Callin me back home to Burnamwood

This weekend, the ladyfriend and I will be going back to a camp that I attended pretty much for all of the 90′s, (so that’s like 5th grade to Senior in HS) that was very formative for me both as a believer and as a person. It’s called Burnamwood, it’s in Irvine, KY, and it’s made of win.

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.

Towards a Streamlined Drive-thru Ordering Ethic

It’s understood that I have a tendency to over-think something that should be simple. The brain that fries itself with complex problems that have complex ansers often has trouble coming up with simple answers to simple problems.

With that in mind…

Over the last few years, I’ve come to a place of understanding about the “best” way to place an order at a fast food drive-thru. You probably consider this a rather simple task, and it should be. But consider the following:

Your average fast-food employee wasn’t necessarily chosen for their job due to their “attention to detail” and multitasking potential. Now sure, plenty of them are good at it, but plenty of them aren’t as well. This is compounded by the fact that the options for your average combo meal at a fast food place have been on the rise lately.

Let’s consider a combo meal at Wendy’s. Here are all the options that have to be determined:

- Combo meal number.
- Combo meal option (i.e. cheese or not, spicy or homestyle sandwich).
- Combo meal size.
- Combo meal drink choice.
- Combo meal side choice (fries, potato, salad).

So that’s 5 items that need to be decided, and I’m willing to bet those 5 options have to be inputted in to a computer in a very specific order.

So let’s say I pull up to the drive thru, and say the following:

“lemme get a number 8 with coke, garden salad, no tomatoes on the sandwich, oh, make that a large coke.”

Assuming the options have to be put in the computer in the order listed above, I am of the opinion that as soon as you say something that diverges from the next option their computer wants them to enter, about 50% of order-takers stop listening to what you say, and wait till you finish talking so they can back you up to ask about the option you need answering.

So let’s let that last order play out:

me:“lemme get a number 8 with coke, garden salad, no tomatoes on the sandwich, oh, make that a large coke.” ** (but all they heard was lemme get a number 8, blah blah blah blah blah).
them:ok would you like that spicy or homestyle?
me: spicy
them: and what size combo?
me: (slightly agitated cause I already said large): uh, large
them: and what to drink?
me: coke.
them: and what side?
me: (more agitated) garden salad.
them: alright, your total is 6.92.

So basically, I had to answer all the questions again. And they didn’t hear me say I wanted no tomatoes. Now, of course there are some folks who can take in all the details and sort them out, and enter it all properly. But some can’t.

So What To Do About All This

The picture painted above may seem alittle over-dramatic and making a big deal out of something simple. And I would have to agree. But I told you that going in to it!

What I do about it, is simple: try and spit my order out in the order that the computer wants to know it. How do I know the order? Well, I don’t really, but I did work at Fazoli’s when I was 15/16, so I do have a basic understanding of what would be required. Here’s an example, for what I often get at Chick-Fil-A. It was based on what questions I continually get asked about:

“I’ll have a number 6, caesar wrap, caesar dressing, value sized, with lemonade, to go.”

That usually works pretty well. Before I said it in that order, they would ask me what dressing as soon as I finished talking (which is an odd question if you ask me, obviously if I’m getting a caesar wrap, I’m having caesar dressing, but I digress).

Alright, I think I’ve worn this topic out far too much. Any input, even if it’s an expression of an excessive amount of time on my hands is welcome.

Well, we ressurected the blawg, might as well do the once-a-day photosteam too, right?

So a loooong time ago, July 10th, 2007, and the ~70 days previous to that, I got it in my head to try and do a once-a-day photo stream. I had a blast, I’m always seeing things that I think would be epic to have a picture of.

But then one day… tragedy struck. The camera lost its ability to auto-focus, and was too cheap to have a manual focus. Which meant that virtually all images it took were blurry. So I put the camera away. And let it sit. And it did a good job at that. Until yesterday, I picked it up, and decided to see if its horrible problem still was occurring. It wasn’t!!!!111

So, in honor of this magical self-healing, here’s a picture to celebrate the triumphant return of ericonceaday. It’s also the once-a-day picture for today:

I realize the irony of me being excited about it auto-focusing once again and then putting up a blurry/grainy picture may be too much for some of you to bear, but it also wasn’t meant to take pictures at 3 inches away. Clearer pictures will be forthcoming!!

Oh, and if you didn’t ever see Eric Onceday before, or want to subscribe to the RSS of it:

ericonceaday’s Photostream
RSS Feed of ericonceday’s Photosteam

Pocketses

I’ve recently been trying to cut down on the amount and volume of items I carry around in my pockets every day. Hopefully this will turn out to be a before/after scenario, where this is the “before”, but here’s a brief view in to what I carry now (you’ll have to click the image to see the full-size version to read the captions), followed by a side-view of the height of each item:

Suffice to say, this is waaay too much stuff. Especially since I’m considering ressurecting the Eric once-a-day photosteam, which would require carrying yet another bulky item, a camera.

So I did some research, and here’s my sekrit plans for pocket domination:

• 1. Wallet -First of all, it’s a 3-fold wallet with exactly 14 pockets and crevices for putting… well, I’m not sure what. It has a coin purse, two see-thru pockets, 2 areas for monies, and 2 secret compartments. This is vast overkill. Currently, I carry at most 40$, and the cards shown in the top picture (license, car insurance, medical insurance, 1 credit card, 1 debit card).
  Solution for Wallet (generalized) - Less cards, less scraps of paper, less discount cards. If you can significantly reduce the number, move to a smaller wallet.
  Solution for Wallet (for me) -(courtesy of the evar-useful mr. d10) – The Slimmy, and it’s smaller cuz, the SlimSlimmy, for the minimalist. Their marketing is elite:

  

• 2. Phone(s) -Ugh. This is definitely the biggest problem area. The main issue is that I have to carry two phones, one for my personal number, and one for my work phone. I would happily just leave my work phone in my laptop bag… but sadly, I have to go on call every 2 or 3 weeks, and have the Treo on me 24/7.

  Solution(s) to Phone Issues (generalized) – Not sure anyone really has an issue with phones. Obviously a smaller, thinner phone is better. Or, if you do carry multiple phones, the phone that can roll with two SIM cards simultaneously is becoming a reality.
  Solution(s) to Phone Issues (for me) – Ideally, I’d have one phone that could carry and access two SIM cards simultaneously, which I had assumed didn’t exist… but some quick googling found… these!

  - Samsung D880 DuoS
  - HKC G1000 Dual SIM Phone with Windows Mobile 6

  Sadly, these lovely phones run about 3 to 400 dollas each, so thats pretty much out of my price range. More likely, I’ll replace the Treo with a much skinnier Blackberry Curve, and keep the Nokia, as it rox long-time.

• 3. [What the] Keys - Ugh. The metal thorn in my side. Several times while writing this diatribe I’ve looked over my keys and tried to remove some useless key or accessory from it… but its all fail. The only thing I could remove is that little grey plastic thingie that’s at the bottom, and leave it in my car.
  Solution for Keys (generalized)- One strategy seems to be the way to go… try and determine which keys you don’t use at least once a month, and leave those keys in your car. This is assuming you will be near your car during those rare times you do need them.

  Solution for Keys (for me)- meh. got nothing. I’ve already pulled off anything I don’t use at least once a month.

That’s all for now folks. I’d like to take a moment to congratulate myself on not making a single, “is that a ____ in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me” joke this entire post. Thank you, thank you very much, self.

Eric, Novice Lumberjack

The chopping described/animated in my previous post has continued… Sunday, Monday, today. I’ve decided to make a routine out of it on afternoons I have available, and plan on having a lovely stack of firewood by the time it gets cold enough to make use of it.

More pictures forthcoming, but here’s a taste of one of the new tools I picked up at Ace… it makes splitting wood much easier than with a sissy axe. For you suburbanites, its called a splitting wedge (mad respect to the true outdoorsman who knows way more about this crap than me), I put it in the top of the vertical log in the last picture from the last post, and then slam the top of it with a sledgehammer, till the wood finally gives up and is split in halves. Yeah!

My weekend, or, a treatise on manly activities

This weekend, my parents came in to town. Hurray! Given that my parents both subscribe to the “busybody” theory of vacation (Heather subscribes to the “chillin’ hardcore” theory of vacation), we were in motion nearly the entire time they were here. Stone Mountain, trip to the mall and/or taco mac, and then dinner at Canoe on Saturday. Here’s a pic from the top of Stone Mountain:

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.

The eat together test, or, a post about deep community, part 2.

This is the second dose about community from me. Part one is here.

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.

The “eat together” test, or, a post about deep community.

(tl;dr version: if you aren’t close enough friends that you could be talking to them on the phone, and take a wizz while they’re still on the phone and they know you’re wizzing, then you probably won’t be friends with them if one of you leaves the social group that links you. this only applies for guy to guy friendships, as far as I know).

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.

Back in the game.

It’s been too long. I haven’t blogged consistently since November 2007 (which roughly coincides with the date of a content filter being installed on the Internets at a former employer… hmm…), which is coming up on a year ago.

I do tend to make this a glorius comeback, and as such, here’s a few changes:

- no more funny links on every post. I know, very sad. Gainful and engaging employment is not conducive to the retrieval and distribution of funny links. Though we certainly loves us some youtubes at the office, so I may link quite a few of those.

- [obviously] no more once-per day posts. If you hadn’t noticed that, I believe this particular policy ended around November 2007.

- Writing to a larger audience. I’ve linked a Facebook rss trigger to my blawg, so anything I post here shows up on you people’s facebook news feed as a Note. Of course, that doesn’t mean anyone will read it, but they certainly have the option to, which they didn’t in Nov 2007.

- New theme. Something alittle more reserved, and technologically sound (widgets, theme editor, etc. The old theme was all custom edits to someone elses work). The pirates/ninjas deal is outdated, as the pirates clearly won that conflict.

I think thats all for now. Thanks for reading.

Do you guys know what happiness is? I’m glad you asked.