I’d Be Composing

As I have written before, I compose.

Now, my time is limited and I am not able to push the song to what I really want it to be.  I simply get a couple of thoughts out, dress it up a little bit, and put it on display.

As my music pages say, “It may not be good, but at least it is mine.”

However, even I am surprised by what comes out sometimes.  My latest song is up on Soundclick (which probably has the best interface), and it tells of my death.  Well, maybe on my death but somebody’s death.

Here is the lyrics: To Deadman’s Curve which can be found once you’re at my Soundclick page.

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I ride along in the great big car that is black, it is

People stare ’cause I’m tucked in the back, I am

Fresh green grass sliced away,

There’s a square for me

Lay me down, down to rest

I will always be

Rounding….

Deadman’s curve

Deadman’s curve

Deadman’s curve

Deadman’s curve

Fresh clean box, Custom fitted for me to size

Crisp white shirt, dark grey suit with a nice striped tie

The hymn are sung, around the grave under cloudless skies

But weep not child, I am dead, but I will not die

Rounding….

Deadman’s curve

Deadman’s curve

Deadman’s curve

Deadman’s curve

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I have no idea where this stuff comes from.  My wife didn’t like the words to my last song, but I couldn’t change ‘em.

Home To The Break

Over 1800 miles bikes on my commuting bike in 2008.  This is the number of miles that I had after getting home tonight.  With the current rate that the IRS allows, I should have over $600 in savings from riding my bike.  Considering that the state and the government through sales tax, income taxes and other taxes take around 40% of my salary, that is like almost $1000 that I made by riding my bike.  My software is telling me that I’ve spent 98.5 hours on my bike, and while it can get a bit old in riding this much, there are also benefits.

For instance, I always like the above chunk of my commute.  I take off from work and go over quite a steep little hill.  Once I come down the other side, I get onto a bike path for around 1.5 miles.  The bike path is nicely wide and in many ways scenic, as you can see above.

Now, we have finished up the quarter, and I am just mentally tired.  Luckily for me we have our Fourth of July break, so I get time off next week.  (Ignoring some phone calls that I need to make.)

This has also been a pretty big week for my kids.  On our street, we have another Christian family.  There two children have grown very close to my kids.  Their Church has been putting on a vacation Bible school.  This would allow the two friends (Colin and Madison) and my two oldest to lead the kids.  The youngest would in in the classes.  Now, the oldest boy wasn’t sure if he really wanted to lead the group of kids, since he’d rather just be doing robots and Legos.  However, the oldest daughter was so excited that she could hardly stand it.  She loves the little kids.

I come home last night on my bike, and the kids are all done with the school.  The youngest two are participants in the school so they are wearing yellow shirts.  The oldest kids were leaders so they are wearing the orange shirts.  My oldest boy did a little better than he thought, and ended up enjoying himself.  The oldest girl was very sad when it was all over.

The girl made some clay figurines for her kids.  One of the boys was into sharks, so she made him a shark.  His mother found my wife.

“That shark your daughter made is remarkable,” she said.  “It my son’s favorite possession.”

This was the boy that also asked my daughter, “Does Jesus love everybody?  Does he love Satan?”

I had to answer this question when I got home, because the family wanted to know.  I answered in the following fashion:

“The original name of Satan was Lucifer, and he was one of God’s most beautiful creations.  He was an archangel, and God loved him very much.  Now, Lucifer rebelled, not because he thought he could win, since Lucifer was very, very smart.  He rebelled just because.  He simply didn’t want to do what he was told to do.  I would tell the child this.  If the question comes up if God loves Satan now, I would tell him to talk to his pastor.

However, for our family, you simply need to read the Bible.  God is a God of redemption, and everytime that somebody cries out to him for help, he does redeem.  I believe that Satan ends up in Hell not only because God puts him there, but because Satan would rather be in Hell then to submit to the authority of Jesus.  Even Satan, if he repented, could be heard and saved.  This is because God always seeks to redeem what is lost.  However, he will no longer soften our heart, and what comes through is our own rebellion.”

This I believe.

The Saturday Morning Kid Show

The most weighing think on us right now is our daughter’s health.  The oldest one has been complaining of headaches and achy body.  This has my wife thoroughly freaked out.  It all started 7 or 8 weeks ago when my daughter was not feeling that well.  My daughter has always been rail thin, and they weighed her at the doctor’s appointment, and they found out that she had lost 3 pounds.  A very worrisome outcome.

So, they have been drawing blood and doing tests.  My wife is impatient and calls the doctor, and they tell her that it takes a while to get the results back.  All the results are negative.  No mono.  No elevated white blood count, no anything. 

They suggest that maybe my daughter should see a shrink.  Stupid doctors.  My daughter is a normal kid, but a very well balanced one in a loving household.  I tell my wife we need to find an endocrinologist. 

However, the daughter continue to soldier on, and feels pretty good in the morning.  She is entered in a polymere clay contest.  She makes all types of creative and cute animals.  Here is the mermaid she worked on this morning.

She currently has a entry at Polymer Clay in this contest here.  If you want, please vote for “Nap Time.”  I think it is darling.  Here is a detail picture of the entry that you can find on the website.  The other entries are also very, very good.  I hope she is not too disappointed if she doesn’t win.

However, my daughter isn’t the only one to be going like crazy.  My boy rolls out robotic projects like there are no tomorrow.  He is 100% an engineer.  He reminds me a lot of my Dad.  He is as healthy as my oldest daughter is feeling bad.  He wakes up at 6:30 in the morning so he can work on his NXT robot set.  Then he enters contests on the Lego website for building various types of robots.

The current Lego contest is running, and his latest inventive robot can be found here.  He calls the robot the “White Tortoise.” It consists of two different robots.  The bigger of the two robots carries the smaller of the two robots, and he can control both of them.  He has a lot of positive comments.  I bet nobody knows that he’s 11 years old.

If the link is dead, here is a picture of the “White Tortoise.”

This is not to say the other kids are not doing stuff this morning.  For instance, I just heard my wife downstairs.

“Ruthie, wait, wait, wait,” she said. “You need to unload the dishwasher.”

“Owwwww, Mom!” she whines back.  She doesn’t want to unload the dishwasher so she can get back to playing the piano.  After the last recital, she has really, really playing the piano.  The same piece, over and over.  We don’t care, it is great.  She likes performing.  Really likes it.

So, finally, what is the younger boy doing?  Well he has already finished his Sunday School homework.  Pastors need to get their work done before Sunday.

Me?  I’m hoping to continue to set up my new PC. I’ve been downloading and installing music software.  I am hoping by my break next week, I can work on some songs?

 

I’m In Business

Here I am walking to get my nightly fueling of a burrito before I bike home.  I don’t know if you can see it on my face but I’m tired.

We are officially in “end of the quarter” mode.  There is a lot of activity around this time.  We are settling down the bids for next quarter, we are figuring our customer’s pulls through the end of the quarter, and we are trying to figure out where the quarter will land.

The issue with being in a public company is that you make commitments to the your share holders.  This commitment to your share holders will come when you are only 4 weeks into your current quarter.  This is enough time to get a sense of where you are going, but not a perfect sense.  So, you are supposed to then hit your commitments for the quarter.  My company has a very good track record on hitting our commitments.

However, there is always tuning at the end of the quarter.  The tuning normally comes down to the people that make decisions about where to ship product and what business you will do with your customers at the end of the quarter.  In this case, this comes down to those individuals that are in business managment side of marketing.

That would be me and my peers.  We all feel the stress of the effort of hitting our commitments.

All’s Quiet At The Western Kitchen

Nobody else is up this morning except for me. So here I sit downstairs getting my normal breakfast. Shredded wheat and a big pot of green tea mixed with pomegranate juice. By the way, if you have never had green tea and pomegranate juice, you are missing out tremendously. I then get my dose of daily Bible teaching from “Jon Coursen” on the Searchlight Podcast.

The youngest of the kids, mainly the small boy and the small girl, have made up their minds that sleeping outside is an adventure. Now, while we live in an exceptionally safe neighborhood, I have no desire of my kids waking up in the middle of the night thinking that they heard a bear (which none exist around here) and then being upset, yelling, and screaming. You may think, “Well most kids don’t have this type of problems.” However, my kids are not most kids. They are some of the most wonderful kids in the world, kind and loving, but they are highly neurotic. Halloween is always a horrible time of year because they are convinced that all the ghost and goblins are devilish. (Who knows, perhaps they are right.) So, I notice they get more rattled by stuff. The older girl has grown out of this.

The other day, there were some rowdy high school kids running up and down the street. They were running up to houses and banging on doors. They wapped our door hard and rang the doorbell then ran away. My little girl came running into the room crying saying that somebody was trying to get into the house. My youngest boy was right behind her. My oldest daughter, who had her window open, came out of her bedroom said, “I heard a bunch of kids running up the block. They’ll just making noise.”

I went door stairs and looked out the door to settle the younger kids down. However, the young kids were rattled for a little bit. This is why they aren’t going to sleep in a tent outdoors.

However, we have an upstairs porch, so I said that they could sleep on the porch. So, last night, the two youngest ones went out on the porch. They somehow talked my oldest boy to go out with them also. Now, this always sounds great, but it is not uncommon for one of the small kids to have some issue during the middle of the night, so I was not surprised to see the bed empty besides me when I woke up. I am sure that somebody got Mom during the middle of the night. She’s probably sleeping between the two kids outside on the porch.

Piano Recital

The oldest girl doesn’t like publicity, and she gets very shy in public. However, the rest of the kids were ready to play for the piano recital. So, we went down the the yearly piano recital with all the four kids.

The smallest girl was so excited she could hardly sleep, and she kept saying that she was really, really looking forward to it.

My youngest son doesn’t say anything at all, however, he was extremely excited to get the pizza afterwards.

Tim Marston Post Again

Arrrgggghhh. I put in a new tube, and just as I rolled into work today, my tire went flat. This is six tubes in six rides. Here I am in my office after I’ve pull the rear wheel off the bicycle, and changed the tube. When I pulled open the tire, I noticed the exact same type of casing flaw as the other inner tubes that failed. So, I am looking at the casing flaw a bit more.

I start to notice that what I’m assuming is a casing flaw actually looks like a very, very shallow cut that is made a long way on the tube. However, the line is so straight and so long, it looks like part of the inner tube. I then whip out the tire liner I have in the tire.

Here it is. This is a liner that sits in my tire between the inner side of the tire and the tube. It is a very thin and very tough plastic. The theory is that if glass makes it through the tread, it stops at this very tough inner plastic. Now, I have used these types of tire liners for many years, and on different bikes. They are phenomenal at stopping flats from glass.

However, since these are new wheels and tires, I believe that there is something about the curvature of the tire that is exposing the edge of the tire liner. Since the plastic is very, very thin at the edges, and very tough, it is like a long knife. Somehow the edge is exposed, and it is cutting every inner tube after 10-20 miles. What is supposed to stop flats is actually causing flats.

I remove the liner, and I bike home.

No flat.

I throw the tire liner away. If this is the root cause, this thing consumed around 7 hours of my life.

A Tim Marston Post

5:40 Wake-up

Man, I’m groggy, but I want to ride my bike to work today. I had a problem with my tubes and tire, but I replaced the tubes, and I’m sure that this will fix the problem.

6:30 am On the Bike

Okay, I’m biking now, everything should be great. A nice morning.

7:10 Up the Hill and 6 miles into ride

Rats! Flat tire. I open the back tire, which the hardest to change. I see the tire has no glass the tube has split down the casing. This is okay, as I put the spare tube inside.

7:45 Getting near work at mile 9

ARRRGGGGHHH. Oh no. The tire has another flat. I open up the tire and the new other tube has a flaw that caused it to split. I’m already late, but I have no tire and no way to patch it. I call my wife.

7:55 My wife calls back

She can’t get the car started. I tell her to get the other car and bring the bike rack.

8:30 My wife picks me up.

Grumble Grumble. Glad to have the wife but I am late.

8:50. I’m home, but I need to unload the bike. Take off the bike rack. Put bike in garage. Shower.

9:30 Drive to work

9:50 At work

Wasted morning getting to work because of stupid tubes.

6:50pm at bike shop

Bought three new tubes

7:30 pm at home

Changed tires. Ready to go tomorrow.

Memorial Memory

My life is a bit sad.

Over the last three days, I really haven’t done all that much, and what I have done I wish that I could have done more.

Let me explain.

I was at work late on Friday night grinding through a series of slides for a critical business review next Wednesday. Now everybody was gone, but not me. I had the spreadsheets open. I had the slides crunching. I was comparing data. It got to be 10:30pm so fast it blew my mind, and I was so wired up by the time that I got home that I couldn’t sleep.  When I am work, I give it my all.  I have two speeds “all the way on” and “all the way off.”  I know this about myself.  I have done very well in my work because I am all the way on.  If I wasn’t like this I would be all the way off, and I would not have made it half as far as I have in life.

However, the problem is that Saturday and Sunday come and I go off.  After my week of being amped up on due dates and crisis’s, when the weekend come I collapse. And I do mean collapse. I am not good for much around the house as I surf the web and watch TV and do whatever I want. I am lazy, almost.

Why “almost lazy?”  What is strange about me is that I don’t stop. Now, mind you, I don’t do what I really want to do on the weekends, but I do not stop (for the most part). I am actively engaging on something, usually on the web. This weekend it was a series of posts with Matt Petersen, who is a friend of my sister’s family.

Then, since I had today off, I went down to the piano to tap out a tune. No idea why. From this, I went upstairs and uncovered my recording equipment. I had a sort of cool riff, and I put together a short snippet of a song.

You can hear it here on Soundclick, but click on “A Riff On Light” on the selector page.

Now the problem with writing music is that it is really tough, and even this very short snip of music, which is in no complete, takes a lot of effort. The first issue is that I simply don’t record that often and when I set up my recording gear, I am unwinding a bunch of cables. Then the software never works right. I can’t get the sound that I want, and I don’t even write lyrics for it.

All I do is repeat “Bright Light, come inside of me now, and burn the gray away.”

I mean these lyrics are nothing but a useless chant.

Yet, even with this small bit of time and frustration, I hear a subtle tone in my own music that points to something else. Although others may not hear it, I hear the music of God inside of my own writing. I grieve in that I do not have the time to bring the music of God up to the level where others can hear it.

I saw 60 Minutes the other night where the “new kids” in the workforce after Gen-X is the Millennials. I am the first of the Gen-Xers in both my age and my personality. I was into the New Wave, Punk, and anti-establishment movements. However, as reported, there was much in the Gen-Xers that talked about hard work.

The new Millennials worry more about family and friends and less about their jobs. They work for self satisfaction. I work for my family and my art and theology are less important. I grind until there is little left for myself. If I had me in mind, I would be working on my music in earnest and creating full works of art and not slop of mediocrity.  In many ways it is harder for me to do something like a riff of a song on a weekend like this because it reminds me of what “could be.”

I could be pursuing my music.

I could be writing my book on theology.

I could be teaching my children more.

However, mediocre I will be. Afterall, the bills must be paid.  I must prepare for the future.  The fate of the family is on my shoulders.  I can choice to beg off of this responsibility or I can choose to face it head on.  However, someday I can hope that I can bridge the gap.

The Levis retired when they were fifty. I am thinking that I will do the same.

God Doesn’t Want Me To Bike Today

Here I am with my bike. My bike with no back tire.

I seem to be having some amount of trouble getting to work on my bike, and I am thinking that God has decided that I should not bike for a couple of days. I’m not mad, but merely accepting of his will.

I have been listening to Jon Courson, who is one of my favorite Bible teachers. Jon just plows through the Bible in the stereotypical Calvary Chapel way. I am listening to him describing the Exodus journey and how the Children of Israel grumbled the whole way, and this was their downfall. This point to our life in many ways, because we often run into things that seem to not go the way that we would like them. We can accept this as God’s Divine Providence, or we can complain.

In my case, I am having a tough time making it to work. On Tuesday, I biked four miles up the hill, and then air in my rear tire was leaking out. I called my wife.

There was a series of events that lead to the problem.  I had just change tires on my bike.  Now, normally, I put a liner in my tire to help guard against flats, but it wasn’t fitting so I skipped it. After all, I hadn’t had glass on my route.

However, Tuesday morning I had two patches of glass. The second patch got me, and it went through the tire that had no tire liner. I called my wife, and she picked me up. It really turned into a good deal because the team had scheduled a phone call that went to 9:30pm, then I had to do a pitch until 10:30 at work. If I rode my bike, it would have been really late at night. So, this was a blessing that I got a flat.

I was in San Jose yesterday, and while I didn’t ride, I did get back last night and finished a patch job on my tire. When I pumped it up, I found another small leak too close to the first leak to allow another patch. So, I put in a new tube last night, and it was holding air in the morning just fine.

This morning I was 1 mile from my house, and the rear tire went flat. I got home and opened up the wheel. I saw that the new inner tube had a casting flaw. In other words it was defective, and it just split open. Providence at work.

I wonder if I’ll see why God wants me to drive today.