Nate Houge

once when i worked at the big church i spent an entire morning trying to set up an auto reply and sending messages to people that already had auto reply so that there would be an eternal auto reply loop.  that was kind of like stealing money from the congregation in hind site.  or fueling my creative hunger so i could do other cool things that would later lead to vainglory.  and give me the very thing i was working at.  a lutheran complex.

But enough about memememememe, let’s talk about my schedule.  Now that i’ve got a calendar it’s come to my attention that i will be away from this here highway for the next 7 days at least.  Wipe your tears faithfilled readers.  In fact maybe you should take a week off too.  sabbatechal.

Oprah’s personal trainer recently spoke to me via the back of a box of Cheerio’s. At the time I was busy lowering my cholesterol. He told me that this was my year. (Emphasis mine.) Heck yeah! And here I thought it was the year of the rooster!

By the power invested in me by Oprah’s trainer, I hereby declare it the year of yours truly,

Two-Thousand & Nate.

Normally between mid January and late August I get my butt over to Office Max and purchase a calender to write down important things like meetings and lunches with important people that aren’t really going to happen but that I like to write in red pen on days when I’m actually having lunch with less important people. The idea being that while dining with a lesser I can pull out my calendar and check what else I have going on that day and the lesser will see that I’ve skipped my lunch date with teen heart throb Bill Moyers to have lunch with him or her. It makes the little people feel big. And now that I look at it in writing it makes me feel little. Take me out to lunch and see if I’ve stopped doing it.

If by September I still haven’t purchased a calendar for the year I print one off using my big shiny computer. In the past this has taken me longer than a trip to Office Max because I can never remember how to make Sunday just as big as the other days €“ Outlook always squishes up the weekends, and when you love Jesus as much as I do you need a lot of room for all the Holy ways you’re going to make a living on Sundays.

But this is 200n8 folks. Office Max isn’t going to cut it and neither is Outlook. No, this year is bigger. Brighter. Specialer. This is the kind of year when one such as myself must fashion a calendar using only the sCraps laying around the house and his own God given ingenuity. That’s right, I made my own calendar. And I took pictures. And I’m going to walk you through the process so that you too can make 200n8 my year.

Supplies:

Lots of paper with one blank side. Reuse it dude. (A couple years ago I worked near a photocopier and made a habit of nabbing all the wasted one sided copies out of the recycling bin for printing stuff at home and projects like this. It lasted me for a year after I quit the job. Gold mine. )

Pen (s) (Number of pens/colors may vary according to your personal asthetic)

Hole punch

Metal rings or twine

Back of an old notebook (optional)

1. Fold all the paper in half, blank side out.

2. Place two fold pieces side by side butting the open ends together fold-to-fold.JPG 

3. Make a 5 x 7 grid 57-grid.JPG

4. Write the Month at the top month.JPG, and days across the top, (traditionally folks start with Sunday, but remember it’s my year and you can start with whatever day you want. )

5. Here comes the tricky part:  Write in the numbers.  A little hint, The 1 doesn’t always go in the top left hand corner.  If any of you wondered why I was so unpredictable in 2004, this oversite was a major factor.  That, and I was using military time.  I was an imbedded chronographer of sorts.  2004 was not my year.

6. I’m not sure where we are in the process.  Lets see… months, days of the week, dates… Holidays.  Add holidays.  Lots of them.holidays.JPG

7. And while you’re at it, put it a month just for yourself.  Here’s what my month looks like.nateuary.JPG  It works on an 8 day week (I inserted “longday” between wed and th)  Natueary only has 19 days.  Sure, it’s my year but lets not get too self indulgent.

8. Create a title page.title-page.JPG

9. punch some holes in it whole-punch.JPG  That’s write, whole punch.  Put something through the holes to keep it together.

10. Viola.  Yer donne.  At this point you have the option of taking it to the next level with additional pages.  At this point you’ve moved from calendar to PDA,  except without the D.  With it’s oldschool charm I think I might call mine a Mayberry.

11. Enjoy your year!  It’s mine.

as we walked the aisles of the self service section of Ikea my daughter looked at me and said, ‘you’re a giver and a wanter.  you keep getting rid of things and you keep wanting more things.’

I’ve started paying her 160 bucks an hour.

elsa me checking e-mail first time 2 weeks sorry few blogs be funny soon nate

I’m not a clothes shopper. A little over a year ago I went to Fleet Farm and bought a flannel shirt, striped overalls and some long work pants. Since then I bought a pair of corduroys at Savers for 6 bucks. These are my clothing purchases of the last 18 months. Oh, and my father in law slipped me a Benjamin to buy a nice suit coat for special occasions. I got one at Target on clearance for 12 dollars. I’ve been meaning to give him the change.

Other than a couple sweatshirts and the overalls all my clothes fit in my dresser, and still every time we go to Goodwill I’ve got a pile of clothes to give away. I don’t get it either. But, as is so often the case, I have a couple theories.

#1 €“ Spontaneous Cotton Mass Reproduction. (SCMR) Sure it sounds crazy, but nobody believed me when I said Kenny Rogers would make a come back either. This morning he was on Fox News. ‘Nuff said.

#2 €“ Burglars. But not the kind that steal stuff, the kind that give stuff. Benevolent burglars. Benevolgurs. Burglarvents. Benevulgerlervents. You get the idea.

#3 €“ Father in law. He’s already set a precedent by slipping me the Benjamin. But I think I would notice if he had given me more money and told me to buy other articles of clothing. Unless he’s a master hypnotist and has hypnotized everyone in the family so that they don’t know he’s a hypnotist so they haven’t been able to warn me about his hypnotic powers. The other reason I think it might be his fault is that the majority of my clothing has Walhalla ND written on it. And he’s from Walhalla ND. You put two and two together and that’s what you get, Walhalla ND. 2+2=Walhalla ND.

Now I love Walhalla ND as much as the next guy, probably even a little more. But would I go out and buy Walhalla ND wear on my own? Not unless I was under someone’s hypnotic spell. And, no, we haven’t ruled that out. What I have noticed is that folks up here are into ‘logo wear.’ Although with the lack of graphic artists in the area (by area I mean ND) most of the logo wear relies a bit more heavily on the power of the written word. And as pastor’s like to point out whenever they read John 1, logos is Greek for word, so maybe it would be more appropriate to refer to the clothing here as ‘logos wear’ and not ‘logo wear.’ Either way, one of the most popular words to include in their logos wear is the word Walhalla. See where I’m going with this? Stay with me I’m about to bring it all home.

People make logos wear to share logos wear. All be it out of character for farmers, when it comes to quantity of logos wear to be manufactured, the farmers get possessed with a previously unidentified personality trait that we’ll call optimism. And this optimism takes control of their bodies just long enough for their mouthes to utter numbers like ‘five hundred’ or ‘one thousand.’ A week later a farmer living in a town of 700 receives a box with one thousand sweatshirts, hats, or t-shirts promoting his farm. In fact, about 100 farmers receive these boxes that they vaguely remember ordering in that fog of… what did we call it again? Oh yes, optimism. Now when they see their friend on the street or in the field they say, €œCome over to my pickup, I’ve got something for you.€ And then they give their unsuspecting friend a t-shirt. And then slide them five more for the family. Or if they see your truck by the bakery they may just slip a few onto the passenger’s seat. What a nice little surprise. It’s quite possibly the most compelling reason to lock your vehicle while within the city limits of Walhalla ND.

This is where I come in. I am that family member that hasn’t figured it out yet. Until now. As likely as SCMR and burglavenerbles are I’m going with choice #3, Father-in-law. And no, I don’t think he’s a hypnotist. I’m a victim of logos wear. And just a heads up here €“ next time you come to visit me, lock your car. Let’s stop the vicious cycle.