I’m feeling a bit stretched after yesterday and with my schedule today. Bear with me please.

I had a licensing interview* in the Twin Cities yesterday. It was an excellent time. The candidate performed very well. One of the joys was sitting on the interview with Dean Johnson. Dean was once our North Central District's Superintendent. He's since moved on to other things, like retirement. Except he's finding himself almost busier in retirement than he was before. "But it's a good thing, I think," he quipped. Dean's experience spans several decades as a pastor and as a leader. I would love to be able to sit down with a man like this over lunch, about once a month and just pick his brain and experience involving all things pastoral. What a resource that would be.

The interview involves me leaving home at 6.15 AM, sitting in the District office from 9 AM 'til about 12.30 PM. Then I jump back in the car and head for home, hoping I'll not get too tired while driving. (I made it home safely; about an hour after I got home, there was a serious accident on the highway I'd travelled.) Before I left the Cities, I had to make a quick stop at the Apple Store in the MoA (that's Mall of America, for all you initially-challenged). Yes, this was a serious visit: I'm trying to figure out how to get our church sound system "wired" through my aging iBook so I can record our worship services directly through to the appropriate software. It's just gotten a bit tedious doing it one of two "old-fashioned" ways: 1) use a digitial recorder set up somewhere in the front two pews and record "through air space" (that means no direct conneciton to the system), download that audio file to my iBook (it's in a .wma format, which my laptop can read, but is more tedious... wait, I used that word already, so let's check the thesaurus: yes, there it is – mind-numbing, sould-destroying, wearisome – the right words for dealing with something that only get "programmed" for Windoze machines. Then I can manipulate that file to burn to CD. Or, 2) if the digital recorder (this past week) hasn't worked properly (this past week) and has failed (this past week) to record anything at all (this past week), then I have to use our system's cassette tape (this past week) recording which does connect directly through our system. That's a much longer process, but it does work (well, with the exception that during our congregational singing, all you hear are the worship team's voices – nothing wrong with that, except I just love hearing lots of voices sing.

Wow, that was a rabbit trail, wasn't it. Sorry, back on track here.

After a brief rest and supper with the family, I had things to catch up on, so "worked from home" for a bit last night. That got a little distracted, on occasion, while watching some of the Olympic events out of the corner of my eye.

Today will stretch Ann and I even more, schedule-wise. She has to clean two houses. Jonathan has to catch his football practice car-pool at 7 AM. I have a chapel service to lead at a local senior living facility at 2 PM and Elizabeth has to be at soccer practice at 3 PM (my chapel usually runs 30 minutes and from where I'll be, it will take close to 30 minutes to get E. to her soccer practice, cutting it close, but make-able). Then Wednesday's schedule has me with a morning appointment at 9 AM, which will rund about 2.5 hours, making me late for Prayer Time at church, which starts at 11.30 AM.

All this is to say: this is an incredibly uninspired, uninteresting post from a mind that is wandering a bit at 5.30 in the blessed A.M. So please, bear with me. Thanks!

Tags: schedules, busy-ness, hectic