Random Thoughts

Now that Katie’s taking a photo class, we have to get out and do some regular photography. This is fine by me as I need an excuse to get out and shoot. Last week, she had some trouble getting her film developed, so we had to make an emergency trip to the camera store, buy some film stock (and the supplies to process it at home that night), and head out for a shoot.

She was looking for perspective and framing. I was looking for whatever looked cool. I had been wanting to head down to Minnehaha falls, as it’s supposed to be pretty neat. We found it, and started hiking. The falls are cool, and we found a trail that follows the creek. Eventually, the creek runs into the Mississippi, but we didn’t go that far. We did see some great photo opportunities, however. 

That night, we got Katie’s film processed, and hopefully I’ll be able to scan some of the prints and put them up. She has quite an eye. On the other hand, you can check out some of my favorite shots on the photo blog.

This past Sunday, we had a big announcement at Upper Room. The short story is that we’re going be planting Upper Room as a new independent church in a new location. You can read a lot more about it here.

Personally, I’m very excited about this move. I think it will be very good for Upper Room, and give us the opportunity to reach our target demographic more effectively. From a missional perspective, this is good. It will mean some changes, to be sure, but I’m not bothered by change. 

My role has already started to morph. I’m doing less and less video work, and more IT-related stuff. I’m currently in the midst of developing a project that would include setting up a new Mac Server (an XServe) and converting the UR staff over to all Macs. If you know me at all, you’ll know this fits in with my master plan from the start. And I’m getting better at it. It took me over a year at Crosswinds to start the transition to Macs. Here in under 9 months, I’ve been given the go-ahead to move us over. I should get commission. For real.

So there you go. Sorry I’ve not been updating here much, but most of my spare writing time goes into my Church Tech Arts blog. And I Twitter a lot, too.

How many times did you spell that as a kid? Hundreds, probably. Today, I not only spelled, but I walked over it, and next to it. I’m referring to the river, not the state. If you’re not up on your geography, the Mississippi River starts in Minnesota. And it runs through Minneapolis. Today, we decided to talk a walk next to Ole Miss, and see what we could see.

Turns out, there are some really sweet parks along the river in the Cities. We went to one called Mill Ruins. It’s so named because the “ruins” of a flour mill and associated water powered mills are there. It was actually quite interesting. I’m fascinated with what people could build before the modern age of concrete pumpers and huge cranes. 

We parked behind the Guthrie Theater, which is a local landmark. It’s also an engineering marvel. There is a cantilevered lookout balcony that extends a hundred foot or more with no vertical support. Seriously, it’s amazing. The balcony looks out over the river and to the Stone Arch Bridge, which was built in the 1800’s. The bridge spans the river, and is itself a marvel. Especially when one considers that it was built in a spot where the river fell a few hundred feed over just a few thousand feet. It used to look like Niagara Falls, so they say. But then they built a wooden spillway. Tough folks, these Minnesotians. 

Ironically, the 130+ year old Stone Arch Bridge is just a few hundred feet up river from the under 40 year old 35W bridge that collapsed just over a year ago. The new one is almost done. Let’s hope the new one is built more like the Stone Arch Bridge than the “modern” bridge that collapsed. I got a good view of just how far down it was when it fell. That would have been incredible (in a “scare the crap out of you” kind of way) to have seen that.

Anyway, take a look at some of the pictures I took today. I’m really pleased with a few of them.

Peace.