountains and oil, etc..)  My child was an enthusiastic natural born liar.   I was so proud...and scared at the same time.  Cpl Anderson wrote me a stern warning about driving in the left lane which to this very day I am pondering and contemplating.  Mainly how Colorado legislature has too much time on their hands...OR...the sheer brilliance of getting the idiot slow people out of the left lane.  I'm sort of wishing WI would get all our fricken idiot Buick drivers and make them drive on the shoulder or something.

11:00PM  We hit the worst of the rockies and the Continental divide...which happens to be in the middle of a tunnel through a mountain.  I stop at the top of the last mountain climb and we do one last oil check.  Only one quart down after all those climbs.  Getting better.  Looks like we're going to make it to the flats of CO and beyond and make it home.  I think that last climb however took 15-20 minutes with a top speed of 17 mph in spots.

11:30PM,  We come over that last rise where the lights of Denver lie spread out before us.  What a sight.  we cruise up I-25 to Broomfield and pull into the Drs. Brucker driveway at 11:45pm.

1:30AM,  Ike and I finally go to bed after telling our tale of woe and catching up a bit with Eric.  Eric was/is one of my best friends and was my roomate from DMLC days.  He left after freshman year and I left after Sophomore.  He went to Univ of CO and then Univ of Texas and Post Doc at Rice University. He has a PhD in Chemistry and is married to Noel, a Pediatrician.  They represent two of the very few people with such exceptional educations that are still the coolest, interesting, down to earth, Christian, and warm-hearted people I know.  Tomorrow we have a quick 1000 miles to home.  But I am going to get my oil in bulk at Walmart this time and save some money.  Almost home.