pennstar.net
Dave & Pen's place on the Web
Every New Day
Aug 24th
The other day I was traveling to work, the final song Five Iron Frenzy ever played “Every New Day” started playing on my iPod. For those of you who don’t know, Five Iron Frenzy were a Christian Ska Band. Finishing their musical career with this song was no surprise, as all of their concerts finished with Every new Day. What really struck me was how much of a praise song to God it was. At the end they basically stood their in front of thousands of people and said “Everything we did, we did for you God.”
When I was young, the smallest trick of light,
Could catch my eye,
Then life was new and every new day,
I thought that I could fly.
I believed in what I hoped for,
And I hoped for things unseen,
I had wings and dreams could soar,
I just don’t feel like flying anymore.
When the stars threw down their spears,
Watered Heaven with their tears,
Before words were spoken,
Before eternity.
Dear Father, I need you,
Your strength my heart to mend.
I want to fly higher,
Every new day again.
When I was small, the furthest I could reach,
Was not so high,
Then I thought the world was so much smaller,
Feeling that I could fly.
Through distant deeps and skies,
Behind infinity,
Below the face of Heaven,
He stoops to create me.
Dear Father, I need you,
Your strength my heart to mend.
I want to fly higher,
Every new day again.
Man versus himself.
Man versus machine.
Man versus the world.
Mankind versus me.
The struggles go on,
The wisdom I lack,
The burdens keep piling
Up on my back.
So hard to breathe,
To take the next step.
The mountain is high,
I wait in the depths.
Yearning for grace,
And hoping for peace.
Dear God…
Increase.
Healing hands of God have mercy on our unclean souls once again.
Jesus Christ, light of the world burning bright within our hearts forever.
Freedom means love without condition,
without a beginning or an end.
Here’s my heart, let it be forever Yours,
Only You can make every new day seem so new
A video of their final performance of the show is below. When I watched it I realised that, if you are a christian band, and you play the final song of your career with people raising their hands in the air praising God then, it was all worth it.
Thanks Five Iron Frenzy for the great music, it’s still relevant 7 years after your final performance.
Elementary School
Aug 9th
Today Daniel started school at Freeman’s Mill Elementary.
There had been a few weeks of lead up with a New Parent and Student night at the school, and and “orientation day” where we got to meet Daniel’s 1st grade teacher Mrs Reece. But today was “The Day!”
When we asked Daniel what he was looking forward to, his response was “Learning new things and making new friends.” That is a great was to approach a new school year.
As it was the first day of school, the whole family took Daniel down to catch the bus. There Daniel got to meet a couple of girls who are going to his school.
When the bus arrived, Daniel was the first one on the bus. It was as if he had been doing it all his life. Up he went. The bus driver checked his bus tag and told him where his seat was. Within a few moments the bus was leaving and Daniel was off to his first day of Elementary school.
Pen left work early today to pick Daniel up from the bus. Due to it being the first day of school, things run a bit late, she and Stephie ended up waiting 40min more than they should have in the blaring heat due to the bus running late. We have been assured that this only happens on the first day of school.
How did Daniel go today? Daniel LOVED school. In his words “It was Awweeeesome!”.
We were most impressed that when he got to school he was able to find his class room all by himself. He also found out that the boy he sits next to has the same backpack as he does (Star Wars), so they already have something in common. He loved getting his own lunch, meeting new people and learning new things. He did say that the questions they asked today in class were “too easy”. No surprise there, he is a very bright kid.
It seems like Daniel was meant to be at school. He thrives on structure and is a great learner.
So Day 1 of Elementary School is done, he only has another 11 years to go before he finishes with his initial schooling. Even though it seems like a long way off, I am sure the time will fly by.
Street Cop
Aug 2nd
This past week I have been reading a book called Street Cop.
Street Cop is written by a good friend of mine Dave Spell. Dave wrote this book after 30 years of service in the Gwinnett County police force. As well as being a Lieutenant in the police force, Dave also holds a Ph.d in Theology and teaches at the C3 Atlanta School of Ministry.
Street Cop is an easy read, it is light hearted at times and deadly serious at others. Overall it gives you a great understanding of what the boys in blue go through when serving and protecting. It also makes you wonder how we managed to get so many crazy people in this world, and why Dave is the one who has had to met them all. 
While Dave is a good mate of mine, I’m not recommending his book just because he is a mate. This is a book that I believe would be enjoyed by all. If you are looking for a birthday present, or a Fathers Day present (if you are in Oz) or even a Christmas present if you start your shopping four months in advance, you should seriously consider getting Street Cop.
New Hosting Provider
Jul 26th
After many years with the same web hosting provider this weekend I decided to change. The reason behind it is over time I saw the performance of Pennstar.net slowly degrading. So much so that I was having trouble bringing up the site or logging into the admin area. So the site is now hosted by www.asmallorange.com. They were referred to me by a friend of mine and so far I there is a noticeable difference in the performance of the site.
In other news I have attended three birthday parties in the past 4 days.
The first party was for our neighbor’s Jason and Julie’s youngest Jeslyn. Jeslyn turned 2 and had a small family birthday at Chuck E Cheese’s. Penni and I felt very honored that our family was invited to the “family” birthday party. All of the kids loved hanging out and playing on all the stuff. Daniel is now addicted to Air Hockey. I swear he played something like five games straight against Jeslyn’s older brother Jase.
Here is a video of the kids all dancing around at Chuck E Cheese’s
Last night the awesome Annie Spell came over and watched our kids for us, so Penni and I could go and celebrate our friend Rick’s 50th birthday party. It was a Hawaiian themed party. Neither Penni nor I had any Hawaiian shirts, clothes etc, but that didn’t matter as when we got there they had grass skirts for everyone to wear It was a great party with lots of funny stories told.
The final party was today. Stephanie’s friend Hailey is turning four and she was also having a party at Chuck E Cheese’s. This was a little kids only party, so I took Stephanie to the party while Penni took Daniel to get a new backpack for school and then pick up my movie tickets so I could see Inception with my mate Collin. Inception is one cool movie!
It was a very full weekend, adding on top of it all the migration of Pennstar.net to a new host means it might be time to go back to work to have a rest.
Home again
Jul 16th
We’ve been back a few days and are now fully into the swing of life again. Pen had a little bit of jetlag but nothing major.
While we were traveling pennstar.net was updated using the WordPress for Android App. I was most impressed with how well it worked. The best part about it was being able to work offline.
This was critical as I rarely had internet access and was thus able to compose blog posts in pieces, instead of trying to compose something in the 30min I had internet.
I found myself writing snippits after we had been to a site or first thing in the morning. The WordPress app pretty much allowed me to do most of the critical functions required to write a blog post.
Once we found a free wifi spot, it was easy to complete the post. Uploading the finished article, including pictures taken on my phone was a snap.
So a big thankyou to the WordPress developers who created the app you made blogging while in Paris possible. Also a big thankyou to everyone who came to our blog and read about our travels.
Paris Day 6
Jul 14th
So we didn’t get to do a night tour as we left the booking a bit late. What we did instead is go and see the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triumph all lit up.
Both of these monuments are very easy to see from our hotel. The best view in Paris of the Eiffel tower is a 10min walk from our hotel at a place called Palias De Chaillit.
When we got there at 8:30pm it wasn’t dark yet so we went and had dinner at an English pub called FROG XIV. Then at 9:45pm when it was finally getting dark we walked back to view the tower.
To see the Arch De Triumph we caught a train for a couple of stops and got a great view. Around the Arc everything was being prepared for today which is a national holiday in France with a big parade that goes past the Arc.
As for today we left our hotel at 9:00am to catch a train to the airport. We immediately ran into the problem of the ticket machines not accepting our credit cards (I have had this problem before in Australia but didn’t think of it at the time). To solve the problem I left Pen with the bags and ran to the bank to withdraw some money.
After changing ticket machines to one that accepted bills we were off and running again.
After catching the train all week, getting to the airport on the metro was pretty easy. All we had to do was change lines twice and as a bonus we got an express train for the final part of the journey to Charles de Gaul airport. The total train trip took abour 1hr 10min.
One thing to know about CDG is that it takes a long time to get your tickets, get through immigration and then through security. All in all it took about 1.5hrs to do that.
Another thing about CDG is that it is really nice to look at as it has a somed roof. The downside of that is that tha acoustics are terrible. It is really hard to work out what they are saying on the announcements. This didn’t help when they were trying to tell us the new departure time for our flight.
The flight was delayed two hours and as a bonus Pen got the honor of having further inspection done on her bags and a pat down to ensure she wasn’t a terrorist. You never know about these Australians traveling to the US.
Btw the weather was terrible today in France so we are not really missing anything, although it was mainly the weather that caused our two hor flight delay.
Still we managed to get to Atlanta only an hour late. It was interesting as it was the first time we had gone through customs and immegration in Atlanta. You would think that after 9 years in the city we would have flown an international flight out of Atlanta before now.
We had a great holiday and would love to visit France again one day.
Paris Day 5
Jul 13th
Last night while we were out for dinner some French Navy personel came into the bar. Being the first time I had ever seen the French Navy uniform the only thing I could think of is what the Navy officers must say at recruit training.
“Men I know you have all heard rumors about the Navy being Gay. These rumors are not true. To help combat them we have decided to put pompoms on the top of each of your hats.”
And now for something completely different.
Being our last full day in Paris you would think we would try and fit as much in as possible. We decided to go the other route and take things slow. i.e. look at all the stuff we had bought, write some postcards to Australia and generally just hang out.
We did hower take a river cruise up and down the the Seine. This was an hour long trip up and down the river. We got to see a different view of most of the sites we traveled to by train. Many pictures were snapped on the trip.
Tonight we plan on doing a tour of Paris to see evrything at night. At this point in time it is a plan only as you need to reserve these things and we haven’t quite got around to that yet.
Some of the things we have learnt while being here is that the French are really quite nice and helpful. If you want to go shopping for clothes etc then you should do that after hours. Most of the monuments close at 6pm but some clothing shops (especially on the main shopping strip) are open until 10pm. I have also confirmed my belief that America is pretty much the only country where American Express cards are taken everywhere.
Tomorrow we head back home. It will be a shame to leave Paris but it will be great to get back and see the kids again. Annie Spell has been doing a bang up job looking after them.
Paris Day 4
Jul 12th
We completed day 3 with a trip to the Louve. That place is huge! The art work on display there is amazing. We randomly chose a wing to view and founf that it was the one holding the Mona Lisa. So yes Penni and I have now seen the Mona Lisa.
Pen has decided that it’s been great to see everything, but her favorite thing has been the food over here. She loves being able to walk up to a cafe, sit outside and order quality food. We have seen very few chain restuarants in our travels.
Today we planed on making further use of our train pass and travel as far as we can on the train line to see something. Our detination was Vincennes Castle. The castle is the highest keep in Europe and was used over the years by the Kings of France as afortified residence and a holding place for political prisoners.
In addition to the castle there was a chapel based on La Chappelle that we saw yesterday. When we went in I took a picture of the stained glass windows and was propmptly told in french that I can’t take photos. Both Pen and I missed the sign as we came in. I still have the picture though.
It was amazing that something so beautiful had so few tourists. It was very easy to miander around at your own pace without the press of crowds.
We then headed off to Basilica of the Sacred-Heart. This was another amazing feat of architecture and the view from the church steps was amazing. One of the signs out of the front of the church stated that for 125 years day and night someone has been praying. That’s pretty impressive!
Paris Day 3
Jul 11th
Day 3 started out with the luxury of sleeping in. Our kids are early risers so rarely do we get to sleep past 6 or 6:30am. Today we rose at 8:30am and headed down for breakfast about an hour later.
We had been tossing up whether or not to take an open bus tour around Paris. We eventually decided that we should put our train pass to good use and not take the bus (much faster travel time). So off we went to St-Michael Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle for our first couple of stops for the day.
Sainte-Chapelle is amazing with their stain glass windows. Unfortunately they are restoring some windows and we didn’t get the full effect. Still it was incredible.
We visited Notre-Dame cathedral while a mass was on so we got to experience the full thing. The cathedral is huge and really impressive.
On a different note probably the funniest thing we have seen while here, was when we were lining up to go up the Eiffel Tower. While waiting in line there are all these people trying to hawk their wares. At one point they all started running. Soon we saw two policemen on bikes riding casually through the area. Once the police disappeared all the people all appeared again. It was like a bunch of galahs that had been scared.
Paris Day 1 & 2
Jul 10th
It is now 4pm on our second day in Paris. It has been a great vacation so far even with the flight problems we had.
We left on Thursday night after turning the house and kids over to the wonderful Annie Spell. Made it to the airport wioth plenty of time to spare. After a quick bite to eat we boarded our plane. The plane backed away from the gate relatively on time but then sat there. In fact we sat there for an hour and a half, where upon we learnt that there was problems with one of the engines. So back into the gate we went and waited another hour while we got a new plane.
This time we got underway. We landed in Paris 4 hours late which started our next adventure. We needed to collect the 5 day train passes we had ordered, so we jumped into a taxi and showed the driver the address we wanted to go to.
It turns out our really nice taxi driver didn’t speak any english (not so good), but Penni managed to dredge up enough of her year 7 french class to explain we needed to be at the address by 6pm (time was 5pm).
The taxi driver got us there with 5min to spare and even got out of the car to help us find the travel agent.
After collecting our train passes we then successfully navigated the metro system to our hotel.
We followed that up with wine, cheese and dinner at a little cafe areound the corner from our hotel.
End of Day 1
Today we have seen two of the major sites of Paris, the Eiffle Tower and the Arc de Triumph.
It is worth the 1 hour wait to get ticket and get up to the first level of The Eiffle Tower. It is even more woth the half hour wait to get the lift to the top of the tower.
The Arc de Triumph is just as spectacular. We climbed to the top and loved the view from there.
Currently we are sitting in McDonalds using their free wifi to bring this post to you.
More later.
