place of nathan.

When i was in college at Taylor, i picked up rollerblading. This was back in the mid-1990s when social rollerblading was all the rage.

So yeah, i did a lot of rollerblading. I mean, a lot. i rotated my wheels about every three weeks. My friends Steve and Jeff, and occansionally some of our female friends would head out at 11 p.m. or sometimes even 1 or 2 a.m. for some social blading. we would typically go south of campus, to some fairly nice neighborhoods. Steve particularly enjoyed looking at architecture. I had never enjoyed architecture before–and i had pretty much never even liked to look at houses before. But Steve gave me an understanding of architecture, an appreciation of architecture.

We used to blade for hours and hours at a time. It was much fun.

A few years later, i was blading downtown Fort Wayne with some friends, and as I took off my blades, i noticed i only had three wheels on one skate. We went back to look for it, and found the wheel, but were not able to find the axle or screw, so i had a 7-wheeled set of blades for a while.

That is, until i bought my K2 250cc aggressive skates. Aggressive skates are the ones used by professional skaters–the ones you see at the X-games and on ESPN. pretty cool stuff. I became a pretty good skater. Not like I was some great skater or something, but i could certainly hold my own. and i looked really cool skating, too. i was a smooth skater.
But now i haven’t used my skates in like three years. The last time i put them on, it was really awkward. It was like i had no balance anymore. i was scared to do anything for fear of falling. i didn’t fall–i was just scared of falling and getting hurt. i just didn’t trust my ability.
I think that is a lot like our walk with Christ. A lot of times we’re scared of doing something for fear of getting hurt. It’s not like we’ve never been there, it’s just scary, because we don’t trust God’s ability to get us through things.

Have you ever been here before?

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So it has been unseasonably warm here the past several weeks. Although it did flurry on Christmas afternoon, nothing stuck and we didn’t have, as Bing puts it, a White Christmas.

Now, this unseasonably warm weather is quite appreciated when you realize we’ve had like a total of 2″ of rain in the past week. this roughly translates to 24″ of snow. i don’t want to think about digging out of 24″ of snow. I couldn’t handle that. digging out of 6″ of snow is all i can handle.

So with all this rain, last night when Emily and I were getting ready for bed, i walked around the side of the bed, getting ready. Then i stepped in something wet and i yelled out to Emily, ‘Did you spill water in here or something?’

‘What?’ She responded.

‘Water. The floor is wet.’ About that time, a drop of water landed on me. I looked up.

‘Oh, no.’ I thought. This is not good.

There was a 24″ line of wet ceiling, plaster/paper drooping. Water was actually dripping from two different places. One would drip every 45 seconds or so. The other one (which was directly above our wooden dresser, and yes, it was quite wet by the time we found the leak) was dripping about every 20 seconds.

We got out a couple of older towels, sopped up the water, cleaned off the dresser, and left the towels there to catch the drips. When the drips landed on dry towel, it was pretty quiet. But when the towel got wet, it got kinda loud. Emily had a hard time getting to sleep.

This morning when i woke up, i examined the damage. It had stopped raining over the night, and it wasn’t leaking any more. In fact, it was no longer sagging. I could tell the plaster was still damp, but it wasn’t going to leak.

So this morning instead of coming in to work at my normal 7:15, i went to Home Depot and picked up some Roofer’s Choice asphalt sealant.

Today during lunch break, i get to climb up on my roof and attempt to locate and stop the leak. I’ve had three different roof links before and got them all stopped up first or second try. One was when i had a roommate, and was in his room. (that is just a shameless plug.)

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Okay, so about a month ago i talked about my 2007 goals, and asked for some suggested goals. I got some good suggestions, and here they are (in no particular order).

• More consistent God-time. It seems when I get busy, the first time I skimp on is my God-time. This shouldn’t be. God-time should be priority one. I need to refocus on this this year.
• Read 2,400 pages this year. In my previous blog linked above, i mentioned my goal was 1,200 pages. I figured I needed to aim a little higher. So, 2,400 pages it is.
• Treat my body better. I get lazy. I eat bad. I don’t exercise. i do not treat my body as well as it should be treated. in 2006 I put on about 10 pounds (not to mention a lot of muscle mass loss) and about 1 1/2″ on my waist. I would like to be more healthy–just feel better all-around.
• Follow my dreams. (More on this one coming in the future!)

So, those are my goals for this year. What are your goals for the year? Why did you choose the goals you did?
If you choose not to make goals for this year, why did you make that choice?

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