Lazy Days

Not much been happening the past couple days. A late morning storm kept me away from the Philosophen Weg on Wednesday. Today I spent mostly at home, reading. Made a brief trip down to Bismark Platz, secured a copy of "Die Siedler von Cataan" (a most excellent German boardgame). Nothing spectacular, but satisfying none the less.

Speaking of the storm earlier, what's been going on with all the thunderstorms recently? Heidelberg almost never has storms this much. I'm not complaining, I love thunderstorms (more on that later), but it's just surprising. Plus, since I now live on the top floor with big skylights, I wake up to every 3-6 AM storm that comes around.

But as I said above, I love storms. In fact, last night I sat out on our balcony with my mother and father, watching the thunderstorms roll in over the valley. The experience took me back ten years and more, back to when we still lived in Virginia. Then, we would go out at nights and sit on our deck at our house in Warrenton, and watch lightning flash out in the west. Those were special times, though it felt like we had thunderstorms every afternoon.

Alright, I'm gonna put the laptop away and just stretch out on the hammock on our balcony. It's awesome to have a balcony that's big enough to use (and with a view, too!). Tschus.

Photos

The thrift shop didn't have any tripods, but we found the one we own. So now I'm off to go play tourist and take photos of downtown heidelberg. Tomorrow I'm planning on going up the Philosophen Weg...anyone want to model for me? (a.k.a. hang out on an awesome hike with a beautiful view of the old town :) )

Sightseeing - Google style

Google just recently added global satillite images to Google Maps, which spawned a resurgence in wasting time looking for aerial photos of landmarks of former places of residence (at least for me). For the uninitiated, Google Maps is a fairly standard road map utility ala Mapquest or Yahoo Maps, with the exception that there's a small link in the top right corner of the frame that you can push to see satillite images of the area you're looking at. Very addictive, especially if you don't have anything better to do.

I was pretty excited about the added images, since I've spent so much of my life in Germany. Unfortunately, none of the places I've lived are displayed in high resolution (again). But that doesn't mean there aren't any interesting sights to be seen.

Finding landmarks outside of the US and Canada is a bit more challenging than finding those inside, because the road mapping feature only works in North America and Britain. So there's no simply typing in the address of a place you lived or a famous building; you have to find it manually, the hard way. Below are a few of the places I found while I was tooling around showing Google Maps off to my dad.

• Norfolk Naval Base - Ok, so this is inside the United States, but it's still one of my favorite places to look at. I love looking at all the carriers, destroyers, cruisers, and submarines.


• American Beach in Livorno - I thought those of you who just got back from Italy Beach Break would appreciate this. If you go to the east a little bit, you can see Camp Darby. Unfortunately, Pisa isn't in high resolution, and neither is Cinqueterre.


• The Straigt of Gibralta - Be sure to zoom in and see all the tankers and cargo ships sailing through.


• Olympic Complex in Munich - The large, oddly shaped building is the Olympic Pool, where Mark Spitz won his record number of gold medals in '72 and the European Forces Swim League holds its annual championship meet. The thought of racing in the same lane as one of the greats really builds up your adrenaline.


• Heidelberg - Unfortunately in lower resolution, you can still make out places like PHV, Plankstadt and the Schwetzingen Schloss (Can't see the castle, though)


• Augsburg - This is the first place I ever lived in Germany. The kidney shaped patch centered in the screen is Fryar Circle, where my family lived for two and a half years until the caserne shut down.


• Gablingen - This is a base in the Augsburg area. The twin circles centered in the screen is a gigantic radio array which dominates the base.

So that's all I have at the moment. Leave links to places you've lived or interesting things you find in the comments. (Because Google Maps doesn't auto-update the URL when you scroll around, you need to hit "Link to this page" in the top right corner to generate a web address. Then copy it out of the address bar and you're good to go). Actually, just leave a comment anyway, even if you don't have time to mess around on Google Maps. I want to know if anyone is actually reading this yet. :)

Lazy Sunday afternoon

So today turned out to be a much more satisfying day than it initially promised to be. I went to Chapel this morning for the first time since I've been here this summer. (The first Sunday I was here I was sick, and then the second Sunday I was in Italy). My family was late...as usual. Good to know at least some things never change. But besides coming in a few minutes late, the service was decent. Worship involved a lot of songs I wasn't familiar with, most of them in a key that wasn't terribly comfortable to sing in, but even that was OK. God's not so much interested in how we sound as where our hearts are, anyway.

It's funny to think that today was only like the 2nd "church" service I've been to in the past six months. The only other one I've attended was in April when I went to Blacksburg Christian Fellowship to watch my friend Nathan Francis get baptised and hear his testimony. Other than that, "church" has been meeting for house church in various families' homes around Blacksburg. I'm not really sure how I feel about honest to God church services anymore.

After church I spent the afternoon mostly doing nothing, with the exception of one 40 minute "5-minute" job with Tim. Good times...oh, I also ran my brother to the Power Zone and talked him out of purchasing a combination Digital Camera/ Web Cam. The rest of my afternoon was spent trying to drum up people to go swimming (struck out on every attempt). Always sad when you look at the phonebook in your cell phone and the only numbers that are still valid are the service numbers and your own phone number. By the time I finally decided that I wasn't going to get anyone to come swimming with me, it was around five and my parents convinced me to come to a street fest in Wieblingen with them. That was where the evening surpassed it's promise. While the fest wasn't all that exciting, it was still fun. I got to chat with a nice old German man who tried to sell me about 30 novels (in German) for 2 Euro. And I was introduced to the James, friends of my parents who are great (if slightly crazy) people. Hanging out with them after walking around some, beating my dad handily in a game of chess...all in all, a most satisfactory evening.

Alright, that's all for the time being. Later.

Introduction

While I expect that most anyone who comes here will know who I am, I think it's only common courtesy to include a short description of myself and maybe some idea of what I'll be writing here. Or in other words, I'd feel awkward posting my rambling muses withous some sort of introduction. So to begin, a little about myself:

I come from a fairly typical (or not-so-typical) nuclear family: I'm the oldest of three children, with both a younger brother and sister. I spent seven and a half years living in Germany, and my parents still live there today. In fact, I'm writing this from our new house in Leimen, a small town in the Heidelberg area.

For the time being, I'm a college student studying Computer Science at Virginia Tech. From that brief sentence you should be able to surmise all sorts of things regarding my interests, hobbies, and personal hygiene. And there's a strong possibility that those assumptions are correct. They're also very likely wrong.

In addition to the usual geeky pursuits of gaming, reading copious amounts of science-fiction/fantasy novels, and other, less honorable (or at least more embarrassing) activities, I also enjoy playing sports, specifically soccer, swimming, and ultimate frisbee. I love hiking, backpacking, sailing, alpine skiing, and other outdoors activities. The one time I went skydiving was absolutely incredible, an experience I'd very much like to repeat (if only it weren't so expensive!). I've been experimenting with photography recently, and would very much like to learn how to paint. Playing guitar has been a release for me for the past six years, and I constantly sing (to the occasional annoyance of those around me, unfortunately).

The most important aspect of my life is that I know and love Jesus. While I'm not sure exactly sure in what capacity He wants me, I know a life spent not serving the Lord is a wasted life. So while I'm not sure exactly where he wants me, I have faith that He'll make it clear to me when the time is right. In the meantime, I know He has work for me where he's placed me.

As for an introduction to the blog, there isn't all that much to say. I only have a few ideas where I'll be taking this. Mostly I've conceived of this blog as a way for my friends all over the world to stay abreadst of what's going on in my life. To a smaller degree it'll also give me a sense of staying connected while I'm somewhat isolated here in Germany over the summer. So to both those ends, I'll be posting pretty much everything. Sometimes all I'll post is what I've been doing, other times it'll be things I've been thinking about. There will also be posts on things that really matter (e.g., spiritual issues). I can't promise that any of it will be particularly good, but it will at least be real. Hopefully that will be enough.

Anyways, it's getting late here in Central Germany. I was hoping to publish a "normal" post about some today's exploits, but time seems to have slipped away from me. I'll probably end up writing them tomorrow.

First Post

So I've finally broken down and gotten a blog. Those of you who have been trying to get me one of these for years can now rest easy: your mission is complete. Oh wait, there isn't anyone out there who fits that description (except maybe Jennie, to a small extent).

Anyway, this is really just an announcement. It happens to be a beautiful day, and I have things to do (not to mention a lunch to finish). A more complete "first" post will follow later tonight, but for now, this is it.