Had a great weekend with my sister Miriam, my sister-in-law Micaela, and her son Ryan. Miriam had been planning to visit for a while, and it just so happened that a video-game-development school called DigiPen(with an amazingly crappy site — blech) that Ryan has been looking at attending was holding an open house, so he and Micaela came up here at the same time. It was just what I needed — some great family to hang out and get lovin’ from, and a chance to show off Amira to relatives who knew just how to admire her.

I’d really wanted to show them more of Seattle, but due to this and that, we really only got to visit Magnusson Park (I thought it might be cool to visit the Sound Garden, but it was closed because we’re in post-9/11 America and it’s right next to a NOAA facility, and only open on specific hours) and Pike’s Place for a short while. But, we still had a great time anyway. We watched Charlie And The Chocolate Factory one night (I’d give it a 6.5 out of 10 — it left me a little dry) and and a giggle-infested desert night with Doug and Larissa. I have some pics of the weekend — I’ll post them hopefully later today or tomorrow.

We briefly discussed the idea of living in a shared house at some point. I don’t know if that is a conversation that will just fade away into the Land Where Casual Good Ideas go to die, but it would be marvelous. I sometimes want it, but it would be difficult for me personally and for Amira’s sake to live in a single-family house again. Living in community with another family is guaranteed to be frustrating at times, but at the end of the day it’s deeply rewarding in many unexpected ways and encounters. If my family got serious about it, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Speaking of family, my friend Sky has thyroid cancer — a malignant growth he discovered about two weeks ago. It’s weird to even type that. He’s not much older than me, and like everyone my age, he seems mostly indestructible. A friend of his, who I knew but not that well, died several years ago from a rare sinus/brain tumor, but no one I know personally or closely has confronted this before. As long as they can’t find any other cancer anywhere, he’s in good shape — the success rate for treating this kind of cancer is 99.6% according to his site, which is a great relief. He’s at the beginning of the treatment process and by no means out of the woods, but I know he’ll get through this with support and prayer from his community.

But, it’s still unnerving because I feel a significant and symbolic connection with him and his little family. He and I are musicians, were in a band together, have shared countless political and religious discussions, both have dynamic and entrepreneurial spouses, both have a beautiful little baby girl, and even share similar career skills. He’s extremely insightful and intelligent, and I’ve really come to value and rely on his spiritual insights and journey to inform my own — like a mentor in a lot of ways. Life feels suddenly much more fragile since I heard about his diagnosis, and it’s got me evaluating what’s really valuable to me. I’ll probably write more on that later…

But post I shall… Stayed up all night last night working on designs for a law firm, so I’ve been running all day on 3 hrs sleep – not near enough for this droopy old man. So it’s bedtime.

Few quick things, tho. My youngest sister Miriam is in town until Monday. She’s mass cool and I’m looking forward to hanging out with her. We are going to come up with a Seattle adventure tomorrow — some kind of a day trip that we can all go on. It can’t go too late into the evening because I have to do the first audition for the Upper Room tomorrow at 6:30p. Then my sister-in-law, Micaela, who’s very Irish and also very cool is coming on on Fri morning with her son who’s looking at attending an art/animation school up here in Redmond. They’ll also be here until Mon, so it’s a family weekend. I’ve been needing a family hit, so this will be fun.

A few more links I forgot to post last night — nothing heavy, just some good ol’ pop-culture entertainment:

• The Cool Hunter — Just like it says. This blog author tracks down all the latest coolest shiznit and posts it for our over-stimulated decadent Western consumption. There’s also a couple of cool features — a featured artist/illustrator, and something called “Post Secret” where people post art-y little things about secrets they have.
• The Superficial — Yeah, it’s celebrity gossip. Which, normally, is about as interesting to me as watching old cooking grease congeal. But the writer is pretty damn funny in a kind of immature schoolyard way that I’ve always found humorous. And, really, where else are you going to find frightening pictures of Carrot Top? (Speaking of un-eye-candy, you should probably see this, too.)
• Fontleech — I love free fonts. In fact, I crave them in that kind of heroin junkie way. I never end up using 90% of them, but I download them anyway just so I know I have them “just in case a project needs it”. Which is a junkie way of saying “I’m addicted”. If I had an extremely large budget, which I will someday, I will spend an obscene amount of it on a massive shopping spree through some of my favorite font haunts. Like House Industries. And Veer’s type collection. And FontFont. And the Font Bureau. And Emigre. And Psy-Ops. And… Well, you get the picture. But until that day, there is Fontleech.
• When Jesus swears, what does he say? I’d never really thought about it before….

OK, to bed.

I guess my last post must have been too long. After trying to kick-start my blogging posts back up again, I just found myself all…blogged out, I guess. Faced with the choice of browsing the Net or working on my design projects or reading graphic novels or clipping my toenails — or blogging — I just felt like choosing the “anything but blogging” category. But after reading some blogs tonight, I realized that I feel strangely comforted by being able to follow the ebb and flow of life online at some of my regular blog watering holes, and it would be nice to be able to join the flow by starting to post again, and maybe occasionally being comforting myself.

Like I said, I have a few blogs I find myself wanting to read on a regular rotation. I have a fair amount of blogs in my bookmarks, but just a few that I find myself being a regular reader of. Maybe these will interest y’alls:

• Janece Moment: My lovely wife, mother of my vivaciously beautiful daughter, and an extremely interesting person to share a life with. We work at home together, so I usually feel pretty much up on what she’s thinking, but I still learn a lot of stuff I didn’t know she was thinking by reading her blog. I especially like stumbling upon photos of Amira I didn’t know she’d taken.
• Sky: My friend for a number of years, and someone who has unknowingly played a theological mentor for me more than once. Good head on that man’s shoulders. He’s a former Protestant who converted to Orthodoxy, and I’ve learned a lot by hearing what he has to say sharing his passion for the Church and the life he’s found there. He just recently found out that he has a lump in his neck — unknown type and unknown cause. Say a prayer for him as you pass, if you’re the praying type.
• Andrew Sullivan: A conservative, pro-war gay blogger — not really someone I immediately would think I had a lot in common with. But sheerly by the virtue of being resolutely and publicly authentic about his convictions in this polarized political climate, a well as his stauch condemnation of the current US policy condoning torture, I’ve found myself being a regular at his site. He gets a lot of shit from both sides for his honesty, and it makes him stand out among the yammering partisan hacks cluttering up the blogosphere.
• Jordan Cooper: He’s a pastor in Saskatoon, Canada and I originally started frequenting his blog because he’s involved in the Emergent Church movement and dialogues. I admit I was mostly hoping to shill my worship CD idea to him so that he’d pimp it on his site to his bazillion viewers. But the more I visited the more I liked the guy — again, unafraid to be honest even if it meant be controversial to some. And now he has diabetes. Pretty bad. His courage and continued interest in life despite his dehabilitating pain is inspiring, even though I can guess he doesn’t feel inspirational.
• Stylegala: I stumbled on this design newsite/blog a number of months ago, and I really like it. The crew there is mostly focused on CSS, but there’s a lot of links related to development in general, web trends, accessibility, and other stuff that interests me professionally.
• Kottke.org: Jason Kottke is pretty well known in the web development community so there’s not too much I need to say about him. A year ago, he asked people to donate to him so that he could blog full time and keep providing a high level of content for the web community. I think it worked and I think he’s still doing it. At any rate, he’s got the best web links around — tons of wacky and useful info about all kinds of things. Jordan rips off Kottke’s links pretty regularly for his “Contextless Links” feature on his site.

Unrelated: I took the “Classic IQ Test” today on Tickle.com — first one I’ve ever taken. I scored a 133, and here’s what they describe my “intellectual type” as:

Your Intellectual Type is Word Warrior. This means you have exceptional verbal skills. You can easily make sense of complex issues and take an unusually creative approach to solving problems. Your strengths also make you a visionary. Even without trying you’re able to come up with lots of new and creative ideas. And that’s just a small part of what we know about you from your test results.

Janece has the IQ rating system in this entry. If you ask me, it’s all just more proof that being smart doesn’t mean jack by itself. Wisdom is definitely distinct from intellect. I’ve been learning recently that there’s just no substitute for persistence, enthusiasm and a dream. Being smart has often just been a way for me to make clever excuses for laming out on taking responsibility for my life and talents.

There’s more going on on the church front, as well as some really cool things happening in my web projects, but I’ll post more on that some other time.