From the Mind of MandoRon

Let me begin by saying that I’m not quite sure where this is going to go.  There’s just been several things that I’ve seen lately that I’m trying to wrap my brain around.

First… the other day, I was looking around at some of the clutter in the house and thinking that it would be nice to have just a little more room.  After a few minutes, it hit me that I’d just have more clutter.  People just seem to naturally fill up whatever space is available.  More space = more stuff, not less clutter.  I told Andrea that maybe we are blessed to have a smaller house than most of our friends.  That way, we’re forced to donate or throw away.  And to really think about what we’re buying.

Second… I took a truckload of “stuff” to the dump Saturday morning.  I had to wait in line for about 20 minutes since there were several other pickups in front of me.  It really made me stop and think about all the consumer waste in our society.  We don’t repair anything, we simply throw it away.  This is true whether it’s furniture, appliances, televisions, cars, or even houses.  I was throwing away some true junk and some limbs.  But I was also tossing some large plastic kid’s toys that my kids don’t use anymore.  Some of them probably could have been sold in a garage sale or donated.  I also threw away a high chair and a crib.  My parents and grandparents never would have thrown out a high chair…  The crib would have been salvagable if I hadn’t left it on the back deck for 9 months…

Third… there was an article in the paper this weekend about how landfills are hurting in this economy.  Landfills are having to lay off workers because people are buying less new stuff and fixing things more often.

Fourth… I read this quote from Will Rogers on Monday.  It’s so true

 ”Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”

What does all this mean?  I don’t know.  I’m just making observations.

Here’s what I do know:

1. My wife is happier when there’s plenty of money in the savings account.
2. The more instruments I buy, the more money I spend on strings and stuff.  And the more time spent on maintaining all of them.
3. My 13-year old car gets me to and from work just fine, but I still want something with more mojo.
4. If I had a bigger house, I’d just have to spend more money furnishing it, maintaining it, heating and cooling it, etc…  And in a year, or two, it would be just as cluttered.
5. Being content with what you have is the key to happiness.  I’m more content when I don’t look at the sales ads in the Sunday paper.

Thoughts?

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Spring Thunderstorm edition of Sunday Setlist.  Here you’ll find my recap of the music at GracePoint Community Church.  You can check out more setlists over at Fred’s Sunday Setlist Blog Carnival.

Week 3 of the “Rockstar: Making Him Famous” series was jam-packed with great music.  It was the most fun that I’ve had mixing sound in a while.  Everything went pretty smoothly, and the band was smoking hot.

• So What by Pink (walk-in)
• Let God Arise by Chris Tomlin
• No More No Less by MercyMe
• God With Us by MercyMe
• Rockstar by Nickelback
• Drifter by DecemberRadio (prayer time)
• My Glorious by Delirious (offering)
• I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett (encore)

So What was a fun song to open things up with.  Christina rocked the vocals.  (The lyrics were of course a little more church-appropriate…)

Let God Arise is my favorite Tomlin tune, and is great for some rockin’ worship.

No More No Less  is a good one from MercyMe.  When Christina sings it (like this morning), we change the chorus to “I am just the one” instead of “I am just a man”…  I like this song better in the offering slot than as a worship song, but that’s just me… 

God With Us is currently on my list of favorite worship tunes.  It was just recently introduced at GP, althought it had been talked about for a while.

Rockstar …  the best part of this song was Terry Johnson dressed up as ZZ Top.  Mike told me to add some vocal effects so that he’d sound like Nickelback…  Not really possible dude.

Drifter hasn’t shown up in a while.  It made a nice backdrop to the prayer time.

My Glorious is an awesome song from Delirious.  I’d like it to show up more often.

I Love Rock and Roll … Christina brought the house down for the encore.

The band: one male and one female vocalist (plus a special appearance by Terry…), two electric guitars, bass guitar, keyboards, and drums.

Have an awesome week!

• Forgive me, it’s been nearly six months since my last Share-it Saturday.  But I’ve come across several cool and interesting things lately, and I figure it’s time to dust the format off.

So here goes!

• My good friend Buck thinks I look like this professional bowler…  This guy has an uncanny resemblance to Mike Snow.
• Thousand Foot Krutch is offering a free download of their new song “Bring Me to Life”. It’s one of the hardest songs they’ve done in a while. You can get it at WelcometotheMasquerade.com or FeedtheBeat.com. (Thanks to Matt at TheFreeChristianMusicBlog.com for pointing this out.)
• MercyMe covers “Dead or Alive” in the Cover Tune Grab Bag.  There’s a lot of guitars, and I really like John Reuben’s little TobyMac interlude.
• Very cool stop-motion video called The Wolf and the Pig.  I came across this over at Collide Magazine.
• MuteMath released the video for “Spotlight”.  It’s well worth watching.
• Incredible group of kids rocking a little Journey.

I think that will do for now.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Thanks to the magic of craigslist, we rescued a stray dog from the Valley Center animal shelter yesterday.  He’s a lab mix.  Got some pointer, weimaraner, or something else in the DNA too.  We think he’s about a year old.  Andrea is going to take him to the vet this morning, so we’ll see what his input is.

The kids are ecstatic, as you can imagine.  Because he was a stray, we don’t know his name.  We’re leaning towards “Bullet” at the moment - named after the horse that runs out on the field whenever OSU scores a touchdown.  “Bolt” was in the running for a while too.

I think he may just be the perfect dog.  He’s sweet, gentle, and loves people.  He has completely made himself at home.  In fact, he’s asleep on the couch right now.  He ignores the cats even though they keep hissing at him.  He seems to be housebroke.  He’s got super short hair, which means he shouldn’t shed too badly.  I took him for a walk yesterday, and he behaved quite well.  He doesn’t know any commands like sit or stay, but he’s so eager to please that I don’t think it will be too hard to train him. 

He was so excited when everyone woke up this morning.  He’s one happy dog!

Here’s some pictures…