Nate. Bowling Green. Black Swamp. I love those things combined...plus the other dozen or so people I love about BG...and the really cool place that it is. It is one of the nicest places in the world. Few corporations. Lots of community. Neato people. Art. Music that doesn't suck, or that does suck but exists and tries really hard so you have to feel good about it being around. Anne and I miss it a lot. I will admit that freely. We think that we need a place like this again. A place where people sit in coffee shops until midnight and talk about deep stuff. A place where people read things that are not on the bestseller list. A place where grown people fingerpaint. If you know of such a place that would have us, let us know.

Zoar has been really great lately, but I need Sundays like this every day. I got there early and made up 4 pump pots of coffee for everyone. (I can really see how a person could like to work in a coffee shop. It is fun, creative, it smells great, and you get to meet all sorts of neat people who are biased to like you because you are serving them a chemical.) Then Anne and I played in the funk/jazz band for service and it rocked. I love playing for that...with a feeling deeper than anything else I have felt musically. It is the perfect fit for me--I would do it every week if I could. Then there was a chicken lunch thingy that was super-tasty and very good for meeting neat new people. We are officially adults now. We talk to people who have kids...and we like it. Also, I think it is cool that Zoar is donating one of our pastors and a few other people to take the donations down to an ELCA church in Mississippi that is presently hosting about 200 people who are displaced because of the hurricane. Anyway, I think it is cool. Zoar has also been going nuts about MAYBE getting displaced people who would be placed there from the Red Cross because it is the designated disaster recovery area. It was lit up like crazy last week on news that many people could be showing up...but that never happened.

I ordered some glasses from Hong Kong and I will get some more later--they are really stinking cheap and appear to be pretty fashionable. If they aren't, I can just order more of them because they are so cheap.

Now to sleep and go to work. This weekend felt like it lasted a week..a really good week. Last but FAR from least, I got my dissertation back from my advisor and he had surprisingly few comments. He actually just expanded on the stuff that I had noted to him was pretty bad to begin with (some graphs I was not happy with and such). I will hit this hard this week and maybe go for the approval from him. It is scary and surprising, but the degree will ACTUALLY be over this semester (of course, it has to be...what with the life changes like a baby and official job and stuff).