Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Tonight I will head over and stay with my parents and spend christmas morning there. I believe the christmas night movie will be The Spirit. I love Frank Miller as a comic book writer but I'm not sure how he'll be as a director. I was going to go see the new Tom Cruise film Valkyrie and a movie about Nazis with no german accents sounds bad but I'd much rather take my chance with the Spirit.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas. Enjoy your family.

Fading Away

Listened to Demon Hunter's "Storm the Gates of Hell" while jogging this evening. Big fan of the song Fading Away.



It's in this wake that I find myself
Losing the will to resume this Hell
When every breath is a dying wish
It's harder to follow the point of this

This broken place that I call my home
Has deepened the sorrow that I have sown
And I can't erase what is in my heart
I want it to finish before it starts

My own solution insufficient again
No false illusion, this devouring threat
I break the vessel, giving air to its red

And open my fate to the darkened sky

[Chorus:]
I've been fading away
I've been waiting on the call to reach my veins
Ready or not
No attention to waste
Every sorrow of the soul will read my name
When I cease to exist

So now I've come to the final sleep
I pray that forgiveness is mine to keep
I know it's hard to forget this man
Driving the failure into your hands

My own solution insufficient again
No false illusion, this devouring threat
I break the vessel, giving air to its red

And open my fate to the darkened sky

I went jogging in the rain, in the dark. Not my favorite conditions for a run but it was nice. Relaxing.

My brother booked me a show at the Music Cafe in Damascus. He's the man. I'm super excited to be playing live again and playing most of these songs for the first time. My brother is working on flyers and posters which I'll post when finished. December 26th. Come out, please!

Basketball is on my tv for the first time this season. I boycotted the NBA last year during the playoffs because the games were terrible. I hadn't watched this year because there is football and hockey to watch. But alas there is no hockey tonight and I'm just looking for something to be on in the background and the sorry Wizards are just that.

I'd like to take this moment to say I really enjoy the Churro at Baja Fresh. Very tasty. I'd also like to say that it would be awesome if Giant carried their popcorn chicken more.

Raided by Waves

Currently enjoying some sweet potato soup and Yuengling. Doing a little fooling around on guitar. Once I finish dinner I think I'm going to the music store and pick up a couple of cables and odds and ends before I try and do a little recording. I'm going to go very minimal and do mostly just guitar tracks, possibly some light percussion and maybe some bass lines but I really want to put together a collection of thee guitar tracks I've had. If for no other reason I just want to have a demo to shove out and play live. I don't care that much for the idea of recording and putting out music, as I've said. But one needs to do it to play live and have people listen and enjoy that which is created. Although honestly I don't care to have people like what I make and that's an honest truth. I just enjoy playing and would like to have people share in my joy of creating what I think is some rad music. Let's all sit around with coffee and beer in hand and enjoy the sounds of my guitar creating beautiful meoldies. Sounds fun right?

I think I'm honestly at a crossroads in like and how I choose to deal with it is up to me and at the moment at least I want to completely shake things up and just try a bunch of things I've wanted to see happen for a couple years now. I need a change somewhere. I think part of the change that God has given me has been good and very helpful but I think there's some bigger changes that need to be made. I hope I don't mess up too badly.

Thanksgiving is a couple of days away. I'm pretty excited. Good food. I love turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, pumpkin pie... I'm hungry. Tomorrow or Thursday I'll have a post on being thankful and the things that I'm very appreciative of this year.

I'd be lying if I said anything other then I'm super excited for Christmas. I've done 95% of my shopping thus far (which turned out to be even bigger then thought). I love christmas. It's very exciting. I get far too into giving. I love buying christmas gifts for people. I did it last year and I'm doing it again. I have a lot of joy giving gifts. It's exciting. I wish I had that same joy all year.

The other reason I love Christmas is the music. Not the same dozen cheesy songs you hear on the radio. More like...

Stress and such has caught up with me. I am home from work sick today. I'm not really of fan of being sick.

There's a line in the song "It's Hard Not to Shake..." by Zao that is hitting me in the head right now.

"I am not a prophet or a teacher. I am a failure of God."

This is how I feel right now. I'm down. Saturday night playing drums and worshiping was a great moment of grace and peace that I wish had stayed. It confirmed that I shouldn't quit the worship team. I wrote a song about 5 years ago called What are you waiting for and I said, "what are you waiting for (someone to hold me), what are you waiting for (someone to save me). I've been held, I've been saved... What am I waiting for?

Maybe I'm trying to hard. I'm pretty sure I'm not trying hard enough. I know I'm spending too much time trying to fix myself and work on myself instead of letting God come in a fix me. Why is it so hard to just accept grace and now that there is nothing I can do but God can change is reform me if I let him.

This is a song we played Saturday night. I love it.