thai.

doesn't look like much.  the food was gooood.

cooking it in front of you

Thai food is a variety of food I did not experience until I lived in Australia.  Side note: along with thailand, there are a whole bunch of countries I was not very aware of until I lived in Australia, such as almost all of south east Asia, and almost all of the Pacific Islands.  Anyways.  There are lots of Thai people due to Australia's close proximity to South East Asia.  And. let me tell you.  As someone who grew up on Chinese as our Asian food of choice, Thai is way better.  I spent the night at my friends sisters house and she treated us to thai for dinner. 

hanging with the gaffneys

eating breakfast

mrs gaffney

walk on the beach

daniel and his sister alyssa

 

 

 

 

 

on Sunday morning, i got to hang out with a really great family.  Back in 2006, I staffed Daniels DTS and we went to Fiji for our outreach.  He had a great school with this particularly great group of guys.  Daniel lives in Canberra, Australia and even though it's been 5 years, we still get to hang out every now and then!  This time it included almost his entire family which was even better.  They took me to breakfast at a great cafe and then we walked to the beach.  The whole time I got encouraged by what Daniel's doing with his life.  He's an at risk youth worker in his city, as well as a leader at a youth group and he is going for it!  These are a few snapshots of our morning!

Daytrotter.

Are you guys aware of daytrotter?
Its a pretty amazing music website its $2 a month, has one of the best iphone apps i've seen in a while*

They have some amazing sessions free to download from a bunch of up and coming bands its a great website to just cruise around and check out new music.

There are sessions from the Local Natives, Thrice, David Bazan, Someone still loves you anymore Boris Yeltsin, recent favourite is a band called The Lumineers shown to me by a friend.

*haha i wrote that like i know something about phone apps, i dont... but this one is still awesome

coming soon!

We've been a bit behind on the updates sorry. but we have a few posts in the works including two more 'stories from the side of the road'

here is a preveiw.

Brandon Reid

This is Brandon Reid, He makes fine music. follow the link and listen/buy is music.

I met him about 3 years ago in Alaska. He is a wild man, a traveller a poet and a good cook!

He also is responsible for my stick poke tattoos and teaching me how to cook asparagus. He was the highlight new years eve 2010.

Good guy.

stories from the side of the road (#1)

So.  There's something Christina and I, and a few others secretly really love. Twice a year, every suberb around us has their designated large item trash pick up from the city council.  You can put out items like televisions, old fridges, couches, tables, lamps, etc. Being the economical, thrifty, not wanting to consume more than what we need people we are, we've found these weekends are great for getting furniture items we need for our houses and rooms.  

It looks like this:  Around 10pm on a Sunday night, we head out to the designated area, drive around and look at the tree lawns.  Items I'm specifically looking for right now are:  a t.v. stand, a set of drawers for the end of my bed, and more chairs for our kitchen table.  Items we've found in the past are:  my kitchen table, a really cool bedside cabinet, tents, a christmas tree, and more.

Anyways, we drive around, check things out and bring home what works.  We look crazy (example:  Jesse was sitting on the hood of Christina's car wearing a head lamp), but we find some great stuff!  

Here are a few photos of our recent finds.

vintage suitcases!  Anyone getting married soon?  these would be great in your engagement photos.  why the wombat?  i was looking for practical furniture items.  Christina was looking for anything animal themed. You'll see...

 

along with the animals, there were pots EVERYWHERE.  we settled on one that wasn't giant and that looked a little bit Mexican.

 

like i said, more animals.  This is for Christina's door. 

 
This butterfly....what can i say about this butterfly.  It lights up and sings an asian techno song.  Score. And another animal for Christina.

an illustrated dictionary (it only goes A-K...that's a bit of a problem) and there was a box FULL of cassette tapes!  I started to love Cat Stevens because someone gave me a cassette tape of him and then I spent a lot of time in a car with no c.d. or MP3 player.  So this time we grabbed the Beatles 1's and Cole Porter. 

 

cleaning a set of drawers that I found that are pretty useful.  Everyone walked by and said 'it looks like...' and then said things like 'siding', 'window shades', 'bee hive'.  side note:  holy heck our building looks ghetto. 

a sampling of our stuff!

ok. let's be honest. we picked up a lot of crap. but we had a lot of fun doing it and so far everything we've picked up is being used.  The dinosaur and wombat and vintage suitcases decorate Christina's room.  I use the set of drawers.  We listen to the cassettes while driving. The butterfly...ok. i don't know how that is being used. It's just weird.  but it's made a lot of people smile so it's been useful that way.

look out for next weeks treasures!

 

I totally just donated to Wikipedia, no i have not been hacked, i truly think its a great cause.

 

 

pete bjorn and john

while home, i won tickets on the radio to see this band (thanks 88.3 the sting!). I hadn't listened to them much aside from the song most people know that intros gossip girl (guy whistling: 'do do do do do do do do do do').  I grabbed a friend, we stopped at a great little bar called 'La Cave', and then saw this fun band play.  They're swedish, have been together for awhile, and it was really good show! I was just going through my blog photos and I saw that I'd saved a picture of the concert poster, so I thought I'd write a little blurb.

mary.

This is mary.  She is a student on one of the schools we run called a'Discipleship Training School'.  Hers in particular is called a Compassion DTS. 

Mary has a pretty great collection of tattoos and we figured she had some stories for them, so me and Christina took a few photos and asked some questions.
 

Mary is from Michigan and is 20 years old.

The first tattoo we'll talk about is this one behind her ear.  It's the first two letters of the word 'Christ' in latin.  At one point, it was used by Catholics to identify their faith.

This tattoo is the one that caught our eye the most.  It's colorful and the artwork is bright and fun.  The story of this one starts with a boy.  A little while ago, Mary was dating someone. This someone turned out to not be the right guy for her.  When they broke up, God spoke to her about how she was made for a life of adventure, and the guy she just broke up with was not adventurous.  She got this tattoo as a symbol of the adventurous life she's going to live with God.  Considering she's living in Australia right now, headed to Latvia and Russia to do prostitute ministry, and is passionate about reaching the hard core music scene, I'd say she's living a pretty interesting, adventurous life. 

This is a close up of her adventure tattoo.

She has a storm cloud on the back of one ankle and a sun on the back of her other. This is to signify praising God through the good times and the bad.  

 

This tattoo commemerates her love of her home state, Michigan.  She says many people in her church have this one.  She loves her state a lot.  I've noticed a lot of people from Michigan do.

You can also the anchor that is behind her other ear.  It's a symbol of hope, which pairs with the symbol for Christ behind her other ear.  So hope in Christ.

This tattoo is her favorite.  She loves what is says, the script, how simple it is, and how you can usually see it. 

This one is a work in progress.  She started out with the outline of a heart, and then later filled in the color.  It was supposed to say 'We only have one heart' but before she went to get the color filled in, she had a dream that it was meant to say 'This is only the beginning'. So that's what she got.  Again, considering the adventure that is starting in her life, this is pretty true.  

She has a few other tattoos planned, but she's not sure when she'll get them done.  She has a friend who tattoos, and she wants to get them done by her. 


Thanks so much Mary for letting us take a look at your artwork and for telling us your stories!

the other f word

I just came across this trailer for a documentary. it's about guys from some welll known bands who are now dads (members from NOFX, Blink 182, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc), and the questions parenthood raises about anarchy and submission and rules, all while they're just trying to be good parents. It looks pretty great. 

Pray the devil back to hell

ALOHA

I just watched this incredible documentary.

 

I highly recommend it, its powerful as. I give a little more detail here and there is the trailer. i figure to stop me writing reviews and showing a ton of youtube videos this summer i made a little other section titled the summer review 

r.i.p.f.b.

as a part of my 'no consuming november' 

I deactivated my facebook. 

I will return to facebook, or I may not.

(this is a big deal)

facebook doesnt take you on adventures like this one, does it!