Do world leaders ever play practical jokes on each other? I mean, does Obama ever send the secret service over to England to cover Gordon Brown’s office with post-it notes?

We are leaving in the morning for the CCCA Ozark Section Conference. Basically it is a conference that gives a lot of regional camps a chance to get together to relax, learn from each other, and learn how to do camp better. I actually really enjoy it, its fun to get to connect with other camps and bounce ideas off of them, give them ideas, talk about how we do things…stuff like that.

I’m teaching a seminar on using social media as a tool for your camp, so Rhett and i will be talking about facebook and youTube and such which should be interesting. Beth will be teaching a class also. Her’s is on camp community. How you keep your staff community healthy, how to support each other, stuff like that.

all this adds up to a late night tonight figuring out exactly what to say about facebook….

I have done a few things recently that make me sit back and say, “Wow…how many degrees do you have?” And before you even get started, I’m being brutally honest here, so no “making fun” comments, only sympathy or sharing similar experiences. Thanks.

Cases in point:

1. I really like my coffee grinder. Except for the power cord. Specifically the length of the power cord. There is only 3 inches of cord, and that just really is not long enough. For a couple years now I’ve been frustrated almost every time I go to use it b/c of that cord length. I recently noticed that some friends have the same coffee grinder that I have, but the power cord on theirs was 3 times as long. A much-improved design modification I thought the maker adjusted between the time I bought mine & they bought theirs. I bought another grinder this weekend so we could have one in the camp office & I could keep mine at home (b/c I get cranky when I can’t make coffee at home b/c my grinder is in the office…and b/c whole bean is really the only way to go.) Well, lo & behold this grinder (same exact one that I have, and our friends have) has a great, long cord…with a cool feature that lets you wrap it back up under the base, to keep things less cluttered. While I was showing this to Ben he said, “Are you SURE yours doesn’t do that?” And of course, while I picked it up and was explaining that, “No, it doesn’t, see…” I unwrapped another foot of cord from around the base of mine. Heh heh…guess my dad was right about reading those owner’s manuals all along…
2. Our answering machine is usually full of messages…mostly because we like to keep the old ones that are funny. One day (several YEARS after we got the machine) as I was impatiently listening to all 8-10 of the messages to get to the last one that I needed to hear I was complaining about this to Ben. That’s when he showed me the “skip” button. Where you can skip ahead to the next message & you don’t have to listen to the whole thing. Now if we could only figure out how to set the clock on the answering machine, we could know what time people actually called our house…instead of the “fake time” that it says they called. (If you call & leave a message at 10am on a Sunday, it will probably tell us the message was left at 7pm on a Tuesday).
3. Our cell phone has about a million phone numbers stored in it. I get quite frustrated scrolling through ALL those names to get to the person in the “T” section of the list. And then Ben showed me (a few weeks ago…we’ve had the phone over 2 years) that you can just hit the letter you’re looking for & it will jump ahead to the first entry for that letter of the alphabet. Genius! Now, why he didn’t tell me about this from the beginning I’ll never know.

Its fun to see people who have worked for me at NLR go out and use what they learned here for God’s glory. I hope that in some small way i was part of that. Ryan is going to be working for an sending organization doing video production, and Justin works for a church and has a production company you can find at www.theysaybuild.com. Both of these guys worked at camp as summer video guys, so its cool to see them going out and using video even more.

so, we have not done an update about what is going on in our life in a while..so here are a few things that have been going on:

Beth is taking Perspectives, i took the class a couple years ago, but it has been good to go back and sit in on a few classes.

I made some postcards to promo some camps we do.

Our friends Cass and Brandi moved to Siloam Springs. It’s kind of strange to not see them every day. Now Cass is a starving artist so buy his music.

Beth spent a weekend with her parents helping move her grandma to a new assisted living facility.

We had lots of ice last week, but not as much as Siloam Springs or the rest of Northwest Arkansas. The further east you go the worse it got. We missed out on the bad stuff this time.

I tried to make some bread the other night but i got the timing all wrong and ended up staying up until 4am, and it was not even very good bread.

I just started reading Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. I have no idea what i think of the book, all i have read is the introduction.

but…I really like the layout. Its not just straight text, the designer used a lot of pictures, illustration, and typography throughout the book. It reminds me of The Ragamuffin Gospel Visual Edition (which i really like). Now, don’t get me wrong, i think a well set (and traditionally set) book is beautiful, and hard to do, but at the same time it’s refreshing to read a book that is a full and serious text, but breaks completely with the norms.

now, if its a good book, all the better.