Southern Travelocity

On St. Revenue Day (April 15 - BTW, happy ordination anniversary, MJH) I departed the still-cold state of Minnesota for an interesting two weeks of travel south of the Mason-Dixon line.

First I flew to Atlanta for meetings Wednesday through Saturday. It was warm for a Minnesotan, cool for Georgians. We spent most of our time in the hotel conference room. Meetings were good. I only had one extremely trying moment when I was collecting my Dodge Economy car from Thrifty Car Rental. After an hour in line with only two people in front of me, I finally departed with my little silver Excalibur. I thought that renting an economy car meant it would get good fuel economy.

Not so. Did you know they still make cars with power NOTHING! I had to roll the windows down with cranks AND had no way to lock the doors without specifically pushing down each individual locking button.

Sunday morning at 6:39 am I departed for Rock Hill, South Carolina, to surprise Mary Cat for her 10:30 am wedding. Abi and Rob saved a spot in the back pew for me. What a glorious way to celebrate "Low Sunday." It was great to see Sue and Erica, too.

After the reception I took off for Gainesville, Florida, to visit Miss Kimberly, Albert, and our goddaughters, Grace and Karen. Several hours and 409 miles after Atlanta I pulled in too late to greet the girls: they had already gone to bed. I only had one strange encounter along the interstate when I stopped for gas and some lunch. I felt like I had just wandered into a Carl Hiaasen novel. There was a woman with only one arm, a teenage girl proudly sporting an exterior heart monitor, a miniature poodle pooping on the floor of the women's room, and a creepy guy in weird shorts with black socks and tears and bloodstains on his gray, ribbed tank-top. I got the hell out of there lickety-split!

I had a blast spending the afternoon with Grace and Karen. I painted their toenails with Magic Princess Polish that goes on frosty pink and turns gold in sunlight. (Thank you Del Sol!) They were pretty impressed. We also played a rowdy game of hide-n-seek, and we played Fairy Godmother-Princess wedding with the Playmobil castle and company. It was great catching up with Kim, too.

On Tuesday morning I drove down to Orlando to attend a conference with some church colleagues. It was a pretty good conference and I picked up some helpful tips and appreciated the sharing of best practices. A couple friends from my CREDO conference were there - it was great to see them again. We had a lovely break on Thursday, hanging out by the pool in a perfectly sunny 85 degrees. Laurie took some of us out for a spectacular dinner.

This morning I got up well before the sun to make my way via US Airways to Arizona. I beat Joren by about two and a half hours. We rented an electric blue Seabring convertible for cruising the Valley of the Sun. It's a tradition in honor of Marnie's old Mustang GTO. We had a great dinner with Mother/Sheila and Reg. Mother presented Joren with a birthday present (see photos). He's already plotting to create a FB page for his Gnome and its keepers. It should be very interesting. Stay tuned for more reports and pictures of Gnicholas the Gnome and his keepers, Eek-Eek, and A-Booga.

Tomorrow we plan to go to Church of the Epiphany in Tempe where Steve, another ministry colleague, will be celebrating and preaching. We're hoping for a sunny warm day :)