New York

Chris and I are officially going north for spring break. It's going to be way colder than I would like, but Chris has off school and I have off teaching at the same time this spring break, so we're taking advantage of that to head up and do the things we've been wanting to do for so long. So we're gonna spend about a day and a half in Washington DC on the way up to see some art museums, then to NYC for 5 days. I've never been to NYC and Chris has only been for a few hours once, so we're really excited about it, and are just starting to try and figure out what all we're going to do while we're there. I know we're really excited to go to lots of art museums, and of course things like Central Park and Times Square and stuff. But I'm not really sure how to plan or what to think about doing. So if you have any suggestions or money-saving tips or anything, let me know. We're staying in what is most likely a crappy hotel but it's only $100 a night instead of $300 a night so we're dealing with it, but we really wanted to stay in NYC near subways so we can get up and go, not try to drive anywhere or anything. So. Will be an adventure. Then we're wrapping up our trip with a couple of days in Philly, staying with the Clarks who moved there about a year ago. So I'm excited about that. Not excited about the cold, but, I will deal.

Providence

So, as always, I work in Vidalia (80 minutes from home) on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And I stay the night in town since I work until about 10pm Tuesday, and start at about 8:30am on Wednesday. But the house I usually stay at had guests so I couldn't stay there. And for some strange reason, all the hotels in this tiny town were booked for Tuesday night. So one of my students had offered previously to let me stay with her if I ever needed to, so I took her up on the offer (and felt like a real jerk, calling her on Tuesday at work to see if I could stay with her Tuesday night). Anyways, she was super-gracious about it and so I followed her the 20 minutes to her house in a super-tiny nearby town. She and her husband are about my parents' age, and they have 3 grown sons, so they have lots of spare bedrooms. So I stayed there that night, got up in the morning and got ready to drive to work... and my car wouldn't go. It would start, and would run as long as I gave it gas, but as soon as I tried to do anything else, like break to put it in reverse, or turn on the lights, or ANYTHING, it would die.

So after trying to start it for about 10 or 15 minutes, I started to panic. Here I am in a place I know nothing about with a car that won't start and I have to be at work and I'm 90 minutes from home. Well, the woman I was staying with is the city Clerk for her town, so she just called up the chief of police to come by and help us out. He tried to start it up, no luck, then offered this suggestion, which we followed -- he called someone else to tow it to a repair shop for me, and then he called the repair shop to let them know to expect the car, while my student drove me to work. In the meantime, her husband called up the repair shop, talked to someone he knows that works there, and let him know that I had to have the car running that day if at all possible. Then when it was all fixed at 4:30pm, he called me at work, picked me up, and took me to get my car. I have a very strong hunch that if it was just little ol' me taking my car in to this (very busy) shop, my car would NOT have been ready. As it was, I made it to work on time, left work on time, and got home at about the normal time for a Wednesday. Pretty freakin' amazing, if you ask me.

When I realized I was going to have to ask this woman if I could stay with her because I didn't have anyplace else to stay, I really felt horrible because I really felt like I was intruding, and I just kept saying "God, you know what you're doing...." After today, I know exactly why He had me stay with them... because any other scenario would have been ridiculously impossible, and would most likely result in my still in Vidalia without a change of clothes or any clue of what to do until my car was fixed. It was just a real blessing, and an amazing example of how God is in control of EVERYTHING, even these relatively little things in our lives, and how He looks out for His children. I need things like this every now and then to remind who is really in control.

And that's the story of my day.

Oh yeah, the car had some grounding rod in the BACK that had corroded and was losing the connection to everything else, so the repair people had to spend half the day locating this bizarre problem, and then removing this rod, sandblasting the junk off it, and putting everything back together again. I have such bad luck with my car.

Evangelical Politics?

I found this article to be interesting, and a little promising. The article seems very similar to conversations I've had with of Christians my age, because none of us feel that either political party is close to operating biblically. So voting for one candidate is always voting against things we feel we're called to support as followers of Christ. So it's encouraging to see that this is a conversation that's really cropping up everywhere, and not just in the twenty-something age bracket. I mean heck, the LA Times is taking about it.