this blog is DEAD

For numerous reasons I have changed my blog to a new address at wordpress. Here is the link:

http://bencrawfordlife.wordpress.com/


I have moved everything over except for the comments people have made.

This will be the last time that I move this blog so sorry for the inconvenience.

The King of Kong

If you have not seen this documentary you need to check it out. It is throughly entertaining and a VERY educational look into the world of classic video gamers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/

after you see this you will have a much greater appreciation for this picture:

Seattle Communion

I hate blogging but got this email from a pastor at our church and needed to share it.

Dear Friends,

In an effort to make communion as accessible as possible, we have decided to add an “allergen-free” communion option at Grace. Beginning this Sunday, we will offer communion wafers that are gluten/wheat/yeast free. It will be on the communion table along with a cup of wine and grape juice for dipping the wafers into. These cups will not be used for dipping the wafers and not the communion bread, so hopefully there will not be any cross-contamination issues.

Since this is a new process, there may be some wrinkles we need to iron out as we go.

Warmly in Christ,
Steve Beveridge

Growing up.....emotionally

It's recently been brought to my attention that I am bad at feeling. For those of you that are familiar with the Myers Briggs personality test I am a strong "T" or thinker as opposed to a "F" or feeler. More specifically my profile say that I am:

slightly expressed extravert
distinctively expressed intuitive personality
distinctively expressed thinking personality
slightly expressed judging personality

Of course knowing this about myself makes sense and does not come as a surprise. What is more new for me to think about is that in being strong on the thinking scale I am actually disadvantaged or immature when it comes to feeling. No for most thinking people including myself this is more viewed as a strength as opposed to a inferiority in any way. Well I'm starting to realize that I am behind. Someone I know recently was quoted as saying that they have the emotional maturity of a 12 year old. That person is over 30. It got me thinking, what is my emotional maturity? While I am fairly in control of my emotions I hardly know how to cry and I find it VERY difficult to even share my emotions most of the time. Most 16 year old girls have this mastered. Since i'm going to have 3 of them in another 10 years I figured that maybe this is something that I should work on. So the whole deal with the Myers Briggs thing is that this is the way you are. You can't really change it. So while my goal is not to completely transform the way my personality is set up I have decided to at least tackle some of my weak areas. This is the first place that I am going to start:
I have shared with my family and immediate community that I am going to attempt to be (more) honest about expressing my emotions. The reverse way of putting this is that I am going to attempt to not suppress my emotions. Here are a few clarifications:
I do not want to say whatever is on my mind. I think that there are very clear grounds as to how powerful words are and how destructive words can be when you say whatever the hell it is that you are feeling OR thinking. What I would like to accomplish through this little exercise is when I am feeling something and that part of me says "that's stupid to feel that" or "people are going to laugh at you for being _______" that i accept the emotional aspect of my life and others as equally as important as the thought driven parts. I plan on this being difficult since I think I have been raised in a cultural context that teaches that feelings are feminine and any male that operates off of them or expresses them is inferior.

I've already tried this a couple of times and it's pretty strange. Feel free to ask me how it's going. If you want to take your personality test you can do it here:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Quasi Restaurant Vegetarianism

So i've had some new thoughts and i thought i'd post them. I am going to become a quasi restaurant vegetarian. Here are my reasons in no particular order:
1. In general i think i eat more meat than is "healthy" or definitely necessary
2. From my brief studies it doesn't seem like the environmental impact of "harvesting" meat is that great
3. I only plan on taking it away from menu items where i think that the taste impact will be negligible or non-existent. For example i wouldn't go to outback steakhouse and order a salad. but in this case in particular i have decided that i can just as easily go without the pepperoni on a pizza and not miss anything. i have also discovered that at olive garden i do not miss the chicken on a fettucini alfredo.
4. The cost of adding meat is almost always greater than omitting it. In many cases i noticed that i buy because it is the default mindset not because i think it is worth the extra value or because i enjoy it that much.

I am not sure how much of an impact this will have on my overall lifestyle. it could be alot it might not me much at all. either way it's cool to be "green" now so it's a win win.

Rainier

I took this picture today while driving in Seattle on I-5. It was probably dangerous but definitely worth it.

Crawford Rhythm

So, we have i have lived for 28 years, been married for 7, had 4 kids and never had a schedule. All that has now changed. In light of some recent thoughts that I will share with you I have decided to come up with a family and person rhythm. While I feel like i was able to survive without a schedule i feel like this will be a much more productive way of accomplishing our goals as a family especially on the macro level. when i say macro level i mean things that are on a week and bigger type basis.
so this is how we created our rhythm. we wrote down all of our values on little pieces of paper. there were a lot of them and some of them were written numerous times depending on how frequent we wanted them to happen. There were 2 different criteria for things that got written down.
1. Things that we consider personal or family values that will not happen unless they are scheduled on a weekly or monthly basis.
2. Things that we don't necessarily need reminders of but unless they are planned out ahead of time will conflict with us being able to accomplish things in category "1."

that is why you will not see breakfast or lunch on the schedule but you will see racquetball. There are also some things that I put on the calendar where the goal was to accomplish more specific goals within the normal task. for example with my work days i now have specific days that are carved out for organization and research instead of just doing whatever seems the most urgent.

this is the beta version. i'm sure there will be some changes and i must admit that when we first put this on our computers it felt slightly claustrophobic but i think it brings some much needed changes. i would be interested in hearing comments from others about things that they have incorporated that they find useful.

a few notes on navigation:
1. i recommend viewing it on the day view.
2. in order to find out my notes and specific purpose on most of the items just click on its title and my notes will come up.
3. check out the first sunday of every month. that is when we will have our monthly "remember" meeting.


You can view my calendar at:
http://ical.mac.com/teamcrawford/Crawford%20Rhythm

For mac users:
You can subscribe to my calendar at:
webcal://ical.mac.com/teamcrawford/Crawford%20Rhythm.ics