Living Rarefied

Saturday I tackled a house project that you don't do every week. As I begin the process of remodeling my basement, there are 3 main parts I needed to be completed before I can do anything else. I need a plumber (coming later this week), an electrician (anybody know a good one?) and I needed an egress basement window. The window is so I can be up to code for fires and emergencies. Somehow I convinced 4 of my buddies to come chip in and help out (Kevin, Kevin, Dave, Chuck). It is truly amazing the power that a free Chipotle offer can bring. The only thing I knew about egress windows is what they looked like as a finished product, what the 4 page article in Popular Mechanics online magazine.. That was no help. Kevin had been on a project doing an egress before, but none of us had any experience, I liken it to my first experience tying my shoes.. I knew I could get it done, didn't know how long it would take, but I knew I could get it done.

8-12, dig a hole…
12-1, eat Chipotle and rent cement saw…
1-3:30, build frame and set window…
3:30-5:30 secure window and retainer wall and backfill hole…

So we got 'r done… No animals in the house, no injuries, only a window and some sore arms to show for it!

(Hole at 1 foot deep)

(Hole at 5 feet deep)

(View from inside)

I will take a picture of the finished product and post tomorrow.

Also went bowling with a few friends Friday night…

We were able to crash a double date and bowl a few games with some great people. Even though we were invited, I like to say we crashed their romantic evening of bowling.

My sister beat me for the first time ever… Congrats Lex!

Ethan Daily

It breaks my heart to see stubborness and hate in the name of God.

A book with stories about the life of Jesus and where he is mentioned over 25 times should be flushed?

This is not a way that we as followers of Jesus should act.. Where's the love? Where's the acceptance of others? Jesus loves us where we are at, if we are to walk as he did, why can't we love others where they are at, across income levels, ethnicity and cultural barriers and especially against the confines of religion which we as humans have created the segregation?

Baptist Minister Urges Quran Be 'Flushed'

Ethan Daily, Surprise Me

Alexis got a call from a fairly large company today.. Maybe you have heard of them, or seen a few of their stores…

Hopefully that triggers your memory…

She is going to start at the end of July as a Merchandise Coordinator at Target Headquarters in Minneapolis!

Scary to think the little one is going to have an 8-5 job…

Ethan Daily

It seems as I try to back on committments and free up time for me and a few, I get deeper and deeper into pits of busyness.

I am feeling like I cut something out of my schedule and then something comes along to plug it up, and I don't even hesitate to accept it.

"I have time, I am no longer doing all of these other things anyway…"

What I spend my time doing each week…

• Sleeping
• Work
• Young Life
• See my family at least a few times each week
• Spending time with a few other guys each Monday
• Blog (read and write)
• Work on websites from home
• Play some golf
• Make 1 public appearance for the masses
• Meet people for meals
• Attempts to workout at the gym
• Play softball
• Spend time with God

Here's the kicker.. The items arent listed in my favorite order of what I like to do or wish to do, they are in order of approximate time spent and priority levels I tend to give them.

The last item happens maybe in the shower if my mind isn't already consumed with something I have to do during the day, maybe it happens in the car on my way to work if I forgot my iPod or I am not consumed with how a 3 mile drive up 100 can take 20 minutes somedays.. It may happen if I get a call/email and am requested to pray for something. It may happen when I feel guilty and spend time out of guilt. Or lastly, how about before bed right? Nothing else to do for the day, except that I often turn the lights off and curl up into a ball in my bed. I may last 10 minutes and then in mid sentence I hang up on God with the flow of dreams moving in to consume my mind for the next block of hours. Only then to repeat the same process the next day.

Ethan Feeling

Here is an interesting prayer… Kind of cool, hits on very similar to things I catch myself doing.

The Blogger's Prayer 1.1 by Andrew Jones (June, 2002)

Ethan testing

Detached from the reality of life…

I spent a week last August with 50 other fellow UR community friends. I met new people, made great friends, dug some holes, fitted some rebar, played with some kids, got sick, used the most disgusting bathroom I had ever crossed, sweatted off pound after pound in the intense heat, got sunburned, had some wonderful back massages from Cathy… This was all in the first few days.

Then I met Manuel Amadeo Rodriguez… I have sponsored Manuel for almost 3 years now. The 3 hours I got to spend with him, playing soccer, giving him some candy and other small gifts, speaking with him and his mother through a translator, seeing how proud his mother was as she watched him play with the other kids, seeing how tough they have it as she discretely hid 4 slices of extra pizza into a hankerchief to bring home to her other children. Getting a chance to hug him, see him smile and laugh, and to think I may have a little part in helping him out was amazing.. These 3 hours were probably the best 3 hours of my year up until that trip, and still to this day.

It has been 10 months tomorrow since I left on that early morning flight to El Salvador August 7th. It has been a few days short of 10 months since I spent those 3 hours with Manuel and other smiling children of God.

Why have I only sent 1 letter to him since??? Is it that I don't have time to write a letter, but have time to sit and watch a Seinfeld episode for the 9th time? Or is it that I feel our lives are so different that he wouldn't be interested in what I have to say? Or there is only so many times I can ask how his math is going? Or is it that I worry they may have the same feeling as I do when I recieve a letter and it is a carbon copy of a letter my other friends who sponsor children get? Or am I just lazy and don't care?

Why do I have World Vision auto-debit my account for the monthly payment of $30?? Why don't I physically write a check every month? At least then I would think about Manuel more. Have I gotten to the point that $30 a month is no big deal to me? When people ask me if I will go back to El Salvador soon, I say I would like to wait a few years, so it doesn't feel like it becomes a vacation to me, going every year, becoming part of my routine… Has it already become part of my routine?? My monthly sponsorship doesn't mean as much to me as it did when I first started or the few weeks after I returned from El Salvador last August..

I might as well send each one of you a check for $360 and never ask what good you may have done with it…

That is how detached I feel..

Ethan Surprise Me

If there's one thing I have learned from my Momma, it is this…

"Never pass by a lemonade stand without stopping…"

• I stopped at one on Tuesday.
• It was 1 block from my house.
• They gave me pink lemonade, my favorite.
• It was 10 cents.
• They were the cheapest lemonade sellers I have ever seen.
• They were also one of the most organized, boy gets the money, girl pours the proper amount and gives me the glass.
• They were fast.
• We sold lemonade for 75 cents when I was growing up, we lived on a golf course and the golf course charged 1 dollar.
• We stole a lot of business from the golf course.
• We understood the value of a dollar and how far 3 cute kids in lawn chairs can move your heart to buy anything.
• We were children of a financially savvy father.
• Our lemonade was better, my Momma made it.

Why never pass a lemonade stand?

Because:

• There is never a sadder looking face when they see you coming and see you drive by…
• There is never a happier face when you stop.
• There is never a more surprised face when they ask for 10 cents and you give them 25 cents, or when you buy 4 glasses and it is only yourself in the car.
• There is never a happier parent standing behind the kids, or watching through the window.
• And because you had a lemonade stand as a kid, and your kids will most likely have one too…

Ethan Daily

I found this on a blog linked from a blog linked from a blog 4 more times… I have edited it a little bit and cut some inappropriate items out.

Where are you? I am on 4 I think…

#1. Start reading blogs.
You start out as a lurker and by either having met a blogger or run accross an intriguing and challenging post from someone else’s blog, you start mulling about in your head for either a forum for response, challenge, or agreement. You *could* start by commenting on other folks blogs first, but you start having a gradually increased desire for a space of your own. Like when you’re living in your parent’s basement and the rest of your friends are making weekly trips to Home Depot and using words like “mulching�. You begin to wonder if you want to belong.

#2. You start a blog.
Maybe at first it’s on blogspot or livejournal. You start writing about cheese sandwhiches. You use your full name and the full names of your friends that are involved in your occasionally mischievous exploits. These things satisfy you. Hubris starts taking a more significant part of your site as you develop your tiny homestead online. The notion of fleshing out your online personality becomes important.

#3. You become a stats whore.
Daily stats/referrals and meme participation for webrings, quizlists, personality profiles, and the occasional sepia toned webcam photo to make you look all “emo� and “sultry� and “sensitive� or at least a little bit thinner. And definitley like a Kpop music video still image. You voraciouslly groom your links list as you build a posse. The wishlist makes it’s initial appearance and creepy strangers start sending you gifts when your birthday comes around. You consider this slightly weird, but hey, then again, you *did* get that Star Wars Box set that you always wanted. You *start* memes just for the additional traffic. Perhaps you even start a webgame of sorts.

#4. You become really personal on your site as the online and real-life worlds start confusing you.
As you recognize the possibility of being an opinion leader in your personal circle, people flame you. You occasionally flame back. You cry about comments that certain people make to provoke you. You complain about these things as well. Then you take into consideration that comments were made by pimply 14 year olds who post jpegs of their warcraft characters online and realize that these lOZeRs aren’t worth your time. This gives you an sense of superiority. Haha! you say to yourself. I have a posse and a blog and you don’t. So what's up now?

#5. You faux “retire� from blogging.
Having temporarily exhausted the emotional reservoir from which your personal blog has released, you post about retiring. Or a vacation. Or a hiatus. Or a sabbattacal. You say this will be permanent. Or last a month.

#6. You cave back into blogging in less than 72 hours.
You candy pants blogging crack addict.

#7. You decide to “get serious� about blogging.
You seek out “The A-List� of bloggers and start reading more of them, and news about them, and news about blogging in general. You come to the conclusion that if you ever hope to join their rank, then you need to atleast register your own domain. Afterall, http://candypantsnewbiebloggeraboutcheesesandwhiches.blogspot.com will not get you linked by many people and will not look good in a Google search result.

#8. You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met.
This will likely end badly. Very badly.

#9. You decide that you must meet other bloggers.
SXSW seems like a good way to go about it. Or finding any excuse possible to move to San Francisco. At least a trip, after all. With a visit to SF, meeting other “celebrity� bloggers is just as tasty a tourist destination as going to Fisherman’s Wharf. Or more so. Definitley more so. Your blogroll grows threefold.

#10. You take a step back and metablog about blogging and what blogging has done about your blogging.
You become pedantically navelgazingly annoying. For some reason, your blogger readership eats this up.

#11. See step 5. Shampoo, rinse, repeat.

#12. You decide that as a result of step 10 and having repeated step 5 more than 3 times in the course of your lifecycle as a blogger, that you need to sanitize or reinvent your blog. You purge or hide archive entries and take more note to remove full names of your friends/crushes/accidentaldrunkenfondels from your site and links list. Your blog goes back to cheese sandwhiches. But this time your site validates.

#13. You either lose your job because of blogging, are afraid of losing your job for blogging, or join a company that builds blogging tools. Either way, your blog either dies a horrible painful death, or becomes significantly less personal to the degree of trite and uninteresting compartmentalization or subject matter discretion.

#14. You decide to start an anonymous livejournal blog. Here is where you still talk about your crushes, the he said/she said crap, and that you really really really really really really really like Maroon 5. And it’s on your wishlist.

Ethan Daily