the cottage

I know I've been silent of the last two weeks - I 've actually been where Southern Ontarians call 'up North' even though it is still more South than most of Canada! Parry Sound. Nice beautiful quentisential Muskoka Lake building a beautiful custom Timberframe cottage. I am only on the job for two weeks because that is about the length of time it takes for my five awesome kids to drive my wife nuts....so I am home now and thought I would post this picture of the jobsite - it is a joining of 5 pictures so some of the perspectives are kind of off..but you'll get the idea.

I like building - but I even still can't shake the feeling like there is something else I am supposed to be doing with my life. It gets under my skin and makes me grumpy. I just don't know what that something is - I am assuming that when the Lord wants me to know - He'll let me know, everything right now seems to not work when I try and make it work so I am crying UNcle and waiting for Him to make it clear.
Frustrating all the things that are in my head. Probably post more on this later...

Here's the pic -

building

Been away building a custom cottage for a company called Timmerman Timberworks. Incredible guys, good friends and great craftsmen - makes me nervous doing work for them! What if I screw it up. Went up with my crew on Tuesday and we'll go up again on Monday for another week. This week was a little tricky, getting back into the swing of things, made a few mistakes that I had to correct. When I worked at the shop i remember my uncle saying "you always know if someone has made a mistake because they are working faster than ever!" well that was true of me. There was another guy on the job, more experienced than I, and he kept saying, "do it this way, that way..." annoying beacuse even though he might have been right, there is more than one way to skin a cat! At any rate, I was getting frustrated and I remember reading Brennan Manning and him saying something like, "it is impossible to insult one who knows that their identity is Abba's child." I guess i still have a ways to go to understanding my identity!
I'll try and take some pictures of the job to post soon.

American Military

Just going through my images from Washington - I took a couple cool pictures of the Iwa Jima memorial. The memorial is basedon a real picture taken during world War II in Japan. Marines putting a flag on top of a mountain. Three of the men in the memorial statue died on the island during the war, I think they were all 22, at least all in their 20's.
Wierd moments there, we asked the kids what the statue made them feel - bravery, pride, things you might expect. I think it's odd because those were the same feelings I had, but I am mostly a pacifist...although I have so few soapboxes these days...basically I know nothing. I love the line in the movie Rudy when he asks the priest what the deal is with God....the priest responds by saying "son in 46 years of theological study I am only sure of 2 things.. there is a God, and I am not Him."
So all that to say, any thoughts on the memorial, war in general etc...?

OK - so one more tonight...just keeping you up to speed....

Loved Washington - not too big a fan of American politics in general, but some of the memorials were incredible and I was moved to tears at the Lincoln memorial. They have the gettysburg address on the left and his second inagural address on the right - both incredible. Then downstairs you can see the emancipation proclamation and some video of Martin Luther King Jr. address from the memorial. Incredible, that is a cool heritage. Even while being annoyed by the current american political scene, it did spur me on to think again about going into politics...I wonder.

We also loved Old Georgetown - we found this great little pub called Martins that has served all the presidents since it opened. The Kennedy's got engaged there and a KGB spy ran operations out of there in the 50's!
Nice!

OK Go

Alright - I can't join youtube for some freakin reason - so you'll have to go there yourself and look up OK Go and check out the video with the treadmills - so hilarious. This is music video at it's best -
here we go again is the name of the song I think.....

washington

So...we've just come back from Washington on a family trip - Catherine was there to go to a career counselling center that I has been to before. www.ability potentials.com
At any rate - more posting to come on that, but I couldn't resist getting this picture of the washington memorial which in general is a pretty lame memorial...he really got shafted so to speak...grin.....

new beginnings

Odd how blogs have become this cathartic way of re-inventing oneself in public. It seems to me that in general we bloggers (and I include myself as a previous blogger) are looking for a way to express ourselves out loud in front of everyone - it would be interesting to figure out whether or not we continue to blog if no one reads...and in that case, why not just keep a journal! At any rate, my previous blogs were just that, a way to express who I wanted you to think I was.....this time I think I'll try and drop the facade. I'm a bit of a blog lurker - I read loads of my friends blogs and I really like to keep up on their lives, travels, thoughts etc...so I think that's what I am going to try to do here, in a light hearted way. Sure it will likely get theoretical sometimes, but mostly I'd just like to try and fill friends in on life as jones.

happy reading!