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it was kind of an uneventful day, at least by blogging standards. there were no fires, no asteroids, no bloodless coups, no lottery winnings, no nike endorsement either.

we did get a lot more nasty looks from our montanan neighbors…which…is simply mind-boggling to me. i can’t think of the last time i crushed a south carolinian’s rv windshield with a cinder block. can you?

kelly cataloged our activities today, so if you are interested then check out her blog. currently we’re chillaxin, watching a lame show on TLC, and figuring out our route to yellowstone.

now, i’ve never been to yellowstone and i have several expectations:

1) buffalos/bison/land orcas. a book that some friends let us borrow assured us that yellowstone often has what they call “buffalo jam,” namely, when a buffalo or many buffalos stand in the road…and stop traffic…and chew things slowly.

2) yellow stones. if there aren’t yellow stones i am going to have an angry blog.

QUICK ASIDE…the show we’re watching on TLC has the family sightseeing in FRESNO, CALIFORNIA…on the 180…taking pictures with oranges trees. and stealing oranges. currently they are literally screaming with delight at the sight of sequoia trees.

fun fact about the word ‘sequoia’…it has all the vowels. except Y. because Y isn’t a vowel. the show says they’re going to speak at a church…hopefully we’ll know it.

now back to our subject…

3) an endless cavalcade of chintzy gift shoppes filled with coasters, ash trays and out dated nature books.

and now back to our ASIDE….the reality family, which is about to speak at a church and has been saying really angry and inappropriate things to each other for the last 15 minutes, is in sequoia natl forest stealing pine cones and generally leaving the paths (despite the well-placed signs asking visitors to not do so) and causing a lot of expediated decay of the forest. lame. i want to report them. then again, since they have sextuplets no one will care. boo!

does anyone else miss the old itunes commercials now that the new ones are out? i do. i also miss the days when itunes didn’t update every other day and didn’t take over my pc resources whenever it is open.

see? not much happened today. at least, not much that kelly didn’t report on AND is blogworthy. see the bind we’re in? quite.

except this of course:

i have nothing to say…because i’m speechless.

so, TLC show is finally at the fresnan church they spoke at…which is one that the ole’ college hour worship team played at once. fun. i’ve been there. and so was a TLC camera crew. and some angry people who have their own show.

and, after seeing the church footage, i am (as usual) thoroughly grossed out at what was broadcast as ‘church.’

speaking of church, we missed our church today, and we missed it lots. a good reminder as to why we don’t want to travel lots.

OH! today we saw a bumper sticker that really made us reel with delight. we tried to get a picture, but we failed. it was on a montanan vehicle (of course) and read:

Blaming Guns For Killing People Is Like Blaming Spoons For Making Rosie O’Donnell Fat

wow.

wow.

ok…this post is a lot of fluff, so here comes the end.

right…

NOW!

blessings

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so…since today was concert day i thought i might retitle the post ad hoc. do i know the 100% proper use of ‘ad hoc?’ of course not. will that stop me? no. no ad hoc. presently.

today was indeed concert day, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. our morning began with a nice and hearty breakfast with pastor dale lewis and wife, donna, at perkins cafe in uptown hamilton. i had oatmeal and hashbrowns…my faithful standby when subjected to “the most important meal of the day.”

after breakfast (where we got to talk shoppe extensively) we went on the grand tour of the church building. it was built many years ago, just like our own wonderfully quirky building back home. then we headed out with pastor dale to see hamilton. we saw the downtown area, daly mansion, some hawks and some victorian buildings. oh, and we saw the GSK building…yes, the pharmaceutical GSK (oh good, now i will have the wonderful opportunity of getting another hundred spam pharmecy hits per day).

after that kelly and i took a trip down to Out West Ice Cream Parlor (sorry about the lame-o picture…it’s a cellular), where i feasted on lemon custard (quite good) and kelly enjoyed huckleberry. i did not like the huckleberry. i also don’t like the country music video that is on the tv right now.

thanks Out West Ice Cream Parlor!

so…having returned to the hotel we made quite the discovery…

somewhere between idaho and montana our the hood of our rental car was mercilessly keyed. now, we got A LOT of bad looks in idaho…but this was pretty amazing to us. i mean…who actually keys the cars of strangers? had i made remarks about the offender’s mother…or wife…or dog…then i could understand…but this person actually just keyed a car simply because the license plates bore the word “california.” lame.

the joke’s on them though…it’s a RENTAL and we got insurance on it. ba ha. we are win.

but yeah, that’s kinda a drag. oh well.

the concert tonight was a lot of fun. free bbq in a park followed by music is a no-brainer. the gear was all really professional and the atmosphere was non-idahoic…so…there you go.

i suspect that kellster will post a bit more about the concert…so i’m going to wrap up my entry. plus, there are few things i enjoy less than talking about my own playing. suffice it to say, i had fun, learned some things and was blessed by a really, Really, REALLY old woman who came up to me afterward and leaned into my ear and said, “thanks so much for coming…here…hold out your hand,” at which point she poured the contents of her change purse into my hand. the bill, quarters, dimes and nickels totaled $2.50, and i was utterly encouraged, not by the dollars, but by the warmth of this woman’s heart. hard to accept…yes. wonderful to accept…yes. thanks for the spiritual encouragement Lord!

discovery and TLC are sharing our interest right now. deadliest catch is running a marathon, but ‘little people, big world’ is stealing our hearts as well.

um…i can’t think of much else to say…we’re excited for worship tomorrow…church in general really…but will miss our own services back in h-town. i can only hope to catch the webcast if we have the time.

i hope you enjoy church tomorrow…or, if you are reading AFTER sunday morning, i hope you enjoyed church.

oh and one more thing…one concert picture…

for some reason i felt an oppressive presence whilst playing…i couldn’t figure it out until i took a closer look at the picture…once i did i discovered the problem straight away.

i hope you can see what i see…

ba!

blessings

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our day started early…but not TOO early. kelly and i had a thumbs down sleeping experience last night. the hotel was fine (complete with horsen!) but we just couldn’t get to sleep. we’re crossing our fingers for tonight.

about 4 hours into our drive today we were REAL glad we muscled through 12 hours of driving on day 1. so, now we can happily say:

twin falls to hamilton DONE!

want proof? we got proof!

the truth is that we pensieros don’t know much about montana. at this point we know that it is a state in the union…it has some mountains…and….it’s….at an elevation of 6995 feet above sea level….

now…from the pie-in-the-sky/i-want-to-move-to-idaho-and-montana tales we’ve heard from SO many people back home we were half expecting 40 acres and a llama free at the border from the chamber of commerce…maybe the homestead commission…but it didn’t happen. we DID get to see some mrad wildlife…llamas, lots of horses, lots of cows (who all seemed very happy by the way) and even a deer. a lady deer. a bounding lady deer who bounded away from the road as we drove close to her.

the drive was real nice. kelly’s blog has a bit on the moon pie field we came across. most of today’s trip was along the scenic 93 north…much of which follows the Salmon River through idaho. though the physical terrain of the 2 states we visited today was reminiscent of of the sequoias or yosemite, it was a fun new experience to drive along a river for a hundred miles or more. we even stopped and went down, both almost falling on the gravel…then both almost falling into the river. river rocks are slippy.

(school of rock is on cartoon network right now…how does that work?)

another fun stop was at the very beginning of our drive today…some bridge in Twin Falls. we loved it. quite a view. AND i’m pretty sure i played at the golf course on Tiger Woods Golf back when i was an RA at fpu.

this is the top of the bridge. i suppose you’d like to see the view from the bridge…

too bad. i only have a few minutes until Man Vs. Wild comes on…and…it’s a new one…and i just don’t have time to edit another photo right now. sorry…sort of.

highlights:

- sign for a local restaurant reads: “Welcome. Open 9 to 5…Usually.” nice.

- a scale model of the statue of liberty in somebody’s front yard…but not tastefully placed.

- Judy at burger king (WHY DIDN’T WE GET A PICTURE?!?!?!) who made us almost want to become AARP cashiers at said restaurant.

- knowing we don’t have to drive tomorrow. ba ha!

lowlights:

- we tuckered out today. that’s alright.

- we had to watch a lot of junky shows on discovery (hey…i love discovery channel…but today was National Boredom Day) before Man Vs. Wild came on.

- at burger king i had to utilize the rest room. when i walked in a teenage kid was washing a dress shirt in the bathroom sink…with the bathroom soap…and the bathroom water…and…it reminded me of that terrible moment where my dad and i made a shocking discovery in a carl’s jr. bathroom on a trip to disneyland. and…i don’t want to be reminded of that moment. ever, ever again.

so yeah, today was a great day. good times of prayer and talking with my lovely wife. and…it’s always fun to see a new place. we felt like nomads. or vagabonds. or…travelers.

although, i am a bit worried about the effects on this trip on kelly…i mean…this is what happened today:

oh man…all that Tazo tea has changed kelly into the eco-friend you see above.

truly, we’re already eco-friends. at least as much as very conservative republicans can be. hmm. that is fodder for another post. another post that i’m never going to post about.

so, today is about over. i hope Bear survives today’s episode.

i keep trying to convince myself it’s possible to be jet-lagged in a time zone 1 hour different than usual. in which case, label me lagged!

tomorrow…music time. huzzah! although i am a TINY bit nervous because i found out they’ve been playing radio promos for the event every 2 hours for days and days….the pressure’s on Geno. maybe i should’ve brought a guitar…

devotional thought for the day…no complete thoughts (yet)…just the importance of finishing well. so few of the kings of israel and judah finished well. and…recently i’ve been thinking about how i live like a king, not in attitude but in wealth, position and opportunity. i want to serve well (all israel’s kings were meant to serve), but i want to finish well too. and, finishing well is every day, all day.

oh! we learned one more thing about Montana today…

we learned to NOT MESS WITH MONTANA…because i mean…it’s protected by beardcore. do i know what beardcore is? no. do i fear beardcore? yes. a resounding yes. i mean…i can’t even GROW a beard…and apparently these bearded mercenaries have taken control of security for the state. if it’s on the lower left corner of the state sign it must be true. mustn’t it? MUSTN’T IT?

may beardcore have mercy on our california-plated car.

blessings.

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ok friends…Montananza has begun…and, having the best intentions to start the blog-record of our first out-of-state-trip-as-a-married-couple-and-solo-act, i failed yesterday. the truth is that wednesdays are not a good day for blogging…so, tonight (10pm thursday night, mountain time), i am starting the blog in retrograde.

day 0…or -1…depending on how you think…

as you saw a few posts ago, i had yet to finish guitar maintenance…

lady martin needed some new sp’s…but not just sp’s…lady martin needed some nice cleaning and wax:

if you play guitar and you enjoy playing guitar…and you enjoy YOUR guitar…then you need a couple of things.

A) Meguiars Gold Class Wax (only paste)

B) planet waves humidifier

C) some TLC. and…if you don’t know what TLC is, then don’t touch your guitar again until you find out.

after guitar time it was studio-pick-up-time. as me and my lovely wife say, “GHLLL!”

but i did tidy adequately.

got the rental car from hertz, got a hair cut (photo not found) with kelly, and headed off to church for a wonderfully blessed wednesday night service. broke out a few oldies for worship…and it was really rad. it was mrad. remember mrad? i just did!

oh and yes, time for kelly’s before and after pictures…she got quite the cut:

nice honey! i love it.
(jaws is on tv in the hotel right now. YES!)

finally, i made a little animation the other day on some website i found on accident…it is my guess of what the show will be like on saturday…if it were in a dog park…and not in a regular one….a person park….

blessings

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hey friends. if you head on over to the right and select “Album” you can listen and download all of the songs (listed in the same order as on the cd).

anyway, i hope you enjoy a track or two.

blessings and maranatha

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so, after a week or so we are finally back in action over at genepensiero.com. apparantly, as you can see, i am having some scripting problems still…hoping that will work itself out as the server orients to its new locale…

and, not only are we back online, but……..

ORPHAN, LEPER, SINNER IS FINISHED!

i’ll load the tracks today if i’m able to access my ftp with the new server. the cd will be available from me or in our bookstore on sunday.

i am very, very excited and hope that the music, though imperfect, will bless some people who listen.

blessings and maranatha!

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well, safety patrol returned for a college hour announcement in the much anticipated sequel. the premise is a bit shakey if you weren’t a student at the time…and, since we only had 90 seconds to tell a story the plot had to suffer somewhat.

anyway, the idea is this: the annual party in the stras quad was coming up, so safety patrol was going to prep the people/events for the highest level of safety…pads for the inflatable jousting…handmade DDR…decorations…and so forth.

now, there was in fact a third installment in the safety patrol series, but it was never released. i don’t even remember what exactly it was for but i do know there was some sort of aerobics involved. if anyone out there has a copy send it my way!

enjoy!

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kelly and i recently moved into a new apartment. we’re super excited about it. that is not the purpose of this post.

the purpose of this post is the world premiere of something that has only been previously screened to a select number of fresno pacific university students…Safety Patrol.

now for a little background…

Safety Patrol was born during a little R.A. competition. my group utterly decimated our opponents with our 3 part freshman-orientation video. i was privileged enough to be involved with the planning, acting and editing stages of our project.

believe it or not, Safety Patrol gained a very small cult following among the student body in the 2004-2005 school year. needless to say, we had a lot of fun doing it.

so, without further adieu or disclaimer, here is the first installment of Safety Patrol in iPod video format…

enjoy

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if you visit disneyland i highly recommend stopping off at Innoventions to see the rad stuff they have in there. it is truly technology at its finest.

at very least, Innoventions is a place where you can play video games for free if you are so inclined. no longer do you have to spend countless hours at target and wal-mart enduring harsh glances and continual shaking of heads in your general direction. at Innoventions you can play games you’re too cheap to buy as long as the park is open.

our favorite stop at Innoventions is the computer aging program. here is the grainy, lofi result (not because disneyland cheaped out, but because it was the best resolution our canon powershot a520 could handle.*

*actually it was not my wonderful canon powershot…it was my lg cell phone…no WONDER it’s so small…sorry about the techie-mixup.

enjoy

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well, wife and i are in the magic kingdom. no, not Dollywood, but Disneyland. we are celebrating our 1 year anniversary.

highlights include:

on Pirates a mom/daughter couple shared with us:

little girl – “mommie what’s that?”

mom – “that’s beer coming out of the barrels honey…just like your daddy drinks.”

whenever we go to disneyland we are always amazed at the types of shirts/clothes people where. so, for this trip we’ve decided to use the phrase “pineapple whip” when we see a crazy shirt. usually we just count Scarface apparel, but we’ve decided to broaden our horizons.

other highlights include REAL pineapple whip, when a tiny little girl tried to grab onto kelly’s leg because she thought kelly was her mom, when a young man with down syndrome tried to grab our backpack (he was real cute), the rifles (which i can not remember doing but was great fun) and the new Red Hot Chili Pepper’s soundtrack on Screamin‘ and Space Mountain.

today is going to be a big pin trading day.

also, we’ve heard a rumor that Johnny Depp is going to be in the park today…we’ll see…

here are a couple of media bits for your enjoyment.

we’re on dumbo. and while on dumbo i say To The Top Please! no ride is too little for us, nor are we daunted by the prospect of our combined weights causing a flying ride to break right off of the cables. dumbo was down for a little while yesterday, but we were able to squeeze in a ride before the end of the night.

yellow submarines mean only one thing: NEMO is coming soon! this isn’t a great picture but the monorail gave us the height to see over the construction walls. we saw the infamous ‘hey! hey!’ crabs as well as a number of animatronic seagulls.

in disneyland, everything is magical! we love disneyland.
thanks photoshop.

also, i’m posting a few ipod videos. enjoy.