Here I sit again, staring at my monitor, drawing a blank. Why was it so easy to write last year, and now I find the writing toilsome and the reading blah? Too much work and not enough play? Do I no longer see things with a writer's mind? Maybe it's just the anticipation of eating that room-temperature 7-layer burrito that's distracting me...

Hmm, I'm out of things to say. Let me see...

I put my truck back together today! I didn't get it fixed. I got 95% of the way there and couldn't get the last little bit. Kind of frustrating, mainly because this will delay my new lens nearly one month (because of the cost of repairs). I got 98% of it back together and I hit another dead end. I was missing a nut and washer. I searched high and low for it. I used a magnet and poked around all over under the hood, thinking it may have fallen down in there somewhere. Then I looked some more. I covered myself in grease crawling around looking for that thing - never did find it. My best guess is that a rodent ran off with it during one of the 3 weeks it was laying on the floor in the garage. Unfortunately, I can't drive my truck without this little detail. So my truck sits in limbo. This is really getting on my nerves. Seems like it's costing far more money than any Toyota should...

But my burrito just walked through the door (in a sense), so I'm going to go eat my (now cold) 7-layer...

So I was really bored yesterday. But, oh! The splendor of boredom! Mentally, I was absolutely drained after this weekend. I think I spent literally 1/2 the weekend in awe of the fact that I couldn't think of anything - my mind just wasn't processing anything. It was all I could do to muster the mental capacity to accomplish tasks, after which I set my mind on standby until my next requirement. I spoke very little to anyone. I just couldn't think of anything to say....

Sunday we went to Seattle to hear Rob Bell's presentation, The Gods Aren't Angry. I was really looking forward to that all weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Joar suggested I blog about it, which I plan to do.

Yesterday was a very rejuvenating day. About noon, however, I was bored. So I wrote a wallpaper page for merethinking.com, and started sorting archived photos, since my 250GB external drive is filling up... I was kind of like a walk down memory lane. I ran across pictures I'd either forgotten about, or never appreciated.

I was working in Texas in the spring of 2006. Miguel, a young man about my age decided to be baptized. After his baptism, we went over to a friend's house (Noah Zygmunt) and hung out all afternoon. Later that day I dropped him off. It was near the end of my time there, and I was just kind of reminiscing about all that had happened over the summer when I drove by this church. I'd driven by it many times, but just happened to have my camera this time, so I pulled over and snapped some pictures. This picture, I think, captured a lot of my feelings about that day.

When I was working in Washington, DC with Net '05, my sister and I took a day and went to the botanical gardens there next to the Capitol. It was beautiful. Undoubtedly the most beautiful garden's I've ever seen. I snapped a bunch of pictures, but only a few jumped out at me. I don't know why I never did anything with some of these... Maybe I should.

Way back when it all started...

This is my AFCOE class graduation pic. It was November of 2003. Wow, four years. In a way it seems that it's been only a short time, but when I look back on all that's happened between now and then, I think it must have been much, much longer than four years. God has certainly led me on a very great adventure. I'm really grateful to Him for what He has given me. I wouldn't give these last four years to anyone else!

It all began on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007. I got home from small groups. Jeffrey met me in the hall and announced, "Hey, I got something for you." I followed him to his room where he handed me a small box with an "X" on the front. I just about kissed him - but I didn't...

I grabbed my computer and inserted the DVD and clicked "install." My computer rebooted to the DVD. I made a couple of selections, and the installation began. One hour later I was staring at the new eye-candy in Leopard, Apple's latest OS.

We got the family pack, so it was only $40 for me to upgrade. At first I was questioning whether it was worth the investment or not. I think now I'd be willing to pay the $130. There's a bit of a learning curve, especially with Spaces, but once you round the bend, you'll be floored!

Leopard boasts 300+ new features. While some simply improve the look, others could have been left off. I preferred the old version of Front Row. The new one looks like something off the Microsoft product line. Oh, and that semi-transparent menu bar at the top - totally Vista... But here's a few of my favorites:

• Quick View
• Cover Flow
• Spaces
• Time Machine
• Data Detector
• Notes/reminders
• and a nifty little progress indicator for outgoing mail.

With all the work that I do with photography, large numbers of photos (I have more than 20,000) are sometimes difficult to manage. Quick Look is a digital photographer's dream-come-true! With Quick Look I can instantly see any photo without the need to open a program. The best part is that it works seamlessly with Cover Flow.

If any of you have iTunes, I'm sure you're familiar with Cover Flow. This is a GREAT feature for scanning through large quantities of files. You can see a small small version of the files, and when you think you've found what you're looking for, simply hit the space bar to bring it up in Quick Look to see all the little details. This is a HUGE time-saver and very intuitive way for me to browse and find pictures.

Spaces is great for organizing your work. For example, right now I have Pages and iTunes open in this space. I have Photoshop and all my other photo editing programs in another space. Mail and my calendar are in the third space, and Safari and my web-development apps are in the fourth space. This enables me to work more efficiently in the space I have without getting confused by having too many applications open simultaneously.

On the down side, I need a faster Mac now because I can manage so many more applications simultaneously.

Then there's Time Machine. If I accidently delete a file, or decide I really did need that file that I deleted three weeks ago, Time Machine allows me to go back and restore it. It's better than simply backing up your files. Unfortunately I accidently lost a bunch of pictures a week before I got Leopard instead of a week after... Oh well.

The Data Detector is genius! Whenever I get e-mails announcing important dates, it recognizes the date and gives me the option of adding it as an event to iCal! Apple says it best:

Say you get an email invitation to dinner. What if Mail recognized the address of the restaurant and let you map directions on the web? Or let you click once to add the date to your iCal calendar? With Leopard, it does. - Apple.com

Notes and reminders fit right into Mail and work seamlessly with iCal. I can add a reminder in Mail and it will make a note of it on iCal - I can even set an alarm to remind me of the event or deadline.

I'm still feeling my way around Leopard, but I'm really happy with it. I'd recommend anyone who uses their computer for more than just e-mail get Leopard. Steve did it again. I wonder how long they can keep this up. In the words of Jeffrey: "Are they going to release another operating system? There won't be anything to add to it - Leopard already has it all!"

That's right, Leopard's got it all, even a sweet new screen saver.

So that infamous sound had been lurking on the other side of the bathroom wall for the last four days. At first I was in denial - "I'm sure that's nothing..." So I ignored it. Jeffrey actually checked after day one, but found nothing. So the nearly inaudible noise continued to haunt all who entered our bathroom.

Yesterday Jeffrey checked again.

"Brandon, I've got to show you something. Come here."

"What is it, Jeffrey?"

"You've gotta see this."

I got up from my comfortable seat in front of the fireplace where I'd been studying and followed him down the stairs. On the way he continued talking:

"So about four days ago I noticed this strange sound while I was in the bathroom."

"Oh no!" I thought, "There's a leak..."

Sure enough, he opened the door to the utility room (located behind the bathroom) to reveal a small thunderstorm in progress.

It turns out that it was the result of a pinhole in a 3/4" elbow just above the hot water tank. This single pipe feeds all the hot water to the rest of the house. It's under quite a bit of pressure, so this pinhole was emitting a hairline stream of water up into the ceiling - hence the rain storm. And parts of the ceiling just outside the utility room were showing signs of the squall inside.

So we shut off the water, wrapped a rag around the pipe, and set up a makeshift drain system (using a dust pan, block of wood and a string) to control the damage until we could fix the joint properly. We turned the water back on and one of the guys called a friend who is a plumber and arranged to borrow the necessary tools for the job.

So first thing this morning I set about fixing this thing. Torch, flux, solder, pipe cutter, sandpaper, pipe brush, all these things took me back several years to when I'd been helping my family build our home in Colorado. I actually had a blast!

I shut off the water and drained the system. The I sweat bullets while cutting the pipe, fearing that somehow I made a mistake and the water from every pipe in the house was going to back-drain into my face when I got the pipe cut. Fortunately, it didn't. Then I heated the joint and pulled the elbow off. I cleaned and prepared the replacement pieces, fitted them together and soldered them. Then I cleaned up while the pipes cooled. Again, I sweated bullets as I turned the water back on, hoping there wasn't a leak - there wasn't. That's actually one of the most fun things I've done in a while - 45 minutes and a huge sense of accomplishment!

Now the thunderstorm has passed, but the ceiling is still reminding us of what happened. I could fix it, but I think we'll stand as a memorial for a while...