nick probably sent out the new invites for the next Epiphany Lougne™ this past weekend, so it’s safe to show them off now. i really want to design someone’s wedding invitations. that would make me happy. (it would also make me money, which can help out in the paying off of the student loans… which would help in the making of the me happy… if only temporarily.)

the ultimate way to fold a t-shirt.

glorious. so glorious.

before we get started, let me just tell you that our yard looks AWESOME. brown and i did the yard work gig on friday, and tolbert stopped by to help because he’s just cool like that. by the time we were done, there was a pile of branches, weeds, briars, vines, dead rat (yep… dead rat), and leaves about 6′ X 6′ X 35′ out on the road. we do yard work right, kids. the nice (currently blooming) pink dogwood in the backyard (complete with make-out-bench™ underneathe) now has some pretty scenery around it. yaaay us. good friday, indeed.

not a bad Easter weekend. we had somewhere around 3600 people come to our four services, which was nice. the band rocked a little pride in the name of love and it made me happy. spent the first half of the afternoon cooking/eating at the sis’s house with the fam and then spent the second half in slumber. last night… jake and suzanne’s… and the fifth element which, despite its numerous over-the-top flaws, is still one of my favorite flicks. fun times… as usual… late into the night.

listening to clay cook live stuff and demos today. tasty.

tomorrow i am off (thusday was not outrageous, thursday was office, because tomorrow is good friday… and i am off) so… the plans for OUTRAGEOUS FRIDAY™ (doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? let’s never try that again, k?) include yard work with brown. fun times will be had by all. come help.

in other news, casey got her site up and running this week. you should probably go there. especially considering she found this. jerry seinfeld and superman. hysterical. watch uniform. my kind of humor.

what happens when friends tell me that there are pictures of them on the web? danger… that’s what happens. and now, for your downloading pleasure, a new desktop wallpaper. the legendary jeremy hunt… from my computer to yours, in all his pink glory.

last night’s Epiphanuit™ was some great convo. Nick has a nice post-game wrap-up over at the Epiphany Lounge™ blog. i love hanging out with those folks. so fun. (although our sojourn to the House of the Waffle last night is decidedly not treating me well today. ew.) i had a wonderful convo with matt mantooth (coolest… name… ever) about design and such. i’m looking forward to getting to know him a bit better… i’m very glad he’s sticking around post-college-grad…. at least for the time being.

tonight, i am doing new invites for the next Lounge and buying some sheets for my new matress & box spring that was delivered today. yeah, i know, i live such an exciting life. you’re jealous, aren’t you?

coffee last night with lisa, from sweden. highlights? she grew up with IKEA in her backyard… how could she not be great conversation? she’s also a fairly new believer, so it was nice to hear her take on New Spring. she said “it makes sense to me.” high compliments indeed. it was very fun, almost three hours of talking and not once did i look at my watch. so rare. it’s meeting people like that that continue to convince me that the creative, engaging community i’ve always longed for can be found right here in SC. (who knew?) speaking of which…

tonight is the first Epiphanuit™… that would be the gathering of artsy types for conversation and such that Nick has been fostering. i built Nick a little blog (which is eerily similar to this site, considering i’ve been doing this whole “web thing” for all of three months) for the Epiphany Lounge™ so he can keep the brood updated as our community grows.

in other news, everything i own is now in THE 220™ and a few thoughts occurred to me today as i surveyed all that i have worked so hard to get… 1.) wow… i don’t own much of anything. 2.) my furniture is pathetic in both its style and condition. 3.) if my furniture screams “wretched bachelor,” at least it’s a fairly quiet scream considering that there’s not much of it. 4.) time to go SHOPPING!

again, i promise i like girls. i just like all-things-well-designed, too. that includes interiors.

i found no curtains last night. sigh… perhaps THE 220™ will have to rock some mini blinds. i was discussing with the sister last night how difficult it is to be a renter. i mean, you live there… but you don’t want to invest a lot of money that you’ll never get back in a place that you’re not going to live in for more than a year or two. i have to curb my desire to make the place awesome. by the way, the sister’s house is looking quite amazing of late… new hardwood floors and such… and we’re getting closer on the right paint scheme for the living room. (i promise i am heterosexual.)

today, i have a few newspaper ads to design for our easter services. that means we’ll talk tomorrow, because i’m going to be slaving over a hot computer for the rest of the day. tonight, i’m having coffee with an industrial designer from sweden. what? it will be nice to talk all-things-design with someone, especially someone who has the educational background from the country whose designers have influenced my style greatly in terms of how i approach projects. very exciting.

oh yeah… i saw hellboy on saturday night. (by the way, never go to the 10:00PM movie… on the night of daylight savings time… when you have to get up at 6:30AM on sunday for church.) i liked it. was it perfect? no, of course not. but dangit if it wasn’t the best comic book adaptation i’ve probably ever seen. having been a fan of the hellboy comic (yeah… i like comics… back off) and an even bigger fan of hellboy’s creator/artist/writer mike mignola, i think they pretty much made it work on the big screen. there were even a few scenes (the allies in the rain at the beginning particularly) that looked like mike mignola drawings. so cool.

i definitely think that if you’re going to see it expecting the same sort of movie experience as spiderman or x-men, you’re going to leave disappointed… but hellboy isn’t that kind of “comic book.” that’s probably why i like it so much, the way it combines so many elements into a unique world. h.p. lovecraft and 30′s detective stories and mystery and film noir and little bit of horror and the classic comic book hero/villain roles. i’ve always loved hellboy because it has this sort of human, child-like innocence to it… even though you’re dealing with a demon who hunts down monsters… and the always impending sense that the world could fall apart if the right monsters get away. (and, to put it simply, hell.) such a strange tension.

ok, soapboxing: comics get such a bad rap… as if they’re inferior literature… all i know is when i was 8 i knew what “patronize” and “martyr” meant… and i never learned that in english class. my love for writing and words is a direct result of reading well-written comics for so long as a kid. obviously hollywood has run dry for new ideas… and comics are certainly the “hot new thing” right now. which is funny… considering hellboy is a virtually unknown franchise outside of the indie comic world… and an almost-ten-year-old franchise at that. and considering i used to get made fun of by people for reading comics about the characters that those same people are now rushing to the movies to see on a friday night. oh, the irony.

what a crazy weekend. (not really… i live a fairly boring life.)

friday night consisted of dinner with the brothers MCD and mom MCD. she’s so cool. and cracker barrel tasted oh-so-sweet. then we went to clemson to see hoobastank and lostprophets. (minus mom MCD) the show wasn’t half bad, except for the opening band… anybody remember an SC band called shades of grey? well, kenny floyd is flying solo… only he seems to have forgotten to bring along a good band. they were just… not at all good. (and his website is wretched.)

lostprophets were one tight band… vocals were a little off, but they were still entertaining. i’d love to see them in a club setting. high-energy, loud bands seem to be better in clubs for me. hoobastank was pretty impressive. did you know that their singer is probably 5′ 4″? no lie… they had these cute little metal boxes for him to stand on up front on stage. he represents the loli-pop guild. for real. also, no one seems to be able to get that PRS/mesa boogie guitar tone right live… it’s just not-quite-there. the high-end is weird. (sidenote: do all those mall-emo bands go take a class somewhere on how to dance around like idiots on stage? i only ask because they all have the same moves. it’s total-choreography. “aaaaaaand spin, and jump, aaaaaaand thrash, and spin…” you get the picture. i’m just asking is all…)

loli-pop guild’s vocals were pretty-dang impressive, even if he did back off on the two songs that i thought, “he won’t pull that off live.” but still, not bad. i did miss the harmony vocals… it would make a better live experience to just bring another vocalist on tour with them who could nail the harmonies. or track them… they used tracks anyway on a few songs. it’s not like the don’t have the cash to make one of those options happen. if they can fly a 50′ x 80′ backdrop with a levitating monk on it (whatde?) then they can at least give me the background vocals i hear in my head when they play their songs.

i spent most of saturday moving in to the new house. (henceforth referred to as THE 220™) i need furniture… i’m such a horrible bachelor right now. mom and dad bought me a mattress and boxspring (which was my christmas present… that i had forgotten they had promised me. yaaay for suprises.) so, after sleeping on a couch for 6 years… i’m actually getting a bed. weird. it gets delivered on thursday… on friday, i’ll give you all the details on how glorious my night of sleep was.

sunday afternoon continued the moving process. wilson and kelly helped out, and leggett too. i never get to hang out with her, so that was fun… even if she did lose her keys somehow… somewhere during the moving process. and then we went and got her spare… and her car wouldn’t start. great, that’s all we need… i move into a new house and everyone who drives by sees her car parked in my drive. let the rumors fly.

tonight… i buy curtains. i am officially a loser male.

so i actually am going to see hoobastank with the brothers MCD tonight. mall emo… here i come.

i… am… so… campus invasion.

i’m also really curious to see if they can pull that stuff off live; especially the vocals and the guitar tone. the opening acts are lost prophets and ima robot (could that be the worst band name of all time? i submit that it can.) our soundman extrodinaire joel yates is running front of house for the show… and he called to say (i love you…) that lost prophets is one of the tightest live bands he’s ever heard. (and loudest… 128db… at sound check. note-to-self… invest in ear plugs prior to the rocking of the out.) so… it should be a fun evening. i feel like i need to wear sweat bands and black clothes and skater shoes to the show just to fit in. oh well… i’m old and i have a beard and i’m wearing flops and i don’t care.

tomorrow… i will rock a matinee showing of hellboy. the big guy can wait for another day.

so, for those not “in the know” yet (or those not “in SC”)… my church just signed a contract on 34 acres of land, right where we wanted to be. the sunset out there isn’t too shabby. hopefully we’ll be in the building, having services (and offices!) in 12-14 months or less. God is amazing… that is all.

ok. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. (hence forth referred to as eternal sunshine)

i loved it. i’m not going to get into specifics or use all the ridiculously over-the-top language that “movie critics” use, but suffice to say that it’s the best flick i’ve seen this year. acting, story, editing, pacing, etc… all top notch. basically, it showed the nice, flowery side of love… and the messy, painful side of love… and communicated those emotions so well that it made me want to fall in love. (i’m for serious) i’ll be needing to see it again.

all moved in to the new office, though it’s not quite cozy yet. i still want a different desk and i need some sort of something to store all my magazines in/on. i heart magazines… but the ominously leaning stacks are getting out of hand. even though this office is smaller than the one i was in, it’s actually square, instead of being a reflicted long-ish rectangle… and the natural light in this building is better than in the other. happiness follows.

tonight? choices, choices. nickel creek is playing in athens. they are one of my top five favorite bands to see live… but i doubt that i’m feeling the drive to athens for a show that starts at 10:00PM. (and i doubt that the trooper is feeling the drive anywhere.) MCD is off to see hoobastank. (have fun with that.) i think i will most likely go see hellboy at my local multiplex. my favorite comic book? coming to the big screen? with ron — i almost made beauty and the beast cool — pearlman? i swear… if it sucks i may give up on movies all together. (ok… over-dramatic… but i’m still bitter that daredevil was such a wretched pile of crap.)

moving offices today. i’ll post some pics when i get settled and decorated. (more so when my office gets decorated.) also moving houses (for freaking finally) this afternoon. that’s all i got.