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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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it’s tuesday morning. in 48 hours we will be well on our way to Hamilton, Montana for Worship On The Green at Claudia Driscoll Park. now, we are very, very excited about our trip. we have our maps and routes…we have our snacks (thank you Trader Joes) and reservations. all that’s left is some tidying around the house and here at the office. such as…

- clean up the studio (needed to be done anyway…and DONE)

- clean, wax and restring guitars (1.5 out of 3 DONE and now my hands have a strange, brittle dryness to them…)
- clean up office (by that i mean “clean” up office…not quite done)

- pack, both home stuff and music gear (haven’t begun)

- make sure ipod has everything on it that we could possibly want! (almost done)

and some other things that i’m really not aware of yet…ah yes, package up a few more cds for our new friends in the bitterroot valley.

i feel like i’ve lost some of my edge for writing humor into posts…which makes me sad. i’m hoping that my forthcoming Pumpkin Patch post will rekindle my abilities.

speaking of keen abilities, i’m very excited to share a link with you. if you have ever talked to me for more than 10 minutes you discovered i have a…deep appreciation…for phil wickham. well, he has a new blog on wordpress that he says he will update often…we’ll see. thus far (it’s less than a week old) it has only a few posts, but they are each quite good. you can even check out a few snippets from one of the new songs he’s working on. oh! that adds another item to my to-do list…check phil’s blog every 4-6 minutes to see if he’s updated again. my…deep appreciation…continues.

in other news…i really do want to change genepensiero.com and tweak my blog a bit, but our continuing server issues have halted those plans. stay tuned.

coming soon:

Pumpkin Patch Post

Things-Kelly-Got-From-Her-Students Post Part 2

Montana Updates

coming very soon:

People Get Ready, Jesus Is Coming Post

blessings.

hello friends. it was quite a tug of war to decide the topic of post number 88. would it be a politique on the iraq war (after all, there isn’t nearly enough internet discussion on that subject)? would it be an episode of casting a pillar (readers can’t complain about a little Bible study after all)? would it be a blogger’s digest (an easy form of posting that seems to convey a lot of information, but really isn’t all that thoughtful)? would it be an update of current happenings (personal, yet, somehow not very informative or entertaining….infotaining….entertainative…)? would it be a review of the bamboo-slivers-up-your-nails torture (aka Spiderman 3) we experienced last week?
the verdict is: 1 part infotainment, 1 part bloggers digest, 1 part stunning revelation.

welcome to hamilton, montana. in a stunning turn of events (namely a phone call) i have been asked to play a saturday evening show and lead worship for the sunday morning services at Bitterroot Valley Calvary Chapel. the pastor there, dale lewis, has been a friend for a number of years. i’m very, very excited to pack up and take the drive with kelly.

apparantly, hamilton, montana (home town of BVCC) is where robert redford’s 1992 depress-o-matic, fly fishing extravaganza A River Runs Through It is set. honorable mention goes to sadness classic Legends Of The Fall which is also set in everybody’s favorite north…ern…state montana. which reminds me…what is montana classified as? it’s not the plains…it’s not the midwest…it’s not the pacific northwest…can anyone tell me?

back to the montana movies…we’re hoping that our trip doesn’t end up like either of the epic films listed above. we will be wary of joining up to fight in a european war as well as fly fishing. don’t forget marrying your brother’s wife…we’ll steer clear of that too…being that i have no brother and neither of kelly’s brothers have wives.

but, A River Runs Through It is indeed set in Bitterroot Valley…so i’m wondering if it runs through our destination, the city of Hamilton.

so…as an homage to instant replay technology…let’s take another look at the picture.

that’s right…gene pensiero doesn’t make you scroll back up…even if that scrolling would only be the natural movement of your eyes…

seems to me that the river runs near it…not through it…so…i might have to contact mr. redford’s production company and let them know (even though i don’t think they ever claimed that the river did in fact run through the one city i happen to be visiting…).

at any rate, we are very, very, very excited about our trip. for another look at this news you can look at my wife’s blog.

that’s right….kelly has started a blog. and now we move into the blogger’s digest portion of our post…

The Softer Side Of Pensiero – kelly’s very well-written blog offers much in the way of infotainment…entertainativeness…

The Dairy Life – my sister’s blog is brand spanking new and ready for visitors. now that i have indoctrinated my family into e-journaling my next stop is kings county unions. probably the teamsters first.

The Black Knight – a simple but fun game. oh those flash programmers…what will they think of next?

No Impact Man – if you haven’t heard about this yet then give it a chance. i have read a bit, and in general it has been RELATIVELY even-handed, in that he is not slanderous with his views from his platform. i can not vouch for the quality of the site, only that which i have already read. the experiment itself is intriguing…as long as it isn’t me who has to live that way. but yeah, some good things to think about…and that’s coming from a conservative!

finally, the stunning revelation of the day: clive owen is in the bourne identity?!?! i haven’t watched the first installment of the bourne trilogy in a while and i put it in tonight to be astounded to recognize a younger, slimmer, less manly clive owen hunting matt damon like an animal. fantastic. i really like clive owen. not all of his films are winners, but his performances are all quite excellent.

so, friends, hope this post was infotaining. if not…give me some suggestions. and as always, get out there and post yourselves!

i leave you with a somewhat more aerial view of our june 21-25 destination, hamilton, montana, which lies in the Bitterroot Valley, where in truth, a river runs through it…

blessings