Washington DC Trip, Episode Two

I have finished the second of my video albums of our family trip to Washington D.C. If you are interested, you can see it here.

I Preached Yesterday

Hey all,

Thanks for all of you who sent me really nice messages yesterday. I got several kind words through e-mail, facebook, and twitter.

Given that yesterday was the first anniversary of my father's death, I was very concerned about my ability to preach a decent sermon. Some folks prayed for me, Laura in particular prayed a great deal for me. I felt that God gave me a great deal of grace.

When I came in today to the office, my office manager, Dara, told me that she had already received 15 requests for yesterday's sermon. That is a lot of CD requests for us, especially so quickly. Many people said very nice things to me about the sermon, most of them having no idea about what the date meant to me.

So, I don't normally do this, but I'm going to recommend yesterday's sermon to you. You can listen to it by going here.

This sermon is a bit long for me (24 minutes), but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it. And it was well received. So, that's why I'm bringing it up.

One Year Later

Today is the first anniversary of the death of my father, Robert H. McKenzie. My mom called me this very hour, one year ago (while I was walking my dog), to tell me the news. I had known it was coming, even coming soon. But it was devastating.

The last couple of days I felt pretty darn low. Partially because I was coming home after great vacation time with my family. Partially because I have a bulging disc in my back which is giving me problems. But also in large part because of this anniversary. Yesterday my awesome wife suggested we take a family bike ride in the late afternoon, and I have felt a ton better since then. It has actually been a really good day today.

A few weeks ago I was poking through my iPhoto and found a couple of short videos that I didn't know I had. They are of our younger daughter with my dad, the Christmas before he died. They are very brief, but they show the deep affection those two had for each other.

In honor of this day, I put those little snippets of video together with a few pictures of the two of them from the same trip. It is a cute little show that helps me remember the good times. I hope you enjoy it.




If you are reading this as a note on facebook, you can see it by following this link.

D.C. Trip, Episode One

Summer Vacation is now over, or at least the traveling part is. Behold the first of a short series of videos covering our family's trip to D.C.

Top Ten Thoughts about Washington D.C.

I recently returned from Washington DC. It was a 100% family-of-four, grade-school friendly, tourist extravaganza. We spent five nights in a hotel on Pennsylvania ave, about a kilometer from the White House. We spent all day every day in the Mall area, eating ice cream and pretzels from street vendors and seeing as much as we could.

Our car stayed parked in the hotel garage the entire time, so we used our feet, the subway, the bus, and an occasional taxi to get around. We hit most of the major sites: the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the National Archives, the Mall, the monuments and memorials, and several Smithsonians as well as Dupont Circle and Chinatown. It was a great trip.

I have some deep theological/ecclesiological thoughts, which I intend to share once I have composed them. However, for now, let me give you my Top Ten list of D.C. questions/impressions.

10) Why is anyone interested in looking at stuffed, dead animals when they could see living ones at the zoo, for free? (Natural History Museum vs. Smithsonian Zoo)

9) I have now been inches away from Abraham Lincoln's hat, the Wright Brother's airplane, and the Declaration of Independence. Unreal.

8) The Air and Space museum features marvels of modern technology, including a Space Shuttle. So why don't they have self-flushing commodes in the Men's Room?

7) The best things about the American Indian museum were the building's architecture and the introductory "film." "Film" is in quotes because it was about the coolest immersive media presentation I've ever seen.

6) Someone needs to do to China Town what Rudy did to Times Square. That place is gross.

5) Why is a little bust of George Washington $20 at the Smithsonian, but only $12 at Mt. Vernon?

4) The Apotheosis of Washington, the painting of George Washington ascending into heaven in order to become a god (found on the inner top of the Capitol dome), is just about the most disturbing thing this Christian witnessed.

3) Why aren't there more people on the Mall at night? It's the area at its most beautiful.

2) The Supreme Court is arguably the most powerful branch of government. However, no one lines up to get into the building, the gift shop is tiny, and security was more lax there than at any museum. While the Capitol tour features a beautiful but overproduced film shown in a large theater, the dated Supreme Court "film" sits behind a curtain and is shown on a 32 inch tube television to a dozen empty folding chairs. It might have been a VHS tape; no joke.

1) Why don't more people tour the White House? I stood under the famous portrait of JFK pictured above, and then a couple of hours later saw a photo of Obama standing in exactly the same place. Being in there is like entering history in the making. You have got to see the White House.

All in all, the best part was spending time with my lovely family. So, take the wife and kids and hit the road!

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Of Sites and Templates

My faithful readers here at iHajj.net (aka ThomasMcKenzie.com and ihajj.blogspot.com) know that a few months ago I altered my template. Gone was the three column, tiny print look of past years. Emerged the quirky, huge font, fun sized iHajj.

Oh, how I hated it. At first I liked it, but soon I found it gaudy and hard to navigate. I let it slide, though, because now facebook and twitter had taken over a good deal of my former blog energy. So what if my blog was sort of weird, if people were reading my posts as facebook notes anyway? So what if I didn't say as much as used to when twitter was getting things across?

But now I'm on vacation, which means I have some time to do things I don't normally do. So for the past couple of days I've been experimenting with a website company called squarespace. Yes, I heard about it because they sponsored NPR's This American Life.

I've been using my 15 day free trial to build out a site, and I must admit it looks pretty cool. However, if I were to change to it I would likely break some of my current links and disrupt my feed (though they say this would not happen, I don't trust the internet). Worse, I would have to pay for it. Pay to use well crafted web-based services? Shocking! Finally, as I got further down the square space rabbit hole, I discovered that there are several functions that blogger has and it doesn't, things that I rely on.

So, today I decided to revert to a standard blogger template, something boring yet functional. If I can stand it, perhaps I will keep flying here at blogger. If not, you might see a whole new site here. Sometime. Maybe.


Technorati Tags blog template

DC

My family and I are currently in Washington DC. If you are following me on Twitter, or are my facebook friend, you have figured that out. I'm talking about it a bunch over there, and sharing pictures.

I have lots of thoughts about DC, but I only have limited time to use this computer with internet access, so I will save them for later.

We're having lots of fun, but please pray for my wife. Her back has been hurting her, and caused her to miss a couple of sites thus far.

More later,

I'm out!

Insomnia is Great for Home Movie Making

Last night, we went to sleep just before midnight. At about 4 am, I woke up from a strange dream. Try as I might, I couldn't go back to sleep.

So, at 6:30 or so I sat down at this here computer looking for something constructive to do. I found the first digital videos we ever made right here on my hard drive. Using my super cool iMovie, I made a couple of little video albums.

Much younger versions of our girls star in them; and they come from the end of Summer, 2003. Enjoy!