Heather has never been, and as such there’s been some reservations about this camp, because most images and descriptions of it include some level of craziness (mud sliding, games with shaving creme, mass chaos), which is exactly the type of activity Heather is not a fan of. I’ve done my best (as well as Britain, mad props homegirl) to re-assure her that there is a place for her, and not everyone is crazy. In fact, there is a large swath of people who are very chill and quiet, and I think Heather could totally do well with those people.

On a related note, we had some Chinese food on Tuesday night, and each got a fortune cookie. Heather opened hers, and it read:

You’ll accomplish more later if you have a little fun this weekend.

Holy crap. I started shouting, something along the lines of: “SWEET BABY JESUS, THANK YOU FOR BESTOWING US WITH THIS EXCELLENT PROPHECY OF TRUTH.” It was all kind of blurry. I’m thinking about taking the fortune and scanning it in to the computar.

So anyway, see you next week. By the way, if you haven’t subscribed to the ericonceaday photostream (RSS LINK), you’re doing it wrong. Here’s a sample of some of the last two weeks best pics, that you’ve been missing.

Last week, I borrowed an axe from my brother-in-law Andrew, for the purpose of trying to chop some of the logs in our back yard into firewood. Jason, our pet teenager, and the son of the Mooney’s, Micah, came outside to watch the festivities.

I tried to make an animated gif using the “sports shot” from the Mooney’s camera. Sadly, I missed the log entirely the one shot that had me all the way down… oh well. Here’s the finished product. Jason is the esteemed photographer in the animated gif, with Becca and I taking the other pictures:

So there you have it. Interestingly, my brother-in-law just came over, and tried to split the log that you see in the last photo. He informed me that wood is typically not this tough to split, and that usually it gives way alot easier than the log I had was. Which is actually good, cause I’m chopping it more for exercise and less for any real need for mounds of firewood.

So last time I promised I would talk more specifically about how community looks in my current life. Perhaps you could call this some form of a ‘state of our community’ address.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, Heather and I have been part of a house church for nearly three years. One of the major draws of this way of doing church was the hope that we would be able to be in deeper intimacy and community with the people around us. I could certainly pop off all the theoretical reasons that come to mind about how that would work, but I think only just lately are we starting to get a grasp on that deeper form of community.

I don’t want it to sound as if we’re not making progress and God isn’t drawing us closer together, though. Since 2005, we’ve moved in with another couple and their two kids, and since were joined by a single teenage guy (I call him the pet teenager. awesome). The d10′s have two single guys living in their spare bedrooms, both awesome dudes. Our house church has grown closer together, and we’ve really connected with one another.

But more to the point, for the first time I can say I truly love my circle of friends. Definitely all of the people I see week-to-week, all the couples, all their awesome kids, all the single people. I’d do anything for any of them, and I believe they would do the same for me. I don’t know if in times past I would necessarily have said that. Maybe, maybe not. This may seem harsh if you knew me in the past, but I’m just trying to be honest.

As I said earlier, I think we’re just starting to get there, though. Two Tuesdays ago, we had a meeting about this very topic. One of the couples shared about how they yearned for closer friendships between us, where it wouldn’t be wierd or awkward for us to be more spontaneous and sharing more meals/time together. They encouraged us that perhaps some of the distance/boundaries between us had no place in the kingdom of God, and were more drawn from a worldly perspective on friendship.

Additionally, H and I could definitely develop deeper friendships with those we live with. Despite sharing many meals together, we rarely make time/use our time to really do more than just live in a routine. The d10′s and their two single fella’s are sort of crazy busy, and have eaten precious few meals together.

I’ll probably talk more about this topic in the future, or at least I hope to. Please feel free to share any thoughts you have about these things, good or bad.

It’s always been interesting to me to watch what happens to my friendships when someone I am change the social circles I am a part of, usually by moving. Time for a short history lesson. It’s 2003/2004, and Eric and Heather go to church in Smyrna, GA.

We had a fairly strong community of people, a college Sunday school class that I had generally assumed would stay friends for quite a long time. We went to each other weddings, even being ushers/groomsmens/cake-cutters/servants in said events.

Then Heather and I moved to Lawrenceville, and stopped attending the church. That was 4 years ago. To this day, there’s only one person I’ve stayed in close contact with from that church: Adam Walker.

So that was the summer of 2004, and we started attending a traditional church in Duluth. It was and is a great church, and we definitely found a place to minister both to the body itself as well as the community around it. Same situation, Sunday School class, spent time together inside and outside the church.

Then in the fall of 2005, the d10′s have this crazy idea that God wants them to start a house church. So we transition away from the church in Duluth, and have been part of that house church since. And from our time at the traditional church, there’s only one person I’ve kept in contact with: Josh Brown 1.

So what did I learn from those situations? At least for me, this rule stands: only the friendships with people in a social group that you can comfortably share a meal with alone will be able to survive the removal of the social group, usually by you or them leaving.

So you want to know who you’ll be friends with in 5 to 10 years? Look for the people who you eat dinner with, and it’s just you and them. If you only eat together or hang out when its following some event, or through a group of mutual friends, my short experience in life would seem to indicate that your friendship won’t last unless something changes.

Of all our friends, only the Walker’s and the Brown 1′s were we close enough to that our friendships could stand on their own, not on the link of another person or a church. And I still talk to Adam and Josh at least twice as week. Josh just moved ot Nashville, and Adam loves him some doorhangers long-time.

This is Part 1. Part 2 will look at how this plays out in my current social circle, which has to do with house church and how that’s changed/hasn’t changed things.

Quick notes:
- I’m not suggesting that just cause you ate dinner with a person or couple that your friendship is in someway sealed. There’s a level of closeness you reach with someone that makes meeting for a meal much more… comfortable.
- This post was birthed out of my reaction to reading the first half of Anna’s recent rant, appropriately entitled: “Rant”. The post talks primarily about a similar experience of the Brown’s, where they left a church and assumed they would remain friends with the people in the church. Specifically:

I can remember people telling us on our last few weeks how much they would miss us. Moms and Dads would thank us for the difference we had made in their kid’s lives, then follow that with, it’s a shame your relationship won’t be the same. Call it immaturity or ignorance, my response would always be “well don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. We’re leaving this church, but not your lives.” I would laugh with Josh about how people kept saying they would miss us in their lives. I always thought they thought we were abandoning them, and we would just kind of laugh and say, BUT WE’RE NOT LEAVING YOUR LIFE! It really became comical, and I laugh looking back at how many times we said things like “but we will still be at your basketball game” or “we will still be at your birthday party” or “we’re still going to dinner Thursday night, right?”

It never dawned on me that when we walked out of that church for the last time, we were basically walking out of a lot of our closest friends lives. Not by our choice. But it happened.

People didn’t know what to do with us. We didn’t get invited to the little socials that we knew were still happening. Just because Josh and I left the church didn’t mean all the kids didn’t go to Wendy’s every Sunday night anymore.

Now, I didn’t know the Brown’s at this point in time, but I think *some* of what happened is what I described above. The friendships were enabled by mutual membership at a church. Now obviously I can’t really speak for the people whom they knew deeper or the people who bad-mouthed them, that’s another issue entirely, but I would guess half of the friendships couldn’t happen without the enabling social org.

Having spoken to Anna further about this (since writing the post), she did say that alot of the people were those she knew grewing up… and I can’t speak for those people, that just sucks.

Look for a follow-up post soon.

Eric and Mr. d10 are discussing options:

Eric: I think I’m gonna get laser eye surgery, and it looks like there will be like, alot, left over. [this assumption turned out to be false, but whatever]
d10: Well if you have so much leftover, I could just get my eyes done too.
Eric: Well, yeah, if you were my dependent, maybe. [can only use money on self, spouse, or dependents]
d10: You mean like a tax dependent, not like an emotional dependent, like I am.
Eric: Exactly.
d10: And how do you even document that your an emotional dependent anyway?
Eric: In tears, man. In tears.

FL: Images of Park Avenue before and after the car

I think me and the ladyfriend will be up there about 6pm. You should come hang out if your in the area!

Here’s a link to the location where the grubbins be free.

FL: Atlanta Humane Society using old Michael Vick jerseys for dog bedding – pwntastic.

[context (not like you need it) - Eric and Mrs. d10 are discussing... can't remember, I think maybe Chipotle]

Mrs d10: yeah definitely
for reals
[fr]
or flz
maybe frlz
whaddya think?
me: well
Mrs d10: frlz?
me: srsly is canonical
so prably frlz
Mrs d10: canonical?
me: yeah
Mrs d10: how is it canonical?
me: basic: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality; “a basic story line”; “a canonical syllable pattern”
srsly is the purest form (on the internets) of compressing a word in this fashion
aka taking the vowels out
Mrs d10: i’ve never heard that called canonical before
de-voweling a word
dis-envoweling a word

Meanwhile, our hero inquires with a trusted ally and lore-master of the internets, the one we call Jeremy.

me: jeremy
is the word srsly
canonical
Jeremy: yes?
me: yes or no
no question marx
Jeremy: yes
me: thx
time to grubbins

Japanes biker fails to notice missing leg – sorta old, but still awesome. Summary: guy on motorcycle smacks into safety barrier, severs leg below knee, doesn’t notice, rides on for a while, friend has to bring leg till guy notices his leg-less-ness.

Not really sure where I came up with this, other than it seemed like a nice, lofty ideal for simplifying the things I own. My guess is that over the last 3 nights, I’ve removed roughly 30 cubic feet of crap from our clutches, with more on the way. I do recall that at the end of my Junior year of college, every single thing I owned fit inside of my Camry. The goal, out of necessity (I had to drive back to the motherland), was accomplished then.

Since then, what has happened:

- Moved in to a larger space (much larger than college), not fully furnished as my college apt was. This caused the natural progression to obtain at least basic furniture, which began with a mattress and box springs. Entertainingly, this purchase did not occur until some 4 to 5 months after I left college. I was content to sleep on an air mattress, the ultimate in comfort and portability. From there, the majority of furniture was provided graciously by Abbas and Heather’s dad and his wife. The house we rent came furnished with a stove, microwave, fridge, and washer/drier.

- Got married. This was a biggie. You’d think two people could split one set of things (media, dishes, whatnot) to live on and that would be that. My wife, bless her awesome little heart, is what we call the supreme overlord of all things packrat. If she can see a conceivable
use for it 5, 10, 15 years from now, that is plenty of a reason to box it up and let it sit. About once a year, we enter in to the realm of all-things-boxed-up and slowly thin out the massive amount of unused items. It’s a slow process, but when you do it once a year, you eventually start remembering what stuff you didn’t throw away last year, and how you hadn’t used it all of the past year, or the year prior… and so it wasn’t real likely you’d need them in the coming year either.

Btw, if you’re one of the uber-kind people who has helped Heather and I move, my bad for not doing things like the purge this week before we moved. I haven’t used 95% of the items being removed since then. Little extra moving karma in yo’ pocket.

FL: French dood reaches level 70 in Warcraft in 28 hours. – this, to most of you, won’t seem like that big of a deal. To give you a point of reference, the developer of the game has thought it would take a few months, or at least weeks, to accomplish this.

Time for some relationship advice. For you married men. First, like all relationship advice, we’ll begin with some women-science:

“In a brain-scan study of female orgasm, researchers discovered that the women needed to be comfortable and have their feet kept warm before before they felt like engaging in sex.” [emphasis added]

po. 78-79, The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine link

So, to simplify: cold feet = no thx for sex. Warm feet = oo la la.

That said, I highly recommend these:

A mere 12.99. And they come in four colors. There’s two sizes, so make sure you know if her feet are women’s sized 5-7 or 8-12.

You’re welcome.

Worst video game endings ever. – Not sure I agree, but whatevs.

I was talking to Josh 1 yesterday during my afternoon commute, quite the common occurrence as it were. He was chillin out with his infant son that day, and was talking about how cool it would be when the current generation of gamers (for those of you keeping score at home, that would be me, guys a few years older than me, and a massive number number of doods younger than me) finally had some kids, and would be able to play video games with interact with their kids. He also relayed the fact that his role in this would be somewhat diminished with his son, because both his gaming talent and time available to devote to this holy task are limited. I fully expect his son to be destroying him at whatever game is popular in T minus 10 years.

If he has any more to add, he’s more than welcome to add a comment. Thanks for the free content, J1.

FL: Reading Shakespeare has dramatic effect on brain – from what I understand, it’s not http://digg.com/general_sciences/Reading_Shakespeare_has_dramatic_effect_on_human_brainat all like the minor effect reading my blog has on your brain.