A subtle shift. . .

I've had to make a decision to change a few things about the blog.

I also blog over at happythedog.com which is the ministry I speak for on a regular basis. I try to update it after every speaking event as well, and more often than not, it's the exact same blog as what you read here, with only minor, occasional changes.

Well, it seems that now these two blogs are starting to serve different purposes. The happy blog is primarily for speaking and ministry engagements, and not necessarily for all the trivial, sporadically bizarre, ideas and activities that I often post about on here.

So to keep things nice and separate, the happy blog will have more event details, while the wordofmouth blog will have more details about me as a speaker outside of the events.

I know there are a handful of you who are now thinking, "What? I have to check two blogs now? Ridiculous."

I agree, but I know that blogging as if I were only writing for one site was limiting me greatly as to what I could say on either as they both tend to have different audiences.

So that being out of the way, if you want more event details, just go to happythedog.com and look for the blog posts by Jason (as Troy and Dawn post as well).

On with the blog:

Just got back from Ripon, CA Christian School last week and had a great time. I had to give ten talks in five days, so that was really challenging. We had to do a middle school service at 8:30, then a high school service at 10:55. Then we also had to do a Wednesday night high school rally on top of it, while visiting classes, eating meals, and playing soccer in gym with the students.

It was definitely a challenge to come up with that many back to back talks as I couldn't always use the same ones from middle school for high school, but I felt like they all went really well by the end of the week.

While in CA, we went to see Gran Turino Monday night. Really fun movie. Andrea and I went to see The Wrestler two nights before. Even more fun movie.

I finished reading the Shadow series by Orson Scott Card as well as a book called Posers, Fakers, and Wannabes by Brennan Manning which was the first Christian book (besides the Bible) that I've read in YEARS and actually enjoyed.

I'd highly recommend it. It basically boils down to the different personas we have to put on depending on who we're around at the time. Kind of similar to the different blogs we have to write . . .

Missed Carson and Andrea horribly while gone. Being gone for a week at a time now is almost unbearable as Carson is picking up so many words and tricks daily now.

Airports used to seem a lot more fun than they do now, as well. I had to sprint from gate G4 to A13 Friday night at about 10pm because the tram was shutdown for the night. I was a sweaty mess for my seatmate on the hour trip home to Des Moines, and I can only imagine what he must have thought as the 225 pound man sitting next to him had to towel off the entire flight home because he was sweating so much. Malaria? Typhoid? Sars? Haha! I'll never tell!

I was hoping my seasons of Extras would come in before I left but it didn't. Which is just peachy cause Andrea and I are now watching them together. Much different than the British Office, but still a lot of fun.

I also found a good site to keep up to date on current Flight of the Conchords (my favorite television right now) since I don't have HBO.

What else? I suppose if you want two more blogs on all the happenings from Ripon, feel free to check out the happy site linked on the side of the page. I'll try hard in the future to give this site a much different feel with a little more insight than usual.

On a fun note, a guy at Northwestern College in Orange City is doing a play I wrote a while back on April 18th. I'm pretty excited about the opportunity as I feel my playwriting skills have greatly waned since college and I'd like to sharpen them up again. If this one goes well, I have a couple more in my brain I'd like to get down on paper.

We have a cast reading coming up this month that I'll get to sit in on, so I'm really looking forward to that. As well as a couple improv dates - one with good friend Mike Rottink in Iowa Falls, and one with good friends at Omaha's 88improv in LeMars, Iowa.

Phew. I'm done blogging for the day.

jason