So, I was a wee bit nervous about my first day at a new job for many reasons, but one of them was certainly introducing myself in front of all 300+ team members (most of whom I hadn’t met yet — I’ve since met a bunch of them, and they’re all pretty cool, and not really all that scary…)

Well, as it happens, the speaker at the Lampo devotional this morning used me, as the newest hire, as an illustration. “Who’s the newest here?” One hand goes up…mine. “Who are you?” “What do you do?” “Who’s your boss?” — by that question, I was flustered enough that I couldn’t find him and the speaker actually beat me to him “Oh, hey, he’s right in front of you!” But, that went fine, too, and was pretty funny.

BUT, my week of fame isn’t over yet!

Today, the local FOX affiliate came to Lampo to do a piece on the wealth of tech jobs in the Nashville area and at Lampo specifically. They interviewed Jon Shearer (my boss’s boss’s boss) and shot some footage of some of us working at our desk. If you watch the video and watch/skip to the end, I’m the last developer. Well. That’s my head. They really only show the back of my head and the top part of my awesome new “code hope” daveramsey.com web team t-shirt. They didn’t show the bit where I turned around without realizing they were behind me filming, gasping, then turning back to my desk really quick. Nor did they show the part where I did something wrong to my editor and had to force close it.

So, a whopping 90 seconds of public speaking and 2.5 seconds of television fame! What’s next? It’s only Wednesday!

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I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, my son learned something new! The bad news is it’s how to tell good news/bad news jokes…

In church on Sunday, pastor was telling a few jokes, as pastors do when they want to set up a topic, and they happened to be good news/bad news jokes.

“Pastor, the good news is the elder board voted to accept your job description as you wrote it. The bad news is that now they’ve started a search committee to find someone qualified for it.”

“Pastor, your biggest critic has left the church! Unfortunately, he’s now your district superintendent…”

Then, he told a more serious example of good news coming with bad news in the life of the author of the “Experiencing God” study. His book was selling fantastically well when his wife was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.

Well, it was at this point that Ethan turned to me and whispered, “Dad, I thought of a good news bad news joke!”

“I have some good news and some bad news! The good news is your book is selling really well. The bad news is…your wife has cancer!”

Um…well, we explained that that wasn’t really a good joke since cancer is a really bad thing, and it’s not good to make fun of serious things like that.

He figured it out, and we were treated to a long series of jokes on the drive home. Not fantastic jokes, but slightly more lighthearted.

“I’ve got some good news and some bad news! You’ve got a new mansion for a house! But, the butler’s a clown! Hahahaha.”

Hey, it’s not Shakespeare, but then it’s also not making fun of tragedy any more.

Say. That makes me think of a joke! “Mr. and Mrs. Capulet: I have some good news and some bad news. Well, the good news is that you’re not going to have to worry about your daughter Juliet pining away after that no good Romeo any more. The bad news is…”

Hmmmm….Maybe not…

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For your visual and aural edification…

And…

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Amy gave me my Father’s day present: an awesome e-book from one of the bloggers she reads.

Marla Taviano wrote an earlier book entitled “Is That All He Thinks About?”, a book about…”a three letter word that ends with ‘x’” (as she put it in ‘Husband’s Guide…’), aimed at wives and written to explain the profound differences between how men and women approach the…erm…marriage bed. Amy expressed some interest in the book, but it seemed pretty self-serving to get it for her

(But, if anyone else wants to “surprise” her with a copy, that would be just fine with me!)

The Husband’s Guide is written to the guys. It lays out 6 simple (but not necessarily easy or quick) steps to show our wives how much we love them. Physical intimacy is the likely result of that deeper, stronger relationship. She’s a great writer, and the material is covered in a very frank, entertaining way. She didn’t beat around the bush when a strong stance needed to be taken, but she also explained concepts in a way that connected with me a little better than some other marriage books I have read.

I found the best part of the book, though, to be the fantastic husband survey she ran to gather quotes from husbands. (I was actually one of the respondants — Amy told me she was trying to get 100 husbands to chime in.) Much of what she was saying clicked with me; I know that I should be actively striving to be a better husband. But, it was really, really encouraging to see quotes from other men who felt the same way about some of these challenges, and about how certain things our wives say and do can build us up or break our confidence.

It was a pretty quick read (I read it on my phone between when the kids went to bed last night and this evening at around 8:30). It was fun, encouraging, and very motivating.

It is $5 really well spent (especially, since Amy says the Taviano’s are using the revenue to fund a family mission trip). Read more about it at the Husband’s Guide to Getting Lucky website.

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We had a very touching service church service this morning. The Teen Challenge choir was singing, and the testimonies and songs are always moving.

At one point, the director of the program asked the very pointed question “Who here, if it weren’t for teen challenge, would probably have been in jail or dead within 6 months”. Almost every person on stage raised their hands.

So did Ethan and Audrey.

We’re very concerned about this shocking discovery…

Also heard this morning, after the youth pastor, in introducing the missionary of the week said “and, we should have a slide up here…”:

“What? Awww…I though they had a slide!”

You ever tried to explain to a 5 year old boy that a bunch of words projected on the wall are a “slide”, but not a downward leading plastic spiral? Ethan was pretty excited for a second or two there!

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Got my arduino in the mail this morning. This is one of my first projects with it.

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Did Amy mention the snow? Yeah. There was a lot of it. But the snow was okay, it was the inch deep layer of slush UNDER the snow that really got to your feet.

My wife loves me. A lot. She was ready to drive to Cottage Grove at 20 miles an hour, but saw that I was disappointed that we weren’t running the race. I wasn’t looking forward to doing it, but I really wanted to have done it.

It was going to be my first “official” (that is to say, chip-timed) race. A lot of people come (500 or so last year), so it’s a very different type of event than the Winsted race was. I had not trained much over the last few very busy months, so I wasn’t expecting to do great, anyway. But, when you add in crazy conditions, that somehow made it something bigger than just a race — a day to remember. I REALLY wanted to be able to look back at this point in our lives and know that we ran this 5K even though it was probably pretty ridiculous to do so.

Anyway, the actual race:

It was cold out. The wind was coming hard from the north, and it made waiting for the race to start pretty uncomfortable. So much so, in fact, that almost 200 people were huddled in a big clump out of the wind by the building until the organizers finally called us all over to the starting line. The gun went off, but it actually took us a few seconds to realize it. Almost nobody shot off at the start. Oh, a few people did, but most of the rest of the group took off slow and took advantage of the trail left by the eager folks up front. It took a bit for people to squeeze around each other to get into the right place in the pack, but Amy called back to me, and encouraged me to follow her to a place in the line where we could maintain a challenging pace for me (and probably a pretty painfully slow pace for her…)

The first half-mile or so was okay, but then we started a LOOOOOOOONG (1/2 mile or so) hill, most of which was headed into the wind and snow. It felt a little like someone throwing tiny snowballs at your face. We all had to keep our heads down, watching the feet of those in front of us so we wouldn’t get faces full of snow. I remember watching Amy’s feet and being grateful that she was there.

By the 2nd mile, we were heading perpendicular to the wind, with it hitting us on our left sides. Apparently, the front folks had sorted themselves out too, by then, because what had started out as 3 or 4 trails settled down into 2 packed-down paths with only one being available at some points. As a result, a big group of us ran in single-file, keeping pretty much the same speed. With my poor training, I would have probably gone a little slower if it hadn’t been for Amy calling back to me to make sure I was still there. That was enough encouragement to keep me trying to catch up.

The final mile curved around quite a bit, weaving through a bunch of ball fields. The terrain there was a little bit rougher — the leaders had lost the sidewalk a few times, and the trail they left behind ended up angled or deep in mud, but Amy was still there ahead of me, warning me to watch out when the going got tough.

She knew the course, having run it once before, and as we neared the final curve, she warned me that we were going to sprint the last bit. I yelled back “no, I’m not” or something to that effect. We came around the corner, only to discover that since the course was now certified, it had been lengthened. We had to run back down part of the beginning of the track and do a u-turn back up a hill before heading to the finish line. Very dispiriting, but I pushed myself to catch up with Amy on the way back up that hill.

We didn’t sprint, but we did speed up a bit, and came in with a time of 39:20, for an average pace of 12:37.

All in all, it was a pretty tough run. I owe Amy for finishing it as quickly as I did. It was hard, but she kept pulling me on.

We ended the race proud of what we did. For what it’s worth, we also ended the race about 30 pounds heavier in water weight (my gloves alone felt like they weighed 10 pounds each, with the snow they had soaked up). It was fun. Well, not so much fun in the doing, but in the having done.

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Yeah. About that search party.

Took a wrong turn on my 6-mile run and ended up going 8. It was a nice long run out in the middle of the country with no side streets to get me back any faster than just keepin’ on after I realized my mistake at around the 4 mile mark. At around the 5 mile mark, I realized how far away I was and tried to pick up the pace a bit to get home before Amy called the police…or packed up the kids in the van and came looking.

Ah, well. Amy didn’t send out a search party, but she was outside looking down the street for me when I got home. Maybe I should run with a phone on my long runs? Or, maybe look at where I’m going to go before I leave so I know where I’m going to turn!

In the end, I did 8 miles at a 15:17 pace. Definitely a distance record for me, even if it was unintentional.

Also, it was dark.

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