Today I’m writing from Winter Park, Colorado. Early last week my parents mentioned they hadn’t canceled their timeshare reservation for their condo this week. Thus, either they had to use it or lose it (or pay a heft fee to recycle it, I think). They asked if I was interested in taking a jaunt out here, where we used to take family vacations every spring break and ski the slopes.

After factoring in that Kyler’s Tuesday/Thursday Mother’s Day Out program was going to be on Spring Break this week AND Kim’s parents wanted to see the li’l bugger, I figured I might as well make the trip. Sure, it’s a lot of driving, but it’s a rare opportunity to go to a remote location and have a few days all by yourself.

My twin brother Kolby also came out for the ride, and is staying with Kyler at the Lintons to help do some work around the house and just soak up mountain life. (And I’m glad he did, because it made the 10 hour drive out much, MUCH easier to handle.)

We arrived yesterday afternoon, spent the night and then I drove out here. And now I’m sitting in the bedroom on a comfy chair (this was always my parents’ room, so I never knew HOW comfy it was until now…) writing for my blog. I have a few books to read, some CDs and plenty of free time. There’s just one thing I DON’T have that I had planned on bringing: my MacBook.

Originally I was going to spend the next 4 days working hard on editing the novel my co-author, Patrick Aquilone, and I are writing together. To have so many days of uninterrupted productivity – it was going to be amazingly fantastic.

But as of this writing, it it NOT amazingly fantastic, and that’s for one reason and one reason only.

My MacBook died.

On Saturday night – mere hours before Kolby and I were to leave for the trip – my laptop died a horrible death. (Not as horrible as when my iMac went up in smoke, but horrible enough…) I was in the middle of backing up my hard drive when it seemingly got hung up. Frozen. Kaput.

So I did a hard reset and was aghast to see it reboot to the ominous Flashing Question Mark folder. Translation? It couldn’t find my system folder. The brain. The thing that makes it tick.

Restarting did nothing. Plunking in my TechTool DVD did nothing. Praying over it did nothing. It was gone…

On the plus side, however, I’m pleased to report that I DID back up as recently as Thursday, so all is not lost. It’s also still covered under my extended warranty, so I’ll either get a new hard drive or a new MacBook out of the deal. But on the downside – my MacBook is toast.

Also, my plans for productivity are shot. At least, when it comes to writing the novel. But my plans for reading and seeking God are now pushed to the forefront of my agenda.

So the question that I’m lingering on is this: who made my hard drive crash? Was it Satan somehow, knowing that the novel I’m working on is a Christian epic? (How he’d affect a hard drive, I have no idea.) Or was it God, wanting to remove my distractions and have me pursue this time with Him alone? Or do these things “just happen?”

Regardless of the cause, I believe it was God’s will for this to happen because it happened. Here I am, without a MacBook. But to argue that, wouldn’t I have to say that EVERYTHING that happens is God’s will? The Holocaust? 9/11? People being electrocuted by lightning? Is that a logical conclusion?

I don’t know the answer, people, I’m just putting the question out there. As it stands, I plan to spend a lot of time praying & reading the Bible, so maybe if I have any profound revelations I’ll share them here.

Kevin

This weekend I had a rare pleasure: dressing up in a gorilla outfit to impersonate Bigfoot. And why, you might ask, would I be dressing up like Bigfoot? Why, because my church asked me to, of course!

The latest sermon series at LifeChurch is Urban Legends, and even though they’re actually addressing the Urban Legends and misconceptions among Christians, they’re embracing the whole theme of legends with marketing material showing images of Bigfoot, aliens, Loch Ness Monster, etc.

So I was the Bigfoot that walked casually across the stage, down the stairs and out the back of the auditorium. (Actually, I walked casually across the stage for the 5:30pm service, then BOLTED down the aisle for the 7:00pm… kind of a hurried lurch, I guess…

It was fun, but incredibly sweaty. Boy, that suit stank! I felt bad for the next guy who donned it for the Sunday morning services. To be honest, I kinda had flashbacks to when I’d dress up at Chuck E. Cheese when I worked at Showbiz Pizza Place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Except this time I didn’t have some delusional parent handing off their bawling kid, trying to capture the “perfect moment” with their camera. Seriously. All they ended up capturing was evidence of child abuse… and character mouse abuse, I could argue.

The Urban Legends series is fantastic, though. You can stream it or subscribe to their podcasts through iTunes to see what it’s all about. Good, good stuff!

Kevin

Update: Tonight I was asked if I could be Bigfoot again this weekend, wandering the parking lots aimlessly. I immediately said Yes, of course. Wow. I’m thrilled! (No, seriously… I’m actually thrilled, here!)

This weekend in Oklahoma they’re predicting up to 2 inches of ice and sleet to blanket the state. We’re being told this storm will be worse than the one in 2002, when there were electrical outages everywhere (someone in Kim’s office had no power for over a week).

Even though I grew up in Oklahoma, I never really experienced the inconvenience an ice storm can bring. And in Indonesia we experienced our share of brown outs and down power, but it never lasted long. But power outages in the winter? No way to heat the house? No way to cook food? That’s something else entirely.

Am I scared? Just a tad. Not “pee runneth down the leg” scared, but more like… concerned. We’ve all grown so comfortable with our lives’ various comforts.. to get ‘em yanked away forcefully, so quickly… well, it’ll be a shock.

As I was praying this morning, trying to ask God how I should pray to avoid the calamity, the verse from Psalms 112:7 came to mind. “He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.” (The whole passage describes the man who “fears the Lord.”)

That’s good stuff.

There’s a storm coming. An ice storm. That’s bad news. But me? I’m not going to be afraid, because regardless of what happens, I will trust in the Lord. Not trusting that He’ll specifically swoop down and save us or protect us, but that regardless of WHAT happens the next few days, He is still God and knows EXACTLY what we need and when.

So, Fear! Time for you to take a hike. And Pee! You crawl right back up my leg and return from whence you came! (Wow… what a visual…. eww……) I know where my heart is, and where it’s not. Circumstances may change from moment to moment, day to day, but God and His sovereignty will not change.

I’ll be sure to post some pics later…

Kevin

So the other night Kim and I were over at Rob and Carreybeth’s (our friends around the corner) eating dinner, and Rob asked if we had made any New Year’s Resolutions. Needless to say, we hadn’t. It hadn’t even occurred to me, honestly. I used to make resolutions back when I was younger (more idealistic?), but I just haven’t done it recently. Eh…

Still, his question got me thinking, and a few minutes later my jumbled thoughts had strewn themselves together and came spewing out of my mouth. “I have an idea,” I announced. “Why don’t we make resolutions for the OTHERS around the table?”

Blank looks all around.

So I explained the concept: Kim, Rob and I would come up with a resolution for CB. She, Rob and Kim would come up with one for me, and so on and so forth, until everyone has been told off how to improve themselves (or how much they suck, depending on how neurotic you are…). I don’t think I knew what a can of worms I had exploded, but thankfully it didn’t go over too poorly. (i.e., no one ran from the room in tears or flipping the other three off… well, no one ran from the room in tears, anyway…)

I won’t go into everyone’s suggestions, but I will share what they came up with for me. Because I like to go to the gym and go for a leisurely swim or a relaxing walk on the treadmill, Rob suggested that I actually work to get my heart rate up to where I’m doing aerobic exercise. I found the idea to be intriguing and enough to make me squirm, but I accepted it. (How could I not? I was the doofus who came up with the game in the first place…)

So for the past few days I’ve been at the gym, briskly walking on the treadmill for a half hour, getting my heart rate up to 130+ and so on. The first time I knew I was going to die. Just flat out have a seizure right there on the machine, in front of all the workhorses surrounding me (and THEY run at full tilt, mind you!). Alas, I didn’t die. Today I thought my calf would seize up (again, drawing gawkers galore…0, but it didn’t happen either (yet).

Lesson learned? Don’t come up with cute, novel ideas of ways to play with people’s heads unless you’re ready for them to poke around in your life first. Or something like that…

Mr. Universe (Kevin)

Burning Down the House. (Blendon)
Originally uploaded by jackardiac.

I’m testing Flickr’s ability to update my blog at JacKardiac. Bear with me… (more ungainly tests to come later…)

Kevin

Okay, so I’m screwin’ around with the template a bit. To be honest, it was an accident. As I’m working through revamping JacKardiac.com and separating my creative outlets from my family ones (i.e. a separate site for family stuff), I was browsing the templates at Blogger.com to find something suitable for the JacKardiac name.

I came across one that looked nice and adventurous, but the background looked some some smoker’s wallpaper. Nasty stuff. So I’m back to plain jane until I revamp the whole thing in iWeb. I like the simplicity of Blogger, but at this point I’d rather be in control of the entire formatting of my site(s), so iWeb it is…

Anyhow, I’m coming up with new ideas to write about, so stay tuned… I’ll update this thing regularly yet…

Kevin