sjamesho.v3

i wasn’t able to attend the full weekend of the Young Adult retreat, so after attending two spiritual sessions and a hike on Sabbath i wished that i had. i’ve never been interested in retreats before, but through the “insistence” of my friend Pam (for those of you who know her, its hard to say “no”) i’m glad i went and perhaps when another Young Adult function happens in the future, i’ll definitely go and encourage others to go as well.

the retreat was held at Mt. Cross, a Lutheran Outdoor Ministries camp, which was about 45-50 minutes away from where i live.

at first i was planning on visiting yet another church, but the nature setting definitely appealed to me and was what i needed to get spiritually refreshed.

after lunch i was sitting on at a picnic table waiting for the group to finally gather to go on a hike. this is when i looked up and saw this amazing view. and when we were on the hike i was only able to take so many pictures, otherwise i’d be trailing everyone else. but now that i’ve been there i can take my all the picture-taking time i want.

we stopped at a clearing for a really short but sweet spiritual thought and prayer.

the hiking trail looped back to the camp, so from the clearing it was only a short distance till we got back. we had about an hour or so to kill so i visited with some people before the 4:00p meeting.

after the meeting i was so moved that i wanted to stay for the next session after dinner but i since i had missed last years church social, i headed back to my church.

ice cream! so many flavors to choose from. there was even root bear float… mmmmm!

of course, i had to have mint chocolate chip on a cone. its nostalgic for me because my grandfather used to take me to Thrifty’s when he babysat me and he would buy me this flavor. i don’t remember whether he picked the flavor or whether i did. all i know is that i had this flavor and eating it (especially with a cone) takes me back.

i’ve been a little out of it all this week. not the sick kind, though. i’ve just been lazy with the blogging-thing. of course it couldn’t have come at a better time when there was a big event that i witnessed last sunday. there was certainly enough going on last weekend for blog fodder but i don’t know… i just didn’t feel like updating for you guys. sorry. i figured i’d better throw something together before this weekend otherwise i’d be WAY behind. so what has been going on with me? let’s back up to last friday, shall we?

18 Aug (Fri). my friend saw my “sin city”-styled picture and wanted me to do the same for her, so after vespers and a giggly photo session i was able to get a bunch of photos which i hoped at least one of them would work for this effect.

two days ago i was able to process the pic. so here’s how it turned out. if there is a next time, i’m going to remember to bring a spotlight because the lighting wasn’t helping and flash just made her face too bright.

19 Aug (Sat). i was planning on going to Redwood City Church for a visit but i kind of overslept. so instead of driving all the way up there, i decided to go to the Mountain View Japanese Church which is on the way to Redwood City from my house but its about half the distance. when i got to the church, my friend Dave Zecha greeted me with an invite to his wedding the next day. oh wow! that’s awesome! i also met my friend Brandon Ross and his wife who came up for the wedding and we had a nice chat over lunch. after that they had stuff to do to get ready so i visited with my other friend Andre Tio and his wife Faith. i had left my guitar in my trunk after vespers the previous day so he and i had a little jam session which i hadn’t done in a long time. it was very nice.

that evening, i hung out with Ted, Chrissie, and Phil. we picked up dinner to go at Chipotle and then went back to Ted and Chrissie’s place to chow down with a double feature of Underworld/Underworld: Evolution to follow. once we got done eating, Chrissie went over to her collection and realized that she didn’t own the Underworld DVD. (i brought Evolution and would have brought the first one). so she and i went to Target to pick it up with no success since all they carry is fullscreen for that movie. i mean come on! fullscreen? you gotta be kidding me. i think it should be illegal to put fullscreen movies on DVD. don’t get me started with movies that shouldn’t be on DVD in the first place. but i digress. so we headed off to Fry’s with about 15 minutes to spare before closing and found a widescreen version. yippee! then the double feature commenced once we got back. we ended the evening at around 1:30a which is unusually early for us since we usually push the 3:00a mark. but i guess we were unusually tired because for about 30 minutes after the movies we were talking but weren’t making a whole lot of sense. i left around 2:00a only to see Ted and Chrissie again at 10:30a at the wedding.

20 Aug (Sun). i heard that Dave and his fiance Susan pulled together this wedding in two months. as hurried as it was, there was quite a turn out although if there was a longer announcement time, i’m sure that more of our college friends would have been there.

Dave and Susan at the reception. i was actually going for a more candid shot but as i was adjusting my camera settings he signaled Susan before i could get one off. its still a good picture.

the table where i was sitting was adjacent to the wedding cake table. so i was quite comfortable and seated while i captured this.

the obligatory close-up shot and the obligatory wedding favor. Dave was trying for mint M&M’s but couldn’t find them. i guess they are by custom order however mints do just fine.

Brandon and me. he was a class behind me at PUC and lived across the hall. oh, the stories we can tell… and the stories we’d better not tell.

weddings aka college/friend reunions. why do we only get together around these types of celebrations?

the 4th North crew. as custom dictates, there’s always a picture of all 4th North members when one of us gets married. oh yeah… so that you’re in the know, 4th North is in reference to the rooms on the 4th floor of the Newton Hall men’s dorm at Pacific Union College.

there will be more pictures of the wedding posted in its own gallery as soon as i can post it… or something like that. you know what i mean.

i love tech gadgets. yes this is another blog about yet another device that i’ve acquired. its not so tech-y and its not nearly as costly as my other recently acquired gadgetry, but it has a small neato factor. and that neato factor is the only thing that it does… shred DVDs and CDs.

ok, this particular model doesn’t actually “shred” optical media but it does make them unreadable, useless coasters by making dimples all across the disc.

so here’s a plain disc and its smooth surface.

and here’s a disc that’s been passed through the shredder.

check out the dimples! all in a perfect grid.

so why in the world would i want a gadget like this? even though some paper shredders nowadays have the capability of destroying optical discs, not everybody has a paper shredder with this feature. plus this device is small and portable enough for me to take to my clients who may want to destroy discs that contain sensitive, business-related data. and on a personal note, i also have discs that contain backed-up personal information that i would like destroyed so that when they are outdated i won’t have to worry about somebody scrounging through the dumpsters, finding the discs, and go all willy-nilly with them. you’d be surprised that there are people that actually do this. so if any of you ever burn personal data on discs, you may also want to think about getting a paper shredder that destroys discs or a dedicated shredder like mine. you never can be too careful.

so unlike the time when my car first entered into the five-digit mark, i made certain that i mark today as the day it turned 20000… miles that is.

the new number happened as i approached the intersection of Abel and Calaveras-237 in Milpitas. unfortunately, along that block there was nowhere to pull over to take a picture so i quickly snapped the evidence before the light turned green. yeah… my life is that exciting.

speaking of exciting, i’m looking forward to a Underworld double feature and possibly some PC game action at my friends place this saturday night. its been a while since we’ve had a LAN party so i’m anticipating much fun to be had.

okay, i’ve become rather lazy and i know i haven’t blogged in a while. i actually wanted to a couple of days ago when i had something fresh to write about, but you’ll have to settle for something slightly less fresh. so if you don’t mind i’m going to take you back to last sunday… take this as your free trip in a time machine.

about 30 church members showed up to help our new pastor unload his family’s belongings from the moving truck. although you can’t see him in this picture, Luis Perez is in the drivers seat backing out the pastor’s car from the semi. the rest of the people are giving the rear-end a little lift (hehe… i’m sure some of us would like that!) so that it won’t scrape on the road as it comes off the ramp.

how many guys does it take to move a glass table-top? i think that’s what’s wrapped in the blue blanket. its that or a mirror. but i have a pretty good idea that its glass.

the inital estimation to unload was about four hours but since there was plenty of people that showed up we shaved about an hour off. that meant that we were able to eat the yummy lunch that was arranged. many thanks for those that planned the feast. i wish i could have eaten more but with all the moving, i think was more thirsty than hungry.

after lunch i went back home and rotated my tires. woohoo! blog-worthy material right? well… not really. i could go into more detail about tire-rotation methods but i don’t want to bore you. i’ll just mention that i sliced my right index and middle finger on one of my rims. go figure.