Friday Summary Report, June 14

It has been a crazy and hectic week, and the upcoming weeks will be similar!

(1) We have had a busy week with Kinsley. Sunday night we had to take her to the ER because she (apparently) has a peanut allergy. It doesn’t seem fair—my little girl has enough to deal with without being deprived of peanut butter as well! In more positive news, we went to Little Rock Tuesday/Wednesday so she could have another EEG. We received a good report, and so she won’t have to continue to take steroids to fight her seizures (which is a significant blessing—the steroids make her cranky and also cause her to gain weight).

(2) I am officiating a wedding tomorrow (for two awesome people), preaching on Sunday, and also preaching next week at camp, so I have had a lot of lesson prep to do. Also, as it happens, we are kicking off new lesson series in the youth group Bible class this week (both this past Wednesday, and this coming Sunday). Lotta work.

(3) I’m going to camp on Sunday. It will be fun (it always is), but I am not prepared for it in any sense.

(4) The week after camp I have class in Memphis. Between now and then I have a lot of reading to do (at camp! How is this going to work?) and assignments as well. It will be a challenge starting a week of class (which is exhausting) immediately after completing a week of camp (which is exhausting).

(5) The week after class we are headed for vacation with Caroline’s family to Rosemary Beach. I am so looking forward to it—I think I’m going to get to read books of my own choosing!

(6) With the busyness upcoming, I’m betting the blogging will be sporadic. Hopefully not too much though—I miss blogging when I am away from it.

Boston and New York

Back in August, Caroline and I went on vacation to Boston and New York City. It was kind of a whirlwind trip, as we only were gone for a week, and things have been pretty crazy for me ever since then with school and work, so I just got pictures from the trip up on Flickr this week.

I had never been to Boston or New York before. Prior to the trip, I was really excited about visiting Boston and wasn’t really looking forward to the Big Apple (it was Caroline who insisted on that part), but in hindsight, I was completely wrong. Other than Fenway Park and a few other places, Boston was somewhat of a disappointment*, while I thought that New York City was incredible (not as cool as London, but still really nice).

A few things we did/saw while there:

• Freedom Trail in Boston (A lot of Revolution-related landmarks including the Old North Church, Paul Revere’s House, the graveyard where several founding fathers were buried, etc.)
• Boston Harbor (disappointing…barely a mention of the Boston Tea Party)
  
• Harvard University
• Fenway Park (awesome; maybe the high point of the trip)
• Grand Central Station
• St. Patrick’s Cathedral
• Chrysler Building
• Empire State Building
• Macy’s (definitely more exciting for Caroline than for me)
• Times Square
  
• Dinner in Little Italy
• Chinatown
• Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (I might devote a separate post to this—it was really cool)
• Ground Zero
• Brooklyn Bridge
• South Pacific on Broadway

Most of these places we visited on foot—we’d leave our hotel in the morning and then walk around all day. It really was a lot of fun, but pretty tiring as well. I wish we could’ve had another week.

*For a town with so much history, I thought Boston did a pretty lame job of preserving/sharing it. I was really excited about the Freedom Trail, but only a few of the stops were very worthwhile (like the Old North Church for example, which was excellent). Boston would be an ideal location for a comprehensive American Revolution museum…someone should get on that.

Schmap London Guide

A few weeks ago I received notification that three of my London photos had been nominated for inclusion in the 10th edition of the Schmap London Guide. I have no idea how this happened, and I assume that someone must have search for photos tagged “London” on Flickr and come across mine.

Anyway, I just heard a couple days ago that all three of my nominated photos had been approved and included in the guide. You can view them by clicking the links below:

• British Museum
• Big Ben
• National Gallery
  

I don’t know why they picked the photos they did, because they’re not amazing pictures and really weren’t even some of my best ones.

Still it was flattering, and I was able to pretend for about 30 seconds that I was a real photographer.

London Pictures

I finally uploaded pictures from the London trip to my Flickr account. I let my Pro account lapse, which means I’m limited to just 100 MB worth of photos at a time, so I’ll have to upload more later.

Here’s the link for the full set, and here are some of my favorites.

London

So there are several reasons why The Doc File has been pathetic lately, but one of the major ones was that for the week of Thanksgiving I traveled to London with my family (the week before London I was busy trying to get things done so I could be gone, and the week after London I was busy catching up with work that I missed).

It was an incredible trip. I had never been to London before, but it was quite a bit like I expected. One thing I expected but still couldn’t really get over was how much history there was all around you.

In the town where I live, buildings from 1900 are preserved for historical value and schoolchildren visit them on field trips. In London, we randomly stumbled upon a cathedral that none of us had ever heard of which dated back to the 12th century.

A non-exhaustive list of places we visited and things we did:

• St. Paul’s Cathedral
  
• Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and Mueseum (not the original, it’s been rebuilt)
  
• Southwark Cathedral
• National Library (Codex Sinaiticus and two 1215 copies of the Magna Carta)
• Natural History Mueseum
• Edinburgh Castle (we took a train to Scotland one day)
  
• The Royal Mile in Edinburgh
• Jack the Ripper walk (this was really cool; I’m kind of obsessed with Jack the Ripper)
• City of London walk (Big Ben, House of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace)
• Trafalgar Square
• National Gallery (Rembrandts and Van Goghs)
• Evensong in Westminster Abbey
• Tower of London and Tower Bridge
• Harrod’s
• Stonehenge
• HMS Victory in Portsmouth (Admiral Nelson’s flagship from the Battle of Trafalgar where Napoleon was defeated)

It was kind of an exhausting trip with all the stuff we squeezed in, but you don’t get to go to London whenever you want to. I hope to upload some pictures to Flickr later this week.

New Pictures

I’ve been gone a lot this summer, and I finally got some pictures up from some of my travels.

I am cautiously optimistic that my hectic summer will now begin to slow down, and that this post will signal an end to what has truly been a pathetic few months of blogging.

Flea Market Find

I spent most of last week in (or en route to and from) Denver, Colorado for a wedding.

One of the undoubted highlights of the trip was visiting a flea market and finding an affordable ($12) 1950 Bowman baseball card of Preacher Roe, the only Harding University alum to play in the Major Leagues.

I’ll be in town for the next several days, so hopefully that will result in a little more activity on the blogging front.

The Summer Of Weddings

One of my good friends is getting married on Memorial Day, so tomorrow Caroline and I will pack up the car and head to Nashville, Tennessee, and The Summer Of Weddings will begin.

I call it that because, by my count, there are at least five weddings between now and the end of July that I am expected to be at. Three of these weddings are out of state, and combined, will represent almost 4,000 miles of car travel. I’m not a big fan of car travel.

Oh, and while I’m complaining, I forgot to mention that weddings are undoubtedly one of my least favorite things in the entire world.

Oh well, at least this wedding should involve seeing a bunch of friends and playing a lot of ultimate.

Happy Memorial Day.

New Pictures

I updated my Flickr page with some pictures I’ve taken over the last few months.

Some are from a couple of mini trips that Caroline and I made, and a bunch of them are from the ice storm that we had back in January. I mainly just posted some of the prettier ones, but you can get a sense of some of the damaged caused by all of the ice.

Back At Home

So I know that things have been pretty lame around The Doc File for the last couple of weeks. Sorry about that—I’ve been out of town quite a bit.

Last weekend I was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to play at an ultimate tournament with a bunch of college friends. We played well, and I had a lot of fun, but I did pull a hamstring in the second game (out of seven) which has been somewhat of an annoyance since.

This past Sunday afternoon, I headed down to the alma mater for the Harding Lectureship, and just returned last night. It was a fun and uplifting time, but unfortunately, I returned sick.

It will be nice to stay home for a few weeks.

Not Far From Us

For me, one of the highlights of my vacation was visiting Chichen Itza, which I had studied about in college but had never had the opportunity to see before.

Chichen Itza was a pre-Columbian Mayan cultural center and is located on the Northern Yucatán peninsula, a dry area with no rivers above ground.

Despite this, Chichen Itza was able to thrive as a major Mayan city because of two cenotes located there. A cenote is a sinkhole which contains groundwater, and the two cenotes of Chichen Itza were substantial in size and would likely have contained adequate water year round for the people the city.

However, of the two cenotes, only one was used for drinking water, because Cenote Sagrado (pictured above) was believed to be the home of the Mayan rain god, Chaac.

In order to keep Chaac happy and the rain plentiful, the Mayan people would offer human sacrifices. These sacrifices, often children, would be weighted down with gold and silver jewelry and then tossed into Cenote Sagrado. Their remains, as well as the treasure that dragged them to their deaths, were found hundreds of years later when the area was excavated in the early 1900s.

I thought the history of Cenote Sagrado was fascinating when I heard it, but aside from that, my chief reaction is one of sadness—how sad it is that so many children had to be killed in order for the people of Chichen Itza to appease a god they didn’t understand, and whose will they had to guess at.

Paul describes a different God in Acts 17.27 who “is not far from each one of us.”

How fortunate we are to have a God who revealed Himself to us through the life of His Son, and whose will and desires for us we can know by reading His Word!

Flickr Album

It has taken me a while, but I now have pictures from the cruise (and lots of other pictures besides) up on Flickr.

They’re still not all that organized, and I haven’t tagged them yet or anything, but you can see my photos here.

The photo above is one of my favorites from the cruise, and was actually taken by my wife.

Back!

I got back from vacation late Thursday night, but I've actually been fairly busy since then and haven't had time to post.

We had a great time on our cruise. Overall, I thought it was a little overrated, but it was definitely relaxing, which is what I was hoping for. For me, the best part was probably getting to visit Chichen Itza:

Me desperately wishing that climbing El Castillo was still permitted.

I'll be out of town again beginning Thursday, this time for our summer youth group trip. I'll try to catch up with blogging next week.

Away For A While

My blogging will likely be sporadic over the next few weeks.

In a few minutes, I’ll be on my way to Green Valley Bible Camp where I’ll be spending the week as a counselor. This year, I’ll be in a cabin with a bunch of 13-14 year old boys, which is an age group I like well enough.

Generally I enjoy camp, but it’s always exhausting (and seems to get more so every year), so I’m not looking forward to it quite as much as I usually do.

The day after I get back from camp, the wife and I will be making a quick trip to Memphis for my father-in-law’s Retirement Ceremony.

Then back to Fayetteville to work for the rest of the week, and then Friday afternoon we’ll be heading to New Orleans, where we will board a boat and go cruising around the Caribbean for a few days.

I’m betting that will be fun, but honestly, until I’m actually on the boat, thinking of everything I have to do between now and then just makes me tired.

Dreaming Of Passports

I planned to spend my Spring Break in 2005 in Honduras, but as I made preparations to go, I discovered that I couldn’t find my passport anywhere.

Eventually, after some expense and quite a bit of stress, I was able to get a new passport in time to make my trip, but ever since, even thinking about passports makes me slightly nervous, and I have to check now and then to make sure that I still know where mine is.

Twice recently, I’ve even dreamed about traveling and not having my passport.

In one dream, I was in Greece, and was supposed to travel with some people from there to Egypt, but at the airport, I suddenly remembered that I had left my passport at home. I had to be left behind, which was disappointing (as was the fact that my wife didn’t choose to stay with me), but I remember that my main reaction was knowing exactly where in my apartment my passport was located and being very confused as to how I had made it all the way to Greece without my passport in the first place.

In the second dream, I think I was in Russia and was returning through a security checkpoint when I realized that, once again, I was without a passport. This was confusing again, because I had somehow managed to pass through the same checkpoint without my passport right before. The prospect of being stranded in Russia was more disconcerting to me than being left in Greece, and I was starting to get upset when, in desperation, I opened my wallet to search for alternate forms of identification.

Somewhat surprisingly, but to my great relief, my expired Harding University ID was good enough, and the Russian officials let me pass on through.

I knew I was holding onto that old ID for a reason.

Out With The Old Year…

When I look back on 2007, I don’t think of it as a bad year, but in a lot of ways, it was certainly a stressful one, filled with a number of unexpected events.

The unexpected events began in January, when I decided not to pursue Masters Degree in Spanish. This left me somewhat suddenly without direction in life, which, though not an unfamiliar position for me, is certainly an uncomfortable one. The fact that I reached the decision after the long process of getting into graduate school, buying textbooks and starting the semester didn't really help things.

And that was just the beginning. Soon after, Caroline’s great-grandmother passed away somewhat unexpectedly, and we traveled to Alabama for the funeral. A couple months later, we were all very surprised to learn that my grandmother was very sick, which led to two sudden trips to Colorado (once to see her and once for her funeral).

On top of that, factor in two car accidents (I’m really not a bad driver, I promise), two hospital visits, one of which included surgery, and at times, some fairly significant work-related stress, and you get a pretty decent idea of what my 2007 was like.

A lot of good things happened in 2007 as well, and like I said, it wasn’t exactly a bad year, but at the same time, I’m not really sad to see it go.

A Near Miss

As I mentioned before, I was in Memphis over the weekend to play in an ultimate tournament and visit family.

The family visiting went well, and the tournament was pretty good too. We ended up finishing fourth out of ten teams, narrowly missing qualifying for Regionals. We should have done it too—we were up 7-3 in the third place game before eventually losing 15-12.

The loss was a little disappointing, but either way, it was our best finish at this tournament, and it was fun to get to see and play with a lot of my old teammates.

My running paid off fairly well too. I certainly don’t have all my speed or endurance back yet, but I played well overall and was definitely in better shape than I was earlier in the summer.

Speaking of near misses, that’s me in the photo above, not quite getting the D against my man. Oh well, I was always more of a threat on offense…

Home At Last

I’ve been gone for the last several days, but I am finally home.

After having spent nine of the last ten nights staying in hotels, I got to sleep in my own bed last night, and hope to get to do so for a while.

I also hope to get back to blogging on a more regular basis. I actually had my laptop with me the whole time, but I only had reliable wi-fi access in one of the four hotels I stayed in, so that severely limited my ability to blog.

First, Caroline and I were in Branson for a few days for vacation. We had a good time shopping, going to a zoo and aquarium, visiting a museum and an amusement park. Here are a few of the highlights:

A chameleon at the zoo looks at me with one of his cool eyes.

An alligator smiles for the camera. I wasn’t entirely sure
what all the leaves on her head and back were about.

The ferris wheel at Celebration City all lit up.

After we got back in town last Monday, we left the next day for Denver, but this time, the trip wasn’t for fun.

My grandmother is very sick with cancer, and we weren’t sure if she would live until Thanksgiving, so my parents, my brother and sister, Caroline and I made the difficult trip to Colorado to see her for maybe the last time.

I took my camera along in case I saw anything worth taking a picture of:

The sun peaks through the clouds.


The city of Denver, from the top of Table Mountain.


At the base of one of the bluffs near the top. Since I’m not a
real rock climber, I had to find a different way up.


Me at the top of Table Mountain. I wasn’t actually in a terrible mood as my facial expression might indicate; I just don’t like having the sun shine in my face.

It’s good to be home.

Keeping My Fingers Crossed…

I’ll be out of town for the next few days—it’s time for our Summer Youth Group trip.

When I was young, I always looked forward to such trips, but now that I’m in charge of organizing them, they tend to fill me with a sense of dread.

This year, we’re going to Springfield, Missouri where we will spend a day working at a Children’s Home, and then we’ll head to Silver Dollar City for a day of “fun.”

Youth trips are always a big gamble—sometimes they’re great fun and sometimes they’re just a source of great drama. With the way this summer has been going, I’m afraid it will be more of the latter.

Pray for our safety. And my sanity.

Home Sweet Home Alabama

My wife’s great-grandmother passed away earlier this week, so Thursday morning, Caroline and I drove 10 hours to Huntsville, Alabama for the funeral.

With both Alabama and Arkansas being southern states and also located fairly close to each other, many people, especially over-generalizing Yankees*, would probably think that they were very similar. I am sure there are many similarities, but there are also some glaring differences, and I’m going to briefly mention a few I noticed over the past few days.

1. There are way more southern accents in Alabama. Now, Fayetteville might be somewhat of a high-brow locale compared to much of the rest of Arkansas, but I’ve also lived in more rural Searcy, Arkansas, and there is still no comparison: the southern twang is much more prevalent in Alabama.

2. Apparently, there are Old School, non-Supercenter Wal-Marts in Alabama. In my part of Arkansas at least, this is not the case.

3. Funerals are way different. Not only was the funeral at a local funeral home instead of the church that Caroline’s great-grandmother attended, but the family also sat up on a stage off to the side, out of sight of everyone else. Once the funeral was over, a curtain closed over the stage; I guess so the family could have privacy while looking at the casket. Different.

4. The Alabama/Auburn rivalry is way intense. Being from Arkansas, where the Razorbacks get top-billing in everything, this is completely foreign to me. I think it’s neat having the vast majority of the state unified in support of a team, but coming from a state with no real rival, the intense rivalry thing seems pretty cool too.

5. According to a sign we passed, in Alabama, coon dogs are apparently a very, very big deal. At least, more so than they are here.


*Yes, the ironic word choice was intentional.