Last weekend we tried to go camping but the rain never really let up. Not only did it not let up, but the severe weather down in the gulf kept getting worse so we decided to give it a go this weekend. We are or were pretty avid campers in the day and we have camped in just about every state in the country but haven’t been in quite a while.
I am looking forward to a bit of relaxing on the beach with some time to read and write, hopefully we will see a bit of sun while we are down on the gulf this weekend. Below are some of the cloud formations we saw in the storms coming through this week. I love clouds, they are almost like snowflakes, day is different and they are constantly moving.
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A Day at Cornerstone Church from Scott Fillmer on Vimeo.
This has been done a million times but not by me, and not on this Sunday, so today I took my video camera with me from start to finish through a normal Sunday at Cornerstone Church. The video is a little long I know, I will try to keep the rest of them down to 2-3 minutes but this one covered about 8 hours of the day. It has a cast of many, special thanks goes out to Jack Fisher for putting up with me posting what he didn’t want me to post (always seems to work out that way with Jack) and everyone else that appears on the video.
I would like to make special mention of two songs in the video I briefly used, one was Love Love by Brett Younker and the other was Offering by Daniel Boshta and I would recommend both of their current albums, both of which are available on their websites. I have met both of these guys and they are very passionate about what they do, so go buy some of their CD’s if you like their music. The song Brian is singing throughout the video is Glory to God by Fee which will be released by Steve Fee in a few months.
Cornerstone has two services, one at 9 and 11 and I am usually working both or at least at both. I edited out as much as I could to still make it flow as the day went, but it gets quite busy and hecktic at times. We just launched a new website so check it out if you have time, and if you can make it through to the end of the video you will have seen all 4 of the leadership team at Cornerstone, Rusty, Josh, Brian, and Jack. Enjoy.
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Does this seem like a really strange Valentine’s day to you? For some reason it being on Saturday seems like it got overshadowed today by Saturday being Saturday. This is not to say that Deb and I do a whole lot to celebrate Valentine’s Day on a normal year, but this year I spent most of the day today at a leadership retreat for our church (post coming soon), and then we were able to catch up with each other for the Auburn vs Mississippi State basketball game (also post coming soon).
Holiday days of any kind are not my favorite. They disrupt the flow of everything (which is not actually bad), but more importantly, Deb and I make a conscience effort to do these things all year round, not just on some special day because that is what the calendar says to do. Instead of spending the day together on Valentine’s Day, we spend every day we can together, including every attempt to spend each Friday together all day without interruption. That doesn’t always happen, but instead of a date night, we have a date day. In that respect, we should act like it is Valentine’s Day every day, right.
Valentine’s Day [also here] contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.
Deborah has her own way to celebrate each holiday that rolls around, she has a pair of socks that she wears on one day of each year. Today, those are the Snoopy Valentine’s Day socks (seen below). I have mine, a few photos to celebrate the day, Valentine’s Day chocolate of course. So to Deb’s socks and everyone else, happy Valentine’s Day.
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I love walking around in the heart of Auburn sports on campus. For the basketball game today we parked in the Jordan Hare Stadium parking lot, as many do, and I shot this photo as we walked by the stadium. Directly across the parking lot is the new $92.5 million Auburn Basketball Arena being built while the older Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum which opened in 1969 sits to the left and directly across from the baseball field, Plainsman Park. A lot of history and tradition in one small place, and a lot new history being made.
Auburn played a great game today and finally came out on top right at the last few seconds of the game. It really could have gone either way at the end and the Vols did get off a last second shot at the buzzer and it just didn’t drop. The season is getting very close to March where it will wind down and give way to the crack of Baseball, and this team has managed to win games they shouldn’t and loose games they should win.
Basketball this year has been as enjoyable as always but I am really looking forward to the opening of the new arena when we can pack the house for a basketball game and at least look like we have some support for our basketball team. There was a lot going on in Auburn this Saturday and I am glad I was able to spend some time with Deb and my parents as well.
A very busy week coming up starting tomorrow and some exciting new things coming towards the end of the week.
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This was probably once of the nicest late December days that I can remember. It was over 70* with partly cloudy, blue sky and I ended up working outside all day. We ended up taking down our Christmas lights today and replacing them with our “everyday lights” which will remain up the rest of the year (these are lights that go around the inside of our patio). We started decorating the patio for this coming summer, which actually was an idea in part from a friend Cindy Wall during her baptism (photos will be coming on down the road).
As the holiday days wind down I am really looking forward to getting back to work (without holiday interruptions). We have so much coming up in the next few months, and I am really looking forward to seeing how it all plays out. One area we will be ramping up is “Twitter church”. So if you are not a Twitter member yet, sign up and see what it’s all about. Once you have signed up, you can follow Cornerstone from @cornerstonebuzz and if you are so inclined, you can follow me at @scottfillmer as well.
My Friday Feet post is a little late because I spent most of yesterday with family and at the movies. My dad and I went to see Valkyrie and if you have any desire to see the story about the assassination attempt on Hitler, I would highly recommend this movie. I knew very little about this story from WWII and although it was a movie, it did seem to follow the historical account fairly close. Although I am not a big fan of Tom Cruise any more, it is hard to deny that this was one of the better movies of 2008.
My friday feet post today is in recognition of the last Friday of the 2008 calendar year. This photo is on the corner of our patio. Deb and I placed our feet in the wet concrete just about this time two years ago when we moved into our house. It is a marker or reminder of the passage of time to me and I look at it almost every time I walk across the patio. 2006, 2007, and a lot of 2008 are almost a blur in history now but this image has become almost a time capsule in my mind of when we finally moved into our house here in Auburn.
Welcome home to all those who were traveling over the last few days, hope your New Year will be great.
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Most things in our house are high tech as we can get, except when it comes to heating the house. When we built this house a few years ago we put in a wood burning stove (see Lopi, Lopi, and Lopi). Heating our home with a wood burning stove is great, except… you have to have wood of course. Since Deb likes the house to be WARM, we certainly save quite a bit on electricity over the winter (bill runs around $65 in the winter), it just takes a lot of labor to get it to the point of burning as you see below.
So, we spend many a Saturday afternoon in what turns out to be pretty tough work of cutting up wood, splitting, and stacking. Theoretically we should be working on seasoning our wood about a year out from when we are burning it, but so far we haven’t been able to catch up with the seasons and come summer time we really don’t want to be out there doing this type of work, so, we are doing it now.
This isn’t much of a technological post, other than the fact that I do have my phone out there with me, but this is what we did today. You will have to excuse the quality of the photos, all the images below were taken with my phone.
We have this sort of disaster area in the adjacent property our here. Early this year the logging trucks came in and clear cut the 40+ acres and left a huge mess of wood scrap bio-mass (mostly hard wood trees they didn’t want), and in the process gave us an almost endless supply of wood for our stove. Luckily we can’t see the mess next door from our house, and the owner of the property (which use to be a nice deer lease) was thrilled was wanted to clean it up a bit.
It was a totally exhausting day, but the end result is heat for the house.
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This was a busy busy weekend, but I spent some of Friday and Saturday at the building or construction of the new playground at our church. I think our pastor described this as a Mac Daddy playground on Sunday morning, and he was not kidding. This is one heck of a playground put in, basically over the period of a two day weekend.
You can see the gallery of images from the ground breaking to the finish now except for a few missing odds and ends. The real work, done by all the people who volunteered on Friday and Saturday was incredible. After spending some time out there on Friday I realized that this wasn’t about plastic, bolts, and some dirt, but people.
Through God, it is people that made this possible, and people that will be able to enjoy what was done on this weekend for years to come. So, when I came back on Saturday I decided to focus a little more of my attention on the actual faces of the people that made this possible.
I picked two of my favorites from Saturday above. One of my bud Heath over at gotroot and the other one of those who will use the playground, sitting with dad while everyone is on a break. Towards the end of the completed gallery you will see a little more focused attention on the people that made this possible.
It was a very hot and steamy weekend where many people took time off from work and their families to lend a helping hand.
