Family Photo

For a number of years I have wanted to have my family to do a family photo. You know a big one – get the siblings and the spouses and all the kiddies and my parents out but whenever I mentioned it someone was pregnant and wanted to wait until their baby was born. Fair enough. Well, now I’m the one pregnant and I know I will be taking pictures of our little baby so I have no problem with the family photo idea with the baby still in the belly.

After weeks of arranging schedules with my 3 siblings, their spouses and children, my parents and the photographer we were able to find 3 hours that we could all get together. It’s this coming weekend. And you can believe I was excited to know that this was finally going to happen.

This past Saturday I got a cold. Monday morning I went to the doctor for a standard check-up, she told me that I was really swollen and had gained a lot of weight since our last visit (3 weeks ago). By Monday afternoon my left eye could not stop gooping. Monday night the doctor told me I had pink-eye. I’m not sure how excited I am about the family photo on Saturday – Runny nose, overweight pregnant lady who is also very swollen with a left eye that is red and swollen shut but the goop can still get out.

I hope our photographer is good with Photoshop.

Book Recommendation: A Year with C. S. Lewis

A few years ago, for Christmas (maybe during our engagement?), Sonja got me a book: A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. It's got a small excerpt from one of Lewis' books for each day - it's like getting your daily dose of Lewis. I like it because it's easier to digest a small snippet of his writing. But, the format is also nice in that often over the course of a week you'll read one continuous section out of one of his books, it's just broken up into small chunks. I've been enjoying it lately and thought that I should pass on the recommendation.

Here's one excerpt that really made Sonja and I think. It's from the June 29 reading:

We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.

[From Mere Christianity]

Least Intimidating Thing Ever

Last night as I was leaving Seattle after working late (around 11:00pm), a scooter gang pulled out onto Denny Way beside me. Yup, that's right. Not a motorcycle gang...but a scooter gang. I didn't quite catch the name blazoned across the backs of their matching scooter gang leather jackets, but I'm pretty sure it was not Hell's Angels: Scooter Chapter.