Day 5 of 28: This in the air:


This on the ground:


And this in the ground:

Day 4 of 28: These:

Day 3 of 28: This:


This:


And a lot of this:

Day 2 of 28: I am now on pace to watch 28 movies before I return to work. That may drop off ever so slightly. Asobi Seksu says hi.

Day 1 of 28: Minimal productivity, slept and ate at my leisure. An auspicious start. If I have 27 more days like this, I think I will be perfectly content.

During my general surgery rotation at the VA, I had two other interns on the service. One was anesthesia and the other was family medicine, but both were girls, so they liked talking about girly things. They both offered to set me up with their friends and asked me what I liked. Somehow the final description ended up being a large, middle-aged black woman with an attitude problem, which coincidentally describes half the nurses at the VA. I don't know how I controlled myself for a whole month.

I'll be leaving tomorrow for a little trip. I'm taking whatever I can fit into my backpack. Sleep and food will meet me there.

The good news? I "passed" the ABSITE. So I am guaranteed another year of a little too much work and not quite enough sleep. Hooray?

The bad news? Grumby is blowing me off, so I have nowhere to go for my vacay. What's an interesting place I can go by myself for a few days? No answers that rhyme with Bincolnshire will be accepted.

During small group yesterday, Anson asked us to recount the last notable sacrifice that we made for the sake of the gospel. It made me realize that we were, for the most part, a generation of Christians that have sought discipleship without cost. Someone in the group mentioned a few weeks ago that there is an epidemic of spritual malaise among Christians in their twenties and thirties. We are too busy trying to establish ourselves in our careers, as husbands/wives/fathers/mothers, even simply as normal members of society, who spend their free time shopping at IKEA or going to plays or any number of things that are not sinful in and of themselves. But when God slides in at four or five on our list of things to do, why are we so surprised by the lack of revival?

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Good news and bad news, indeed.

I've been helping to fill in as BYG praise leader for Edmund whenever I know that I can make it to church on Sundays. Ideally, I would practice the songs at home during the week, especially the newer ones that I've never played before. This was made difficult by the fact that I had no instrumental accompaniment. I had to resort to plinking away on an online virtual piano just to hear the chord changes.

When I was a sophomore in high school I started learning how to play the guitar at church. My parents decided that, though it wasn't for the piano or the violin, any musical interest was better than none, and bought me a guitar. The label said it was made in Korea and it came in one of those cardboard cases. The action was so high that I could only play it for fifteen minutes before the grooves in my finger callouses made pressing down on the strings an exercise in futility. And I would still play for hours.

I never actually got very good at the guitar. I can play chords well enough to get by, but all the fancy stuff is beyond me. And this old dog is okay with sitting and staying and occasionally rolling over.

But my old guitar is buried somewhere at my parents' house and I felt like it was time to upgrade after all these years, so I bought myself a new one. It was one of the cheaper ones I could find, and it's definitely not gold-plated, but it sounds fine and it plays pretty painlessly.

It's been great. I've brought out old praise song sheets and probably annoyed my neighbors. I had forgotten what it feels like when your voice and the strings are singing and harmonizing and building on top of each other and every breath you draw is Hallelujah.