I don't own a house. I don't have a job. I'm two kids away from a swagger wagon. My daughter cries for a pacifier and then cries for it again a minute later when she spits it out.

This is not how I planned my life to be a few years ago. And yet, I have no complaints about it.

Happy 2 years, Love.

This past week I sold my Martin guitar. Okay, maybe it's not as dramatic as the changing of monarchy rule. But in my mind, an era has passed for me.  I owned this guitar for 12 years, and it always served me well. I bought it my freshman year of college when I started playing guitar more often, upgrading from a Washburn guitar that didn't have a pick-up. It was the guitar I used when I started leading worship at my church in Baltimore the following year. When I returned home after graduating college, I began leading worship at my church, and the Martin saw frequent playing time each week for two years. However, once I stepped down from serving as a worship leader, my six-stringed friend sat mostly untouched. In fact, in the last couple of years, I had played the guitar only a handful of times.

I decided to sell the guitar, feeling that it was time. Though I was told I would regret selling it, I posted it on Craigslist and was contacted by a local musician who was looking for a new guitar for his nephew, an aspiring acoustic guitarist. We made plans to meet on campus and this potential buyer came ready to buy. As he sat there inspecting the guitar, he tested out the sound quality by playing some Otis Redding. Upon hearing "Sittin on the Dock of the Bay", I began to understand what "seller's regret" was. But there was no reason for me to keep this guitar other than simply sentimental value. Had he decide not to buy the guitar at that point, I would have stayed there for a while attempting to play it with my uncallosed fingers. In the end, he did buy it from me and I was sad to see it go.

The guy called me the next day thanking me for the sale. He was so pleased with the guitar and told me that he believed his nephew would be so happy with it. He was a classic gentleman, and my guitar could not have gone to a better home.

One morning last week, I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to find baby crying uncontrollably. In my sleepiness I got up and walked over to the baby room where I found Carolyn looking exhausted and frustrated. I offered to take over and Carolyn went off to bed. As I attempted to soothe and calm my baby girl, I  found myself fighting wave after wave of exhaustion. Finally, after about an hour of cradling, singing, swaying and swaddling, she managed to fall asleep laying prostrate on my chest, as I lay on the bed in the baby room.

I was relieved, but tired, to say the least. I could have fallen asleep right then and there, but I feared completely falling asleep and then losing my grip on her. Or even worse, rolling over her or something. But I needed sleep. I figured I could just get up and put her in her crib, and then I could just head off to bed. Then I remembered the saying of many parents who have gone before us: "Cherish these moments with your kids. They grow up so fast and you'll never get these times back again". It's for this very reason that Carolyn decided she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom-- so that she doesn't miss out on things. And it's for that reason that I just stayed in that position, sleeplessly taking in this time when my daughter was only a month old.

Today I tried to work from home, but Chloe hasn't been sleeping well and has been crying uncontrollably throughout the day. I didn't get much work done. Most of my time has been spent once again trying to soothe her to sleep. In my heart I really wanted to complain about how hard this was. But I realized that even this was a fleeting moment, one that will be gone all too soon.

There will come a day when Chloe will not longer be a baby, but, God-willing, will grow up into a graceful and mature woman. In those days I may enjoy my time with her over coffee, talking about the latest happenings of the day, maybe go on a bike ride together, whatever the future might bring. In those days, I will reminisce on the former days when she was only a baby. 

For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? 

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Maybe I'm the only one who's ever had this problem, but I've come across a few color discrepancies in my pictures as I take pictures on my camera, transfer them to my computer, and then upload them to the internet or send them to the printer. A few years ago I came across this color issue:

The picture on the left was my photo processed in Windows, then uploaded to Flickr. The photo on the right was the same photo downloaded from Flickr onto my desktop. Obviously the color differences are huge. The problem? The color management profiles, or ICC profiles, on my computer and in my internet browser were completely different. The question then is, which photo gets printed if I send the picture to the photo printing company? Well, in that case it will once again depend on what the color profile of the printer is. This is one of the headaches if your color management isn't dealt with. I found a good article online regarding color management on your computer. This webpage has a few test shots so that you can tell if your computer is correctly handling the color in your digital pictures.

In my example above, my browser was using the standard sRGB color profile, however XP was set to AdobeRGB (1998). Images produced in XP weren't correctly tagged. I could be wrong though. These days I have everything set to sRGB and then my monitor calibrated for color. Even then, I had set the color profile incorrectly in Lightroom and messed up a batch of photos printed at Costco.