Ate at McDonald’s today. In my quest to place my order ASAP, I deftly weaved back and forth between the lunchtime lines, picking my spots and seizing openings. However, it didn’t seem like I was gaining any ground.
Finally, people cleared out and I realized: I was the only person still in line. Everybody else, including people who arrived after me, had placed their orders and left.
That, my friends, is the very definition of servanthood.
It’s incredibly hot and humid, and our air conditioning isn’t working. Got a guy coming Monday morning, but by then, it’ll probably have cooled off. We’ve got fans going like crazy, but it’s not helping. Oh, the travails of 21st century American life. Surely, with such suffering on my part, the apocalypse is near.
You’ve seen this in movies and TV shows. Someone is having a medical attack of some kind–heart, anxiety, whatever. With much over-the-top dramatic fumbling, the person finds and opens a pill bottle, tosses the pill open-palmed into his mouth, throws in some water, and swallows. Immediately swallows. And life is good.
I couldn’t do that. Probably not even if my life depended on it. I would die with the pills and water in my mouth.
I take two pills every morning. I pop them into my mouth, take a swig of water…and then wallow them around until the pills are on the verge of dissolving. Finally, after several false starts, all of my throat muscles convene a meeting and decide, “Okay, let’s do this. All together now…1, 2, 3…swallow!” And down go the pills. Or what’s left of them.
Not too many years ago, I couldn’t swallow a pill without looking in a mirror. I would set the pill on the back of my tongue, drink some water, and eventually force the thing down.
Turns out my brother Rick has the exact same malady (as was unearthed when we got together over Memorial Day). And I’m wondering how many untold millions of people, like me, suffer from the same Protracted Swallowing Syndrome? Is anybody working to solve this?
In September, Pam and I head for Oklahoma City to attend MinistryCOM, a national conference for church communications professionals. I attended this conference the past two years (in Phoenix and Nashville), and have found it exactly what I’ve been thirsting for–a gathering of my peers in Christian communications.
I’ve worked pretty much alone for 30 years. At MinistryCOM, I discovered lots of fellow professionals who do the same stuff I do–writing, graphics, video, web–and they do it in the context of the local church. Mostly megachurches. I work from the perch of a denomination’s national office, but still in the service of local churches.
This year I’m doing a workshop, and I’m jazzed about it. The title is “Writing: Different Media, Different Techniques.” The idea is, you don’t write something for the church newsletter, then throw the same text, unchanged, onto the website and into an email and the Sunday bulletin. Different techniques and principles apply to different communications vehicles. You need to edit your well-crafted copy to fit the needs of that particular medium.
At heart, I’m a writer. I’ve been doing publication layout for 30 years, computer graphic design for 20 years, web design for 10 years. Today, I spend more time in Dreamweaver and Photoshop than I do in Word. I’ve developed some strong competencies in graphics and web design. But when you scrape everything away, you find a writer. I miss the opportunities I once had, in editing a magazine, to write lengthy feature articles (something which, in what is now ancient history, won me a couple awards from the Evangelical Press Association).
So it’ll be nice talking about writing, with a focus on how the new media affect your wordsmithing.
If you’re a communications professional in the Christian world, I encourage you to consider attending MinistryCOM. And if you register by July 31, you’re eligible to win a free iPod Nano!
I’m feeling the caffeine urges this week. We started a four-day work week, with 10-hours days. It costs me $8 to drive to work, and several other persons live as far away as I do (or farther). So it’ll be nice saving on gas one day of the week.
Our day now starts at 7 a.m., and ends at 5:30 (instead of 8-4:30). It goes fairly fast, and I find myself getting a lot done. I have big chunks of time, which is good for the type of stuff I do (graphic and writing projects).
But at the beginning of the day, I really really want coffee. We have a very nice new coffeemaker, and they’ve taken to brewing flavored coffees, so this waft-prone extra-rich aroma tempts me. And as I plunge into reading stuff, which is how I typically start my days–emails and RSS feeds–it would sure be nice to hold a cup of Joe in my hands. Coffee and reading-in-the-morning belong together.
But caffeine constricts blood vessels, which exacerbates my Meniere’s Disease, causing vertigo. I could drink coffee all week and be okay, but it builds, and there would be, as Doc Holiday said in Tombstone, a Reckoning.
So instead, I’m sitting here with some mango herb tea. As a longtime hardcore coffee drinker, do you have any idea how hard it is to learn to like herb tea? But it’s something.
Ashley Furniture delivered our new living room furniture yesterday afternoon. Our former couch and loveseat, a matching set from Kittles, were carted away to the Mustard Seed Furniture Bank last Wednesday. After 15 years, there wasn’t much padding left. Not comfortable at all for Sunday afternoon naps, because you could feel the boards down there pressing against your ribs.
We’ve been talking about getting new furniture for several years, but we refuse to go in debt over anything except house and cars (we’ve been paying off our credit cards every month for at least ten years). And there were always costs in line ahead of furniture. Until now.
This white couch, I swear, is the most comfortable couch in known recorded history. Each side has a recliner. When extended, it’s like a bed. You sink into it and want to go to sleep. We sat in a lot of couches in a lot of stores, but none came close to this one comfort-wise. The trick will be keeping Molly from drooling over the white fabric (the only color available).
Fortunately, Molly seems to have taken to the other couch, the brown one.
It’s gone. The first set of furniture we bought for our house, clear back in 1993–couch, loveseat, recliner–gone. Well, not the recliner. It’s still in the bedroom in good shape. But the couch and loveseat had lost their padding, making them very uncomfortable for Sunday afternoon naps. So after 15 years, we donated them to the Mustard Seed Furniture Bank. Two guys came about 7 pm tonight and hauled them away in a truck.
Now we’ve got a very bare living room. This afternoon, Stanley Steamer came to clean the carpets. Then, next Tuesday, our new couches–two full-size couches, no loveseat this time–will be delivered.
Jordi and Molly don’t know what to make of it. They don’t like walking on the damp carpet, and there’s no place to lay. But I suspect they’ll adapt and survive. Until at least Tuesday.
My first table tennis tournament was the St. Joseph Valley Open in March 2007. I left that tournament with an initial rating of 995 with the US Table Tennis Association. I’ve fancied myself a 1350-1400 player, so I’ve been trying to push my rating up.
I actually dropped 11 points in my second tournament, the Indiana Open last September. That was a bummer. But in last November’s Highland Open, I jumped 97 points, to 1081. Then in March of this year, I gained another 26 points in Indianapolis.
So I entered this year’s St. Joseph Valley tournament–by far the biggest tournament I play in–with a rating of 1107. Based on my play, I knew my rating would jump. I just didn’t know how much.
The USTTA finally had the new ratings posted yesterday. I jumped 191 points! I couldn’t believe it! 191!
So now I’m at 1298. My brother Rick gained 38 points, and now stands at 1310. So I’m creeping up on him.
Rick’s rating stood at 873 after last year’s St. Joseph Valley tournament, over 100 points below me. But he gained a whopping 248 points at the Indiana Open in September (while I dropped 11), and another 151 at Highland. Those were incredible jumps. His 38 points in this past tournament is still very commendable, but pales against those earlier leaps. Now it’s my turn.
Next up: the Indiana Open in September.
Dentist appointment this morning. Time for a cleaning. Immediately afterwards, I went to Scott’s and got a couple donuts. No sense leaving them clean.
Yesterday was my appointment with Dr. D, the dizziness specialist at Ear Nose and Throat Associates. After waiting an hour, Pam and I were ushered into a tiny room, and a few minutes later, Dr. D came in.
I explained how I’d been diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease, and that my experience over the past several years was consistent with all the research I’d done about Meniere’s Disease. But now, it seemed that my symptoms had gone to another level. I used the term “Meniere’s Disease” several times.
After some more talk, Dr. D said, “You may have a condition we call Meniere’s Disease.” And he went on to explain it, while I was thinking, “Oh crap.”
In other words, he hadn’t been paying attention to anything I told him. Was probably thinking, “Great, another patient with an amateur diagnosis of a very complicated medical condition.” He let me ramble on, get it out of my system, until he could take over, rush things along, and try to get back on schedule.
Well, anyway, he gave me a couple prescriptions–one for when a vertigo episode strikes, another to help remove salt from my system (basically, by making me run to the restroom every five minutes). I’ll take a test on June 2 at ENT’s Balance Center which will confirm that, yes, indeed, Dr. D is brilliantly correct: I do have Meniere’s Disease. And we’ll go from there.
I am totally inspired with confidence.
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