Monday Madness

First, a shout out to David Hayward at naked pastor for the excellent cartoon to your right!

It's been an incredibly busy week here in Barrett. I've been all over the place and done lots of stuff. Somehow I managed to get some good running in last week, but Friday morning was the last time I ran and today I'm going to have to work to get myself out the door for one more hard workout before the Siouxland Half-Marathon on Saturday.

I didn't preach yesterday. I invited Pastor John Lee from the Northwestern Minnesota Synod staff to preach, and boy, was it a good sermon. I really enjoyed the chance to receive good news instead of proclaim it - and I also enjoyed giving Beloved a chance to listen to a sermon instead of watching Ainsley.

Friday-Saturday was our Synod Council retreat, around which I managed to assist in the wedding of our massage therapist, who is also a friend. (yes, there were many jokes on that subject this weekend) Yesterday we had worship and then I ran off to Alexandria for our Fall Conference Gathering, after which I ran over to movie night with our youth at the home of one of our church families. We watched Evan Almighty, which is an even better movie than the first in the series. Like my friend LutheranHusker said, "I'm not convinced that Morgan Freeman is acting. Have you ever seen Morgan Freeman and God in the same place? I'm just saying..." Great movie and a great day, but tiring.

Today is my personal day. In some ways I suppose it should by a Sabbath for us, but lately it's been our get-everything-done-that-we-couldn't-do-during-the-week day. So, I'm into the second load of laundry, I'll be sorting the recycling in a few minutes, and later I've got to rotate the tires on my Jetta and check to see if Beloved's car needs an oil change (I think it does). The house needs cleaning, the Friday and Sunday papers need reading, the baby's got an appointment to get her cold checked out later this afternoon, and I've got ironing to do while Heroes is on tonight. BUT we do get a bit of a Sabbath this week: we're going to Nebraska Thursday-Saturday to see my folks and run in the aforementioned Siouxland Half-Marathon. Hopefully I'll get to spend some time in a tractor cab on Friday helping my dad with corn harvest - that would be FUN.

It's also Environmental Blog Action Day. I went to climatecrisis.net, the website for the movie An Inconvenient Truth, and I took a carbon footprint test. I discovered that we are average at best and possibly a bit higher than average in our energy consumption, even when you figure in that we've purchased some of our electricity through wind farms, we drive fairly efficient cars and we're trying to limit our travel. But folks, when your house requires as much oil to heat as ours does, and you regularly drive 30 miles for work and groceries and other stuff, those carbon emissions add up quickly. So I'm hoping to find some ways to do better over the winter. Yes, Mr. Carter, I'll put on a sweater (Beloved will probably be wearing two, and gloves in the house to boot)! But I do take climate and environmental issues seriously, and I hope my readers do, too (yes, I meant BOTH of you...).

In other news, my beloved Cornhusker volleyball team is still ranked #1 and hasn't lost even a set since the Stanford game back in September. They are devouring opponents and I can't wait to watch them defend their national title this year. What was that? The football team? Do we have a football team? ;-)

I'm tired, and Ainsley is keeping us busy today, but life is good. This is our Monday Madness. As you were...