San Juan Loop Trail with the kids and the dog...

Ever since going on the three day trip to San Gorgonio with Garrett (which I have yet to post about - so this is a little out of order I know), I have wanted to go on another hike with the family.  And I really wanted to take the awesome pooch, Umi.  After seeing a couple dogs on the trails a couple weeks ago,  I thought she would really love it.  So today I took the kids and the dog out to our local trails off the Ortega Highway.  That's one really great thing about living in Lake Elsinore - we have easy access to the hills/mountains.  I don't know if there is an official name.  Google maps seems to say Elsinore Mountains.  Gina had a project she had to work on so sadly our family was incomplete and we missed her, but the kids and I had a great time.  And Gina enjoyed the chance to work with the sewing machine without Jeremiah stepping on the pedal in the middle of her work.
Jer fell asleep shortly into the hike and napped while riding on my back for about an hour or and hour and half.  A little while after he woke up we were a quarter to half mile away from the car so he walked that last bit.  It was really fun and nice just to get out with and take a walk.  The whole thing took about 2 hours and 20 minutes at our very leisurely pace (which became even more leisurely when the Jer man started walking) and several breaks.  I hope to return and do this hike in the winter or early spring when the streams will be flowing.  This time there was only one spot that had a little still water from the rains a couple weeks ago. 

The one downside was that since the hike is relatively short, and a lot of it parallels the road, you can hear road noise for a good portion of the hike (maybe one third or so).  However, for a hike about a ten mile drive from home, with the kids and the dog, it was great - got some fun pictures and video.  Enjoy!!

Plumbing Fun

So there's been a slow leak under my kitchen sink for a long time. I was pretty sure that it was the drain pipe at the connection to the p-trap. For a long time, I was happy to put it off and leave a bucket under the sink. As long as I checked on the bucket every so often to make sure it wasn't overflowing, everything was good. Every once in a while the wetness would seem to come from somewhere else and the towel under the bucket would end up wet. But this was sporadic. So on the one hand it was not a huge problem, but on the other hand it made determining the source of the problem more difficult.

Well last week - the procrastination had to stop as there was a new source of drippage under my sink. The faucet just began dripping from the bottom at a pretty good rate. It no longer took my bucket a few weeks to get full, but about half a day.

So Sunday afternoon I undertook to replace my faucet.

We went online and found a relatively inexpensive one at Lowe's and went down to pick it up. I thought I was in for a few hours of work. The instructions said 45 minutes, but I knew there was no way and that it would end up being at least 2 hours....heh....I was in for more fun that I imagined.

It's funny how a half an hours work can be reduced to one line "Remove the old faucet". Rather it should say "strap on your headlamp for a half an hour on your back with your arms straight up in the air holding a wrench and a pair of pliers and trying to undo about ten years worth of corrosion".

Of course when I got the old faucet out and the new one in, it turned out the rubber seal on the fittings were completely destroyed and leaking all over the place. Well, a trip to Home Depot to replace these taught me that "that's the old way of doing things" and I would have to buy completely new hoses, and of course new valves. So I went home to get the old pieces to ensure I bought the right size new parts. This of course required shutting off the water to the house. No problem though as I was going to run back out to the Home Dee-Pot and get the required replacement valves and work late into the night to get the problem fixed. The only problem was that both Home Depot and Lowe's were closed early due to it being Sunday. So our water was off and the valves removed and we were out of water for the night. I stopped at Albertson's to get some bottled water for drinking and teeth brushing and the like. This is fun! It's like camping at home!

So at this point I was 7 hours into my 45 minute project, and I knew I would have to take at least the first part of Monday off work because I couldn't leave the family with no toilet and no dishwashing water all day.

Despite the fact that the main valve was shut off, water continued to drip from the pipes all night long and by morning the bucket was overflowing. yay!

Well - thanks to my Grandpa coming over and lending his expertise, I was able to go to both Lowe's and Home Depot and come home with most of what I would need to finish the project, and by about 10:30 the old fitting were cut off the pipes and the new valves were on and the water to the house was back on.

Well to shorten up this long story, I'll just say I had another trip out to both Lowe's and Home Depot in store. I also had about two or three more times of thinking "ahh, finally done" just to find out I wasn't.

What was supposed to be a new faucet with a cool little sprayer turned out to be: a new tee at the drain pipe, buying a new air gap for the dishwasher drain then throwing it away, buying a new 7/8" hose for the dishwasher drain and not using it, buying a new direct attachment from the dishwasher to the garbage disposal, two new valves, two new supply hoses, a new cap for the random hole drilled in the top of the sink by a previous owner, AND a new faucet with sprayer.

It was a long, tiresome, painful, expensive process, but I feel so happy now that we have a new faucet and everything underneath the sink seems to be in good working order. The cold water valve still has a really really slow drip. Maybe it will calcify shut in a couple days, or maybe there's going to be more adventure in store as I try to fix that.

I'm sure this story bring back fond memories of similar experiences for most other home owners, especially owners of older homes. No project is what it appears to be. Whatever you see is only the first domino to fall, or the tip of the iceberg - whichever analogy you prefer.

Sadly - this experience makes me more prone to procrastinate on other projects. I'm never sure if this one hour project will turn out to be the one that ends up lasting 30 hours instead!

$1.50 Latte!

So Starbucks (and pretty much any cafe) can get pretty expensive right? Well here's a nice trick for a $1.50 caramel latte.

With your registered Starbucks card, order a tall coffee for a buck fifty. Ask for added caramel syrup (or flavor of your preference) with room for cream. Add your half and half, stir, and voila! a not bad imitation of a latte! When you like to visit Starbucks often (as I do), but don't like spending a grip of money there, this is a nice cheap way to spruce up the visit, rather than having a plain cup of coffee.

If you do like to visit even once a month, then you really ought to have a registered card. You get a free drink on your b-day, and after 5 purchases you'll get to "green level" and the caramel syrup I mentioned will be a free add to your drink. AND if you're planning to enjoy the cafe ambiance for a while, you can get a free refill of your imitation latte! Can't beat that that with a stick!

What was that you said...in your heart....with your actions?

I always find it interesting when I hear statistics about the religiosity or theistic belief of the people of the U.S. It's always something like, "95% of Americans believe in God, so stop trying to take 'in God we trust' off of our national monuments" or something to that effect.

Here's an example from an article written in June 2008:

(it was the first link to pop up to a google search "what percentage of Americans believe in God"):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/23/ST2008062300818.html

In case you didn't take the time to click and spend the two minutes required to read that article (and I don't blame you, but if you have the time I encourage you to read it because it's interesting), it basically says that 92% of Americans believe in some sort of "higher power", even 20% of atheists claim to believe in some sort of (personal or impersonal) supernatural entity. Incredible... - and often this type of information is cited as some sort of good news in a political context. Yet, the belief noted is a completely worthless form of belief. It is far from faith and in fact is even less than the acknowledgement given God by the demons (James 2:19 "You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe - and tremble!") Because at least the demons acknowledge that there is only One and that He is a personal God.

What initially got me thinking on this was passing through Psalm 14 on my evening reading. The first part of the first verse is often quoted, many times in jest, and I think I probably saw it 5 times last year in email forwards saying we should give atheists the holiday 4/1 to celebrate. "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'". And something struck me when I read it this time. The psalmist (David) isn't talking about those who say with their lips or their mind, "there is no God." Rather those who say it in their heart. I wonder how many people of that day would have said such a thing with their lips. I think everyone in the Israeli community at the time was a theist, and all the surrounding peoples were most likely poly-theistic pagans. Who would be saying "There is no God" as the "intellectual atheist" does today? I think no one. Consider the rest of the verse:

v.1

The fool has said in his heart,

'There is no God.'

They are corrupt,

They have done abominable works,

There is none who does good.

v.3

They have all turned aside,

They have together become corrupt;

There is none who does good,

No, not one.

v.4

Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge...

And do not call on the Lord?.....

So of course, this is a great passage to address what the Bible says about the atheist. Look around, see the creation. Look inward, observe the moral compass. OF COURSE THERE'S a GOD!

But even more than that - this is talking about those who live like there is no God. It's about those who say it with their heart, with their actions. Those who have "become corrupt" and "done abominable works". And verse 2 gives a perspective on how and why this seems so foolish:

v. 2

The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men,

To see if there are any who understand, who seek God.

It's so absurd to imagine a creation denying the existence of it's creator. It's like a child telling his/her mother, "you're not my mother". And mom is thinking, "uh...I was there when, after nine miserable months of carrying you around in my belly, I very laboriously pushed you out." It's the kind of statement to which one almost wants to add the tag ["you idiot"] (i'm not trying to be rude here, I'm just saying - I think a mom would know.... of course hopefully one would never call their child an idiot, and I'm definitely not recommending it. Especially since in this illustration one most likely envisions a very young child. It's just that, being told by your own offspring that you aren't their parent, or for God to be told by His own creation that he doesn't exist - such a statement leaves one incredulous).....but getting back on point - for a person to claim that there is no God is like that situation, to the power of 10 to the power of 100 to the power of 1000.

So verse 2 says that God is looking down upon us, His creation, to see if anyone will seek Him. And I even sometimes think, when studying apologetics or watching a debate between a Christian and an atheist, how funny it must be from God's perspective that people are spending time debating about His existence. Of course I love apologetics and support a full defense of the theism and the Christian faith, but it's just a funny thought when considered from His perspective. He is in heaven, watching, waiting.... "Will you stop debating, and just acknowledge, turn toward, worship, and seek me?"

The sad thing to consider is this: how many of those 92% of Americans that say with their mouth when polled that they believe in God, are saying in their heart that "there is no God"? And how many Christians are living verse 1 "corrupt, they have done abominable works..." and thereby saying with their heart that there is no God.

It's convicting - when God "looks down from heaven upon" me, I want Him to see that I "understand" and "seek God."

GOD, as the One who deserves and demands our attention, love, adoration, respect, fear, and WORSHIP, does not need to justify His existence to us. He doesn't need to explain why he should be our priority. As GOD, He is entitled. He depends upon nothing, we depend upon Him.

I'll end with a quote from Dr. William Lane Craig in his Defenders series of podcasts. I think this is well put, true, and convicting of the heart:

God ought to be our ultimate concern...and since God is the ultimate being, He ought to be our proper ultimate concern; to substitute anything else in God's place is therefore, literally, idolatry. And it's interesting that many of the passages in the scriptures on the notion of God as self existent come in the context of a condemnation of idolatry...because to put anything in God's place as one's ultimate concern is idol worship. Now if I were to ask "how many idolaters are here in the class this morning?" we probably wouldn't see too many hands raised. But suppose I were to ask you "What is your ultimate concern in life?" What would you have said? If it's anything other than knowing and serving God, I think you're worshiping a lesser God. You're putting something in the rightful place of God, the self existent one, our ultimate concern....

In the most absolute sense, He is Lord. Everything else depends upon Him, He depends upon nothing. He is Lord. And therefore in our lives, we need to depend upon the One who depends upon no one.

Alvin Plantinga

You must read about this man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Plantinga