From the Desk 5/11/2008

This morning I woke up having not slept very well. I got up and helped Dad move stuff around downstairs to make room for bringing the other table upstairs to allow for seating for all our guests for Mother's Day lunch. During that process I discovered that Tommy Campbell was still intending on having me film the graduate recognition service at CBCB this morning. I had not planned on this since he never returned my email, but I figured that I already had my equipment with me so I called Hickey and we made plans to meet at 9:00am to set up and film. I gathered up all my stuff and headed out to church. I got everything set up before Hickey arrived and even had a sign to post on one of my smaller cameras to notify people that it was a live camera and to please not touch it! The service went well with a balanced emphasis on the graduates and their mothers. There more people in attendance than I had expected so the balcony where I was filming was more crowded than usual. Immediately after the service we tried to make our way outside to capture the graduates getting a group picture made, but we were not fast enough to beat the crowd of parents. We did make it outside just after the sudden rainstorm with strong winds. Once the brief monsoon passed, the sky was littered with white clouds floating quickly over the now bright blue sky, which made for some excellent footage of the church steeple with a beautiful sky in the background. Hickey and I packed up the equipment and took it back to my car.

I left the church and headed back to my parents' house to prepare for the lunch crowd. Along the way I stopped at Weigel's to pick up some lemonade and ice. I also stopped to take a picture of the tree that had fallen across the main entrance into Spanish Trails on Friday night. I got back to my parents' house and had time to update my blog before being put to work in the kitchen washing utensils and dishes. I also was responsible for helping prepare the onions for grilling and putting the assorted vegetables on skewers for grilling. Slowly everyone began showing up for the exquisite meal. Mom, Dad, and I were eventually joined by Amy, Jon, Josi (Bob was out of town), Grandmother, G-mom, and Papa. We had a feast for lunch including chicken (basted in a mixture of lime juice, lemon pepper, butter, and salt), vegetables (squash, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms marinated in balsamic vinaigrette dressing), rolls, grilled onions, and pasta salad. Josi had brought dessert to say thank you for our invitation to join us so we finished the meal dining on carrot cake and a Texas sheet cake (which basically has lots of chocolate and nuts in it. We did experience the effects of the blistering wind outside as the power went out half way through the meal and remained off for about half an hour. After eating we all agreed that taking a nap was the best thing to do, but none of actually did this as I needed to head home before the weather got any worse and the others had other activities planned for the ret of Mother's Day.

I headed back to Georgia after helping clean up a bit. Hickey and I had contemplated going to the Vols baseball game, but decided against it due to weather concerns. I felt the wind my entire drive home. Sometimes it felt like someone was just pushing suddenly on my car forcing it to veer to one side of the lane I was traveling in. I made it home safely and found out that G-mom and Papa's tree near their bedroom was no longer in top shape as it had split and part of it took out the fence between them and their neighbors and the other part knocked off part of the gutter on the side of their house. I spent the rest of the evening pulling video footage over to my computer. That activity took the rest of the evening, but at least now I can began to edit it and not fall too far behind. I have had all of my windows open in the apartment in an attempt to cool it down. So far it has dropped to 73 degrees inside, which is the coolest it has been indoors since February. I drifted off to sleep easily, not sweating as I usually do from the inescapable heat.

Meditation for the day: Genesis 3:20 " Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living."