Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

It’s a done deal: my baby sister got married! I cannot believe it! I am so happy for her and she was radiant on her day. I took Friday off and enjoyed the beautiful Northwest day on the ferry headed toward the Olympic Mountains and Port Townsend where Erin and Darrin are living. It was a wonderful weekend of seeing family and celebrating Erin’s big day. We had a great time staying at Fort Worden in an old officer’s house. I am so blessed to be part of such a wonderful family! A few pictures from the weekend can be found over at Flickr.

Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Darrin and Erin Fiskum!

I used to be such a good blogger… are those days gone forever? Who knows, it’s my blog and I’ll post when I want to!

Hard to believe, but it was three months ago that I was in Greece! Oh the time has flown! School is back in full force and I have really enjoyed my classes (some more than others…). I figured it was time (well way past time, really) to post my pictures from the European adventure to Greece and Germany!

The bulk of my pictures have been post up at Flickr:

I was extremely fortunate to join up with some great friends from high school and their families on this trip and it couldn’t have gone better (well could have done without the missed flights and lost luggage…)!! Here is a Google Map of my itinerary.

Please check out my European adventure photo collection at Flickr! It was such a great experience!

To mix things up a bit, I thought I would do something I don’t often do: a meme. I stole this from Cori, no, I am not original.

The Instructions:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

Can you figure out what my answers were (before looking below the picture)?

1. Rannie and Matt – A wordpress guy.
2. New York Steak
3. Gig Harbor High School
4. Dark Blue Night
5. The Office: Jenna Fischer
6. Special Fashion Week Cherry Coke design
7. Massa Lubrense and Vesuvio
8. chocolate cheese cake
9. Still Life For Teacher
10. In God’s Country
11. Tender Love and Care – cheesy much?
12. Project 365 – Day 137 – I guess “mattithyahu” doesn’t show up that often, my pictures were the only ones there!

Back on August 11th, Erin and I went to another awesome show at The Crocodile Cafe. The Pale Pacific put on two shows because they are going to put out a live CD! How awesome is that? The set list was great; the CD should sound amazing. Cam, Gabe, Greg, and Justin gave a performance quite worthy of being recorded and now Cam just has to find the time to mix all the tapes down. I just hope it comes out soon! We’ll see I guess. I will be sure to keep you updated when it becomes available.

Here’s the scoop, as per usual, I took some pics and some video clips. For your visual enjoyment, check out my Flickr set: The Pale Pacific @ The Crocodile Cafe. Some are posted below as well and will take you to those pictures, but you should check out the full set (and larger versions). AND for your visual and audio enjoyment, I have posted some clips up at YouTube. You should check them out, I am pretty sure you will enjoy them. (You can also check out my Pale Pacific YouTube playlist.

The Pale Pacific Rocks!

Mr. and Mrs. KC and Hilary Dameron and their wedding party

This weekend I had the huge pleasure of heading down to the Dameron “compound” in Montesano, WA and saw two good friends get married. KC and Hilary finally got hitched! Huzzah! The weekend was a whole lot of fun; I got to hang out with friends, eat good food, and relax in the beautiful weather on some equally beautiful property. Hilary was beautiful, KC choked up, and there was lots of dancing: could things have gone any better? To see some of the pictures that I took, check out my Flickr set: KC and Hilary Get Married!

Dan and Stacey… and Hilary and KC… and even Dan and KC’s mom Sammy keep trying to set me up. Think I have a chance?

Back in early August I ended my North Whatcom County Young Life career by taking a bunch of middle schoolers from the Ferndale area down to Wildhorse Canyon in the middle of central Oregon. It was good times. North Whatcom took about 150 students and we joined up with other 500 or so from around the northwest for five days of fun! There the kids could build on the relationships that they have, were served by amazing volunteers, played games, swam, went down zip lines, fell 50 feet in a giant swing, and, most importantly, heard the Gospel Message.

I don’t think I’ll say too much about the trip, but feel free to ask anything about it! Enjoy the pictures from the trip, it really was lots of fun. Check out the full set over at my flickr set: Young Life @ Wildhorse Canyon. There are lots more there! Feel free to comment! You can also view them as a slide show!

The Ferndale team!

We totally love each other!

Ready to take the plunge on the swing with Justin and Dylan!

Climbing the wall… it was a pretty easy route.

A few of us after our night swimming.

The view of Wildhorse Canyon from the top of Communication Hill.

Please check all the other pictures out at the flickr set: Young Life @ Wildhorse Canyon (slideshow). We had such a great time! If you have MySpace you can check out of few video clips that I took: Taking the plunge on the giant swing – Me coming down the zip line – Jade getting smacked in the face with an egg!

Seattle’ Gas Works Park fireworks celebration on Lake Union.

Yes on this year’s celebration of our independence that comes around every 4th of July I managed to take a few pictures. I’m sure you are surprised. Our original idea was to spend the day at Woodland Park Zoo… but then we decided that it would be too expensive… and we are too lazy. So Dan, Stacey, Casey, Jim, and I went to nearby Wallingford Park and had a picnic, played bocce ball, played cards, laid around, and generally just enjoyed ourselves on the bright sunny day. In the evening we had a Long Way Round marathon (there’s nothing like celebrating Independence Day like watching two Brits driving around the world on motorcycles…) and then adjourned to the roof to watch the Gas Works Park fireworks celebration on Lake Union. Without further ado, here are some snapshots from the day (with more of the fireworks in a slideshow at the bottom). Pictures are clickable for larger versions. For those that prefer it, I put a few pics up at a Flickr set as well: 4th of July 2007.

UPDATE: You should also read Laura’s post: It’s Independence Day – Not “The 4th”. Really. Go read up.

Read more…

It had been a while since I saw The Lonely Forest (see my Lonely Forest blog page or their new demo music page at Virb) perform; fortunately I remedied that problem yesterday by walking down to the Fremont Fair where I met up with my sister and Bekah to catch the trio live once again.

Bekah, Erin, and me. With John and Eric in the background… my giant head blocked Braydn, sorry!

There were worries that they might not be able to perform because John’s keyboard was not functioning (which caused great sorrow), but fortunately they were able to borrow one and off they went. There ended up being a pretty decent crowd there and the last minute change of keyboards didn’t seem to prevent the rock from happening. They have done a really good job with the stuff off Nuclear Winter so I am eagerly awaiting its release.

I will be posting some video clips from the show (as well as one from the quick set at The Vera Project the other night) sometime tomorrow… or Tuesday… I’ll let you know. To see more of the pictures I took, check out my flickr set: The Lonely Forest @ The Fremont Street Fair. I have included a few below that will take you to larger versions.

The Lonely Forest’s youngest fan?