Who has two thumbs and can turn asparagus into toothpicks? This guy.
L is sick, and in bed sleeping. At least I hope so—otherwise this evening has been spent awkwardly alone, watching some Crash Course Chemistry on low volume making some chicken soup with cold-fighting goodness.
So...2013. It was bookended by weddings: my own, and one that looked suspiciously like my own. Some people have been clamoring for pics, but they'll live somewhere other than the blog. But J+J were married (how in the world I know so many people with J names I don't know—but it's ridiculous considering how rare the letter J is in the English lexicon).
She's Indian, and so wasn't allowed into the country until two months before the wedding took place. Weddings can take a bit of time to plan, I guess, so it was for him to do a lot of the planning. L and I offered some pointers, and so their ceremony had some similar features to ours. We were pleased in some fashion that our self-made obsessed-over program was the template for their own. I'm probably a bit too invested to be objective, but I thought ours was pretty decent.
We got married in January. Dad suggested we essentially elope, staging a small party for immediate family and holding the reception at a more convenient time for everyone. I had in my head the possibility that the folks and L&I could share a wedding anniversary...but it didn't happen. It turns out that "immediate family" in the Orient involves "everyone but your second cousin's third-best friend's veternarian." I can confirm from personal experience that Asian grandmothers are pretty much as good as Jewish grandmothers for guilt trips.
We had hoped the wedding would serve as a good tool for talking about the gospel. I think this happened...but predictably some people didn't really care for it. I suppose one of the bigger changes for me in the past several years has been an increasing appreciation for the message of the gospel, both in its historical claims and its personal ones.
It's a thing these days for people to invite celebrities to their weddings, so we invited a few celebrity pastors and teachers—Kathy Keller and Jani Ortlund (the two wives we corresponded with; neither John Piper nor teh Don didn't retern my mals, though to the latter's credit he did write me a note in response to a question I wrote him) both responded with kind advice, and in Ortlund's case, an autographyed copy of Ray Ortlund's commentary on the book of Isaiah. Ortlund writes the way I wish I could: poignantly, concisely, and without self-reference.
We honeymooned in the Caribbean: it felt like the first time we slept in months, and I don't know that we've done very well with vacations since then. Not that we haven't taken them, but there's only so much you can do on a cruise ship if you're not getting drunk, pigging out, or island hopping.
I am not much of a beach person—I prefer cooler weather and hiking (Freudian'd "hicking" there) to baking the white off my stubbornly European skin and shaking sand out of my shorts. To date I also prefer cultural immersion than traveling about in the sanitized version of countries; but on the other hand, no one asked if they could kill me with a hammer.
We met a pretty neat French-Canadian couple on the boat:
They were both really genuine people; he was funny and spoke the most, although she understood English better than he did. We were glad to meet them, and we spent a bit of time out in our excursions with them.
We returned home through Atlanta to visit with Gram and the fam. She's still holding on, having just celebrated her 90th birthday. She is never very far from our thoughts and prayers.
My time off from work illustrated how essential my presence was for the day-to-day running of the business—which was both a little gratifying and also very frustrating. Having recently turned down a job that required about three and a half hours of commuting every day, I'm still pushing and poking at the job market. I interviewed with six or seven firms this past year, and while I was favorably received in most cases, a lot of them turned out to be practice.
Kevin Max, one of my favorite singers, rejuvenated Audio Adrenaline, so I saw them in March. It was a decent show—loud. Max was sick, and his vocals were still pretty impressive:
Spring saw us in one of our frequent visits to the neighbors, whose son is a tax baby and delightfully photogenic:
For whatever reason, he seems to like me.
Smacktor the Dinosaur Hunter, our niece, was born in May—a bit premature but not dangerously so. She was scheduled to be induced and, I think, decided that she wasn't going to be told when to arrive. She's a bit like her mom that way. Of course, she also immediately regretted the decision to leave the womb and screamed like (wait for it) a baby. Being premature did not in any way harm her lungs (or if they have, God had mercy on us all). She will get so angry sometimes that she refuses to be consoled, preferring to heap her misery on everyone else.
Every picture of her must involve a minions caption.
 |
| Get the camera out of here, minion. |
The first Theologica throw down ever happened in June, at Fallingwater. It had all sorts of awkward potential considering the mix of general strangers, Char planning on killing Marv, the politics, and so on.
Sadly, no Marvs were harmed in the taking of this picture. He survived, I guess because he's doing the Lord's work in France or something like that. The whole of it was a really good time, though L was feeling pretty sick for most of it. People turned out to be mostly like they were online, except for J, who was much nicer in person and didn't tell anyone to die in a fire.
L and I had to leave early—work for her and things—but in the end it worked out. Char took the train back from near Pittsburgh. We spent some time in Philly at the Art Museum (and, it must be said, walking by the Moore College of Design). I'm a distant admirer of art (somewhat ironically, I stand way too close to it when observing), finding most of it out of my depth—but I can always appreciate cool dragons and weapons, and there were tons of them in the museum.
Skipping on a bit past some fun times (dislocated elbows, a tournament or two, fireworks, et c.), I finally finished my tour of duty at State Games, which is quite possibly the worst venue I've ever competed in. It was in many respects a relief to be done with it. It closed the five-year commitment I made to the team, and, with recent life changes, looks like my last travel team competition.
For many years karate has been one of the primary reasons I was excited to get out of bed in the morning (well, that and the fact that not working is a good way to starve). Teaching is a pretty important part of living for me, and one of the reasons that I've stayed at my current job for so long is that it pays well and allows the time I wanted to teach. But the teaching schedule, to say nothing of competing, has made it harder for me to get a different job—it imposed restrictions on future job prospects and was one of the overriding factors in a lot of my decisions. After some long thought and discussions, I've cut back my time teaching and won't be traveling to tournaments anymore.
So in some ways, it was bittersweet to end it all in the worst venue ever, but I'll always have my perfect 10 in Lake Harmony. I should've stopped then.
September was the birthday celebration for all of the summer babies, and we traveled to the cryptological museum. One of John Nash's original letters was on display:
They may just as well have called it "The Museum of People Smarter than You." We saw some cool gadgets and were introduced to a lot of interesting history by a guide who was pretty enthused with the stories of how we broke German codes (some working Enigmas were in the museum, along with The Bombe used as a decrypter) and used Navajo talkers. The museum is deceptively large.
One of the exhibits includes a Cray supercomputer retired in 2003. There's the original wireless bug that the Soviets used on the President (they controlled it using UHF!), and some background on the various spies and counterintelligence from the Cold War. They have some models of secure phones, along with samples of what it all sounds like (most of them were pretty much unintelligible), and old secured PDAs. The welding of tech and history is pretty cool.
October was the one-year bday celebration of the neighbors' daughter, K:
We celebrated a bit early since B was going on his annual hunting trip to Idaho. They're still eating from last year, and they share generously. We've enjoyed a good bit of game, and some pretty freaking awesome jerky.
The month brought with it the possibility—indeed what felt like a certainty—that we'd be moving to Maryland in the coming months for a job. L had gotten an offer, and in the end she decided not to take it. It's hard to describe all that went into the process, but it did help us to work on two-person priorities and how we'd try to make decisions in the future. It was the catalyst for retreating from my primary teaching responsibilities and has helped to spur me into finding another job.
Christmas came, and so far I've not gotten out many Christmas letters—although I have a stack more or less waiting for the neighbors. I have stretched out the season perhaps a little longer than I should. But I don't mind doing it this way. So much of my life has felt frenetic for so long that I've wanted to draw things out more. Christmas is one of the increasingly rare periods of time for me, along with Easter, where I see a little more than I usually do.
Of course this is hardly surprising. Reflecting on the Incarnation and Resurrection can't help but remind us of what being truly alive and truly human means. Not a small part of me wants to spend a long time writing about that, and to some degree all of my Christmas cards are a way to indulge it. There are too many people to write to, and I mostly enjoy the personalization and reflection that comes along with writing to each of them—to you.
Lewis wrote upon a friend's death that he lost something of his other friends at the same time: he would never see Tolkien reacting the same way to that one joke. Far from giving him more of Tolkien—after all, he didn't have to share him as much any more—the loss of their mutual friend gave him less.
Maybe to a degree that this is a part of what we get in our fellowship with each other: we get to know Jesus better through how our friends and family relate to him. This is a lesson that has been a very long time in coming for me, and one I think I'm still learning. Home, that ever-elusive experience, is pretty hard to confine to a single relationship or a single location—even though our relationship with Jesus is Home, and we were meant for him. There is a sharing and communion there, too, one that I've been trying to explore.
Reading Surprised by Joy with L this past fall was great. A tough read (harder than the longer Phantastes with all of its convoluted sentences I had to editorialize), but I think one of the ones that makes you appreciate your Home. That Joy is a desire more preferable than the fulfillment of any other desire rings so true in my experience! "I would sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else."
Perhaps it's not a fitting conclusion, but there it is. This is long, and it's time to pack up the (by now quite thick) soup and head off to sleep.
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