Author Archives: AJ Bourg

I wanted to share some organizations that we have supported throughout the years and have done a really good job making the world just a little bit better.

Musana Community Development Organization. Schools, hospitals, women empowerment projects, and more. A model where your gifts are actually investments creating a snowball that will continue to impact more and more people, lifting many people out of poverty. 4 campuses in Uganda with more to come. (disclaimer: I serve on the board of directors and have been involved for over ten years. Would love to chat more if anyone is interested.)

Court Appointed Special Advocates. (National Office, Boulder CASA, 17th Judicial District CASA) CASA provides a trained volunteer for kids in foster care to hang out with and advocate for the best interests of kids. We’re fortunate that the kids we have fostered have had CASAs and they have been really awesome. My wife also served as a CASA for a kid before we became foster parents.

Local foodbanks. (here in Colorado we have supported Sister Carmen in Lafayette, FISH in Broomfield, and the OUR Center in Longmont) These provide important resources in the community in the form of food, transportation and other ways to stand in the gap for people facing hard times in our communities.

Youth For Christ Juvenile Justice Ministry. Have you ever visited a kid locked up in juvenile justice programs? I have and it is a bleak and dark place. All kids—even and maybe especially kids who have offended—need hope and someone to believe in them. YFC JJM takes great care of kids who most of the rest of the world so easily overlooks.

Local Humane Societies. (for us, Longmont Humane Society is a favorite) Humane societies provide important help to pets and helping them find great homes. We have adopted several dogs, cats and guinea pigs specifically from LHS and love the work they do.

I’ll save the lecture for some other time. A value that I have tried to live out is that we give up things we love for things we love even more. What you give up is the true testimony for what you do and do not love. We love to try to make the world a slightly better place, one person, one hour, one dollar at a time.

I’m trying out the Web Stories plugin for WordPress and wanted to try it out with some of my favorite subjects — Swiss Mountains!

I got to thinking of a few of the other subscription type services we have had over the years.

America the Beautiful. National Park Service pass. $80/yr.
We live near an incredible national park, Rocky Mountain, and try to get up there every month or two. The America the Beautiful pass gives you access to all National Parks. James Bryce said that the National Parks are the best idea America ever had and I have to agree. $6.67/mo to have access to all of them is an incredible deal.

Boulder Openspace and Mountain Parks (OSMP) parking permit. $25/yr.
We live close enough to several City of Boulder OSMP spaces that I take really good advantage of this permit. I just went hiking twice in the past week at two different OSMP spots: Mt. Sanitas and Shadow Canyon. As I was coming down from Mt. Sanitas I saw two separate Golden Eagles flying overhead. Several times I thought to myself how Boulder hiking doesn’t deserve to be SO GOOD. Making a list of additional hiking spots to check out in the next year.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife Pass. Was $80/yr, now $29/yr.
The CPW pass is now included as an optional but default fee on all Colorado vehicle registrations, which resulted in a massive price cut. There are several wonderful state parks within 45 minutes of my house, and many more within just a few hours. A couple years ago I took the rooftop tent to Steamboat Lake State Park and it was magical. Looking forward to getting out and enjoying more state parks.

Are you noticing a theme with these? Haha.

Denver Botanic Gardens. $70/yr.
This is something my wife got several years in a row and would bring me along for free as her plus one. 🙂 The gardens are a lovely place to visit in the middle of the week, get a book or take your laptop and get some work done. Especially wonderful in the spring!

Altogether, these “subscriptions” would cost us $233/yr or $19.42/month. We rarely always have each subscription “active” — we may sometimes let one or another lapse as we find ourselves in a season where we can’t do all of the things all at once. This just goes to show how much value these relatively low cost “subscriptions” provide. I can pay Boulder $25/yr and get several dozen hours of enjoyment exploring and hiking and mountain biking all the trails.

While I like Netflix, and Apple TV+, and all the other digital subscriptions I’ve tried — $20/mo doesn’t prove anywhere near as much value in TV as it does in all the outdoor activities afforded above.

That said, it is snowing out as I write this, and as soon as I hit publish, I’ll probably go watch some TV instead of going hiking. So it’s not valueless, I just think these outdoor experiences are way more fulfilling.

I’ve been enjoying all the posts about people’s default apps, and other posts about subscriptions. I’ve found many new awesome people to follow through my feed reader. So here’s my contribution.

I’m pretty boring, for personal use I generally use all the default apps (Calendar, Mail, Notes, Safari, Contacts, etc) because I find them sufficient for my needs, and I have history in all of these apps going back to 2004 or 2005. Seriously, I can look at my calendar from 2005 to see what I was doing back in college because that was the first year I got a Mac.

For work, I use whatever they give me, usually Gmail & Slack.

Outside the Apple apps, here’s what I’ve settled on for other uses:

• Tasks: Things. (I am VERY bad at keeping this up to date)
• Journaling: DayOne. (1,500+ streak strong! :D)
• Feed reader: Reeder
• Bible: NeuBible except when I really want to read the Message or NLT, then YouVersion
• Podcasts: Pocket Casts (though I have not listened to a podcast in over a year at this point)
• Read it later: Pocket (and I’m very unhappy with it)
• Music: Apple Music (it’s only okay)
• Library books: Libby (love it)
• Audio book subscription: Libro (support independent booksellers!)

Subscriptions

Alas, it is hard to get by these days without a bunch of subscriptions. Here’s what I have:

• Apple One Premier: $38 + tax.
  • When it started, it was only $30/month. I use all the services that are included (top ones being: Apple Music, TV+, Fitness, and photo storage space) but the price has been increasing much faster than the value. If there’s another price increase, I will probably seriously look at scaling this back or eliminating it entirely.
• YouTube TV: $73/mo.
  • This one is new for our family, got it to give our media obsessed (especially sports obsessed) kids something to watch at our house instead of going out to Buffalo Wild Wings every-time there’s a game. It’s basically cable but with a much better digital UI.
• Netflix: included in cell-phone plan.
  • We’re back on Netflix. Of all the streaming services, I find Netflix content to be the most mediocre. For a while we subscribed to the $9.99 ad-free plan, but they killed that literally a week after we subscribed. We changed cell-phone providers and now it’s included in that plan. I wouldn’t bother otherwise.
• Libro.fm: $15/mo
  • Basically Audible but supporting independent bookstores. I just put this on pause because I now am way behind on using my credits. Without a daily commute, I’m finding I listen to very little audio content.
• Journaling: DayOne premium. $25/yr.
  • We’ll see what Apple’s journal app provides after a few years of updates, but I am liking DayOne quite a bit.
• Website: Vultr. $10/mo.
  • Hosting this blog on a little instance for $10/mo. Been completely satisfied with them.

Previous subscriptions

• Disney Plus.
  • I loved Disney+ when it came out and considered it a great deal at $7.99/mo. Now at $14.99/mo, I’ve already watched most of the back catalog I was interested in, and all the new content is hit or miss. Andor was amazing. Most of the rest of new content was not that appealing.

Growing up — all the dads in the neighborhood had leaf blowers and were obsessed with blowing leaves around. I have become one of them.

Actually, I think my newest obsession is just moving air. Here are some of my favorite ways to move air.

1. Dyson Stick Vacuum. We got the v11 animal (I think?) and frankly I think Dyson has too many models of vacuums to pick from. But we got ours on sale at Costco and I love this thing. It’s battery operated and we put ours in the kitchen. Our old vacuum cleaner was a chore to move around, so it was a big production to vacuum the house. Not this portable little Dyson. It’s right there, super easy to carry to anywhere that we need it, and it does a great job on both our hard floors and rugs. I wouldn’t say that we vacuum any more consistently then before, but anytime I notice a problem (crumbs on the floor, dog hair on the couch, whatever) — it takes about 45 seconds to solve — so we are spot cleaning WAY more then before. (Pro tip: check the Dyson renewed store for deals)
2. Electric leaf blower. This thing came in a kit of electric tools we bought from Home Depot. This thing is AMAZING. It’s way quieter than the gas powered ones that our neighbors have. And since we live on a corner lot, we have a lot of sidewalk. Usually I’m blowing leaves from the gutters and sidewalks on to our yard (because leaf mulch is so good for the soil!). I’m also frequently using this to quickly clean the dirt that accumulates in our garage, or blow leaves off the trampoline, or whatever. Since it came in a kit, it’s not a particularly powerful leaf blower and I’m thinking of upgrading to one of the higher powered ones.
3. Air duster. I have had other dusters, including a battery operated one, but this one is more expensive and it plugs in. That makes it slightly more inconvenient but my gosh this thing is SUPER powerful. In high mode, I’m pretty sure this thing is more powerful than those cans of compressed air. I like using this to dust things like our plants, ceiling fans, regular fans (the one in our bedroom was getting SO gross), keyboards, vents, and surfaces. Then I’ll follow up a few minutes later by running the vacuum cleaner across the floor to pick up all the dust that settled on the ground.

Okay I might be obsessed with moving air. This doesn’t even count the whole house fan we use over the summer (which is GREAT for saving on A/C), or the fact that my ecobee has a built in air quality sensor that is making me think we should get an air purifier to cut down on the dust and improve air-quality inside.

I probably have been spending too much time on my local Next Door group. But, a lot of people there are complaining about various new projects that are working to bring more housing to our area.

Now—granted—I live in the very middle of peak suburbia. But it never ceases to amaze me how the complaints about more density in new housing developments always fall back to a couple of issues.

First, they complain about “ugly apartment” buildings. And while I think a lot of modern development can be a bit soulless, I think the same thing about most new single family housing as well. And I don’t think there’s anything beautiful about some of the new houses that are anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 square feet and may have only two or three people living in them.

Next, they always complain about all the extra traffic from “cramming” a bunch of people into a space. Okay, well never-mind that the people who most often complain about this sort of thing also complain about public transportation and oppose all the efforts to improve transit. (which is the only cure for traffic)

But I think what frustrates me at times is the short-sightedness. Yes – I think there’s a place for single family houses. When you have kids, it’s actually really great to have a good backyard and nice suburban neighborhoods. But—shocker—not everybody has that.

More townhouses, condos and apartments give lots more options for lots more people. I live in a 70-year-old neighborhood that we love, and many of my neighbors are quite old. It’s pretty common (and sad) to see an estate sale at a neighbor’s house and then a few weeks later, a for-sale sign to go up in the yard. Usually these houses have been poorly maintained as the aging owner lacks the ability or finances to maintain their house like they used to.

With more housing types available, I wonder if more older people would choose to leave their single family houses for smaller apartments and town-homes that have less maintenance. And especially if they could remain in a community they love. This would be a benefit both to the older person with less to maintain and worry about, and to whatever young family would move up into the formerly occupied house.

By making effective alternatives available for people, you can accomplish a few things at once. You can enable a higher supply of single family homes without necessarily building more homes. (obviously how significant of an effect this will have will vary greatly on many different factors)

This is the point that I think is often lost with NIMBY advocates. They look at a parcel of land, and perhaps it can fit a few dozen single family homes, but hundreds of apartments and townhomes and other dense housing. The effect this would have on freeing up single family housing is hard to measure — but I don’t think it’s zero.

At the end of the day, everyone’s needs are different, and creating a diversity of housing will better serve an entire community’s needs.

I feel like I can be a pretty cynical person, but occasionally I will open up social media and go hoooboy. This happened to me yesterday after reading some posts on NextDoor (NextDoor seems to be even worse than Twitter and I don’t understand why) after a pretty big and exciting development project got approved in our city. There’s a lot of posts about how poorly our city is run and how this project is going to fall apart and, well, yada yada yada.

Now, I have my own cynicism about this project myself. There’s a lady on city council that is absolutely obsessed about the dirt that is going to be displaced from this project and where is it all going to go. Like, lady, you don’t think a construction company is going to know what to do with a pile of dirt? She has brought it up at every city council meeting I’ve listened to in the past 2 years and I just don’t understand why that’s her main concern about this project or why the developer’s answers the previous meetings are forgotten and we have to rehash how moving dirt is expensive and they will find good uses for it as efficiently as possible.

But if you were to listen to the people on NextDoor you would think we live in some sort of poorly run hellhole that is one or two steps away from total societal collapse. Do we live in the same place? I moved to this city for a lot of reasons but one of them is that it’s pretty well run. Is it perfect? Of course not. Could it do better? Always. And calling out where we can do better is often how we do better.

But there seems to be a pervasive hopelessness or cynicism about almost everything. Have you been to other places in the world? It’s not perfect and we have some things we really need to work on — but there’s a lot to celebrate too.

Yesterday as I was driving home from a volunteer meeting I was getting pretty cynical about something someone said in the meeting. I was getting really frustrated. And I stopped myself to really analyze why I was getting upset. Were there things that happened imperfectly and I would have liked to see happen better? Yeah. If I were in charge and did the same thing, would I want to receive more grace then what I’m currently giving this person? Yes, that too. And, in the grand scheme of things, are things going really well and am I hyper-focusing on one little thing and blowing it way out of proportion? Yes, absolutely.

And recognizing it, I stopped doing that. I moved on to other things.

Life’s too short.

It’s been about a year since I’ve ridden my ebike, my new bike has taken most of my energy. But I finally fixed the flat tire and went for a nice and long 30 mile ride on a very hot day.

I love all sorts of bike riding. The ebike is really great for going longer distances and exploring paths I don’t normally ride. The extra power gives me a lot of confidence to try routes I may not be comfortable with on my acoustic bikes. I always know I can make it home with the battery power.

Today’s ride was so great because I explored a new path, and of that 30 miles, easily 26 miles were on dedicated trails with zero interaction with cars. Heavenly!

Did you ever wonder how electricity is generated and distributed at the bases on the South Pole? No, just me?

Well buckle up, there’s a blog post with a ton of information. And, be still my beating heart, the whole blog has more where that came from.

I think I just found my new internet obsession.

Every now and again, I need to revisit this amazing section from King’s Cross, a Tim Keller book.

There are a lot of wounded people out there. They are emotionally sinking, they’re hurting, and they desperately need to be loved. And when they are with you, you want to look at your watch and make a graceful exit, because listening to them with all their problems can be grueling. It can be exhausting to be a friend to an emotionally damaged person. The only way they’re going to start filling up emotionally is if somebody loves them, and the only way to love them is to let yourself be emotionally drained. Some of your fullness is going to have to go into them, and you have to empty out to some degree. If you hold on to your emotional comfort and simply avoid those people, they will sink. The only way to love them is through substitutionary sacrifice.

Or think of an even more dramatic example—parenting. When you have children, they’re in a state of dependency. They have so many needs; they can’t stand on their own. And they will not just grow out of their dependency automatically. The only way that your children will grow beyond their dependency into self—sufficient adults is for you to essentially abandon your own independence for twenty years or so. When they are young, for example, you’ve got to read to them and read to them—otherwise they won’t develop intellectually. Lots of their books will be boring to you. And you have to listen to your children, and keep listening as they say all kinds of things that make for less than scintillating conversation.

And then there’s dressing, bathing, feeding, and teaching them to do these things for themselves. Furthermore, children need about five affirmations for every criticism they hear from you. Unless you sacrifice much of your freedom and a good bit of your time, your children will not grow up healthy and equipped.

King’s Cross by Tim Keller, page 142.