Vacation Ate My Brain

Hey guys!

I may not write all that often here, but I'm glad to find out that this site is serving another purpose other than helping me organize my thoughts...a place for old friends to find me. Hi Jonathan, you rock for tracking Tim and I down after all these years, and without Facebook too! ^_^

So here's the update on life as it currently stands. Fair warning, there's a LOT going on right now. First off, vacation was great! I did spend a fair amount of it in doctors' offices getting pills, tests, and shots, but I'm all set for Mexico now and at least this way I had something to do. I say that because I was about one month early for shopping for plants at the local nurseries, and I didn't go shopping because I was trying to be good. I did play a few hours of video games, but not as much as I thought I would, and I didn't finish up my computer cleaning because the project is just too vast. It'll take me a year, seriously! (Dang it for downloading all those ebooks and game remixes!) I did clean out my attic and move back downstairs, so my loft is ready for crafting/playing whatever, and I did pull out a few more of the toy figures I own to display. But all in all, that was it. By the time two weeks were up I was longing for my regular work routine but dreading the work itself.

I did go on Retreat with the Underground to a cabin up in the mountains, where most of us went skiing or sledding and the rest of us ate food and played Egyptian Ratscrew. Very entertaining. If you want to see pictures, they're up on the Underground Facebook page. I'm just posting this video here because it makes me laugh my head off. (Sorry D!) Its stuff like this that makes a group of people into friends, ya know?

Speaking of church, guess what's responsible for eating up a lot of time and brainpower at the moment! *laugh* I'm in the Membership Class for Cornerstone this semester of Life Pathways and we are currently going through the general doctrinal statement of the Assembly of God denomination. We have just hit...(you guessed it!)...baptism into the Holy Spirit, and the initial physical manifestations thereof! The poor Calvinist in me is sooooo confused. Quite apart from the question of whether I agree with their point of view, I just plain don't understand it! I knew that this issue was going to pop up at some point when I decided to make Cornerstone my church home, but I put off wrestling with it until this class when I could talk to people about it. So, now is the time. My first assignment for myself is to pull out my Strongs and go through the Bible, studying the role of the Holy Spirit throughout Scripture. Then I'm going to buy the book Pastor Mark recommended, read it, and make my own conclusions. Hopefully in time for me to have a class period still available to ask questions. Fortunately it doesn't sound like you have to agree with every little point to be a member of Cornerstone, so I doubt this is going to be a problem for anyone other than me and I'll settle it soon enough.

This week the Choir starts practicing for our Easter production, complete with music and 4-part harmony. We have a book to read for Choir too, one that Pastor Travis says has strongly influenced the way he does things personally. Well, we don't have to read it, but I asked for it when he first came on staff last year and I'm only half done, so I need to finish it. You'll be getting a review on it soon enough, I'm sure. Add to that the Life Journal I'm learning to use and this new lady Bible scholar who spoke a very good word to us on Sunday and I'm eager to read more of, and I've got a VERY full study plate. Its like being back with the Bible profs at GCC!

Which leads me to post a list of books I'm currently reading or will be reading soon, depending on when I receive them in the mail. I will be taking a fair number of these with me to Mexico, I'm thinking.

• The Life Journal, created by Wayne Cordeiro
• Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, by John Deere
• Anonymous, by Alicia Britt Chole
• Holy Discontent, by Bill Hybels
• At the Bench & At the Helm: A Laboratory Navagator by Kathy Barker
• Marketing & Selling Your Handmade Jewelry, by Viki Lareau
• The Physics of Baseball, by Dr. Robert K. Adair
• various garden books and magazines

Obviously the jewelry and gardening books aren't directly related to church, but it is thanks to Cornerstone that I'm thinking about selling my stuff at all. I would like to do what I can (without making it a second job) to reduce my credit card bill and start making a little more headway in savings. Its really bothering me right now that I'm going to have a number of expenses this year that I can't really absorb into my current income/savings, and I've decided that if God gives the go ahead (and there are plenty of roadblocks to overcome so it will be pretty obvious if He does) I'm going to try out my craft designs at Bowiefest this year in June. Talk about a little freaky!! I basically was thinking about it all during my vacation.

I mentioned Mexico just a minute ago, so I'll explain. This year, my lab is hosting the first ever Astyanax International Meeting for a number of astyanax researchers around the world down in Taninul, Mexico. Taninul is the "hotel" we use as a base camp when we go caving down there. It's pretty nice as far as Mexican hotels go, but it is in the tropical flatlands so there's no Internet, no phone coverage, not a whole lot of technical amenities like the hotels up here, and you may wake up to find a scorpion on the floor or a toilet that overflows (the pipes are pretty old). But the people are polite and kind, and as long as you're not expecting a tourist town (it stands alone in the country, the nearest town is 35 minutes away), its a nice place. I'm starting to think that Bill enjoys quiet, isolated places like this. The Marine station in Roscoff, France is much the same, except for the ghosts.

Anyways, through a number of interesting events the planning and prep for this whole conference has fallen squarely on the shoulders of the boss, myself, and Spela, who is the only one of us who speaks any Spanish. I'm responsible for supplies, technology, contact management, and purchasing, she's been doing the shirts, hotel arrangements, and transportation, and Bill is working on the abstracts, presentations, and general arrangements. I'm excited to attend as this will be my first real scientific conference, but I'm also going to be glad when its all over. The irony of event planning, I know. In the meantime, just because we're hosting a conference doesn't mean that work is off. Bill's got a lot of experiments planned for me to do over the next couple of months as we attempt to start doing work with results again. And in April we're due for the annual fun with DES and IACUC, always a part of my year I look forward to. (Karin, its like May and June for you. Woot.)

So that's what's going on, and what I'll be up to. I do hope to surface enough to be social over the next few months. After all, Spring Training has started and I have to inflict you all with my baseball/softball obsession, just to be consistant you know. ~_^