Today was such a good day. I've never really been the type to wake up on my birthday and expect it to feel different, or expect to feel older or anything like that. To me, my birthday is just like any other day except I get a little more attention and people sing to me instead of me singing to them like I normally do.

I woke up and went back to sleep. My birthday present to myself. I came in to work around 10:15AM this morning. I had a few minutes in my office before I had to go to the worship planning meeting at 10:30AM. That meeting went fairly well. We spent a few minutes talking about this past Sunday with the special stage setup, worship set, etc. Matt had to go to a doctor's appointment at 11 so we had a quick meeting today.

We talked for a few minutes about something I've been suggesting for a while now--flat screens in the front area of the building. I've always thought it'd be a good idea to set up a few flat screens in the cafe/commons areas and the registration centers so that we could replay ministry highlights, announcements, etc. I spend 40+ hours sometimes on editing the short spots for only a few people that actually get into the service on time to see them. It's not that I really care that much that "lots of people see my work", but it'd be nice to see it get used for more than just the one time showing it in the service. It would also give us more opportunities to use the cafe as a multi-purpose room since it would have video capabilities to go with the existing audio capabilities. The only problem is that flat screens and the technology to provide content to them costs money. Money that we probably don't have right now. Oh well. Maybe in the future.

After the worship planning meeting, James and I went to Matt's office and had a bit of a tech talk but mostly just talked about music, life, video games, and whatever else came up. Around 12pm, we left to go meet Andrew at Oriental House for my birthday lunch. I had invited a few people and most of them showed up as well as a few other people too. There were 10 of us altogether and the people at Oriental House did a great job serving all of us.

I really enjoyed having lunch with friends that I work with, and Andrew bought my lunch too, so that was nice. We agreed that he'd buy my lunch on my birthday today at Oriental House, and I'd buy his lunch on Thursday at Oriental House. So, it all works out.


Our table order number was 25. And I turned 25 today. That seemed kind of ironic. Maybe the people at Oriental House knew because I go in there all of the time. Or maybe it was just by chance.

Jasper showed me this cool function on my little Powershot while we were at lunch that I had never even played with--color accent. It can pick out a color on the fly (samples it from whatever it is pointed at) and highlight that color by desaturating everything else outside of that color tolerance. I've done the effect before on the computer, but it's neat to see a little point-and-shoot camera do it on the fly.


We all got fortune cookies when we got our bill too. I got a little bit creative with the fortunes that were all piled onto the table.


When we got back from lunch, I worked on sending some emails and trying to get caught up on my inbox and contacting volunteers, etc. I don't send one to every person each week but I like to single out one or two people from the team each week that I thought did a stellar job and send them a note of encouragement just so they know that I appreciate them. I can remember doing each of those positions as a volunteer so I know how much it means to have someone on staff that notices their good and hard work. And our tech team is the best. Some of those guys would be there every week if I let them.

I helped Andrew some with the setup and we took down the cross on the stage. I messed up one of my favorite ties while lifting the cross up from the floor onto the side stage loft, which was pretty disappointing, because it was one of my few ties that goes well with my gray shirt. Oh well. I guess that means I get to buy some new ties!

As I was working in my office, Andrew came in and asked if I could come out and help him move a platform, which was really just a ploy to get me to come out so the staff could sing happy birthday to me. I was slightly surprised to see that many staff members all congregated together, but I did hear most of them standing in the Worship Center, so I knew something was up anyway.

It felt great to be on the receiving end of having "Happy Birthday" sung to me. I only regret that they sang in the dark (we don't keep the lights on in the Worship Center), so I couldn't really see everyone.


I spent the rest of the afternoon working on projects in my office, updating my task list, and writing notes for things to do this week. For as electronic as I try to keep my life, I still do a lot of things on paper, namely via steno and legal pads. I love those things. Steno pads are portable, and I've used legal pads for as long as I can remember. Yellow for some, white for others. When I worked at SourceLink, I had folders and folders of handwritten notes and task items that I used for each project. It was a convenient offline way for me to stay efficient. Plus, it made me look super-organized and busy when going to meetings.

Today was by far the busiest and most active day I have ever had on Facebook. I had so many people write on my "wall" wishing me a happy birthday. Some were people that rarely talk to me, others were close friends just using a convenient tool to wish me well. I had a lot of text messages and calls too. It felt great to have so many people remember and recognize my birthday. I guess turning 25 is supposed to be some kind of milestone. I kept a record of every message that came in and made sure to personally respond to each one in some way, because I figured if I was on the other end of the communication, I'd sure enjoy a response. Generic messages are ok for some people (i.e. "Thanks for all of the birthday wishes everyone!") but I just enjoy using the opportunities to reconnect with people. I guess you could just say I'm a social person like that.

Andrew worked on the light plots today while setting up the stage and I helped some with that. I was actually really glad to see him taking the initiative to do that since lighting is always an area that I have wanted to improve but have never really had the time to concentrate/focus on it. I spend so much time during the week with video and overall organizational stuff that I rarely get to actually focus on lighting plots and design.

Around 5pm, I got out the hydraulic lift we have at the church so that I could take a look at the mover light that stopped working on Sunday. I was going to have Andrew help me take it down from the catwalk, but the lift needed to charge and I didn't have time to take it down before going to dinner at 5:30pm.

Today was International Pancake Day at IHOP, probably in honor of my birthday. I made plans last week to meet Rachel and Dan there for a birthday dinner. As I pulled into the parking lot, the place was packed out. There was not a single parking space in the restaurant parking lot. Every car coming in was driving through and having to back up and turn around and go back out and park elsewhere just to come to IHOP. I saw a bunch of cars trying to do multiple point turns in a tight area at the end of the lot to turn around. I decided, having an SUV, that I'd just turn around where I was at. So, I pulled forward and to the left, and then just backed up onto the grass/sidewalk and turned around in one point. I parked in the HH Gregg parking lot next door to IHOP on Woodruff Road.

I met Rachel and Dan and Lauren inside. Lauren had gotten there a lot earlier than the rest of us and got a table already. Jami came in a few minutes later and Dustin ended up joining us too. Dinner was great. We all had the free short-stack of pancakes and I also ate some chocolate-chip pancakes. It was way too much food. I couldn't even eat it all. Someone in the restaurant paid for our entire bill too, which was cool. I don't even know who it was. We tried to find out and they wouldn't/couldn't tell us. So, either someone knew it was my birthday, or they saw my cowboy hat in my car when I parked. Just saying.


So, after dinner, I drove back to the church to help finish with the stage setup. Jami and Lauren followed me to the church to help with the stage setup, which was kind of nice. Andrew and Dan were pretty much already done minus wiring a few things up, so we helped with that. Jami also helped me get the broken mover light down off of the catwalk so that I can inspect it in my office later this week. The last time I had to take one of those off of the catwalk, I carried it down the narrow stairs on the loft to the catwalk and almost fell when doing it. This time, I decided it'd be a lot safer or at least a lot more fun to use the lift and carry it down with me in the lift, so that's what I did. The constant swaying back and forth from the lift was a little disconcerting, but I got used to it.


Jami and Lauren left around 7:45 to go to Walmart to pick out movies to watch. I invited them over to see the house and watch a movie since they weren't able to come to my big house party last Saturday. I stuck around at the church to help finish the stage setup and do a quick sound check before leaving.

I met Lauren and Jami at Wal-mart and we perused the discount DVD movie bin for a while. Jami started organizing the DVDs, which took a while.


We finally made some selections, bought some candy, and left. They followed me over to the house and we ended up watching "Remember The Titans", which I already had at the house. We were all quoting the movie since we've all seen it so many times. We also talked a lot during the movie, which was ok since, again, we had seen it so many times.

Today was really a great day. One of the best birthdays I've had in a long time. I can remember in past years always getting depressed on my birthday just because I felt like I was in a phase of life that wasn't for me, or that I thought I would have accomplished more by then, or something. I've never been the type that embodies the attitude of "man, I'm getting old" (or "older" or whatever), but I definitely am guilty of attitudes like "man, I thought I would have had a girlfriend or dated by now" or "I thought I would have been a home-owner by now" or "I thought that my opera career would have taken off by now". You know. Important things like that.

Anyway. Tomorrow will be a fun day. It's my mom's birthday. I like to think that Tim and I were the best birthday presents she ever got. Because, you know, who doesn't totally love spending their own birthday the next day in the hospital after childbirth. I'll be working all day but hopefully I can pop out of the office for a little bit to go wish my mom a happy birthday.

Later,

Joe