News travels fast: Leighton Tebay is engaged. Congrats, LT and Carol!

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Show notes:

• Audacity - download
• This took forever. It was my first Audacity-powered podcast, so that’s understandable. I’m still getting the hang of optimizing the volume of various clips and so forth. But this is so much better than using a cell phone.

Click here to download the podcast (8.2 MB). You can subscribe by adding this feed to your podcasting app.

Starting Location: Camp Hill, PA
Destination: Hockessin, DE
Date: April 24
Distance: 81.8 miles
Total Miles Traveled: 81.8 miles
Summary: Andrea and I spent the week in Delaware with her parents. It was a truly blessed time. Unfortunately I had to fly out to Seattle to unpack our furniture into Justin’s house for 2.5 days so I missed out on some of the fun, but better me than Andrea. She went to the zoo on Thursday with her mom the flower girl from our wedding. On Friday we went to the circus with my mother-in-law’s second grade class. The kids were adorable. It was a lot of fun. Today we set out for Logan, OH were I grew up. I’m looking forward to spending time with my parents and old friends. More to come.

Last Sunday marked a new chapter for Andrea and me; we left our life in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania behind and began a new adventure. I was (and am) incredibly excited as well as frightened. But I’m convinced moving to Seattle is the right thing to do.

Our church hosted a going away party for us Sunday night after church. It was a very special time. Lots of hugs, tears, and “see you laters”. I’ll miss so many people there including the Gaskins, Hulls, Crowdens, Nicks, Williams, Dan, and many others. I can say with utmost assurance that I am a better man because of these people.

I also find it amazing that, despite my most meticulous planning, that God’s plans are better than mine. I originally planned to move to Seattle directly following my college graduation. But no jobs developed and I somehow ended up in central Pennsylvania. But I learned so many things and met so many wonderful people there. During my time several things happened to me:

1. Time passed. The economy has improved. Companies are hiring. I graduated just after 9/11 if that tells you anything
2. I got work experience. A necessity in a competitive work environment.
3. I got to know my wife’s parents much better living with them for the first four months of our marriage and living the next two and a half years less than two hours away. A blessing.
4. I got out of debt. I can almost afford to live in Seattle now.
5. I found what seems to be the ideal job (for me). It was actually the first job I interviewed for in Seattle. The company is small, the hierarchies are flat, business is good, the technology is diverse and interesting, the office is in historic downtown (a block from the waterfront and close to tons of cool restaurants and such), and there are coworkers my age. Wahoo!
6. The Baeder’s bought a big house. They have space and a big mortgage. We are in need of space and have money to help pay said mortgage. So Andrea and I will be crashing the place until further notice. Essentially, we’ll be fighting materialism through community. Expect to see more on this from Justin and me in the future.
7. I became less cynical about my COC heritage. I’m able to see both the good and the bad and use that for the glory of God.
8. I got to see and work with some truly Godly elders. Not CEOs. Not rulers. Not power-mongers. Servants. I hope to be like them someday.
9. I got to meet some really, really awesome people I never would have met before. Thank you all so much for your friendship and love. Let’s continue it!
10. And finally, and most importanly to my wife, I met a baby that I absolutely adore. I now don’t find them quite so petrifying.

We’ve spent the week in Delaware visiting with Andrea’s family. It’s been totally great. Tomorrow we leave for Ohio to spend a week with my parents and high school friends. Then we make for Seattle via Nashville, Arkansas, Kansas, Denver, and Yellowstone National Park. I hope to keep a travelogue if wifi permits. Keep us in your prayers as we travel over the next two week.

Grace and peace.

Click here to download the podcast. You can subscribe by adding this feed to your podcasting app.

Show notes: This podcast is a few thoughts on hell. This is the book I referred to, which I’m going to pick up right now from UPS (who are smart enough to write me a postcard saying “your address doesn’t exist, so we couldn’t deliver your package,” then mail it to that supposedly non-existent address, where I received the postcard the next day).

Click here to download the podcast. You can subscribe by adding this feed to your podcasting app.

Click here to download the podcast. You can subscribe by adding this feed to your podcasting app.

Show Notes:

• The bad audio quality when I’m describing BitTorrent is, ironically, the result of my mediocre VoIP phone quality - I’m using my upstream bandwidth to make phone calls, and when my upstream bandwidth isn’t great, the phone call quality goes down
• BitTorrent (Wikipedia)
• Azureus torrent client
• Creating torrents requires specialized (free) software - see the Wikipedia article for links

Click here to download the podcast. You can subscribe by adding this feed to your podcasting app.

A heart that’s full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won’t heal
You were so tired happy
Bring down the government
They don’t they don’t speak for her
I’ll take the quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprises
Silent silent
–Radiohead

Whether this is my attitude toward life is my choice. I felt today like my job was killing me (not very slowly at all), mostly because I have a headache. The afternoon cappuccino has gone down the hatch, though, so I’m probably going to be feeling a little less carbon monoxide shortly.

I want to live a life of passion, conviction, wisdom - but not of continual disappointment when I realize that these have been absent for a while.

Father, carry us along as your people. Pillar of cloud, pillar of fire, guide our way as we journey with you.

Aaron is here. We have moved much heavy stuff, including Jesse and Elaine’s new piano. Must rest.