y'all heard the old rev. james cleveland's remake of gladys knight's song? that mug is firrre. i don't know why, but that song was on my mind/heart when i woke up this morning.

y'all can peep out the recording of it on youtube. does anybody know where i can buy it? they don't have it on amazon.com mp3 downloads :-(

and, you know what? jesus is the best thing that happened to me. hollatchasoon...

so, once again, i know this is a long and well-overdue update. but i'm still alive :-) also, if you check my blog, please leave me a little note so that i can know if i need to update it more often...

mt. zion baptist church youth/young adult retreat
on the second weekend in september, i joined the youth and young adult ministries of mt. zion for a retreat at a resort out near mt. rainier. the weather was perfect for the whole weekend. the retreat consisted of workshops on saturday morning (of which i lead one), free time, a prayer hike (it was indeed a hike, but God did speak to us during the hike :-), and we rounded it off on sunday morning with a time of reflection and also skits pertaining to the material of the conference (the focus of the retreat was prayer). i gained quite a reputation from the skit that we did where i performed a drive-by on the father of the main character (i know, i know...... you just had to have been there). i had a good time regardless and got a chance to connect with a lot of people from the church.

work
i know a lot of people have been asking me about work. work has been going well. i'm working in a cool dept. we all been on the grind as we work on the final release of ie8 (if you haven't checked out the beta 2, gon' head and do it!). but, yeah, i'm working with some cool people, some smart people. and it's never a dull moment :-)

hurrcut
so, after 6 weeks out of st. louis, i finally got my first haircut in seattle. it was actually quite an adventure. first, it took me a while to get some recommendations (for somewhat apparent reasons...). the shop closest to me didn't fit in my schedule, so i ended up going to Paul's Custom Cuts, which turned out to be a 25 mile trip (that's one way). the haircut was worth it (esp the way i was looking...). so, after having this transformative hair experience, i realized that i locked my keys in my car :-(. this is one of the few thing that i've been afraid of in moving away from home. so, i called aaa for them to break into my car, and i got a chance to kick it at the barber shop as i waited for about an hour for them to come. yep.

portfolio project
by way of the blacks at microsoft diversity group, i got hooked up with a program through uncf and the y of seattle called the portfolio project. it's an 8-week program (that started last weekend) aimed at preparing high school juniors and seniors for applying to college and to be able to present themselves in the best way possible (hence, the portfolio). the portfolio will be a finished product that each student will have with academic, extracurricular, and personal information for use in interviews or any other pertinent situation. i'm participating as a mentor workin with two students, one of whom wants to be an engineer :-)

and... random chillin
-silver fork. a restaurant on the southside. at the spontaneity of dave, me, him, and about 6 other young adults from mt. zion headed over there after service a couple of weeks ago. the silver fork is on point: they got fried catfish, grits, pancakes, and all other kinds of goodness.
-daniel 'nem. so, i got a chance to kick it with daniel and some of his friends a couple of saturdays ago. they came to my apt and we played "take six", a card game that i think came from germany. and, yesterday, i got a chance to chill with him and his family again for a followup event from his missions trip to ethiopia. good times.
-dave's bday. happy birthday dave! yasmin hosted a planned-turned-spontaneous birthday party for dave a couple of weeks ago. the initial plan was a bike ride to gasworks park with cake, but it was raining too much. so, we all ended up chillin at their place, with 3 rounds of intense mafia and yasmin's vegan carrot spice cake, which i have to admit was pretty good (don't tell my dad i said that) :-)
-family pancake house. this is becoming the new spot after work on fridays. i've been going with a crew from my team. family pancake house has all types of pancakes (regular, swedish, strawberry, potato...). for my stl folk, family pancake house does not replace uncle bill's, but it'll help curb the homesickness :-)

prayer requests
-still adjusting. of course, seattle is not st. louis, but i've come to appreciate the area more over the past two months.
-continuing to build community in the seattle area. i have to put more effort than i did in st. louis (obviously). i love my people in st. louis, but y'all ain't up the street no mo'! definite praise report for the community that i have thus far.
-work. any prayer is appreciated as i continue to build up my skillset and knowledge of the codebase. it's been a lot of grunt work just figuring out how things fit together in internet explorer. but once i got it, i got it :-)

and, just for kicks: a reuters article.

holla!