Category: mi familia

One year ago today

You probably wouldn’t have guessed it from my blogging that day, but one year ago today I met my life, Laurie for the first time ever.
I admitted last night that I was getting a little nervous working that day knowing that we were going to meet and go out for the first time later that evening. I guess I did something right because we’re now married and really enjoying life.
We plan on visiting one or two of the stops we made on our first date later today.
Last year I picked her up and we had dinner at Blue Mesa, then road the trolley down McKinney Ave. and finished it up with coffee at Cafe Brazil.
It’s amazing to think that was just a year ago. It seems so much longer (in a good way). I still laugh to think that one of her roommates thought we had known each other most of our lives after we had dated a month or two.
I am a slacker though apparently – from what I can tell, I didn’t mention Laurie to the blogging world until July 21st. Sorry about that. By then we had plenty of dates under our belt and were “officially dating.”
Laurie I love you and no one thrills my heart like you do. You are all my dreams come true and more.

Jonathan sets out the napkins


Jonathan sets out the napkins
Originally uploaded by Jonathan D. Blundell.

We just wrapped up our first monthly “dinner club” at Casa de Blundell. We had a great time 13 adults and one baby Gracelyn. Our last guests left just before 11 p.m. and we enjoyed some great Mexican food made by all. Aaron and I also partook in some good imported Mexican beer before it was all said and done.
Tonights menu:
Cheese poppers and bacon wrapped jalape̱os РShane and Sarah
Chips, queso and guacamole – Richard and Amber
Beef enchiladas – Blundells
Chicken enchiladas – Josh and Shalyn
Beef fajitas and guacamole – Smiley and Shari
(amazing) Apple cinnamon wraps with vanilla ice cream – Aaron and Keri
We were surprised we were able to get 13 people seated in our humble abode, but we did it and then played a game of Boxers or Briefs afterwards.
We also took two of our old digital cameras and set them out for everyone to snap random photos as they saw fit. One of them has a busted LCD screen on it – so it made for some fun interesting pics. You can see them all on my Flickr account.
A great time had by all I do believe. We’re ready to start planning our next monthly dinner club meeting for next month. Check your e-mail you might be invited. Spaces are limited – we’ll start drawing names from the hat again soon.

The desire for community

I’m still amazed at how often I hear about the desire people have for community – yet so often we’re “too busy” to take time to build relationships, or we’ve “been burned too many times” to take a risk on another relationship.
Even folks who love freelancing and working on their own still desire to build community in their own away-from-work environments.
“The idea for me is forming deep connections with the people who are there,” Brad Neuberg said in a recent video he and other co-workers made. Co-working is a movement to create a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents. “I go to bars and I see lots of people standing around and no one talks to each other and I don’t know why. Yet I go to a house party with lots of people standing around but they’re talking because there’s a shared context… How do you get that magic of a shared identity?”

These programmers have found a way to build community around open source software and technology. As a church we have the common identity of Christ and His salvation yet sometimes you can feel the loneliest at church or around other Christians. How do we build that bridge and knock down those walls?

Some tips from the co-workers for building community and community spaces:

  • Start talking about it
  • Be open with your process
  • Be very sharing
  • The more you give the more you’ll get
  • Be willing and patient in your pursuant of community

Re: On a search for the Music Machine

Further searching led me to a website for Agapeland Music as well.
I did botch those lyrics up on Patience, sung by Herbert the Snail.
The correct lyrics are, “Have patience, have patience. Don’t be in such a hurry. When you get impatient, you only start to worry. Remember, remember, that God is patient too. And think about the times when others have to wait for you.”
You can order all the Agapeland recordings on CD now, but I’d love to find the original records as well.

The fight against immigrants

My mom sent me a forwarded e-mail. I don’t think she necessarily agreed with it, just wanted my opinion.
Snopes has a copy of the e-mail but the factuality/truth of the email is undetermined.
So here is my response:

This sounds like typical propaganda that you could have seen at any point during our country’s history. There have been similar gripes about African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Germans, Irish, Jews, Arabs… you name it. If someone’s different and things aren’t exactly how you want them to be – find a group to blame.
Hitler came to power because he saw Germany falling apart and he was able to propagate and get the German people to believe the source of their problems were the Jews.
I wonder why the church isn’t helping these folks. I wonder why the people griping and moaning the most aren’t doing more to help these people.
In any system there are those who chose to abuse the system to their advantage but there are also those who respect the system and respect those who are giving them a chance.
I find it hard to believe that everyone of the children getting the free breakfast are illegal immigrants or from families of illegal immigrants.
I bet you would find very similar situations in any school that offers free meals and they’re probably not all Hispanic or immigrants.
The problem is with the individuals themselves and government subsidies aren’t going to solve the problem, sending them back to Mexico isn’t going to solve the problem, giving them citizenship isn’t going to solve the problem. It’s going to take these people making a change themselves.
Why are the kids overweight – it’s not because they get free food, its because of their diet. Healthy food is more expensive. There are far more poor black individuals in our country with diabetes than any other group – why? Because many of them are living on welfare/food stamps and they go to the store to buy as much food as they can for the money. And the cheapest food contains the most starches and sugar (corn syrup). I’m not trying to make a racists statement out of that. Just pointing out the fact. I think its a very sad state of affairs when the majority of lower income areas across our country are full of minorities and not racial diversity.
These families, (children and parents) need to be educated. And regardless of whether or not the government takes it upon themselves to do it or not, the church should be. The church should be showing grace to each and everyone of them. The church should be working to help these individuals change – government subsidies aren’t going to change them.