two days ago sarah and i drove to the top of pike’s peak.

with the top down.

i would show you some pictures, but they’re all on a camera and not on my sister-in-law’s computer, so that will have to wait.

tomorrow morning, we leave for rocky mountain national park to get permits for “backcountry camping.”

some people at work think they’ll never see me again b/c we’ll be eaten by bears.

but sarah bought a small bell to attach to her pack, so that ought to scare off the bears.

if you never see a new post on this blog again, assume that bears like bells.

here’s what i mean by “nature nerd,” in my own words.

but first, you have to understand that i believe in intelligent design. (coincidentally enough, i just spelled “intelligent” wrong the first time i typed it.) i don’t believe that God just closed his eyes, pointed a finger, and there was the universe.

it was a well thought out process. i mean, time wasn’t invented yet, so it’s not like he was in a hurry.

i believe that intelligent part is key. i also believe since creation is intelligent, it has evolution built in… but that’s probably a different post.

ask any good graphic designer, unintelligent design is their worst peeve. it does nobody any good. it’s what comic sans is meant for.

to get down to it, i believe my heavenly father is a designer. he’s creative.

if you were just floating adrift in the vastness before universes, would you be able to think up earth? or emotions? or the platypus?

this is where my clichéd journey begins. where creation meets nature.

i wasn’t able to create nature, but i am able to follow the God of the universes that did create it.

and that’s the path i’m choosing to go down. it may get rough and rocky or slippery and muddy, but it’s a path. and i guess i’ll take that clichèd word, “journey,” and run with it.

my father creates, and i’m taking after him.

…here’s to hoping it’s more intelligent than unentelijunt.

starting every tuesday from 6-8 PM, you can catch me here attempting stuff like this…

i’m sort of scared, but mostly excited.

and, i’d mostly scared of wearing a helmet someone else has already sweated in.

grody.

i hope i don’t catch male-patterned baldness.

my previous post is a giant break away from what i thought this blog would be about.

and this commercial for discovery sums it up in exactly 60 seconds.

it’s catchy and it’s got bear grylls in it.

what more could you ask for?

remember before everyone had laptops and flat screens and you had to “deguass” the monitor every once in a while?

i think it had something to do with magnetism.  (i don’t know, i just don’t feel like wiki right now).

the screen would go all wobbly and purple and then just snap back to reality?

well, i took some time to shut up (see previous post) and i think i’ve gotten a refreshed and degaussed look at just a bunch of stuff.

i don’t know if this blog lead me down a path, or if i lead this blog down a path, but there was one point where i called myself a “church nerd.”

after shutting up (see previous post again) for a little while, i got some perspective.  i deguassed.

i think i wanted to be a church nerd.

but that’s not what i’m about.

i wanted to be a church nerd b/c my friends are church nerds.

lately, i don’t think that’s me anymore.

don’t get me wrong…  i AM a nerd.  but just a different kind.

i’d describe myself as a nature nerd.

yeah, alliteration even.

i promise there’s a reason for all of this.  but to keep true to the spirit of discovery that this blog is about, i’m going to keep it at that for now and post more as i realize for myself what it means to be a nature nerd.

and since i hate blog posts without picutres or links, here’s both:

link #1

link #2

picture

good message, but cheesey approach.

does this guy really think the thieves that stole from him are going to give him 3 minutes and 44 seconds?  it’s probably more like 3 seconds.

that video should have been cut short.  if i’m theivin’ a trailer full of bibles, i’m not listening to an emo video droning on with that weird background music.

i kept thinking, “this guy needs to shut up.  just shut up.”

which brings me to this post i’ve been worried about posting for a while.  here it goes…

christians, it’s time to shut up.

now, try to stick with me.  i know it’s hard to hear.

but take a look at this image below.

that’s a shot of my google reader folders after less than 48 hours.

the church folder makes up the vast majority of my blog reading.  that’s 61.6% if anyone was curious.  114 church posts, 71 other posts.

if that’s not enough to make you shut up and think, try adding stuff christians like to your rss feed.  you’ll be screaming “SHUT UP” all the way to the ‘delete’ button.

so what do we do if we can’t talk?  we think.  we listen.

…then we think about what we just listened to.

when my non-church friends hang out with my church friends, they can’t believe how much the church people talk.

yeah, we’ve got a good message, but talking constantly isn’t necessarily communicating.

i can’t help but wonder how many of my non-church friends would become my church friends if we just stopped to listen to their stories.

i might catch some heat for saying these things, but fire away.

i’m ready to listen.

my friend’s sister and brother-in-law are involved in a new company.

eco achievers

if you want to learn about eco friendly things, they’ll teach you.

i just got their launch e-mail today, on earth day.

go check ‘em out.

if i called someone “plastic,” i’d be calling him/her fake.

also, plastic is actually made of cancer.

now, if you want some real stats on plastic, read megan’s post.

i recently discovered how awesome the national geographic channel is.  it’s a shame my time is limited with nat geo.  i’ll miss it once we get rid of cable.  but i did happen to record a show called “the human footprint.”

there are a lot of crazy stats on there, but one thing about plastics that’s crazy is that we don’t know how long it takes plastic to break down.

you can almost watch how quickly leaves and other plant material breaks down.  cars rust much quicker than we’d like.  but plastic…  yikes.  how long has plastic been around and it hasn’t started to decay yet?

scary.

my wife has some awesome one-liners almost daily.  it’s one of the things i first liked about her.

today i walked into the room and she asked, “do you have trin with you?”  me; “no.”  sarah; “oh, i thought i smelled puppy.”

just fyi…  trinity is our new puppy.  and she smells like our new puppy.

apparently, that smell can rub off and i smelled like new puppy, too.

totally radical.

i’ve heard a lot of takes on the mario theme song, but this one takes the cake.

way better than any of these.