Abraham got me thinking on something in his excellent post, 6 Reasons Pastors Should Blog. The thought process is this: I should go back to blogging more. I just need to consolidate my web presence to a few places. This past week I trimmed my email addresses down to two from four. Maybe I’ll get this one figured out, but I’d sure like to change the look of the site. Or I should just start blogging more before I clean up. I don’t know. It just needs to be easy. That’s all I care about, really. This one should probably be archived so I don’t waste time bringing over old entries. There you have it. I blogged again! That wasn’t so hard. It’s like a really long Facebook status entry, only I know no one will read it! Yay! It probably follows that actually updating your site means you keep your visitors, so I’m not asking for sympathy. We’re going to Atlanta tomorrow. Yes!

Rosanna and I have been making some big changes in our lives over the past week or so. Most of these changes are aimed at being more productive, positive, and available people. Among them is something that was pointed out to me by John Gruber’s Rethinking Email in a piece by John Davidson entitled, “Effective Email Bankruptcy.” While I will go into detail in a later post about the changes we are making for our lives, I want to highlight what I am doing with email. I’ve got over 1,000 emails in my inboxes. I’m not sure which ones I should delete, which ones I should respond to, which ones I should archive, etc. Even then, if I took the time to do that, I would be looking at an equally daunting task of how to categorize and sort all of these emails. It just shouldn’t be done, not with what I’m up against the next two months. So, for my own peace of mind, I am declaring “email bankruptcy.” Basically, I am taking all of the messages in my inbox and archiving them. This will empty out my inbox and give me a fighting chance of starting to organize what I receive from here on out. With my iPhone, email and Facebook really are the two best ways to get a hold of me. With empty inboxes, I think this will become a reality. Gruber put it this way:

Under my previous

For anyone wanting to know, Rosanna and I were both at work tonight and are safe. We have not heard back from all of our friends and we are very sad about this awful accident. Please pray for us and our fellow Minnesotans. Rob and Rosanna

So, this is my first entry both in a while and on my new iPhone. Yeah, it pretty much rocks the house that holds the party. I’ve been testing out my typing skills and am rocking about 30 WPM on this bad boy. Not bad for a tiny keyboard, eh? I just wish that I had better cell coverage in my apartment. We are, unfortunately, on the fringe of AT&T’s dead zone in the Twin Cities area. Grr. Oh well, at least it works in most other places.

Next Wednesday and Thursday (June 27-28), Desiring God is having a sale in which all of their books are going for $5 a piece. No limits. For details, read All Books for $5.

We are the proud owners of a Garmin C330 GPS system. Through our first acquisition on Craig’s List, we will now avoid the habitual problem we have been having since we moved up here of getting lost. We tried using it on our way home from where we performed the transaction, and it got us home more than five minutes quicker than I had expected we could get home. And I didn’t have to think about anything. In fact, it gave us a better view of the places that surround where we live. Lovin’ it. In the words of Jeff, Rosanna’s brother, “GPS changed my life.” We’ll see how it changes ours, but it’s off to a great start so far.

So, I joined Facebook. Within 24 hours of joining, I have been joined up to… erm… at least 24 people. I’m enjoying my dive into an online community that is not Crossings. It’s a pretty simple interface, much better than MySpace. Never had much of an interest in MySpace. Life is great up here in Minneapolis. Facebook just might see the return of Rob blogging more than once in a quarter.

I think I can now say that I’m getting used to the Minnesota weather in the winter. On Sunday, Rosanna and I were heading back from a marriage retreat with our church, and after getting out of the car, I sighed and said, “Boy, it sure does feel nice outside today!” I genuinely felt good and could have gone for a walk. Turns out that it was around 20 degrees. That’s what happens when you’ve been in negative teens weather for the past three weeks or so. Honestly, I just like it when it’s 20 degrees because my windows don’t ice up… from the inside. I’ll continue working on this northern thing, though I will always be an Okie on the inside.

Rosanna and I are taking dance lessons at a local community center. Ballroom for now and it’s very basic. We’re going to take the advanced class and get into swing at a later time. It’s been a blast. I was talking to a co-worker about my plans for the evening of our first dance lessons. I was rather happy about it, and he said something astute (and humorous). “You know, most men think that their women want them to take a pill that makes them better in bed. But the truth is, women want a pill that makes men take them to dance lessons.”

So, my site got moved to a new server and I never bothered to see if I could update on it. After giving me some error messages, the amazing David Guy got it back up again. Now, I just need to do a major cosmetic overhaul. This is sooooo 2004-ish. We are still happily in Fridley, MN, soaking up the cold. Yesterday it was around 0 degrees. Yes, zero. But that’s okay, because it’s heating up today to… -8? Fantastic. It’s funny because when it gets up to 30 degrees or so, we say to each other, “It’s not bad out, just grab a light jacket.” Rosanna and I have been reading through The Chronicles of Narnia in a chronological way. Maybe our reading of it should be The Chronologicals of Narnia. Naw, that’s stupid. We started with The Magicians Nephew, followed by The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, skipping to A Horse and His Boy, and yesterday, we finished Prince Caspian. I’m reading them dramatically, with voices for each character. It’s rather fun for both of us. :o) We are starting to read Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist together. We’re reading a chapter every Sunday, along with choice study questions. This is an absolute blast for me, to get to take Rosanna through many of the most impacting realities on my life. We recently read Mark Driscoll’s book, Confessions of a Radical Reformission Rev and are pondering how to put what we learned from that book into action. Speaking of being put into action, I was given the opportunity to be a full-time Mac Specialist at the Mall of America Apple Store, specializing in the front of the store and mentoring. It’s amazing to see God answer prayers so quickly. We heard it sometimes takes six months to go full-time with Apple, and we prayed for four months, and it happened in three. I’ll be starting on January 29, so look for me there next time you’re in Minneapolis. This is absolutely the most wonderful job I have had, and I work with some really, really cool people.k We’re trying to decide what Rosanna should do with her time while I’m at work. We’ve not come to any firm conclusions yet, but we’re leaning towards something near the Mall of America on a part-time basis so she can come with me a few days out of the week. It’s a twenty-two mile commute (one-way) to Bloomington from Fridley, so I’ll be catching up on my podcasts, Bible memorization, and prayer life. Bethlehem continues to amaze me. Every week. I’ve been getting to know more people there and feel like I’m really on the verge of a true connection there. Dan, who is the worship leader for the North Campus, is really blessing me. Pastor John’s influence on me goes without saying and I count it one of my favorite privileges to get to talk to him when he’s up at the North Campus. It just just plain good to be here. We’re also making more and more friends, slowly but surely. We’ve been hanging out a lot with Kyle and Johanna Puelston, who are totally up our ally. You guys rock! We’re getting to know others as well, but I don’t know any of you with a blog or site or anything, so you’ll just have to content yourselves with a generic “and you know who you are” statement. :o) All in all, life is sweet and we are looking forward to some real breakthroughs in 2007 for both of us. More on that later, it’s about time for us to get moving for the day. We’re enjoying our last few days of part-time hours. We will also be flying to Reno on Thursday night due to Rosanna’s grandmother passing away over the weekend. Details on that can be given through email. We’ll be back in Minnesota on Tuesday night. Rob OUT