Friday, December 09, 2005

Handyman Ned; or, why I love Mormon Stories

I am not a very handy guy. I blame my father, who breaks out in hives every time we pass a Home Depot. If we ever had to go to the hardware store, he'd take a deep sniff, grimace, and say, "This place smells like work." This is not to say my father is lazy; on the contrary, he's burned through more precious Saturdays than I can remember sweating it out in the yard. But I think he resented yard work and home repairs so much that he resolved to protect me from them as long as possible. Good man. I've only lived in apartments since I moved out of parents' house, so it's never been an issue till now.

Until a few months ago, I had never painted a room, cleaned out a rain-gutter or used an electric drill. It's good to know how to do these things, but I am not looking forward to a lifetime of home maintenance. You may say, "Ned, my pregnant wife builds bookcases in the garage and my 8-year-old daughter mows our lawn. Get over it." My response is, how do you feel about doing service projects for late-twenties, stay-at-home not-Dads? Can you bring your own tools? Thanks.

Yesterday I decided to finally replace all the blinds and curtains in our living room. I wasn't looking forward to it, so I decided to listen to something while I worked. I really admire what John Dehlin is doing over at Mormon Stories, but I'd never actually gotten around to listening to one of his podcasts. Every time I meant to, I'd tell myself that I didn't really have an hour to sit and listen. For some bizarre reason, I didn't think you could fast-forward and pick up a podcast where you left off, so I thought I'd have to listen to the whole thing in one shot.

Well, I got to work, started up the computer, and went a bit crazy. I ended up listening to five of John's podcasts yesterday, or almost half of all he's done so far. They were great. John is still working out the kinks, but I am excited about the future of these broadcasts. The early ones are (way) too long at an hour and a half, but it looks like he's brought in all the newer ones at a lean 45 minutes.

I listened to John's interviews with: the mason, the anti-Mormon, the apologist (1st part only), and RoastedTomatoes and Serenity Valley (2 parts). (This sounds like the set-up of great joke.) John does a good job at letting these people tell their own stories, although sometimes you wish he'd press them a little harder. In particular, I think John did a good job of letting both the anti-Mormon and the apologist present themselves on their own terms but still putting some tough questions to both of them.

If you have some time, I highly recommend listening to some of these podcasts at Mormon Stories. I think I am going to start playing the podcasts on my computer in the background while I browse the bloggernacle at the same time. Thanks for all your work, John; it certainly made mine go by much faster.

7 comments:

lochan said...

Thanks for the heads up. I hadn't heard of this site. This looks interesting.

Stephen said...

What can I say, my wife lays tile on the side ...

Hellmut said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Hellmut said...

Sorry, town square would have been the better term. (Even though markets are usually in town squares, whatever :)).

Hellmut said...

I love Mormon Stories, too. John Dehlin is creating what Mormonism has been lacking: the open town square. I hope that the powers that be will spare him the fate of Sunstone and Dialogue and will refrain from villifying Mormon Stories.

PS: Sorry, Ned for deleting my own post. There was a "not" missing and that makes a big difference.

Anonymous said...

Sounds interesting, but I just can't listen to people talk that long if it's only audio and no visual.

And I once replaced the stick shift in my car! :P

Stephen said...

http://annhendricksshangrila.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-to-do-seth-roberts-diet.html

It works. I've referred to it as "batscience" -- an old meme from TWH -- which means I'm not at all convinced of the logic (batscience = the science behind the various Batman invetnions), but it works.

Easy enough to do. For those of us who really need to lose weight, it really works, or I wouldn't keep doing it.