"A little less conversation..."

"...a little more action please"

And with that one simple, snarled-lip sound clip from the king, (I think) I'm back. Hesitantly, almost certainly, maybe positively, invariably missing a day or two, back. If you have read any part of my blog for the past year or so, you know one thing is certain...I'll fall off the blogging wagon sooner or later.

But, I have a couple of things going for me now: I have a new iPhone4S with it's snazzy little 8MP camera (squeeeeee!) as well as MOvember. If you didn't catch this post, go read it to catch up on my sure to be awful mustache growing experiment/fundraising adventure that will begin on November MOvember 1st.

Also, I just saw this blog post today and feel...inspired about iPhoneography once again. The stuff you can do with Apple's magical little device is astounding. And I'm all mostly (back) in. With that, stay tuned and remember all guarantees in this blog are certain to be untrue or at least partially disappointing or I'll refund 100% of the money you paid me to view my blog.

What I'm doing...

Most people may already know that October has been a month for breast cancer/women's health awareness. We've no doubt seen the pink ribbons, the 'Save the Ta Tas' t-shirts and even the pink accents to our favorite pro team's uniforms. We have friends that have participated in 5K runs galore and everything. And it's awesome. I love raising awareness for all kinds of cancer research and, more, importantly doing whatever you can to help support cancer research. This is especially important to me because I lost my mom to cancer a little over 15 years ago. So, it's awesome to see.

That is October. So, what about November? Or, rather should I say, MOvember? That's right, I am participating in MOvember this year. What? You've never heard of it? In that case, allow me to share...

MOvember is a movement dedicated to men's health awareness, mostly related to cancer awareness and research. So, to raise that awareness, you can sign up to be a 'Mo Bro'. As a mo bro, I will be growing a mustache (and ONLY a mustache...no beard, mutton chops or goatees allowed) beginning on November 1st and will not shave this (certainly ridiculous looking) mustache for the entire month of Novem...er, MOvember. At the same time, I will be able to raise awareness and funds for men's health issues through my own Mo Bro site (found HERE) as well as from friends, co-workers and family asking me things like, "What is wrong with your face?" or "Hey...you got something on your lip. Oh, that's just some hair."

My wife, so far, has been supportive. Of course, I've never attempted to grow facial hair, which will probably be a pathetic and laughable endeavor since I have the facial hair growing capabilities of a pre-pubescent girl. I WILL be posting pictures as well as some of the more comical responses I receive from people I encounter on a day to day basis. I'm also sure my wife will be posting random grumblings about her boy-husband attempting to grow a very manly-looking wisp of upper lip hair. Who knows? I may even be able to end up looking like a couple of these dudes:

So, what kind of mustache should I grow? Are any of my readers going to participate or even join up with me? Do you know any MOvember participants?

In the beginning...

This post is a bit different. My pastor at the St. Pete Vineyard has been telling us to take a look at coming up with brief descriptions for our respective ministries. Thinking this week, this is what I came up with and just wanted to share with all of you. Here goes...

"In the beginning, God created..."

This is the most fundamental idea in all of Scripture. Before there was a beginning, there was a God and His most foundational action--the action mentioned by the writer of Genesis before anything else, was that He created. He created air, water, earth and fire. He created atmosphere, oceans, rivers and streams. He created animals giant and microscopic. And He said it was all good. He created mankind with all of our complexities and intricacies. And in all of this, we were the only ones with a distinction above everything else that was created...we were fashioned in His image. Which means...that we are instilled with that same fundamental and foundational drive to create. And once again, He said it was all good.

We create in so many different ways. Some of us create pictures and visual art. Some of us create with words and poems and stories. Some of us create with instruments and our own voices. Some of us use what we can touch and feel to create while still others use software and virtual bits of data to create. Some of us create in even more subtle ways: we teach others the best way to harness their creativity or we create the spacious, safe and encouraging environment for others to thrive in their creativity. But, at the core of each one of us, whether we are willing to admit it or not, is the desire to use whatever we have at our disposal to make something different, interesting and new. I see it every day in those around me. My wife and kids are creative. My in-laws are creative. My church family is creative. Most of all, my God is creative. Even more importantly, my God inspires creativity in me and in those around me.

That is where we are, to varying degrees, at the Vineyard. We are creating and constantly desiring to be inspired to create. And this, to me, is the root of worship. The description of worship I once heard is that God reveals, we respond, and then He responds to our response by revealing even more. That's deep, right? And I've found it to be so true.

My goal here as the worship leader is to help create that place where we can see God reveal Himself to us and then we can also feel safe to respond however we need to respond and let that circle happen from week to week, day to day and moment to moment. Worship is so much bigger than a set of songs or our weekly gathering on Sunday mornings. It's bigger than a painting or a poem or picture snapped on an iPhone. Worship is simply His act of revealing Himself to us and our response to His revelation...over and over again and in far too many ways to limit just to music or dance or a funny skit. Don't get me wrong. I am, first and foremost, a musician. I love all forms of music and that is my primary outlet in worship. But, let's not get caught up in what we're used to seeing defined as worship in the church. Let's get...well, creative.

With that said, I encourage you to come worship with us. And then go worship without us. Allow everything you do, both important and menial, to become part of your response to an incredibly loving , immeasuarbly gracious and immensely creative God. Be the creative worshipper He always knew you were supposed to be.

Me, David Copperfield and other disappearing acts

I've turned into a bad blogger. Again. The four people that actually care to remain updated with all things Long deserve better. But, it is what it is. Sorry. Again. 

I was just talking about this with the wife. The thing is, I'm going through a non-caring phase right now. Not that I don't love writing or sharing or whatever. I really do. However, my time is totally consumed with other things. Namely, my guitar. I started learning to play in April of this year and have become completely obsessed. I tinker constantly. I'm playing on Sunday mornings when I lead worship. Just today, I played in front of a room of relative strangers. And it wasn't even remotely embarrassing. Seriously, I'm an absolute addict when it comes to my dedication to all things guitar. 

So, blogging and pictures of the day and the such have completely taken a backseat. Actually, they were probably shoved from the car while I was cruising down the interstate at 90 MPH maniacally laughing as I high-tailed it to the nearest Guitar Center to lust after that Breedlove I'm hoping will soon be mine. I'm sorta not kidding. My 40th birthday is coming up and I accept PayPal. 

My guitar obsession will more than likely recede a bit in the next few months years decades.  I'm learning so much and loving it so much that I know it will permanently be part of my DNA. But, I'll find a way to get my groove back. If Stella did it, so can I. Maybe. Maybe? Right? Riiiight. 

I will, however leave you with this. A shot of the beach behind the Tradewinds Beach Resort where Friends of Giants played a show tonight. It was fun, albeit very poorly attended. Oh, well...at least the chick in the band is hot. 

194/365...Worn out

I've owned my guitar for a little over a year and have been seriously playing for about two months. I'm actually quite proud of the progress I've made in the last couple of months. It's amazing what can happen when you actually start applying yourself and paying for lessons. The drawback? You end up blowing through strings much faster than normal.

193/365...Sunflare

The Long family has been lacking lately In the Sunday family outing business. So, when we got the opportunity to head up to Phillipe Park tonight to scout out some locations for my wife's soon to be first wedding shoot, we jumped at the chance. The time of day also allowed me to get in one of my all time favorite pictures—a sunflare shot.

192/365...Filtered

I went to bed last night pretty sure that I hadn't taken a picture yesterday. However, I remembered just before settling in for the night that I snapped a couple of pictures at dinner. One was absolutely terrible and the other one was actually pretty decent...after applying a couple of filters in Camera+.

191/365...Playtime

Today was our oldest son's first week in the church youth group. What that means is that we have about two hours to kill on late Sunday afternoon with our youngest son. There's only so much time you can spend in Target, so we headed to a park just down the street from our church. This isn't the best composed or lit picture I've ever taken, but it definitely caught Jackson in the few moments of playtime we had today.

Today I'm linking up with Sweet Shot Tuesday at Life with My 3 Boybarians. Go check it out.

187/365...Resurrection

A little bit of hyperbole never hurts. Especially not when we're talking about my beloved iPad that has risen from the dead. Or, more accurately, has been kindly replaced by Apple. I am now back in business with my nifty little gadget. Huzzah!

186/365...Death

In case you're wondering, an iPad doesn't do too well after a three-foot fall to a tile floor. I learned this the hard way tonight. Here's hoping I can get Apple to give me a replacement when I hit the store tomorrow.

185/365...Near Sunset

We ended up with a REALLY busy 4th of July this year. First, we spent some time at a friend's house watching the Nathan's hot dog eating contest and then we were off to Holmes Beach on Anna Maria Island to spend time at the beach and then to watch the fireworks. All the pictures of the fireworks stunk, but I did catch this shot just before sunset.

184/365...Ink

Slow day for a picture. We didn't have a family outing and ended up staying in and watching a movie last night. However, this lovely set of tattooed legs was captured at the Redbox by our house. So lovely.

183/365...Meltdown

We had company tonight. The most excellent kind of company...my brother-in-law, Jacob, and his family. No doubt, I've written about my two incredible nieces, Molly and Ruby. The picture today is a collage of what happens when an infant has had enough. Of what, I'm not sure, but she was certainly pissed about something.

182/365...Red, white and blue

I was looking for an inventive way to display the red, white and blue. Crayons sounded about right and this is what I ended up with.

For this week, I'm linking up with the Live Every Moment photo challenge.

181/365...Five

So, my wife is in the process of doing something special for someone special. That would be planning my 40th birthday party. Problem is, she won't let me know/see/feel anything about my party. And to top it all off..she prances around the house singing little songs and dancing little dances about all the cool/fun/awesome things in store for my little party. And it's starting to piss me off a little.

So, I go in search of a picture subject for tonight, right into the den of party planning central. Wife freaks out, thinking all surprises are ruined. What she forgot is that I am an idiot. An unobservant idiot. All I am looking for is something to photograph and I completely missed my shot to soak up all the glory that will be my birthday party. As I said, an idiot. So, what I have is this:

P.S. My party better be awesome.

180/365...Pickup sticks

Have you ever had this moment? You're minding your own business when a picture subject jumps out at you. How about the moment you realize you never even knew this was in your house? Yeah, that happened today. With a box of pickup sticks. If you don't know what those are, just stop reading right now, buy some and learn to play. Seriously. It's a right of passage no one should be denied. Right up there with stickball in the street and summertime hide and seek after dark. You know, when your mom had yelled for you to come home ten minutes ago, but doing so would give up the best hiding place ever.

179/365...Game face

We're into day 3 of our "Long, party of three" week. But, we've had to find creative ways to keep the littlest Long boy engaged and from missing his brother too much. We don't often remember just how close our two boys really are. Without Ethan, Jackson just isn't himself. So, last night, we broke out the UNO deck and played a few rounds. I only won once, which I later learned was a concerted effort by the wife and little one to allow me to win. It worked.

This picture was taken just before the first deal.

178/365...Popcorn

We're now into day two of "Long, party of three" time. So far, things have been uneventful. Except, poor Jackson has been pretty bored without his best friend in the world around. So, we ended up grabbing a movie from Redbox tonight, cooked microwaved some popcorn and had some mom, dad and littlest Long boy time. And it was pretty awesome. I'll keep you posted on any further adventures this week.

177/365...Trash

Readers of the Long family blogs probably know by now that we like to make a habit of Sunday afternoon outings. This week, however, we are down one member. Don't get worked up...nothing tragic has happened. Unless you count the passage from kidhood into tweenhood tragic. I'm still on the fence, by the way.

So, Ethan is spending this week in sleep-away camp. For the first time. It's been an adventure. So, we headed to the beach yesterday. And it was a wet, stinky mess. No fun. At all. But, I was able to snag one picture. So, there's that.

175/365...Pick

So, so much of my time lately has been spent with a pick in my hand. I love learning new things and guitar has definitely been one of my very favorite things to learn.

174/365...Leftovers

Our most awesome nieces were at our house the other night. And miss Molly left her shoes. And, like all things Molly, they are just too cute for words. These are the kinds of leftovers that I like to have around.

173/365...Honey

Since I seem to back on the blog/picture-a-day horse, it makes perfect sense that I would struggle on the third day to find a suitable/creative/interesting subject. So, I present honey.

172/365...Dirt

This is the second year that both of our boys have had the chance to participate in Pioneer Camp here in St. Pete. Pioneer Camp is basically just an all day outdoor playing in the muck, mire and dirt with no restrictions or limitations kind of thing. Both of our boys LOVE this. What boy wouldn't. These are two of the feet that came home today. Nothing had been washed off when I took this picture. Jackson had just removed his socks and shoes and I snapped the picture. Now, that's one dirty kid, folks.

What I've Been Doing, or Lame Excuses for Not Blogging

**WARNING: Picture-heavy and ramble-heavy post below**

"You're a good for nothin', lazy, bum of a blogger!"

In my mind, that's what you've all been thinking. In reality, it's probably more something like this:

"Who? thekenlong? Did he even have a blog? Seriously...who/what are you talking about?"

Yeah...that's probably more like it. It's been over a month since I've taken a serious stab at taking a picture of the day. Or updated my blog. Or really even wanted to update my blog. Not entirely true, but it's an easy habit to get out of completely if you're not careful. And I haven't been careful at all.

The honest truth is that I have been busy lazy distracted lately and other things have taken priority over updating my blog. At first, it was a fun day trip to Epcot. I even took a picture or two myself:

There has been A LOT of this:

For the un-initiated, those are callouses developing on the ends of my fingers from learning how to play the guitar. I've been taking professional lessons for a little over a month and am actually getting pretty decent from all the practice. Seriously...I haven't been this dedicated to learning something in a VERY long time. I'm sure my wife and kids will vouch for me on this one.

I spend about an hour (sometimes two) each day going over chord charts, practicing scales, picking patterns. It's insane, exhilarating and personally super-satisfying all at the same time.

Mixed in there have been mini road trips...

Oh, the irony (take a moment to see prohibited item #1 in the first picture compared to what was actually found INSIDE the park).

There have been really fun and super-awesome Long family Sunday outings...

We've helped some dear friends move, laughed a lot, loved even more, attended a worship conference and threw in the most epic road trip/concert experience of my life to this point. 

This is a crap picture, but oh-so-necessary.

I say all of that to simply say this...I'm almost back.

171/365:

132/365...Cheap flowers

So, my lovely bride was lamenting about this on her blog last night. This was just one of the cheap flowers she bought in an effort to save a couple of bucks. This flower was separated from its stem for no apparent reason whatsoever. Cheap flowers.

131/365...Trombone

I've been having a hard time coming up with ideas lately for the picture of the day. So, if the picture isn't the greatest today, I can't really blame you for being disappointed.

130/365...Say what?

So, in making a quick stop at the grocery store, I noticed this sign advertising "Assorted Hispanic Pastries". It makes perfect sense that there were a bunch of chocolate chip muffins there. How very "hispanic" of you, Sweetbay.

126/365...Color scheme

This is the color scheme in our family room. I love these colors. And they were all my wife's idea. She's awesome.

125/365...Bliss

5/5/95. That's the date 16 years ago when I said the first and last "I do" of my life. And thus began the bliss.

124/365...The process

So, once again I'm scrambling for a picture of the day when I stumbled upon the wife going through the same process. And here it is. The process.

123/365...Concert time

Jackson had his spring concert tonight. In all honesty, I love these things with the songs and off-key recorder playing and silly dances.

122/365...Lesson learning

The year of procrastination is over. I'm finally taking guitar lessons and soon hope to be an instrumentalist as well as a vocalist.

121/365...Sand angel

Yep...we were at it again. Another Sunday, another beach day for the Longs. Even with sand angels.

120/365...Control

Rush, rush, rush...take a picture. Oh, cool. I can use that.

Tennis, anyone?

Anyone who knows me (or reads my blog long enough) knows that the wife and I aren't crazy about Florida. We're not beach-goers, we don't enjoy the outdoors and definitely hate abhor detest don't like the hot weather. Off and on, we've flirted with the idea of escaping moving, only to be drawn back in by one thing or another...job (or lack thereof), the housing market crash, dream job found, etc..

Recently, however, the lovely bride has become hooked on touristing, as she calls it. Basically, it's about finding different things to do where you live and then experiencing them just as a tourist might. This has led to Sunday excursions, the occasional trip to the (gasp!) beach and new and different restaurants in the area.

OK...long story longer...

Friday nights are date nights for the husband/wife Long. Typically, a movie. Except there were absolutely NO movies we wanted to see this week. At all. Earlier this week, as we're driving around running some errands, we stumbled across Old Northeast Tavern. Loved the location and loved the look of the place, so we settled it...this would be our date night destination.

The place was everything we could have hoped for...Turkey and strawberry sandwiches, sliders, pinot noir, and Magic Hat #9. Quintessential tavern food. We even found some friends hanging out there as well.

Lovely evening. Nearby is North Shore Park and we decided to tourist away, even though it was dark. I still hadn't found my picture of the day and figured I would once again be running around the house trying to find something interesting to capture at 11:00 at night.

Until...

...we found the lighted tennis courts. Sweet! I don't play (well). Never have and never will. I suck at sports. Period. But, the nets, the lights, the shadows were all too much to pass up.

So, I ended up getting out for a night, finding a new one of my favorite restaurants and got my pic for the day all before 10:00. And I didn't have to frantically scramble around looking for even more Legos to snap.

This week, I'm linking to the Live Every Moment photo challenge. Check it out!