Tonight was earthquake night at Casa de la Moment. According to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, we had a 3.0 magnitude jolt about 10:02pm, just about the time we were halfway through “Volver” – tonight’s Netflix selection. That red square on the Seismic Network page is us — well, about 20 mi or so north of us. This house is all wood and looks/acts like a cabin, so there was a fair amount of creaking and popping. (Between 8-9pm when night falls and the house cools and contracts, it sounds like the main deck of the HMS Pinafore in our living room. ) If we get a sustained quake, I’m guessing it’ll be pretty noisy.

Today was also earthquake day for some friends of ours. Heavy-duty drama going on with their life situation, and an uncertain future with no guaranteed relief. And this after almost seven years of struggle, hope, prayer, trust, and continual waves of crisis that is not of their doing. It was hard to ride it out with them, hard to sit and take it in and not shut down and try to make ourselves useful by praying, giving advice, listening. But that’s the blood you’ve gotta shed for each other sometimes. When next our shit hits the fan (and it will… oh yes, it will), I want someone to stand with us and not run, not shy away, take some hits with us shoulder to shoulder. And if you want people to stand with you, you have to be willing to stand with them. So it went.

Our friends Steve and Miche are leaving town without us getting to see them. Steve pastors Union Church of Manila in the Philippines. You can check out his sermons on their site. They are dear people and good friends, even though we only get to see them once a year on their annual Seattle pilgrimage and I actually never talk to them. We’ve got some long roots going back a ways, and we are family in a deep spiritual way that can’t be broken. I’m very sad we missed them. I hope God sees fit to bring them back to Seattle permanently, and soon.

I’m missing Micaela tonight. The world is colder without her Irish fire to warm it up a bit. M, wherever you are journeying right now, we Moments love and miss you.

Almost forgot to post. I’d just rinsed out the sting of mouthwash before climbing into bed, and suddenly remembered. So I hauled myself downstairs and here I am…

Not much tonight. Finished Season 2 of The Wire. Sad tales, sad tales. Also, I found some cool free vector artwork — Photoshop brushes & shapes, and lots of links to other places. Start here:

We drive past a Baptist Church in Poulsbo all the time. This week’s marquee said something about not losing your faith. It struck me as an odd way to put it, the assumption that faith is like “stuff”, something you can more or less of, or store put in a bucket that, if you’re not careful carrying it around, will get sloshed out and be lost. The way that Hebrews (the book of the Bible) seems to describe it, faith is an action catalyst, a mindset that is the well-spring of action, the simple willingness to say “yes” and jump.

In the wandering days of the exile after Egypt, the story reads that the Hebrews would build a monument when something amazing had happened, when they’d been rescued by yet another intervention by God. They did it to remind themselves that something had indeed happened and to acknowledge that it could happen again. But INBETWEEN the monuments… Well, there’s the hard part. We all remember the monument times with fondness, with that warm afterglow and the toasts and cheers and happy feelings. But that awful, unconcerned or uncertain, dark, dreary, boring, dry, anxious part that falls inbetween is the core, the meat of where we life most of our lifetime.

Faith is the decision to step forward from the monument into God-knows-what, the decision to put one foot in front of the other instead of lying down and giving up, the continual wrestling match with God over whether or not this step is the right one or even if we’re headed in the right direction. Faith is a sparkplug that powers each spiritual motion – enabling one decision at a time in the belief that our trust isn’t misplaced even as we glance back at the monument receding into the distance and hope that the next monument is just ahead.

Maybe with enough repetition my own faith spark will grow brighter, more confident, more practiced, and may even grow strong enough to illuminate the landscape around me.

Nothing big again today… Just more work and more Wire. Man, what a great show.

During our Wire time tonight, Amira woke up again. She’s been doing that pretty regularly the last few weeks screaming/crying. I think this latest round of cognitive development is contributing to her having nightmares. I don’t remember much at all from when I was her age, but I do remember a recurring nightmare I had.

It was an old-skool home movie screen — the kind where you fold out the legs, hook the screen handle on the top rod and extend the screen. We had one in my family that my Dad would show our home slides and old Super 8 movies on. The screen was playing a flickering movie, no sound — just the racheting clicks of the film going through the projector. The move was in black and white, and it was just an old white man’s face from the neck up in a non-descript background. His face was thin and wrinkled and he was bald-ish with a fringe of hair. And he was laughing. Silently. Looking straight out of the screen at me and laughing.

It scared me so bad that I couldn’t even scream in my dream because I was so choked up. I’d wake up crying and shaking. And then I’d have the exact same dream the next night. That happened for a while — maybe a month or two. And then it ended and I never had it again.

Back to Amira. After hanging out in the doorway while Janece soothed her and got all the sweet talk (“You’re a nice girl, Mama. I really love you” and so on), I finally got a chance to cut in. I smoothed out her curls out away from her eyes and over her warm little head, and said “Sleep tight, sweetheart.” She sighed a sweet little contented sigh and said “Thank you, Daddy.” Just about ripped my heart from top to bottom.

After we sat back down in the living room, I said to Janece, “You know I’d do anything for that kid, right?” And then a heartbeat later, it struck me. Why do we do that when we grow up to be adults, and then parents? At what point do people make the switch into being willing to do anything for the kid(s), but leaving themselves behind? What makes them give up? What made me give up?

I’m a selfish bastard, but I’m willing to put myself out a long ways for that kid. I’ve endured all of her cries and complaints and foot-dragging and bargaining to do things like give her the right food, the right bed time, the right amount of TV, etc., and been happy to do so because I want her to be liberated, capable, rested, energetic, awesome. And it’s worked pretty damn well. I couldn’t ask for a more wonderful, bright, fun kid.

In contrast, somewhere along the line, I gave up on myself — gave up on the Paul Project. I’ve let myself eat badly, sleep badly, dress sloppy, get bad teeth, hunker down in front of some numbing form of media for unhealthy hours, ignore doing the things that feed my humanity and creativity, get withdrawn from others. I’m not just responsible for Amira’s care — I’m responsible for mine, too. More responsible than anyone else on the planet. And of course, my lack of responsibiltiy has put Amira in danger of assuming my habits because she doesn’t have the power to choose — my habits are The Normal for her, The Way The World Is.

I’m not going to bang myself around with guilt. That’s a waste of precious time. But when I said “I’d do anything for that kid…”, maybe doing right by myself is one of those “anythings”. That’s one reason why I’m switching up some things that need switching.

Day 2. Feeling pretty low-key. Got some work done tonight — small tasks that have been hanging around all week. I have a custom CMS I’ve been offering to my customers, and working on it has meant that I’m doing a lot more programming these days, almost as much as designing. I like programming. I find it to be super-logical, task-oriented and undemanding, but still with some opening for creativity. Design takes a lot out of me. My brain is on high-alert the entire time I’m doing it, checking every addition to make sure it fits in the project spec and branding, double- and triple-guessing myself on the design approach to minimize the chances the client won’t think it sucks, and always always fighting the “i suck why do people think i’m any good at this i want to die” noise that many creatives feel when they’re feeling their way through a project. I don’t want to lose my design edge, so I won’t stop doing it, but I’ve thought many times about just getting programming work for a while because it’s so much less intense.

I want this damn election over with already. I’ve been on the edge of my seat for over a year, biting my fingernails and getting nervous every time Obama’s gotten in another dustup. It’s not so bad now that he’s up against McCain, especially after this trip when it’s become clear he’s a superior candidate in both public image, political smarts and intellectual heft. The GOP’s not going to know what hit them when then get steamrolled by his voter registration drive and the organization he’s building. And McCain has got to be the least organized and least prepared candidate in recent memory. But still… It’s not over by a long shot. And I’m gonna be nervous until I see that electoral landslide.

And the mainstream press, my god. What a bunch of insufferable, self-congratulatory, ill-prepared, lazy herd animals. Their factually sloppy coverage and puerile, fad-driven lines of questioning are barely fit for a high school news channel. Thank god for bloggers. I can learn more in 10 mins of political blog reading than I could in hours of watching TV pundits. (Which, mind you, I can’t physically do –10 mins of that blather sends me diving for the off-button in a desperate bid to perserve my intelligence and sanity.)

Whoopee! Another blog post about programming and politics! I’ll bet no one on the Net has thought about writing about those things before!

To try and rescue this post, I’ll close with a couple of funny face photos I took with Amira when she was two. Hard to believe these were almost two years ago now.

Taken on the Mac loaned to me during my Trivekta years. Oh, how I long for a Mac Book.

So, it’s been less than a year since I posted last. But what a less-than-a-year… Since the last post – October ’07 – Obama now rules the Known Universe, the US economy has a horrible mortgage-drunk hangover and lots of people are feelin’ the poor coming on, my little family moved from mainland Seattle to the Kitsap peninsula where people live by the sweat of their brow and “hipsters” are old people with joint replacements, my daughter and wife have grown older wiser and more beautiful, and I…. Well, I have not.

However, I did grow a beard.

I called it my “Kitsap beard” (or occasionally, my faux-Orthodox beard). It’s kinda farm-ish territory out here. As I understand it, you can’t even build a home on less than 2 acres. And there’s lots of beards — at least, lots more than Lynnwood. And since I felt like hunkering down, getting my head straight, getting back on an even keel, getting away from society, getting my house in order, and covering up my fat face, I decided that a hermit beard would do it.

Today, I started over.

It started with my beard itching like crazy sometimes and piles of beard dandruff — practical reasons for taking it off, letting my skin breathe and starting over. But I’ve also been feeling like maybe it’s time to take a stab at a new wave of energy, activity, outlook. So in the spirit I took it all off, except for a single pitiful soul patch, a transparently pitiful attempt at saying “I can still look hip”.

I think I look kind of annoying, frankly. My double chin that I’ve lovingly developed over months of desk work, reading blogs, trying to work a night shift, and refusal to exercise, popped right out with a “how-dee-do”! My skin is pretty red, like a vampire burning in the sun. And in my opinion, I look like my chin got blown off with a shotgun. There’s nothing there.

But you gotta start somewhere, so here I am. I have a new project — 20 lbs by Christmas, which should shave down the double chin at least. I’m starting in on taking vitamins again, doing my morning pushups, maybe even jumping rope for 15 mins a day. I’m getting on top of my workload again for the first time in almost a year. My rent is paid early. I’m also going to post here every day for a year — at least 365 posts full of God knows what, and I’m going to lay off my political blog reading to do it (which is going to take some discipline since Obama is clearly going to have a hard time getting elected without me obsessively checking the political blogs 3 times a day).

So that’s it. Day 1. See you tomorrow.

PS. Janece and I are making our way through Season 2 of The Wire which is amazing and sucked us in despite being relentlessly and grimly realistic. Rent it immediately if you have not seen it.