A Plethora of Podcasts!!

Lately I’ve been listening to podcasts a lot, which I’m finding to be just a terrific source of information and entertainment. Since I now have a ~30 minute commute to work (instead of the 5 minute commute to my previous job), the car is becoming a great place to listen to my iPod, either through headphones or through the cassette adapter in my car’s pimpin' stereo. There are 4 main podcasts that I’ve been listening to pretty regularly, so I thought I’d provide a little description of each one.

1) Pastor Mark Driscoll Audio Channel – Pastor Mark Driscoll is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. I’ve been listening to his sermons online for a couple of years now, and I’ve found him to be an intelligent, challenging, gifted communicator of God’s Word. And, he’s funny too, which is a bonus. His sermons range in topic from 'Calvinism vs. Arminianism' to Biblical positions on birth control and alcohol. His latest series is called “Religion Saves and Nine other Misconceptions”. Really good stuff.

2) The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack – I’m a big fan of the TV show “Lost” on ABC, and my buddy Cody introduced me to this podcast last year. It’s a great show, giving a detailed recap of the week’s episode, along with listener feedback, behind-the-scenes news, and Jack’s “Crackpot Theory of the Week”. I even called in before one episode last season and they played my call on the air! Fun!

3) The Dice Tower – This is one of 2 gaming podcasts that I listen to regularly. Hosted by Tom Vasel and Sam Healey, with contributions by other folks in the gaming community such as Moritz Eggert, Mary Prasad, and Greg Schloesser. Tom Vasel is well known in the boardgaming community due to his prolific writing of game reiews on BoardGameGeek, and it’s fun to hear the banter between him and his long-time gaming friend Sam. Every episode centers around a “top ten list” of games in a particular category. Tom and Sam both live and work in South Korea doing missionary work, which makes the fact that they’re able to produce a high quality, successful boardgaming podcast all the more remarkable.

4) The Spiel – Hosted by Steven Conway and David Coleson, and recorded right here in Indianapolis, The Spiel is quickly becoming my very favorite podcast, gaming or otherwise. Exceptionally produced and organized, The Spiel is about “games and the people who love them”. Every episode includes gaming news, the “Backshelf Spotlight” (where they highlight some older games that might have slipped your mind as goodies), “Game Sommelier” (where, like a wine steward, they are challenged to choose the “right game for the right occasion”), and “The List”, where Steven and Dave play one or more games off of their personal list of unplayed games in their collection and offer a review. Their most recent episode, called “26.2”, highlights a 24-hour game marathon that the guys hosted with a few of their friends. After every game that they played, they recorded a segment with a short description and review of the game. It was especially fun to hear the decline in their coherence as the marathon went on and they got more and more tired. I hope they make it a yearly event!

Even if you don’t have an iPod, you can still link to the podcast website and download the mp3 files, or listen online. But, if you do have an iPod, all of these podcasts are available on iTunes for free. Listening to these great shows may one day inspire me enough to start my own podcast, but for now I’ll just sit back and enjoy the quality work of these other fine podcasters. Check ‘em out!

Work, Church, Football, and Long Nights

Life marches on, and there’s not a whole lot to report that’s any different from my last blog post. Work is going quite well, and I’m slowly starting to make friends with some of my co-workers. There’s a couple of guys that go out to lunch regularly, along with a constantly rotating crew of other occasional lunchgoers, so I’m finding that hanging out with them is giving me great opportunities to meet and get to know people. The work itself is slowly starting to pick up, and as of today, I’ve been assigned 4 projects to work on. So far, I haven’t found the work to be overwhelming, but there is definitely a learning curve. The science of drug disposition is pretty fascinating, and seems to be a bit more interdisciplinary than the field I was working in before, which was more focused just on bioanalytical mass spectrometry. In my current job, I get to interact with biologists, organic synthetic chemists, toxicologists, and other pharmacologists to help study the ADME properties of these new drug compounds. It’s really quite interesting.

Freedom Church has had 4 Sunday services now, and we seem to have hit our stride as far as setting up and tearing down a church in a movie theater. We have an amazing team of people, and they’re all still very excited about the church, and also about what God is doing in Boone County. We’ve been averaging about 140 people (including children), which is such a blessing, and we’re really eager to get everyone connected and “plugged in”. We hope to have lots of service opportunities in the community, as well as small groups that will help people to build relationships and grow in their walks with Christ. Rachel and I have been a part of this team for nearly 2 years now, and we are thrilled with the outcome so far. It has been SO much work (especially for Rachel – it’s hard when you’re as talented as she is!), but the experience has been unlike anything we’ve ever been a part of before. And I mean that in a good way!!

In sports news, the Super Bowl totally rocked this year, with the New York Giants upending the New England Evil Empire (er, Patriots) by a score of 17-14, in one of the most exciting football games I’ve seen in a long while. It was definitely the most unlikely of outcomes. I’ve always found it interesting that in sports, especially football, there seems to be a constant flow of great games, close plays, and stunning upsets. As Americans, we love to root for the underdog, and more often than is probably warranted, that underdog comes through with a victory. So, hats off to Eli Manning and the Giants! Hopefully, Peyton and the Colts can get it together next year and return to the big game. A Colts/Giants Super Bowl next year would be the stuff of legend.

Tonight I made an attempt to actually go to bed at a decent hour (10:30pm) so that I wouldn’t suffer from the 3pm zombie-like sleepiness that’s been trying to overtake me at work for the past couple of weeks. Apparently, Erin thought that my plan was a terrible one and decided to let me know that at 1:15am at approximately 120 decibels. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, whether due to a bad dream, a bad diaper, or whatever other reason, she makes a point to make her presence and displeasure known. With force. If she were 6 months old, I might not mind as much. But, she’ll be 2 in April, and I thought that we’d be past this stage by now. I guess I’m just being grumpy, since I’m writing this at 3am, physically exhausted but unable to go back to sleep. I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and continue my tradition of a 3pm Mountain Dew for at least one more day. Here’s to caffeine!

A Whirlwind of Activity

Well, last week might have been one of the most interesting and activity-filled weeks of my entire life. Or, at the very least, it was a week that was full of change. This basically centered around 2 main topics:

1) New job – I started my new job at Eli Lilly last Monday, which began with a very impressive orientation day. We learned about the corporate vision and strategy, all of the benefits details, and got a terrific tour of the “Lilly Center”, which is a museum that’s attached to the Lilly campus that teaches about the history of the company. The company was started by Colonel Eli Lilly in 1876 in a tiny, two story building on Pearl Street in Indianapolis. Col. Lilly’s son (Josiah Kirby Lilly Sr.), as well as his two grandsons (J.K. Lilly Jr. and Eli Lilly), all worked for the company at some point, and have handed down a pretty impressive corporate legacy. They have actually built a full-scale replica of the original Lilly facility on the grounds of the corporate center, which was just fascinating to tour. They really did a good job of introducing the new employees to the company and its culture. The rest of the week was spent in my new cubicle, reading SOPs and doing computer-based training. I’m meeting lots of very nice people, and I’ve even had a chance to go to lunch with a few people. It’s definitely a much larger operation than at Covance, so I suspect that making friends might be somewhat of a challenge. But, I know that I’ll eventually find a place to fit in, and I think the work is going to be pretty interesting.

2) New church – Yesterday was the inaugural service for Freedom Church, the new church plant in Lebanon, Indiana that we have been helping to launch. After nearly 2 years of brainstorming, planning, and praying, the first service was just fantastic. We had a great turnout, and are looking forward to seeing who will come back next week! And, for being in a movie theater, I thought we did a good job of transforming the place into a church. My job is to lead the technical team in the “living room” (our hip, 2008 term for “sanctuary”). That means that I’m responsible for setting up running the soundboard and making sure that all the technical details of the service are taken care of. We’re using a program called Easy Worship, which is designed to integrate many kinds of media (song lyrics, PowerPoint slides, video clips), and synthesize them into a linear schedule that is run during a church service. The result is a relatively seamless media presentation, which really adds to the quality of our service. Rachel has done a fantastic job of learning and working with that software – the schedule she designed for this past week just looked great, especially with Cliff manning the controls. Anyway, everything else seemed to go great. Of course, we have quite a few things that need to be tweaked and improved, but overall we were very happy with how it turned out. Also, we were really thrilled that Jonathan and Diane came out to support us (with adorable little Ian, of course), and that we had the chance to have lunch with them, too. I’m really looking forward to next week!!

Not much else to report. Rachel and I are looking forward to an upcoming weekend trip to Las Vegas next month to help my Texas friends Dave and Amy celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. This should be a fun trip, and Rachel and I are really excited about having a weekend together as a couple, sans kiddos. Many thanks to Mr. G. David Chase for his generous airfare pass contribution!!

Happy New Year - 2008 is going to be quite a ride!

Happy New Year to anyone who happens to come across this blog (all 3 of you)! This has been a pretty exhausting holiday for me, but probably one of the best in recent memory. We helped some new friends move into their new apartment, which involved lots of lifting, lots of organizing, and lots of driving the U-Haul truck! It was cool and rainy on New Year's Eve, which turned into bitter cold and snowy on New Year's Day. But, we got almost everything moved, and hopefully were able to help to reduce the stress of a quick holiday move. Plus, I got to give my arms a nice workout!

My week of intentional unemployment continues. I'm very excited about my first day at Eli Lilly next Monday, and I kind of wish it would just hurry up and get here!! It's been more than 3 months now since my first interview at Lilly, so I'm ready for the dream to become the reality! In the meantime, I'm trying to get some work done for Freedom Church. as well as getting some rest. Tomorrow, after helping Shane buy some sound equipment for the church in the morning, I'll be getting together with Mike in the afternoon for gaming, and Cody in the evening for (even more) gaming. Wow, sounds like it'll be a good day! :-)

Here's to a great 2008!!

Reflections on a busy season

Wow, 11 days since the last blog entry. Fear not, I’m still on the wagon of regular blogging!! Of course, with the holidays, it’s been quite busy, but I do have time for a few brief reflections:
Christmas was a little different this year, especially with Rachel’s brother Ryan in the hospital recovering from his injuries. Check out Rachel's blog for more details on that. But, we still ate good food, opened presents, and enjoyed the company of family. On Christmas Eve evening, I went over to my mom’s house for dinner. My cousins Amy, Louis, and Lauren were here in Indiana for Christmas, which was an absolute joy. We had a nice dinner that consisted of an assortment of homemade hors d'oeuvres, including chicken salad sandwiches, meatballs, and an excellent cheese ball. Then, Amy, Lauren, Louis, and I enjoyed three rousing games of Wits and Wagers, which they loved. I seem to be playing that game a lot these days! Then I returned home to where Rachel and the kids were enjoying the evening with Rachel’s family. I got home just in time to participate in the present opening. Ethan really liked the “Leapster” video game machine that we bought him, and Erin seemed to love the toy pots and pans set that Rachel’s parents gave her. She kept walking around with a pot and spoon in her hands, stirring, giving everyone bites of her imaginary culinary creations. I got a nice new shirt from Rachel and the kids, as well as the board game 1960: The Making of the President (FANTASTIC game). Rachel’s parents bought me a couple of nice board games as well.

On Christmas Day, we headed to my mom’s house for breakfast and more presents. I had assembled Erin’s play kitchen at Mom’s house a few days earlier, so that was the first thing we brought out. She loved it, and seemed to know exactly what to do with the oven/stove/etc. Ethan got a big bucket of Play-Doh tools and accessories, as well as some cool bath toys with a pirate theme.

But, even more than the presents, it was nice to celebrate Christ’s birth with family. The afternoon was spent resting, playing, and preparing for a wonderful Christmas dinner, cooked to perfection by Amy. Despite the fact that Louis beat me in my first game of “1960”, it was a really nice day.

So, now I sit in my office on Friday, December 28th. Only 2 more hours of work at Covance. It’s been a strange day, packing up my cardboard box of pictures and other trinkets. I had a nice farewell lunch at On the Border, and this afternoon I have 2 mass spec injections to set up before I leave. After that, I’ll walk out the door for the last time as a Covance employee. It’s been a very good 7 years, and I will miss many of the people. My only hope is that I accomplished at least some of what God wanted me to do here, both vocationally and spiritually. Onward to a new adventure!