Entries from January 2009 ↓

I’m taking a week off work to begin recording the piano parts for my upcoming album. After some thought and good advice from friends, I’m settling on the title of this album:

“Daylight”

Ah, simple and direct, and the idea of daylight is reflected in many of the 11 songs in consideration for the album.

The album will begin with these songs:

• From Midnight to Daylight
• Relentless Love
• Widow Moon
• Sunflower

Then I have a gaggle of songs to sort through in the middle:

• Hanging on His Word
• In the Morning
• Kiss the Word
• The Sins of the World
• Still Beautiful

And then I’ll end with these two:

• Come to Me
• His Mercy Endures Forever

Noticeably absent is “River,” which is available as a “rough draft” download on my free songs page. But to me, that song feels like it wants to be on the next album, with more personal songs I’ve written.

So anyway, I’ll update as I can next week, but I’ll be understandably busy laying down tracks in GarageBand. Thanks!

Fencing results for the recent tournament, for those who want to see how well Caleb did. You can click on the little boxes to see more details.

No, I’m not being annoyingly repetitive. Caleb won twice in Saturday’s fencing tournament.

He was drafted into competing in the saber competition because they needed a sixth fencer. He enjoys saber, but out of the three fencing weapons, considers it his least favorite.

So he fenced saber. And won.

Now Caleb has a ranking with the U.S. Fencing Association, an E. (USFA rankings are letters from E up to A. You earn them by beating a certain number and rank of other fencers. Beating five fencers earns you an E.)

Next up was the epee competition, in which he used his brand new Italian-grip weapon he received Wednesday in the mail. So with zero experience with his new weapon, he ended up in fifth. (He has two weeks to prepare for a big epee tournament in Michigan.)

But then the last competition was foil, his favorite weapon. Out of eight competitors, he won first place and received an E ranking in that weapon, too.

Congratulations to Caleb for doing so well in his sixth tournament!

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” – Frederick Buechner

Awesome no matter your politics: Barack Obama’s inauguration in Legos. 12 photos.

The headline in the Washington Post reads: House Offers $825 Billion Stimulus. That’s a lot of cash. But it’s such a large number that it’s difficult to wrap your mind around it.

Here are a couple of riddles I came up with to put that number in perspective.

Riddle #1

Let’s say you had an unlimited supply of $100 bills, wrapped in packs of 100. That’s $10,000 per pack.

If you began throwing the $10,000 packs into your fireplace at a rate of one pack every second, 24 hours a day, how long would it take until you had burned through $825 billion?

Answer below.

Riddle #2

Let’s say you have $825 billion in your checking account and it can be yours only if you spend it all in one calendar year. How much money would you have to spend every minute, 24 hours a day?

Answer below.

Continue reading →

It’s time for another free download!

This time, I’m offering an early version of my song, “River.” The piano was recorded in my dining room on my Yamaha digital piano and with GarageBand software. The vocals were recorded at Tim Bushong’s studio in Syracuse, Ind.

Download the song here.

And please, share this link with anyone you think would enjoy the song. You can link to this post or you can use the form on the free page to submit a friend’s email address. I’d like to spread this song far and wide!

You can read the lyrics and listen to the song on the music page.

Andy Welfle has now posted our Twitter exchange on the Freethought Fort Wayne site, where his atheist friends try to help him outwit my superstition, derision, tricky misdirection and nonsequiturs. Besides that, they like me.