4th of July

This is out of order but I'm posting anyway.

On the 4th, we won't over to Donna's to hang out for a while. I made some really tasty BBQ baked beans that I got a recipe online for (it has raisins in it...weird). Then we won't over to Chad and Kylie's house for a BBQ. As always, Chad had about 10 pounds too much meat. We ate and ate and ate and then he said, "Ok, now it's time to cook up the rest of the chicken." Needless to say, there were leftovers. Once it hit about 7:00pm, everybody started to leave to get ready to see fireworks. We were all going out to Eastlake to check out fireworks where Dave and Angi live. Apparently, it was supposed to be a great place to see the show. Before we leave, Chad convinces me and his buddy to go surfing real quick. Since he lives in IB, it only takes him 2 or 3 minutes to get to the beach. We strap the boards to his truck and head down there. I haven't been surfing in about 2 years, and I just worked out my triceps that morning. I paddled out past the breakers and then just sat there. There were a few waves I tried to catch but for the most part, I couldn't even paddle with the wave. I was dead tired. I almost caught a wave before heading in but once I popped, the wave was closing out and Chad's buddy John was right below me with the look of terror that I was going to spear him right in the chest. I pulled out. Since I expended all my energy trying to catch that wave, I just rode the next waves white wash into shore.

So we pick up Donna and head over to the park in Eastlake. Dave brings glowsticks and we start playing catch with them. We realize it's 9pm and start looking for the fireworks. The sky above the houses behind the park starts to change colors and, along with the hundreds of people at the park, realize that we aren't seeing the fireworks from where we're at. Another 4th of July without a complete fireworks show. I think next year, I'm going to try to convince Megan that we need to hang out at the 3rd green at Torrey Pines golf course. It overlooks La Jolla Cove where they shoot fireworks every year. We'll see.

Palm Desert

I think I'm stupid. Megan and I went with our friends Chad and Kylie (and their 9-month old Tyler) to spend a few days in Palm Desert for a golf trip. Not only is going on an unlimited golf vacation in 115 degree weather stupid, Palm Desert is only really good for golf and Megan and Kylie don't golf. I also decided that we would share a room to cut on the costs. So there are 2 couples, with 2 pack-n-plays in a hotel room. A little crowded. I won't even get into detail about Tyler and Kylie getting sick. Anyway, I'm feeling pretty guilty and I think I need to get a second job to pay for a trip to Hawaii for Megan.

To start the trip, I woke up at 3:45am on Thursday to go pick up Chad and head out to Palm Desert. We started the weekend at the Classic Club, a course where the PGA Tour plays. We got an unlimited golf deal and started at 7:00am. When we got there, it was only about 95 degrees. Pretty nice, huh? We played the first round in about 4 hours and 30 minutes. I was hoping to get finished earlier. We then jumped back on to play another round and got backed up a bit. We jumped over a few groups of people and noticed we wouldn't get away from everybody so after hole #9, we jumped back onto hole #1. This time there was nobody in front of us and we started moving along pretty well. We would have been moving a lot faster if I could actually hit a fairway. I hit at least 15 sand traps in that round. I also hit 7 balls into water. It was a terrible round and very tiresome considering by now, it was 118 degrees. We finished again and tried to go out for one more round. By hole #4, I had a terrible headache and couldn't hit the ball worth a darn, so we hung it up for the day.

The cool thing about the Classic Club is they give out unlimited bottles of water, apples, and granola bars. Chad and I each had over 60 bottles of water, 6 apples, and a lot of granola bars. I took 7 over the course of the day, and Chad took 12. I think the course lost money on us.

I played like crap every round except for the 9 hole round where we didn't even keep official score. I was only 4 over during that round. At least I can watch the PGA guys play on TV and see how they play the holes. All in all, it was a good time.

On Friday morning, we were at the hotel and played our first round. I shot an 85 and my golf game started to feel pretty good. I was extremely sore from working out a few days earlier and from the day before, so I could barely swing a golf club. I think being sore held me from swinging as hard as I can (my usual golf swing) and helped me out. Afterwards, Megan was supposed to get a massage with Kylie but Tyler was feeling really sick so Kylie and Chad took Tyler to the emergency room. Megan canceled her massage and hung out with me and Ryan by the pool and then went down to the exercise room to run and lift weights. Chad and Kylie got back while Megan was gone so Chad and I made our 4:30 tee time. I actually felt a lot looser than the morning, but played a lot worse.

Saturday morning, I decided that it would be my last round. I was feeling pretty loose again so of course, I didn't play very well. I had a lot of chances to score really low but couldn't make any putts. Once we got to hole #18, we had arrived to our 100th hole of golf on the weekend and there was not one birdie made between the two of us. I hit my ball left and was just on the edge of the lake but in ground under repair. I dropped my ball and hit my second shot over the lake into the sand right in front of the green. Then for my last shot of the weekend, I chipped the ball out of the sand right into the hole for the only birdie.

I think I'm going to take a little break from golf. My hands still hurt :(

Linda's Blog

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Linda's blog

Welcome Linda!!!

Today, We Rock!!!

Today was quite a day. We had the Surfari's come play at our church. If you're wondering who the Surfari's are, they wrote Wipeout. I'm sure they did a few other songs too but it's 60's surf music, so they're pretty cool.

I wanted to help out Steve and get there as early as possible. But since we stayed out until 1:00am last night, I made it by 6:30am. The Surfari's played outside in the pavilion so there was a lot of setting up to do. I tried to help out Steve as much as I could but I was fairly worthless. I basically ended up looking for extension cords and finding out how many outlets we can plug into. I was also a little worried about where I would plug my stuff into and where I would set up but everything worked out great.

One thing about having a concert is it's LOUD. Since their set was loud, we got to play a lot louder than normal, too!!! I finally got to turn my amp up past "2" and hit "3". I'm hoping we can continue this trend for next week. Everything sounded great. I also had to sing this morning and being out late, while having a few beers, didn't help my voice. That coupled with not having any stage monitors made it a little difficult but it was all about just worshipping and rockin' out!!!

Anyway, it was fun. Here were the songs that we did this morning.

Majestic
Love The Lord
Everyday

I know this isn't much of an interesting post, but I'm not really that interesting.

Worship Guitarist Confessional - June 10

I'm not a worship leader, and this is not going to be a video confessional, but I wanted to give a little insight into my gear each week, as well as my thoughts on how the service went.

First off, I was a little late (as always), and noticed that our drummer wasn't there yet, either. I get everything set up (which is a lot of stuff this week), take a look at my phone to check the time, and realize it is 8:15am. We should be rehearsing by now and the drummer still isn't here. Steve tries to call him a few times and can't get a hold of him. Steve even spoke with him yesterday and confirmed that he'd be there. I tried to call him as well and just got voicemail. Another week without drums and without Steve getting advanced notice to program drums on his keyboard.

As we start playing, I realize that the bass guitar is slightly off the beat. He forgot to bring his headphones so he is trying to listen to the beat coming from the mains (pointing away from him) and seems to be picking up the slap back sound coming from the back of the room. Steve was playing with his new electric guitar and was excited to play it for the first time in service, but figured that his acoustic would be better for everyone to pick up the rhythm, so he changed guitars.

First service comes and goes, and we play pretty good and energetic considering the lack of drums. The second service gets ready to start and Steve picks up his acoustic guitar and nothing comes from it. His guitar is silent through the mixing board. So he puts on his electric and strums it once and realizes it is slightly out of tune. He doesn't have time to tune it so we just all come in together. Luckily, there were only 2 songs before the announcements so Steve had time to swap out batteries in his guitar and it worked the rest of the service.

So, if you were wondering why Steve didn't post his worship confessional this week, it probably was he just needed to let this week go (for good reason). Pray for Steve a lot. It seems like he has had a rough couple of months with Sunday morning worship and he needs to be lifted up. Pray for the drummer that has missed multiple times without notice that he can find what it is he is looking for in life, and in music. And finally, pray that more drummers find their way to our church.

Now onto my rig...

This week, I changed out my pickups in my Stratocaster. I got the Tex Mex pickup set and they sound great. So here is my chain:

Stratocaster (guitar) - Boss SD-1 Overdrive - HAO Rust Driver Distortion - Fulltone Fulldrive 2 Overdrive - Fender Tuner to 2 separate outs (1 out to PODxt Live direct to board; 1 out to Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Amp - speaker out to isolation cabinet with 1x12" speaker - mic'ed to mixing board)

I use the Boss SD-1 primarily as a boost for leads since I have the distortion level turned way down but it works well for some very slight overdrive sound. The HAO Rust Driver is a great high gain pedal that I used for Your Grace is Enough. The Fulldrive 2 is just about the perfect overdrive to keep on all the time.

Here was our setlist:

Love The Lord (With All My Heart)
King of Majesty
Only You
Before You
Only Grace
How Great is Our God
Your Grace is Enough

Next week, we have our fill-in drummer coming to play so that will be fun. Also, another guitarist who plays with us once a month will be playing, too. It's going to be a good time!!! I will try to take a picture of my rig next month so you can see how many power cords and cables there are. It's pretty impressive.

Fort Ryan

I love this guy!!!

Ryan, fetch me my beer

Ok, he's not quite fetching me beers yet, but...he can now climb up onto the Lovesac ottoman and get me a movie. I have him on video getting me Caddyshack off the DVD rack. Unfortunately, as you will read below as well, I have no clue how to put the footage on my computer. I think I may need to do a little research this week to show off this cool kid.

Here are few pics.