Dell and Denny’s, Branson and Bogoki

These past couple of weeks have been quite eventful, and I have put off writing a post for so long that nothing will receive very much attention, but it will be fun to recap anyway.

Julie and I had the joy of attending the Toby Mac concert in Raytown last week. It has been since Switchfoot in St. Louis that we have seen a live show (with the exception of For Good or For Awesome live @ the Heritage Center w/ special guest Esteban!) and this was an absolutely amazing concert.  I was pretty excited about the opening bands Thousand Foot Krutch, Building 429, and Family Force 5, although I had never heard of Family Force before (with a name like that, I would certainly remember).  I have always enjoyed listening to the TFK and 429, and it was good music but I wasn’t all too excited about it.  Family Force 5 was more like a circus, with people jumping around in bear costumes as they rocked as hard as they possible could for the sole purpose of rocking as hard as they could.  Not impressed.  But then Toby Mac came out… and immediately redeemed the entire show.  Words cannot describe how, even 20 years after DC Talk’s self-titled CD was released, how amazing his music and performance is.

I bought his latest CD Portable Sounds on iTunes a few days before the show, and enjoyed it, despite that it sounded like a sequel to Diverse City rather than a stand-alone project.  The concert kind of promoted that feeling as well, as they would weave between similar-sounding songs from the two albums.  It also reminded my how much I love his debut solo release, Momentum, with an extremely memorable rendition of Love is in the House. The end of the show was slightly ho-hum, as they dimmed the lights and walked off stage without playing his current hit single from Portable Sounds.  Everyone was chanting “Toby! Toby!” and I’m thinking, I wonder what will happen next.  I wish he had just come out and played Made to Love and then called it quits, but instead they followed it up with a extended play version of Extreme Days, at maximum volume.  Despite these things, it was absolutely amazing.  His background singers / dancers / musicians are all incredible.

Afterwards we went to Denny’s, since we hadn’t yet eaten dinner.  Being 11 o’clock there weren’t that many people there, which was exactly what we wanted after the 2500+ concert crowd.  Julie and I both being introverts makes these things extra-tiring!  It was great just to hang out there, let the buzzing in our ears begin to fade away, drink a few cups of coffee, and just chat without feeling any pressure of time constraints.  Good times.

Saturday brought with it another evening of dinner and games with Beth and Steve, who we haven’t gotten together with for far too long now.  With two phone calls to my Mom and an hour at Hyvee I was able to whip some Donahue-style Bogoki, a Korean stir-fry.  Having never made my own bogoki before I was really anxious, but everyone said it was really good.  I feel good about it, so I am looking forward to trying it again soon, perhaps for Andy when he returns from Korea.  I wanted to make some for Matt Banner, since he is leaving for Korea soon, but I didn’t get to it.  I’m sure he will get much better over there.

Last, but not least, a new computer!  Taking advantage of the infamous NPH computer loan, I purchased a brand-new Dell with a 20-inch flat widescreen moniter.  I set it up tonight and fiddled around with Vista for a little bit, and I don’t hate it as much as I did.  It is really similar to XP so far, with the addition of the cool 3D task switcher.  Although, out-of-the-box it says there is a driver conflict with some of the hardware, and that kind of sketches me out.  I also picked up a Canon S3 digital camera, which is really great.  Even in the indoor and low-light situations I’ve used it in have yielded great pics, which was the Achilles heel of my Nikon Coolpix 3700.

And it will be great to take this camera with us to Branson this weekend!  I have scheduled my first-ever non-Christmas vacation day, and Julie and I are going down to Branson for a three-day weekend.  My old youth pastor Damon Asbill lives down there, and we are going to be able to meet up with him.  It has been probably the better part of 7 years since I’ve seen Damon, and it came as a complete surprise to me to find out that he lives only four hours away in the same state as me!

That being said, I have a lot of work to do for school before I can warrant taking a vacation.  By the end of this week, I will have earned it (I hope).