July 2011

July was a pretty eventful month. Now that it’s over, it’s time to share the happenings. Jess has been honored at her Old Navy job with a few more hours and manager compliments. Hopefully they’ll decide her seasonal job should continue past the summer.

I’ve been continually applying for jobs and hearing little back from anybody. I’ve come to peace with the fact that the Lord, as always, will open a door at the right time. The truth is, there’s been a lot of work on the house I’ve been able to focus on because of my unemployment.

House Update

A New Game Project

With a portion of my time, I’ve also been able to work on an indie game project a lot with my brother Arden Jacob this month. We became fans of an indie game called Terraria, which he researched to discover that it brought in something like $4.3 million in the first month. A huge portion of that stayed with the digital distributor, Steam, but the game inspired us to make something of somewhat similar caliber. We feel more than capable and have some fun game ideas. Hopefully this project will provide the support that Jess and I need to continue our musical pursuits and also pave the way for Arden and I to chase our dream of making more video games.

I’ll share more on this game project once there’s enough content to actually be interesting. I will say that it’s a sandbox platform game in a SteamPunk world with endless randomly-generated islands to explore on a custom built airship… or at least that’s what we’re aiming at so far.

Church Family

This past month at our church, StonePoint, I was honored by the Worship Pastor there by being asked to lead a weekend service’s music/band while he and his wife were out of town. I had Jess join me on a mic. With the level of excellence the team upholds (no sheet music, accompaniment tracks & professional musicianship), it was definitely a challenge, but a fun opportunity for me grow and get to become known as part of the StonePoint family. I’ve been playing and singing every week since June sometime now. It’s been encouraging to get people’s feedback there… hearing that people like the sound of my voice. One lady even compared me to Kurt Cobain. Haha, that’s a new one.

Adventures

Jess and I got to enjoy some shows this month. On the 4th, we went to Centenial Park in Atlanta, where a handful of bands were playing…

Von Grey – a group of sisters

The Key – a solid Atlanta-based group

Crystal Bowersox – an American Idol finalist

…and of course there were some mind-blowing fireworks, shooting off of buildings all around the park. It was intense.

Early on in July, we went to explore a nearby lake, at John Tanner Park.

Supposedly the lake there has the largest lake-beach in GA. It wasn’t huge, but big enough to swim in I guess.

A trail went around the small lake… maybe a mile around.

There was also a nice pond, separated from the lake.

One path the trail took kind of went into a swamp maze.

Near the end of the month, we took our “date night” to Atlanta. We really like HoneyHoney a band that was opening for Christina Perri, who were were also willing to see. As always, HoneyHoney put on a great show.