If it were a snake ...

On Saturday, I was expecting a very important delivery of capital campaign materials. The plan was for the delivery guy to call me on my cell phone since I would already be at church for a Summit Ministries prayer breakfast (for the capital campaign, actually). When the estimated delivery time came and went without a phone call, I contacted the man behind all of our beautiful campaign materials to see what the story was.

According to their records, the delivery was made at 10:30 am and signed for by an HFBC staff member in our print shop. Since I did not have a key for the print shop, Ricky (our Facilities Director) came up to church to let me in. But lo and behold, we could not find the boxes anywhere in the print shop. Ricky got on his walkie-talkie to ask if anybody in earshot knew about the boxes. Clarence replied. As it turns out, they had already moved the boxes (eight in total) to my office.

Here’s the rest of the story …

I had been sitting in my office since about 11:00 am making the above-mentioned phone calls while sending e-mails. The entire time, the boxes were less than 6 feet from my chair. During the more than two hours in my office, I had to walk by them every time I got up to go to the restroom, to look for the boxes, and so on.

So … there you have it. I felt like an idiot. (Think this might mean my office is too cluttered to begin with?)

Bless my heart.

Hail To The Chief (?)

I've moved in to a larger office here at work. Or at least on Tuesdays until about 5:30 pm.

My inkblots are all grown up

My niece and nephew turned 13 this week. Some of you may remember when they were born. I sure do.

It was 1994 and I was staffed in Miami on my first out-of-town project with Accenture (then Andersen Consulting). Since they were born on a Monday, I had to wait until Friday evening to see them. And since Al Gore's invention--the internet--had not quite caught on, my parents had no way of sending me any photographs.

I had to settle for a faxed copy of one of their first pictures. There it sat framed on my desk in Miami--a black-and-white fuzzy image that looked more like a Rorschach inkblot than two newborn bundles of joy.

Now, it is such a joy to see them totally embrace Braden (and Amanda, too, of course). Everytime I call, they always ask about him. Everytime we're together, they cannot get enough of him. At Kyle's birthday party at the Astros game, Braden hung out with his soon-to-be cousins and Kyle's friends. At Kristin's party, her girlfriends were excited to meet the little guy she has been talking about so much. They did their best to get Braden to do some of his dance moves for them, too.

I sure do love my two stinkin' adorable inkblots! Happy birthday, Kyle & Kristin!

Twinkies are Fruit

While in the Nashville area for a conference, a group of us from Houston headed to Dotson's Restaurant for dinner in historic downtown Franklin.

It's listed as a "meat and three" place and that's what I had -- meat and three sides. Meat loaf, green beans, mac 'n' cheese, and sweet potato casserole, to be exact. I should have journaled before I ate. That dinner changed my life.

I was impressed by the selection of vegetables from which to choose. In addition to my three choices above, they had white beans, lima beans, baby carrots, fried okra, scalloped tomatoes, turnip greens, spinach, beets, squash, cream corn ... and Jello.

Our group wondered if the Jello was in the form of a Jello mold with broccoli or peas or cauliflower floating in it -- anything to justify calling it a vegetable. Nobody was willing to waste one of their "and three" choices on a dare, so we'll never know.