Catch Up

To say that the last few days were eventful would be a huge understaement. In the last 5 days I have traveled over 1500 miles and spent over 23 hours in my car. The bond between me and my iPod has, if can be believed, grown even more strong since Sunday. I haven’t posted since Friday so here is a bit of an update.

1) Press: Yours truly has gotten a little bit of press lately from the blog on some music sites. First, I was quoted by Spin magazine in an online editorial about the XM-Sirius merger. According to Spin I am “tuned in” to the issue. They even spelled my name right! Pretty cool. My original post can be seen here and the article from Spin can be found here.

Secondly, my story in my own voice was featured on the March 2nd edition of the @U2 podcast. The POPcast was celebrating the 10th anniversary of the release of U2’s POP album and the @U2 staff asked listeners to submit their favorite stories about the POP album or the tour, POPmart. I never thought in a million years that they would use my story but they did. You can listen to the podcast online or you can subscribe on iTunes. My part begins at around 54:20. Enjoy.

2) PlanetWisdom: I took my students to a great youth conference called PlanetWisdom last friday and saturday. The event was awesome. We had seats on the very front row and my students had a blast. The featured band was group named Addison Road and they totally rocked. The teaching times were solid and the whole event seemed to go flawlessly and smoothly especially from a youth leader’s perspective. It went so great that my students are already asking to go back next year.

On a related note, instead of driving back and forth from here to the conference, we stayed at my parent’s house.

Note to youth ministers out there: Burn all of your stuff from high school if you are going to let your youth group stay over at your parent’s house! They will find something that they think is hilarious. They will make fun of it. They will take pictures and post them on their Myspace pages. I’m just saying.

3) Bono-Fatigue I wouldn’t go so far as to diagnose what happened this weekend as Bono-fatigue but it was at least a case of over consumption. As I set out on my road trip I thought that it would be a great idea to listen to all of U2’s studio albums in a row without skipping any songs. Between Texas and Mississippi I listened to Boy, October, War, Under a Blood Red Sky, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, and Rattle and Hum. After All I Want is You finished playing I was about spent. “On the U2 timeline,” I thought, “this would be a natural break so I should probably quit this experiment right now before I just lose it.” On my return trip yesterday I picked up where I left off: Actung Baby, Zooropa, Pop, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Again maybe not fatigue but my tummy does hurt.

4) Saturday: I am completely stoked about heading out to Colorado to hit the slopes. We will be shooooshing down the mountain at Monarch starting this weekend. Can’t wait.