I just finished reading The Shack and dangit if I didn't cry my little pink-polkadotted, Hello-Kitty, My-Little-Pony, sissy eyes out. That was a great book.

I didn't want it to be a great book...I wanted in all my wanting ability for that to be a totally crappy, lame squad book. It wasn't though...it was excellent. It made me feel all kinds of stuff that I didn't want to feel, but needed to.

Denise gave it to me and typically I hate books people give to me. I don't know what it is...I've got some kind of thing embedded in me that causes people to give me dorky books. This was not so, THANK YOU D-Money for the book! My men's group is actually starting a study on The Shack next week. We'll see where it takes us. Read it!


In other news, we are having a garage sale this Friday. I've been putting off cleaning out my garage in the hopes that it would burn down and I could collect some sort of insurance payout...that hasn't happened and I can't take it anymore. Ryan and I cleaned out everything yesterday and began sorting through the mess...an emergency garage sale is in order!

So if you're keen and hip and available on Friday from 8am - 2pm, stop by my house and buy something from me. Or you can bring stuff over that you'd like to sell. I'll only charge you an 84% commission. Be there or be square!

I had to get something else to read. Simply Christian is a good book...it's just one of those books that makes me fall asleep every time I'm reading it. A realization I'm having is that I need to read "new to me" ideas. It's very difficult for me to ingest more of the same thing over and over. Certain books are full of filler content that really doesn't add to the main idea. This makes me lose interest quickly.

So I borrowed a vewy, vewy nice car from someone and I set off to fill my reading void. We're staying in a somewhat secluded area without the luxuries of McStores on every corner. That's a good thing, but it makes little things like cooking and finding books a bit more difficult. I knew of a small town with a strip of shops in it and I purposely headed in another direction to see what I could find. An hour and a half later, hands empty, I headed for the strip I knew of.

When I pulled up to the eccentric little book store I was greeted by two cats at the door. No I wasn't. I lied. It was one cat and the other animal that I thought was a cat turned out to be a possum upon further inspection. Anyone watching me would have chuckled a bit at my reaction which sounded not unlike a six year old girl at a haunted house. Thankfully there were no possums inside the bookstore where I picked up a copy of In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I'll let you know how

*leaves blog post mid-sentence to go read new book*

I'm getting towards the end of The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman. Wow. What an amazing food book. You know how every once in a while you read a book and it actually causes changes to happen in your life? This was one of those books for me.

I think my cooking level stepped up a couple notches while reading through this. The book is considered to be "an indispensable compendium for the professional or amateur cook..." For that reason I give it a 9 / 10. It loses a point from my highly skilled rating system because this book could be somewhat hard to digest for your average amateur. There is a bit too much "assumed knowledge" that Michael expects the readers to have...I had to look up several things due to mental midgetdom. A blog for The Elements of Cooking can be found---->Here.

I just started reading The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. I'm not very far into it yet...maybe 50 pages. It started off a little slow, but now it's going really deep really fast. It's not getting good...it is good. Carrie dropped it off for me when her and Ryan were home for the Holidays. I'll have to let you know what the final verdict is.

What are you currently reading?

I'm not sure where you are on your spiritual path. I'm not sure if you would even care about this. For me, this book is very important.

I'm not usually one to try to get people to read what I'm reading. I read lots of stuff. Most stuff I read I could really go without reading...it's just not that crucial. This is crucial.

I've been reading a book called Holy Discontent by a Pastor named Bill Hybels. It's pretty decent. It definitely has me trying to figure out what my "holy discontent" is personally.

What is it that brings me a firestorm of frustration? I'm not sure.

I've got lots of things that frustrate me. There are so many topics out there that get me fired up, but I'm unsure of the area with which I should focus. I'm kind of the guy who tries to help make something better in whatever area needs help. I step in, I try my hand at improving it, and then I move on. Sometimes I make things better and sometimes I find out that I suck at certain things.

One thing I suck at is figuring out my holy discontent.