15 Minutes At The Gym
While out and about this evening, my family ended up in the parking lot of the Bally Total Fitness here in Huntington Beach. We just needed to turn around and exit, so I turned up an aisle and thought I could just pull through the lot and be on my way. When I got in too far to back out I was trapped behind a little Corolla that was waiting for a parking spot. For those of you who have never lived in a place where parking is at a major premium, here is what life can be like in Southern California… you will just sit in the middle of a road waiting for someone to walk out of wherever you are going and then you follow them to their car and take their spot. In some cases (like Cal State Long Beach) you might even offer people rides to their car so you can have their spot as they leave. Such is the premium on parking at times. Well anyway, the story here tonight was that people going to the gym were waiting for the closest possible spots so that they did not have to make the extra walk from the adjacent structure with ample parking. I was struck not only by the ridiculousness of the fact that the car in front of me would not move and kept me boxed in for almost 15 minutes while a very entertaining dance of parking manuevers all took places. Truly, the irony was that people were willing to do that to save a few steps, on the way to the gym… the GYM!!! My thought, save the 20 bucks a month on the gym membership and park at the top of the structure and walk up and down a few times… it is free and will not require you to clog up the drive lanes. Just a thought. Needless to say… I would not advise pulling through the Bally’s lot, and if you do, be prepared to laugh it up!
My Daughter Rules…
My little girl is almost one year old, and in that short little life she has had the chance to try many different things. Tonight presented another first for her… she got to go on the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Now I know what you might be thinking… what is the big deal? Well the answer is she did got get scared or cry even one time. In fact she was rather interested in everything that was going on during the attraction. She was particularly interested in the party going on in the grand ballroom. I thought when the stretching room finished stretching and the kids in there started screaming that she would let out a noise, but she did not. She is one tough cookie.
So on our next trip to Disneyland I am pretty sure we are going to hit Space Mountain. She may just need some elevator shoes or something like that, but I am pretty sure she can get through “security,” after all… she is a pro at saying “Ought Ohh” now. Oh yeah… and she can drink from a straw now. Cool.
New Features ‘o Plenty
As I mentioned in my previous post, we are up and running on Fellowship One. We went live with our data last week, and so today was the first day to enter contributions. I will not kid you when I say that many of us have been dreading this day for a while. The new system has tons of amazing features, but training the new crew and getting all to work could have been a difficult task. Well the day is nearly done and so is the contribution processing. It went as smooth as silk and the team of volunteers thinks it is great. Every time we dig in to do something else in F-1 it turns out even better than we had hoped it would be. Love it…
Dinner & a Movie
Something so simple and something so fun… but something that becomes a bit more of a challenge when a nearly one year old is added into the family mix. Well tonight the little one spent an evening with her Great Grandma(Grandma Grandma) so that wifely and I could go out for dinner and then later on join family and friends for a screening of the DaVinci Code.
Dinner was lovely. We went to Applebees and had a quick dinner. Zach was there so we even got to see him! If you have not had a chance to dine at 5:30, you should take a chance and try it. Lets just say that most everyone else there was headed home for peaches and Law & Order reruns.
The movie was great. Good action, great story and best of all… even though I read the book, I did not remember a lot of the plot twists, so it was a wild ride.
Now I am home and headed to bed soon. Thanks wifely for a fun date night… more to come!!
FellowshipOne Is Alive & Kicking
After months of planning and weeks of training, or Final Data Conversion is complete and our staff is learning the ropes of Fellowship One. For those of you who are not in the uber geeky world of church IT and/or church management systems… here is the lowdown… F-1 is a highly sophisticated enterprise level church management solution that is web based. It is really amazing!
I want to thank our sales guy, Steve Dreichsler, our delivery manager, Jeff Rice, and all of the other great bloggers out there who use and love F-1 and provided lots of valuable insight for how it might go.
Billy’s New Shirt
A few weeks ago, several of us from Huntington Beach, had the distinct honor and priviledge of spending a few days in Las Vegas at the NAB show. While there we also spent time with the Guru’s. This is a five year old gathering of tech ministry people from all over the country. We hang out and talk about ministry, tech stuff, cool gadgets & toys, PC vs. MAC, and just general nonesense. This gathering has given a great chance for us to develop friendships that last longer than the conference. One of the guys had a shirt this year that he said was not allowed to come home with him, and Billy offered to take it off his hands. Shreve took Billy up and left the shirt for him. So today, when we were ready to leave for lunch… dorky Billy had the shirt on. So as to not miss this precious moment, I documented our lunch excursion for the world to see. Click here if you dare! P.S. Jason Shreve is Co-Host of Church Tech Talk. Check it out!!
The Value of a Blog…
I love to read blogs. I have a list of about 10 blogs a day I go to and read. I love to hear about church leadership stuff, what excites people, what they are doing in ministry and in life. I am super disappointed when sometimes they don’t post for a few days. I truly feel like I am a part of their lives and ministry from a distance. It is one of the oddities of the blogosphere… you can feel connected to a person or ministry and talk about them as if they are a friend, and never have met them in your life. When Scott Hodge pulled his April Fools joke it took me a few minutes to realize it was a joke, and in those few minutes I was genuinely disappointed.
So you may be thinking to yourself…. “Self, what is the point of this now rambling post?” and the answer is simple. I feel like a blog leach. I take a lot, but do not give. So my resolution for this week is to post something everyday. My request is that you, gentle reader, would comment when you read what I have posted. Say something funny, or witty… just say something. A blog can be about a conversation, if one is engaged. So here is to a post for today.
