Photos from yesterday's travels

I am safely in NYC with Eric. Yay!

The day is still unrolling over here (slowly... and with the assistance of a lot of coffee). We have theater tickets tonight, plans to eat at the Russian Tea Room as well as a new couch that will be delivered sometime this afternoon. But here are a couple of CrackBerryCam pics from my JetBlue adventures yesterday until today fully unwinds itself.

Here's a picture of the Pacific as we flew into Long Beach. Because when you fly to New York from Sacramento, an obvious midway point would be Long Beach.


I spent three hours in the airport in Long Beach. Which appears to have been overrun with various forms of critters. For example, there was a flock of wrens that appeared to just live there all the time, flitting and hopping and flying around inside. Here's one wren that almost sat still long enough for me to get a picture.


And, there were dogs. Lots of dogs. Specifically dogs on my flight. Dogs who, from the looks of things, have logged considerably more air miles than I have. For whatever reason, they were all miniature Pomeranians. Here's one of them chilling in the airport before being stuffed back into his carrier for the last leg:

Last (and most fascinating) (/sarcasm), here's a picture of my lunch. Beggars can't be choosers when trapped in an airport. I was really glad the mayo was on the side in this case, because the little packet of it the guy at the counter handed me was warm to the touch. Ick.

Memoranda

To: Douchey guy at SMF this morning
Re: You're a cautionary tale

How you, with the paunch and bad frat-boy clothes and, heavens help me, checkered Vans, managed to get the attention of the young woman you were seeing off this morning is a bit of a mystery. She was very pretty, in a quiet way, and seemingly smart, based on the conversation I was forced to overhear as you brayed your end of it at her like some kind of donkey.

Seriously, telling her she's prettier with her hair darker and "everyone knows it"? And that you know she can't go to Disneyworld but she "has to understand" that you'll just have to take someone else in her place? And promising you'll send her pictures? Lucky girl!

Four words: You have highlighted hair.
Five more: Sister, run like the wind.


To: Douchey wanna-be rock star/college kid in Long Beach airport
Re: Please get over yourself

OK. The blingy Versace sunglasses (indoors) and omnipresent iPod I totally get. It's SoCal, baby. Or something.

But you have called literally eight people in the few minutes I've been nearby powering up my MacBook to tell them your flight number. Which you repeat digit by digit, as though they're learning impaired. Plus, you sing along to the Muzak and adjust yourself in your seat so abruptly every few minutes that the whole row of chairs bucks around. Never mind that you have taken up the seat next to you with two additional iPods, a BlackBerry and a concerning amount of gum.

Are you a rock star? A movie star? Perhaps just in your own mind? No idea.


To: Douchey seatmate on flight to LGB
Re: I exist

Quit touching me! With your elbows and your purse and your seat belt (which you chucked over the shared armrest for some reason mid-flight) and your carry-on and YOUR HAIR, especially your hair, which you flung around like a horse's tail for most of the flight.

I feel violated. A little dirty. And fairly creeped out.

So far

No traffic

Parking was easy and I was the only person on my shuttle

No lines

Everyone's been polite and friendly

I continue to fret about my wardrobe choices

I have a long layover midway through the trip, but I brought a couple of Netflix movies to pass the time

Next stop: Long Beach

Tomorrow

Deep thought of the day

In which I fail a Pilates class

Another day, another abject humiliation at the hands of my new gym membership: I took my first Pilates class today. Or, I tried to anyway.

The instructor seemed nice enough, particularly at first, and she was sure itty-bitty, which I guess is some sort of testimony to the effectiveness of the class.

There were three of us, not counting the instructor, in a small room. And these flat machines that featured resistance cords and a middle platform on which you'd kneel or lie or whatever. Joseph Pilates originally designed his machines to help veterans rehab after World War I. They are also commonly used by dancers who need to be both flexible and strong. Exercises were essentially repetitive, controlled movements emphasizing stretch, range of motion and using your own body weight (with the resistance cords' help) to deepen stretches and ranges.

All this was done to New Agey music that I think was supposed to be soothing but made me slightly homicidal. I can see the appeal of the discipline even from the few exercises I was able to complete successfully. I could feel the stretching, the depth of muscle contraction as I worked along in my first-timer, uncoordinated way.

The trouble started when we quit lying flat on the platform and began balancing on it. One exercise required us to place one knee on the platform and link a cable to our other leg. The non-kneeling leg was then to kick back behind us as we balanced on the platform knee. Of course, the platform would move on its track as the free leg moved back and forth.

It was during this exercise that I fell off the machine for the first time. I was fine as long as the instructor was next to me with one hand on my shoulder and the other on the small of my back. But the minute she stepped away, I toppled crazily over, a whir of arms and legs. Undaunted, I popped back up, laughed it off (I am a bit clumsy) and tried again. And fell again.

After that, I decided perhaps that specific exercise wasn't really happening for me. So I waiting 'til the rest of the class moved on to the next one. At which point I fell a third and final time. I was done.

I told the instructor as I was leaving that while she'd been very nice and all, I really didn't think Pilates was for me and thanked her for her help.

"Well, yes, it seems very hard for you," she said. "It's a hard discipline."

"Well, sure, but my falling OFF THE MACHINE isn't really helping matters."

"Hm," she said. "Well."

Well, indeed.

New favorite thing: stoneware spoons

I have this weird habit -- whenever I drink coffee, I leave a spoon in the cup. I think it comes from my early days as a coffee drinker, when I was constantly trying to get the sugar-to-coffee-to-cream ratio right. This involved a fair amount of stirring, and if you drink out of a mug, there's really no place to set a sticky, wet spoon like there is with a cup and saucer. Letting it sit in the mug was just neater, easier. And a habit was born.

So when I saw these cool stoneware spoons at Basic French, I was very happy. They're the perfect size to leave in a mug of coffee. They're ceramic, so they take on the temperature of the coffee, and the patterns are just too cute (as an aside, if you're a Francophile, Basic French is definitely the site for you).

I splurged and got three of them:


The red pattern reminds me of chintz china.

They have already worked themselves into my morning routine.

Used to

There was a time that I was different than I am now.

I was coupled -- for a while, with a husband, and at other times with boyfriends and lovers. My world, my space and even my affect were completely different in those days.

I see couples around me now and notice the subtle secret handshakes of this other world that I once inhabited. How they instinctively know where to reach for the other's hand. Exactly how much to upturn their cheeks to receive a kiss. The right angle for their arm to embrace their partner.

The intimacy, the presence of another person has become part of them, and the space around them bends to accommodate, to take in. The reaching, the adjusting isn't conscious. But it's there, a delicate balance, caught up with words and actions and sharing. Consummation, of a sort.

It seems to me that the whole point of the awkward naked stiltedness of early dating is to get you to this place -- of openness, of seamless fitting together, of knowing where to reach and when.

When I was coupled, when I was younger, when I knew and performed the secret handshakes, I too reached and adjusted and embraced. But it's been a really long time. I worry that all it takes to be in this world as a singleton of a certain age -- the keeping so much to oneself, the not getting one's hopes up, the readiness to do nearly everything alone in the end -- works at cross purposes with the emotional collagen needed to be part of a pair, to internally adjust and open. How to be hard, until you're needed to be soft? How to be closed, until it's time to be open?

If the opportunity comes again, will I be ready? Will I even be able?

I love Dilbert

Easily amused

It's been a while since I've seen an LOL Cats that made me laugh, but I found this one greatly amusing:

Good morning?

Full disclosure here -- I hate mornings, and I hate exercise. If there was some way I could just stay in bed all day, managing my life via wifi and MacBook with the occasional shower thrown in, I'd be perfectly happy.

But, sadly, that is not my fate. I am neither a starlet nor a trust-fund baby; therefore, I must get out of bed every single morning and, five days out of seven, go to my job. Which is not in my bedroom or even my house. Add to this my fatness, lack of fitness and shiny new gym membership, and we arrive at a sad realization: if I am going to fit exercise reliably into my life, I am going to have to do it in the morning. Before work. Which is early. And outside my house.

Did I mention I hate mornings?

The new routine has me leaving the house and to the gym by 5:15 AM. Which is just very early, y'all. I spend about 30-ish minutes on cardio followed by ab work and Nautilus-like weights. On the days I do weights for lower body, I do less cardio, largely because if I do more, I can't pick my legs up to get into my car. I'm out of there by a little after 6:00.

What has been an insight is just how many people do this every day, apparently because they choose to and not because they are being held at gunpoint or anything. I base this on the fact that the people I see at the gym early in the day are, dare I say, happy -- smiling and talking and laughing with one another. It dawned on me this morning, as I was slogging through another set of ab something-or-others, that what we have here are Morning People.

There are women in the locker room who, when I arrive to stow my stuff, are already doing their hair. Which means that by 5:15 they have already finished working out. What time did they get there, anyway? When I hit the cardio area at 5:20 or so, there are many people who are already running or climbing happily along, completely sweaty, smiling their "good mornings" at those of us who stumble in. I am stunned by this. I can barely form words at that hour, but these people have been cardio-ing away for who knows how long already. There are also trainers working the weight floor, putting clients through their paces, who ask how you are and if you're having a good day -- and stop to listen to your answer.

It's fascinating. And a little scary. It's like there was a whole world out there, carrying on, while I was sleeping.

Why I love living in Northern California

Especially in the fall: yesterday's changing leaves.



The shocking oranges and reds.



Set off by a bright blue sky.



Making a mosaic on the ground.

Hiccup

Three weeks ago I took something of a leap of faith in treating my migraines and went off all analgesic medications. I was in increasing levels of daily pain, so after talking to a new doctor and deciding I might be having rebound headaches in addition to migraines, I went cold turkey.

And the results have been great. I mean, not so much the first few days of this little experiment, when I basically wanted to hunt down New Doctor and hurt him in a way that would help him appreciate how I was feeling. But that passed, and while I still got headaches that I would have loved to take some Advil to treat, overall, things were a lot better.

The rub was that I was still getting migraines about twice a week. The medicine New Doctor prescribed to treat them, Relpax, works like a dream for me. In less than an hour after taking it, a migraine is typically gone -- not just better or tolerable, but gone. It's like a miracle. The medicine's expensive, and I'm still concerned about the migraines' frequency, but having a reliable means of addressing them has greatly contributed to the quality of my life.

Friday was my three-week follow-up appointment with New Doctor. He actually hugged me when I told him how well the Relpax worked, that I'd managed to tough it out with the Advil and get past the rebound headache cycle, and that I was just feeling so much better. We decided on a wait-and-see approach for the migraines themselves -- to give them a little more time to see if successfully addressing them with the Relpax will, gradually, reduce their cycling as well. All in all, a great day at the doctor, which I don't get a lot of when it comes to my head.

And then -- about 3 AM Saturday I got a humdinger of a migraine. The kind of migraine I get about once a year, one that didn't respond at all to any medication (and I threw everything at it that I had in the house) (which is saying something). It left me whimpering in bed for most of the day, dashed the day's plans to help with Christina and David's move and then go to my church's celebration dinner. It was so frustrating -- to go from feeling so positively about things one day to being back in the trenches the next.

I'm a lot better today, if out of sorts and shaky. But also prayerful that I'll be given the grace I need to walk through this.

The BBQ Song

Too funny. Via Curtis Solomon.

Various

Left behind in Louisville
While I was unpacking from my trip yesterday, I realized that several items I'd taken with me to V&P didn't make it home. An entire outfit and several necklaces. And after the incident where my Bible went missing after a trip to Southern California, I was pretty upset. "What is UP with the thieves at Southwest?" I thought. "This is insane!"

I ranted to myself for the better part of the afternoon until a little niggling thought crossed my mind. "Did you check the closet in the hotel room?" I thought. "I mean, you checked the shower and the bathroom and the table next to the bed where you slept, but what about the closet?" I couldn't remember.

So today I called Southern's Legacy Center, where we stayed, and asked if by chance the cleaning staff had turned up anything. And of course they had. Everything I was missing had been found in the closet of my room, just where I left it. And because they are kind Baptists, they're sending everything to me.

And speaking of missing things
As part of tearing apart my luggage while hunting for my missing clothes, I realized my suitcase had a weird, heavy lump on one side, in a large outer pocket I never use. Curious, I opened it up and reached inside.

Imagine my surprise when I pulled out my old ESV Bible, the one I'd thought had been stolen out of my luggage last summer. The one I literally mourned.

So I've spent almost six months thinking Southwest was harboring some sort of Scripture thief and all the while, my beloved Bible was sitting on a shelf in my closet. I'm kind of a dork, as it turns out.

And speaking of dorks
I broke down and joined a gym. Gold's, specifically. Now that I'm basically taking no ongoing medications and feeling a lot better (praise God!), at least for now, I think it's time to get active again. Which I am looking forward to about as much as I would a colonoscopy or gum scraping.

I have trainer appointments and nutritionist appointments and I've signed up for Pilates and whatnot.

Gah.

Belated last day in Louisville: the Colonel and Lynn's Paradise Cafe

Lynne and I stuck around a few extra hours in Louisville on Monday before heading home, to make sure things were squared away and to have brunch with Jenny Solomon.

She arranged quite the Kentucky send off for us. First stop: a cemetery. Lynne and I were stumped as to why we were there (and had been told to bring our cameras) even as she was giving us hints while slowly driving along to our destination. In case we needed any more evidence that Jen may be the coolest person ever, we soon had it: she'd brought us to see Col. Sanders' grave site.

Which is something. He's buried in quite the fancy-pants cemetery anyway, with lots of sculpture and ostentation, but his is really set apart:



Even the actual grave marker itself was larger than life. He lived to be 90, which is something considering all the fried chicken he must have eaten:



After paying our respects, we went on to brunch. Given that we three all share the name "Lynn" in form or fashion, it was a must-see place: Lynn's Paradise Cafe. The food was supposed to be great (Bobby Flay has been there for a couple of his "throw downs," and the cafe's food beat his both times), but it was also known for its decor.

I don't think Lynne and I had any idea what we had waiting for us. Lynn's sort of defies description -- it's quirky and kitschy and fabulous and strange all at once. Basically, if I lived in Louisville, I'd have to get a job there, because it was all I could do to tear myself away.

The decorating scheme, probably best described as "more is more," is so fabulous I can hardly stand it. I'm not sure the CrackBerryCam can capture it:








There was a gift shop, with all sorts of fun items to be had.


We all had to try on various hats (I didn't smile because I didn't want to interfere with my beard):






And then there was the food itself. We had a late breakfast, complete with biscuits and cheese grits (no shock those were mine). And bacon. Lots of bacon. It would be easy in a place with such larger-than-life shtick to have crummy food, to rely on the decor to carry the day. But the food was really tasty:


All in all, a wonderful Louisville send off. Jen is amazing and smart and funny and godly -- Curtis totally married up.

The Capitol Minnies

Tonight Capitol Ministries held its inaugural Minnie Awards. Minnies were given to state directors in a range of categories and based on a number of factors, both real and imaginary, as deemed appropriate by members of the Minnie Academy (whose members are, obviously, anonymous, as are their votes: we wouldn't want any wagering or coercion to go on). The trophies are intended to be perpetual, so the guys will need to bring them back to V&P next year so they can be awarded anew.

The CrackBerryCam was valiantly operated by Jenny Solomon during the festivities, as I was helping dig trophies out from under a paper table cloth/cloaking device -- since this was the inaugural awards ceremony, we wanted to keep things under wraps as much as possible. A word about the trophies -- they were very cheap and, in many cases, intended to be strange. Not unlike the Minnies themselves.

Onward to the show! Here's Sean introducing the concept to the state directors who, I think, didn't really quite get it in the beginning. They rallied nicely, though:


The first award recipient of the evening was Brent Alderman of Maryland, who won the Emailer Extraordinaire trophy. David's email address competition among the guys (which came to be known as The Race) was what started all this trophy-giving silliness in the first place. Brent is, as it turns out, very, very funny. And has lots of geeky friends to collect email addresses from.


Next up, Jim Young from North Carolina who won Fundraiser of the Year.



West Virginia's Tim Pauley was named The Groundbreaker for having advanced his ministry to local government folks...


... and David Andersen from Virginia received the coveted Dragon Slayer Minnie for consistently doing battle against The Fellowship.


Here's Paul Meinsen from Missouri (whose Oklahoma State Cowboys had a bit of a rough go tonight) being named Rookie of the Year.


Jonn Paul, state director for North Dakota, was named The Overcomer for basically managing to stay alive on a multi-day hike. We're not going to discuss his trophy.


And then Dave DePue of Kansas received the Teachers' Pet award for being a generally sweet man who is always a pleasure to deal with.


Last but not least, the Academy awarded Sean the Cash Cow trophy for his lifetime achievement with the Cow-A-Month program. He didn't know we were going to do this until David made the presentation. It's a little disturbing that the cow on top of his trophy looks like Baal, but it's not like we're worshipping it or anything.


Though Sean does love his cows.

V&P Day Three: The Louisville Slugger Factory

After a few hours spent this morning digging into CM policy and hearing Ralph preach on the "the five pillars," we broke for the day and took a field trip to the Louisville Slugger factory.

We piled into cars and vans (leaving Luciano behind at the hotel, as it turned out. whoops) and caravaned over about noon. We had quick box lunches on site and watched a short film featuring interviews with several Major League players talking about their experiences as power hitters. Then, it was on to a tour of the factory which was busily turning out bats, even on a Saturday.

Here's what greets you at the entrance -- an enormous bat. Even taller than Ralph, as someone said.



Here are Curtis and Luciano scarfing down lunch after Curtis drove back to the hotel to get him:



Sean is relentless with his camera. Here's a picture of him taking a picture of me:



There's a wall of signatures of major-league players throughout the years who are under contract to Louisville Slugger. They actually cut the players' signatures out of their contracts to make the burn plates for bats. Here's one of my favorite player's signatures:



We spent a fair amount of time standing around, waiting for folks to get out of the gift shop or materialize for the film:





A few of the guys bought personalized bats for sons and grandsons. We all received small mini-bats after the factory tour and, eventually, made our way sleepily back to the seminary.

We have a few hours to ourselves before we gather at 5:30 for an hour of prayer, dinner and then -- the Capitol Minnies.