Driving by braille

Yeah, sue me, I am a little bit slow on posting! :~) So I got to go to the Steven Curtis Chapman concert up at the Ford Center this past Thursday the 10th. The All Things New Tour is totally sweet! I got to hear two other totally great bands as well - and . What a wonderful time of worship and praise and just having a whole lot of fun! It was certainly great to get to spend some time with Kelsey as well. My favorite songs of the evening: "Indescribable" - Chris Tomlin, "Holy is the Lord" - Chris Tomlin, "Voice of Truth" - Casting Crowns, "Your Love Is Extravagant" - Casting Crowns, "Speechless" - Steven Curtis, and "The Great Adventure" - Steven Curtis. I was certainly glad that Kelsey’s sister had managed to get a couple of extra tickets so that I could have a great evening of worship and praise!

Welcome to the first post of the month! I have a lot of news, so I will try to get it down to a somewhat manageable size so that it is digested easier. Life has been a bit crazy, because last week I was getting ready for the 1st Annual Impact Ski Trip. And what fun it was! We left around 3:30 on Thursday afternoon and drove through the night, getting into Pagosa Springs at around 3:15. The drive out was uneventful - the only exciting part was right as we were nearing Pagosa, some elk decided that they would walk across the road in front of Pete Jackson’s truck. Thankfully, no elk sausage for us the rest of the weekend! The group we went with was pretty great - Here is a picture of the group:

Pete, Rebecca, Chris, Kelsey, Andrea, Jennifer, and Joel

We skied that next day (Joel, Rebecca, Kelsey and I headed up close to opening time, Pete, Andrea and Jennifer came up a bit later). Kelsey’s aunt and uncle, Jim and Ilene, came up that day as well and they helped teach Kelsey and Rebecca how to ski. That evening, Jim and Ilene invited all of us over for pizza and salad. Let me tell you, after a hard day of skiing, the food tasted absolutely wonderful.

Saturday was more skiing followed by soaking in the Pagosa hot springs for a couple of hours that evening. It felt wonderful, but we smelled like sulfur for the next few days! Sunday we skied as well, followed by an evening of hanging out and chatting after watching the Super Bowl. Monday we made the trek back to Norman, which was a bit interesting because it snowed almost the whole part of our drive from Pagosa Springs to Santa Fe. It was certainly pretty, but the driving conditions weren’t the best ever.

That pretty much should get you up to speed on the news around here through the last weekend. I will have to post some more about some of the more recent events of this past week. But, for now, au revoir!

This is certainly a topic which I feel that I can comment on with some expertise. Having worked with National Merit Scholars for the past five years, I have seen a lot of people come through the office. People who are normal, people who are nerds, and people who are downright weird. I prefer to think of myself as falling in the first category, but, before the comments hit the fan, know that I am probably a combination of all three. So, a couple of stories (someday I should write a book). My favorite story of all time is one student who came into the office waiting for my boss, Craig Hayes. While he was waiting, he wandered around the office meowing. We had one student who graduated three years ago who always came into the office barefoot and wearing a full wizard costume.

Today, I met another student who is high up on my list of intriguing National Merit students. He is one of those guys who is probably telling the truth the majority of the time, but who you really never can entirely believe because his stories are so far fetched. This guy would definitely consider himself a player, but our student workers who were in today assured me that they couldn’t see how he does it. It sounds like this guy is a total chameleon - sensitive or arrogant depending on what the situation demands. He spent about an hour in our office, telling us stories of classes he had been in where he told students off for asking dumb questions (obviously he is in the position to measure that), telling us about this girl who he met two weeks ago who broke up with her doctor boyfriend for him and who he is definitely going to marry. He told us about the wedding he is planning on the beach in California where the orchestra will actually be wearing wet suits and standing in the water, and the other wedding that he will have in France. I determined that he is definitely the postmodern man and I am wondering if I could possibly be his agent so that he could have his own TV show. This is definitely one of the things that I love about my job - the people are so varied it blows my mind!

Work was quite interesting today. One wouldn’t have thought it would have been too terribly hard; we only had two families visiting. However, a combination of one of the prospective students having a broken toe and walking on crutches, and both of them having similar yet different schedules made it intriguing. On top of that, apparently my communication skills are fairly bad. I called the person who was meeting with these students two hours before they were supposed to be there and I left a message detailing the issues and letting her know that we would be about fifteen minutes late. Of course, that message was never received, so I got a call on my cell phone with an urgent request to know where I was (I was actually walking through the door right at that time). Other than that, the day has been going well - I have worked on setting up appointments for future visits (hopefully they will work out better than this visit today), checking the list of students which I will be calling to see how they are doing in their college decision, and answering numerous questions from parents and students. Not to mention the fact that some really weird guys - Brian Clifton and Terrel Fish - stopped by the office. Yikes! There you have it, another day in the life of a guy who works in the National Scholars office.

I managed to make it through a long weekend without any major mishaps (I guess that is not particularly exciting, or even particularly weird, because I am fairly sure that for the most part I have made it through every long weekend without mishaps, but that is beside the point). I had a great time doing some fairly random things during that time. I enjoyed playing cards with Crumpy and some of the ladies of the compound (Susanne, Allison and the addition of Becca as well) - we played du-rat [sic] (aka “six card”), Texas Hold’em, and a bit of Egyptian rat puke (at least that is what I call it). Saturday afternoon, I went with Amy Van Dyck, Susanne, Becca, Allison and Crumpy to watch In Good Company. There were certainly some funny moments and some moments which tried to be a bit profound, but seemed to fall a little bit flat when the emphasis was just on having a good family and enjoying your job. That evening, Crumpy and I fixed some dinner (not so gourmet: spaghetti, dinner rolls - from WalMart, and green salad) and ate with Allison, Amy and Susanne.

This weekend, Impact celebrated it’s fifth birthday (perhaps “anniversary” would be a better term), so I went to Trinity Baptist later on Saturday evening to celebrate that fine occasion. And what an occasion it was. Since I had already eaten over at the compound, I didn’t eat any of the multitude of pizza that was there, but I did eat some of the birthday cake which we had after we played games. We had a piñata (and for those of you who are wondering, it was NOT a likeness of Summer Wheatley), had a few rounds of tug-of-war, and played a bit of put the glasses on Dave Edwards. I suppose that in some ways it was like pin the tail on the donkey, except Dave Edwards was blindfolded as was the person who was supposed to put the giant glasses on him. I managed to get a bit dizzy after being spun around, was directed by the friendly crowd into the wall, and successfully put the glasses on Dave’s neck. What a riot!

Sunday after church, I enjoyed a trip up to Sam’s Surplus in Oklahoma City with Kelsey Scoggins. She tried to tell me she is a crazy driver, but somehow, coming from California, I just couldn’t see it. We made it to Sam’s (which is in the finest part of OKC, I assure you) and they tried to sell us all kinds of things. As we were leaving (honest to goodness) the owner’s son told us he was getting in some underwear which never have to be washed and some dripless ice cream in the summer, so we needed to go back and visit. Apparently he thought he could sell me anything, which was partially true, as I did leave with a pair of goggles (which I am taking back since I found some I like better online), a neck warmer and a goggle cleaning cloth. That was an experience to remember! That evening after church I chatted with Trent for about an hour and a half about his time with the army and some of the things that he is thinking about doing in the coming years. That was great to hear some of that! Yesterday, I celebrated the King (Martin Luther King, Jr., that is) by doing some much needed shopping. I got some food, some pots and pans, and an Ansel Adams picture. I celebrated the finish of a great MLK day at Bison Witches, with a soup and salad special: potato bacon cheddar and the green turkey sandwich.