My mom noticed a trend with the movies playing at the Palace Theatre here in Springfield tomorrow:
Showtimes for Friday, July 31
2:00 – Angels and Demons
2:10 – Monsters vs. Aliens
4:20 – Terminator: Salvation
7:15 – Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
Church groups will be laying hands on the Palace Theater at the afore-mentioned showtimes. Please join us for a powerful time.
:)
You could say there has been a major re-think in progress in my life ever since I went on vacation to the Northwest and attended the YAK Camp in late June.
I’ve been working very hard on being someone that encourages others, has positive input on things rather than focusing on the negative, and trying to pass on the blessings the Lord has given me in my life. All of this is possible due to an increased focus on God’s Word, and a more focused prayer life.
A friend recently told me in passing they felt that I have a gift of writing and public speaking, and they felt it was a gift the Lord had blessed me with. As such, they said, the gift should be used to glorify God by speaking kindly of others and fostering unity in the body of Christ.
Which brings me to a couple of major points:
- You will notice recently if you scroll through the archives of my site that I have grown much less opinionated of Christianity, church, etc. I will vent my thoughts from time to time, but before posting in the future I have made a pledge to ensure I take the time to think things through before I write them, and that what I write has a positive effect on those who read it. Sure, I still have a major disdain for James River Assembly, televangelists and overspiritualization of practical problems in church — but if I write about these things I need to make sure people understand the spirit in which I write them, which as of late has been a more constructively critical one.
- You will also notice that I have completely abandoned political discussions. I see no point in them — thinking that I alone have the power to change someone’s mind on an issue is to think rather highly of myself, and I don’t want to be that kind of person. Plus, given my loathe for the bickering and fighting that goes on between the two major political parties, it is clear that emotionally charged political discussion will only serve to divide people instead of fostering unity, as spoken of above. The Bible clearly states that we are to unify as believers in word and deed, and if we focus on what divides us, we are sinning.
All in all, a kinder, gentler Chris Brewer has been made possible by the Lord’s great work in my life. All it took, I have realized, is a willingness to lay down my hard-headedness and pride for a spirit of submission to the Holy Spirit. It’s a daily process and it’s not easy, but already my mental and spiritual state of being is clearer.
I am so very thankful to the Lord for continuing to change and develop my faith. Even someone at the age of 25 who grew up in church all his life can have a refreshed and renewed life in Christ, learn new things and enjoy the fullness of Christ’s love by fully committing to the fruit of the Spirit — and for that I am grateful.
It is my prayer that this blog continues to be a reflection of the Lord’s work in me.
Short post here, but last night was pretty cool.
A couple friends in the sports department at the News-Leader, Michael and Matt, invited me to play basketball with them tonight. We were going to play outdoors but it started raining to beat the band about 6:30, so we ponied up $4 apiece to play at Doling Family Center.
A great facility, by the way, Doling is. (I just Yoda-ized my sentence.)
We were joined by Ian from the copy desk and my good man Dallas who works for one of the local TV stations. We ended up playing some 3-on-3 having asked a gentleman if he wanted to join us.
First two games were no contest as Michael, Ringer #1 and I beat Ian, Matt and Dallas 15-2. Same result in the second game, but Ringer #1 left — leaving us with Ringer #2 who had skills of his own. We won that one, 15-6.
I also had a nasty block on Dallas as he drove to my left and tried to scoop it in. Seeing as how I am left-handed, that did not end well for Dallas.
The third game was an epic back-and-forth battle. Ringer 2, Ian and I took on Michael, Matt and Dallas and for a bit it looked like we were going to get our hind ends baked and handed to us. But we fought back and eventually took a 10-9 lead — and even after a rebound caromed off my eye and rendered my three-point shooting useless, I played “point forward” and dished the ball a couple times for scores to put us up 13-12, then after Michael tied it with a layup, I scored the final two points off putbacks.
Over the span of three games, I had eight blocks, making it a true Chris Brewer Block Party! I usually get more just from timing jumps and all, but oh well.
Two years of living here and I hadn’t played basketball with friends from work as a group until tonight. I’m glad I did, not just because I won, but because it was really neat to be able to hang with everyone on a weeknight.
And it sure ain’t heaven, I can tell you that right now.
I’ve listed a few items on the Springfield, Missouri Craigslist site and they’ve all sold, fortunately. I’m getting ready to throw another batch of stuff on there soon, but I wonder if I’m going to have to deal with the same crap as last time — people trying to lowball me on my asking price.
I sold my old iPhone months ago for $175 on Craigslist, when it was going for nearly $350-$450 on eBay because of the capability to unlock the device. I actually had someone here in Springfield offer me $125. I wrote them a kind nastygram and told them they were insulting my intelligence by thinking I would accept their swindle offer.
I also sold an item for $50 once, and received two replies from people wanting it for $20 and $25, respectively. Cheapskates, I tell you.
I don’t know what it is, but I have never seen people as Craigslist-cheap as here in Springfield. At least in Portland and Norfolk, VA, people were very nice about honoring the set prices and making reasonable offers.
Moral of this story is that if you look to buy something from Craigslist, don’t lowball people on their prices. Most people know what their stuff is worth and have it listed for that price for a good reason.
Tonight at church was very interesting. I believe I was touched by the presence of the Lord in a way no one else was tonight.
About the second song into worship, you knew something big was going to start brewing when a couple folks on opposite sides of the building started worshipping in tongues. The worship was good, and Pastor John got up to pray that the Lord’s presence and glory would be invited into our church.
No sooner did Pastor John pray that than I got a massive thigh cramp that felt like someone had just punched me a hundred times. Either God Himself crashed through the roof and landed on my left leg, or I just had an adverse reaction to His glory. I’m not sure what it was, but it was odd.
I sat down and stretched it out and felt a bit better. Weird, I thought, let’s keep worshipping. I got back up and began to clap along with the music and sing.
Then five minutes later, our song transitioned. The words were there on the screen:
Strength flows from God,
Flows from God.
Grace flows from God,
Flows from God.
As soon as I sang those words with the church, ANOTHER CRAMP!!!! This one was twice as bad. I had to sit down and stretch it out again. I saw Pastor John shoot me a glance as I was sitting down and I wondered if he hadn’t thought I was being disrespectful.
Strength flows from God, huh? I was the only one sitting down in the building.
I bowed my head down and prayed for the Lord to heal my leg and make the pain go away, and instantly felt better. Good, now I can get back into the routine of things again, I thought.
I lasted the rest of worship without incident, but then Pastor John gave an impassioned altar call for those who needed deliverance to come on down and be prayed for.
You can only guess what happened next. Only this time, my leg started twitching horribly as if I had no control over it.
Holy Ghost, perhaps?
Nah, I don’t see how He would inflict pain in an attempt to get me to the altar. All I know is I looked like some punk kid whom the Lord was moving on and wouldn’t respond.
So I sat back down again, and this time Ted looked at me from across the pew as if to wonder what was up. I gave a “yeah, I’m okay” smile and bowed my head to pray again.
I’m surprised no one came up to pray for me. In years past, in a spiritually charged atmosphere like that, someone would usually border on emotionalism and pray for my deliverance, only not deliverance from the physical pain I was so obviously in.
But it didn’t happen, thank God. In fact, after that, I was free and clear for the night, but holy cow my thigh hurt for at least an hour afterwards.
So I can now truly say that God showed up at Crimson House last night.
I would know. I have the charley horse to show for it.
And yes, just so you all know, I did pray when the invitation was given.
I was very privileged to be able to take in the full three hours of the Oldfield Opry last night. I had previously shot a feature piece for them on News-Leader.com in June, but I had to check out at the intermission…such being the case, I promised them I’d be back to check out the full show as a member of the audience.
What better timing than tonight to go back? Enjoying my “funemployment” at the moment and only two weeks away from my move back to the Northwest, I decided to drag my lonesome self on over to Oldfield to check out the music. And I wasn’t disappointed.
There was a larger array of musicians this time around, or so it seemed…there was a different gentleman on the lead guitar, and they had someone playing the harmonica. All in all it was a great show as they played some old folk standards, gospel tunes and some nice rhythms where they all individually freestyled (hear the audio clip I recorded with my iPhone below).
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It bears mentioning the house was absolutely packed tonight. By my estimation the place seats 210 or so, and it was full thirty minutes prior to start time. About half stayed through the intermission — I think a lot of the elderly folks leave early because driving those back roads at night is a near-death experience.
They opened up the stage for audience members to come up and perform after intermission. One gentleman who was well-respected by the Opry family got up and shared about how he has cancer in his intestine, but he is receiving treatment and trusting the Lord no matter what happens. Another gentleman got up to play a song that the Opry musicians easily picked up and began to harmonize, and another guy got up to tell a few country jokes and read a poem about a preacher set to an old hymn.
It was a very eclectic gathering, and very enjoyable.
Also worth sharing is the fact I ate very well. They had nachos for $1.25, soda for $.75 and pie for $2.50. The chocolate peanut butter pie is absolutely to die for, and I was lucky to get the last piece at intermission.
Before everyone knew it, the ten o’clock hour was fast approaching, and the Oldfield Opry band played everyone out with their signature closing tune.
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All in all, it was an excellent evening as I was able to spend some time chatting with the good folks that run the show. My appreciation goes out to them for giving me a gift of two CD’s of their live music for the trip home.
And like I said before…if you haven’t been out to the Oldfield Opry yet and you live within about a 100-mile radius, make plans to go out there sometime. It’s a neat little slice of backroad Americana that this electronica guru thoroughly enjoyed.
(Click here for my previous account of the Oldfield Opry, with video.)
The follow-up to the old Disney movie Tron is coming out next year, and Disney has just released a public teaser trailer for the film.
It has been confirmed that Daft Punk will score Tron Legacy, which is due out in 2010.
Here is afore-mentioned trailer, and thanks to Joel Gibby for the original link. If the movie is anything as good as the teaser makes it look (and DP’s score is on par with their released music), Tron Legacy will end up an instant favorite of mine.
Sorry to unleash my inner geek but I’m gonna use this post to rave about a cool new purchase I made.
I’m typing this post on a new Acer Aspire One netbook, so before I finish it’s bound to be fraught with spelling errors and a few other consistencies.
The Aspire One, in short, is a small version of a laptop — and by small, I mean small enough to fit in a large purse — with a 9″ screen and a smaller keyboard than a normal laptop.
What the little guy lacks in size, it more than makes up for in computing power though, as it’s equipped with a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor and 1 GB of RAM. My particular model also included a 120 GB hard drive and Windows XP.
I was very blessed to have purchased my netbook from someone off Craigslist for $200. As this model currently retails for $349, it was a huge savings — and he also threw in a laptop bag for it. Pretty cool.
I’ve thrown Photoshop CS3, Lightroom 2 and Avid Media Composer 2.7 on it, and all run very serviceably. I’ll need the services of all three as I won’t be able to run my desktop computer for a couple months while I am living with a friend in Camas.
Throw an NES emulator on there and some old Nintendo games and there’s my entertainment. It plays back videos and audio quite well so I think I got more than my money’s worth.
Oh and for all you ultra-geeks out there, I’m dual-booting Windows XP Home Edition and Linux Mint 7. I switch frequently between the two.
Some minute details are being hammered out, but I can say that as of last night I have secured a temporary housing arrangement for at least the first two months of my move to Vancouver, Washington.
This means that I can set a firm date for my trip, and I will be departing the Springfield area for good at 9:00 a.m. Central Standard Time, August 7, 2009.
Here’s the plan, and I’m banking on this being unlike any other trip I’ve ever taken before.
- I will spend a total of three days in transit. With no need to hurry to the Northwest, I plan on enjoying as much of the trip as possible, stopping periodically to shoot photos and rest more often. I made the trip in two days last time in a car with no air conditioning, and became massively sick when I arrived in August 2007. That’s not happening this time around.
- I’ll have a live location tracker on a special page. You read that right…you’ll be able to track my every move through an interactive Google map that will follow signals broadcast from my iPhone 3G. I will be using the free program InstaMapper to accomplish this.
My Twitter feed will contain photos from my trip. I’ll be taking some photos with my iPhone and incorporating them into my Twitter feed on the same page as the live tracker, so you all can see what I’m up to (sans restroom breaks).
I’ll have much more info on everything pertaining to the trip in roughly a week or so. In the meantime, please continue to pray that the Lord opens more doors regarding my employment.
Above: Members of the band Complete in concert on June 1, 2009. Check out their Myspace!
Wow, I don’t even know what to say. This birthday was the greatest ever!
At the 2009 Celebration Of Chris Brewer’s Car Insurance Rates Lowering Themselves Due To Him Turning Twenty-Five Years Old (abbreviated 09COCBCIRLTDTHTTFYO) tonight in Hooton Town, Missouri, a band named Complete rocked the house. They came all the way up from Fort Worth, Texas and played in front of a packed house of 8 people, 5 pigs, 10 goats and 2 horses inside the Cooter family barn.
The setting was spectacular and the band even better. It doesn’t matter that Complete’s bus broke down on US 160 and the Cooters let them stay the night in the barn…09COCBCIRLTDTHTTFYO was a smashing success. Complete rocked the house to the tune of “Into the Night,” “Hot As H***” and “Dreaming.”
I must say that prior to the show, the Cooter family stipulated that all members of the band must dispose of all their drugs in a clean and safe fashion at least thirty minutes before start time because children may be in attendance — and we don’t want to set a bad example, do we? With there being no garbage cans around, and no creek or river to illegally dispose anything into nearby, the men of Complete started smoking, toking and drinking in a desperate attempt to comply with my rules. I ended up dragging them on stage.
As stated before, the show was a smashing success. Complete was really enjoying themselves, as you can tell in the finale “Hoogie Boogie Land.”
WOW! What a performance! Thanks so much to the Cooter family, especially Scooter the dad and Carol the mom/sister/aunt/niece. It was a GREAT time! And also thanks to Complete…hope you guys wake up tomorrow.
That’s all folks!
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