Books and such.

I flew back into SJC today with a one hour and fourty minute late flight, oh well.

This weekend was a blast down in LA, with much fun in the sun, sorry no pictures this time.

I finished Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up this weekend, and I will have to take some time to digest it. I thought it was an interesting book on the history and practices of the early Christian church. I may mention it later as I think about it some more.

So I headed over to the bookstore to find something new to pick up. I had heard of Guns, Germs, and Steel and had a friend recommend it to me so I picked up a copy. I think the idea behind the book is facinating, and am excited to get started on it.

Well, I am tired after a long weekend and will be heading to bed soon.

Friday night in the city.

This friday night I was invited up to San Francisco to have dinner with the Stollers's (Clark, Cindy, Katrina, and Leah from Gridley, IL) at the Boudin Bakery on Fisherman's Warf. So I headed up after work. Their hotel was right by the piers and we just had to walk across the street for a wonderful dinner. We had a great time and afterward wandered around a little by the piers. We capped the night off with some Gin Rummy and a few games of Egyptian Ratscrew (I may have to try some of the variations listed on that link).

This is just a reminder that anyone can come out to enjoy the Bay.

1, 2, 3, 4. The counter knows all.

I just added that nifty little counter to my page and it is pretty cool. You can see where in the world people are visiting the site from, and lots of other mundane details.

The weather here is finally back to a reasonable mid 80's so things are good. I will be heading back down to altadena this weekend for perhaps more fun in the sun.

These new iPods are almost too much to resist, I may have to pick one up to entertain me during my travels. Also every (expensive) accessory known to man is made for it. It will also make it easier to listen to my books then on my shuffle, which was great for my college life, but not so great now.

Also having to use quarters for washing and drying is really inconvienient, and doing laundry outside your living space is tiresome.

I have decided that I will play these MMORPG's only with people I know and using voice chat. They are just too much of a time waste if I am not interacting with friends.

I have been using AIM a lot more then I used to so feel free to look me up with the screen name matthewschrenk.

I just finished reading Cryptonomicon and the batman comic The Long Halloween and enjoyed them both. Cryptonomicon is very techie focused, but goes along at a good clip for all 910 pages.

So, anyone out there have a new gadget that they really like? Perhaps a good book recommendation?

Some like it hot.

This last weekend I headed down to LA once more and had a really great time. You can find a few pictures here (I really don't understand that first photo). There were a few people up from San Diego and I hope to visit down there some time. We had a great time on Saturday at the beach where we escaped from the dreadful heat. That evening we had dinner at Joe and Sue Klotzle's house. There was some King Elephant and fun all around.

Sunday services were vary nice. Sunday was also Jim Klotzle's 23 birthday, congrats Jim. We hit the Pasadena Ice Rink for some more beating of the heat. Remind me to avoid rental skates in the future, the ones I had were lacking in the edge department. I flew back Monday morning to get in six and a half hours of work.

Work is going well, I feel like I am really learning new things and I am excited by the progress we are making.

Till later.

Hiking California

I almost cannot believe that I moved out to California almost one month ago. It has been a very busy month, so I am glad that I have been able to stay at home the last two weekends. The last two Saturdays I have gone hiking with my brother, sister-in-law and little Arthur pictured here. You can find my uploaded pictures form hiking here.

This last weekend my parents flew in to visit me and make sure that I was settling in OK. I was happy to accomodate them for a few nights on my guest airbed. The hike we went on togather was pretty long, probably about six to seven miles with a pretty steep vertical climb for the last mile (it was all uphill from the ocean). We were hiking in McNee Rance State Park up the side of Montara Mountain (we hiked the yellow trail from the left and took the split off on the purple trail till we could see over the mountain). We were a little dissapointed when we reached the top and our view of San Francisco was blocked by the clouds. The first half of the hike was through some pretty thick fog also. On the way down it was a little dangerous because of how steep it was. Mom just had on some tennis shoes and slipped and fell two times. She was carrying little Arthur in his backpack so it was a little tense. So I got to carry Arthur on my back most of the way down until he got fussy and hungry.

I am getting a little better with my camera, and was able to take some good shots of flowers and the fog. I am really enjoying all the outdoor activities that California offers and hope to spend lots of weekends enjoying some nature. The fog on the mountain was very majestic and beautiful.

We had a little Bible study on Sunday reading out of Ezekiel 33 which in part discusses that if we turn from our path and follow him we will live and the people declared in verse 20 that "The way of the Lord is not equal." They were right, because God is both just and merciful and will restore us if we turn to Him.

On the weekend that my parents were not here I called in to Altadena to listen to their service. I first tried it with my cell phone, but that was not a very easy way to listen. So I checked out Skype. I have not yet tried to talk to anyone, but just listening on my computer worked very well. I think I will get a local number through skype, because it does not cost much per year. Also calling out for the rest of the year is completly free! And, I know some people going to Mexico soon, and it looks like calls to Mexico are free this weekend (July 22-23). I think I might be hooked on voip.

Have office supplies, will trade.

I just had to post about this guy. He decided to try and trade his way from one red paperclip to a house. And he succeded in just a little less then a year. How bizzare is that?

Fourth of July in Minnesota.

Wow. I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Minnesota for a long holiday weekend. I didn't manage to get a picture of the entire group, but most everyone is represented in the pictures at http://matthew.schrenk.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=19. I am happy to report that I now have a place to post all my pictures as can be seen by the previous link. I hope to do some more work on matthew.schrenk.org, because right now there is nothing there but the gallery.

I was going to fly out of San Jose, CA to Minneapolis, MN at 6:35 AM Saturday July 1, and so I woke up at 4:30 and was at the airport at 5:45 to catch my plane. I approached the gate to the announcement that the flight was overbooked and they were offering a free round trip ticket voucher for anyone willing to give up their seat. I established that the next flight left at 12:10 and decided to take that offer. So with a $100 voucher and a round trip voucher on Northwest I got back in my car and drove back home. This made me five hours later that I had planned and I missed some of the first day activites.

You can find another view on the trip over at Tifani's blog.

Ben Dill picked me up from the airport and he headed over to join everyone at Minnehaha park, but we passed them as they left, so we just headed back to the Dill's house for a cookout dinner of brauts and hotdogs. I think we sang everyday for at least 30 minutes, sometimes twice a day. Patriotic songs were high on the list, and I found out how many of those songs have a strong christian theme. Our founding fathers (and also our founding composers) had a great deal to say about what made this country great, and it was God.

That night we played some four and a couch, occupation, and telephone pictionary with the whole group. The group consisted of UofI people (Katrina stoller, Brent Sauder, Eric Zimmerman, and Loren Mogle), some sister from Kansas (Stephanie, Tifani, and Chelsie Bahr), and the Minni YG (Krissa Skoglund, Cheryl Luthi, Zena Davila, Ben Moser, Jeff Rienhardt, Braden Mogler, Meg Dill, and Ben Dill). I think that telephone pictionary is one of the best group games with more then six people, it really helps you get to know each other in a fun way. Braden Mogler's family invited me into their home for the weekend and I thank them. Sunday was my first time at Minneapolis church and I found it welcoming. It was small enough to get around to everyone and have some conversation with a few. After church the rest of the UofI group left. I was sorry to see them go so soon. We relaxed Sunday afternoon then headed to see some Shakespeare in the park ("The Merchent of Venice"). We had a picnic dinner, played some frisbee, and walked around the park.

Monday was a late start to do 17 miles of canoeing on the St. Croix river between Minnesota and Wisconsin. We had a blast and just got a little wet, OK my canoe did tip over for no reason, but we still had fun. That night we had to say goodbye to the Kansas group who was driving out in the morning. On the fourth we visited Historic Fort Snelling and saw some historical reenactors showing how the fort was back in the early 1800's. We also visited St. Paul to spend some time at the Taste of Minnesota. The longest game of the Settlers of Catan that I have ever played was between dinner and the fireworks.

I was so sad to say goodbye to everyone as I flew out the next morning, I hope to see them all soon, and perhaps will need to visit Minnesota in the future.