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Get your geek on with Star Wars yoga? Yes. Star Wars yoga.

“We can’t do things like Downward Dog or anything, yoga will probably be limited to standing poses,” said Mitchell, who will be dressed as Darth Vader. -Roy Mitchell, head of the Star Wars afficionado group Toronto Garrison of the 501st Legion

Two words: NERD ALERT!

Harrison Ford, as usual, was not amused.

Love him or hate him, you have to admit that Leo Dicaprio doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.  NEWSWEEK has noticed that the highly successful thirty-something has forgotten how to smile.

I’m not sure I totally agree with NEWSWEEK, because he was pretty upbeat and quirky in Catch Me If You Can.  But lately he’s been in a lot of Debby-Downer movies.

It’s great to be an American! Someone get me another hot dog!

Melisa and I had some errands to run today in Monrovia, so we tried a new lunch spot to keep up our energy after Caed woke us up for a 5 am feeding. We enjoyed the cuisine of Qdoba Mexinan Grill.

As soon as we walked through the door I wasn’t sure if we had accidentally waked into Chipotle. From the “vintage looking” black and white photos on the wall, to the order counter, to the look and feel, it was as if someone bought a shut-down Chipotle, slapped a new name on it, and opened.

The food was surprisingly similar, although Qdoba offers a number of nice selections including soups and salads. Melisa chose a mango salad, and said the salsa was really nice. I went with the steak tacos with the jalapeno salsa, and the meat was tender and well seasoned.

The long and short of it is that Qdoba is sort of like a Chipotle with the additional soup and salad options. And while I can’t quite endorse this place with only one visit and a plate of tacos, I think it’s a pretty good knock-off of the better known chain.

Check it out in Monrovia, located on Mountain Avenue just north of the 210 freeway (in the plaza by Best Buy).

Today is pretty much a day for us to catch up on rest, TV, and life. I’m hoping to catch the Indy Car race tonight, and that’s about it.

I love a good bargain.  Who doesn’t, right?  And I love ice cream  I scream for ice cream!   So when I saw this story on Yahoo! Shopping about the top taste-tested ice cream, of course I clicked on it.

The list included some usual makers including Ben & Jerry’s and  Häagen-Dazs. But the surprise on the list was Target’s Archer Farms ice cream.  Their Belgian Chocolate received rave reviews!

So the next time you’re looking for something decadently rich and creamy, look no further than your nearest Target store.

Yahoo! Shopping: The Creams of the Crop

The 2010 Rose Parade was reasly good this year, although it can’t compete with the 2007 parade wit the Michigan Marching Band and the Star Wars marching band.

The Ohio State band was really good, even though I hate to admit it. Their marching was precise and snappy, and they sounded the best of all the bands.

It was fun to celebrate this new tradition for my fourth time. Here’s hoping that Michigan’s band makes a comeback along with their football team sometime in the next couple of years.

It’s been a while since I blogged, and I experimented with some new Wordpress themes, so I thought I would throw up a post.  I like this theme because it reflects what I want my blog to become.  My blogging had fallen off into politics, economics, and all sorts of stuff that is not really about me or about God.  It was about the World, a World that seems to be flying off a cliff.

But life goes on.

Melisa and I have a busy weekend ahead, so we stayed home tonight and caught the “wedding” episode of  The Office that our DVR so conveniently recorded for us.  I got a little choked up at the end of the episode, because the two characters were so believable, all in a show that is so ridiculous that nothing seems believable.

Tomorrow we get started fairly early to get ready for a regional luncheon for Vineyard Worship Leaders.  It will be great to connect with people from the area that have the same passion for worship, for God, and for the Church.  We are praying that some great fellowship, friendships, and connections happen tomorrow.

Sunday we will be leading worship at Live Oak, and then busting down to play with a team for a young adults service down at VCC La Habra.  God is doing some cool stuff there, and we are excited to be lending a hand to what is happening there.

I will, in fact, relax a little bit this weekend.  Michigan has a big game against Iowa, and on a national stage. The Saturday Night game on ABC will feature the undefeated Hawkeyes vs. my underdog Michigan Wolverines.

Will the force be with Tate Forcier and the Maize and Blue?  I hope so.  They will need it against a tough Iowa team that dispensed with a powerful Penn State team.

I have to go pass out now, and dreams of  a Michigan victory dancing in my head.

I’ve been wanting to try out a place in Pasadena for a while, a “British-Style” restaurant called Brits in Pasadena.   A couple of my buds from Pasadena met up with me for a pint and a bit to eat.    They have a good selection on tap, and the happy-hour burgers that we sampled were actually pretty good.  But the atmosphere is pretty lacking, and nobody wanted to stick around.  They had a TV playing some weird football-soccer thing on TV to make it look more “Euro” in there, but they had music pumping out of the  rough sounding TV speakers, and a strange mix of music at that.

Brits has tons of potential, but the atmophere really didn’t say “British Pub”.  My advice is to drive the 30 miles to Fullerton and spend your money at the Olde Ship.  I give Brits a mere 1.5 stars.

Man, today started out great, and has been a mostly good day. I got up this morning and met a buddy of mine for breakfast at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles in Pasadena. If you’ve never had two giant waffles with a quarter of a fried chicken for breakfast, you haven’t lived.

After breakfast, I burned up about four hours doing some tracking for a demo of a song the Melisa and I wrote called “And We Sing”. We’ve been doing this song for about a month at Live Oak, and it has really been a song that has taken hold with our church. The demo tracks are coming together, and I hope to get this one done, and also finish off “Likeness of You”.

Stay tuned.

The only downer of the day: Michigan lost to Toledo. I blogged that on Scottie’s News & Views.

Ok, ok, so I’ve been slow at getting my pics from Hawaii uploaded on Flickr, but I’ve got a few up.

Check them out here. I’ve got about 300 more to post!

Highlights included:

• Sunrise walk on the beach on day 1 to view the sun come up over Diamondhead
• Pearl Harbor and the USS Missouri
• A point found on the north shore that juts out into the Pacific where we were surrounded by crashing waves and the bluest waters we have ever seen
• Giovanni’s shrimp truck where we at spicy shrimp so hot that we were hurting and our eyes were watering, but we signed the truck!
• Duke’s Restaurant on the beach
• A traditional Hawaiian luau
• The Hilton Hawaiian Village was amazing
• Good times with our friends from the OC, Kurt & Melanie

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So I’ve been walking around gingerly, and wincing whenever I have to pickup something heavy lately. See, I went out boating with some friends on Saturday, and I made my first attempt at wakeboarding. But the board they had was made for somebody about half of my weight, and I just couldn’t get out of the water. But I sure gave it all I had, and my shoulders and forearms were not happy with me and my attempt to hang on. My shoulders and my grip got a lot better today, but now my upper forearms aren’t happy. I supposed in another day I’ll be fine, but dang, a whole week to recover? It’s just a reminder that I’m not 20 any more.

There’s not a whole lot new going on. Melisa and I are getting excited about our vacation to Waikiki on two weeks! Five days in paradise! I’m already looking forward to the shrimp truck!

In the mean time, we have been staying busy with a lot of work stuff. I’ve been kind of in a summer funk when it comes to blogging and writing much. Melisa, on the other hand, has been working on a new song here and there, and we also have to finish up her demo of “Likeness of You”. Hopefully some of her creative fire will spark me a little bit.

But actually, I’ve been following the Olympics a lot lately. The USA is having a pretty good games so far. I haven’t seen this morning’s match between Nigeria and the USA in soccer, so please, no spoilers. Michael Phelps is just a machine, and I’m sure he is a mutant or something. But he is a Michigan Wolverine, so he’s ok with me.

David and I were talking the out the other night while Melisa was helping his wife, Maria, get their new baby boy, Isaiah to fall asleep. Melisa is known as the baby-whisperer, but anyway. But David and I were chatting about theology, the Lakeland Revival and all of it’s ramifications, and other pastoral/leadership stuff. But while we were talking, the Olympics were on the TV in the corner. NBC was showing mens synchronized diving. And David and I agreed that it’s kind of a strange sport. It’s definitely not as “manly” as the shot-put or weight lifting, that’s for sure.

Whenever I watched The Wonder Years it reminded me that I could never really tell if Joe Cocker was singing the right lyrics, or just making things up. But Terry sent me this video, and it reveals the important message from Mr. Cocker. Finally, his true words revealed.

I was glancing through the HD Sports Guide website today, behold the NFL pre-season starts this Sunday! Even better, now that I have DirecTV, I get to see the first Thursday night pre-season game on the NFL Network next week.

This is good.