Mid-week musings

Good news and bad news: Our church had been wavering on whether to go ahead with a Guatemala mission trip in July, with dwindling numbers on our end, and Tuesday we determined that we have 5-6 people going and we would go ahead and go. A surprise late addition was the Guatemalan American daughter of the man who was a guest pastor for us for six weeks several years ago (her first chance to go home in 3 ½ years). The bad news is that now I have to finish organizing the mission trip (which helps me avoid paying much).

Tuesday I also got my first speeding ticket in 10 years, and in a school zone (I don’t know how I missed that blinking light), which means I can’t just mail in a check and must also go to three-hour traffic school and be even more careful in the future. A fellow church member who is a lawyer contacted me via Facebook and phone and is going to try to help me get the court fee waived (and maybe get out of making an appearance).

On his birthday, Vincent commented on my Facebook page for the first time ever. He was slated to go to see the movie Kick Ass with his father for his birthday. (We celebrated his birthday this past Friday and then went to Thunder Over Louisville Saturday with him.) Vincent said he was slated to start his Bob Evans job later this week. I didn’t ask him about starting his classes (clearly he’d been on the computer) and he continued his hermit line which may mask that he’s bored and depressed and has got no non-family friends in Ohio (and for that matter doesn’t see his relatives on Stephanie or my sides of the family – he seems dead set on boycotting Corey’s wedding this Saturday). Stephanie wasn’t really able to reach him on his birthday.

One of my first assignments at the Presbyterian Center was to write a report for a Presbyterian Panel survey that I had not authored – about attitudes towards reparations. Later on I had gotten assigned a second Panel report – for which I had drafted a small part of the survey – which I’d never finished. More than a year ago I got the transfer/promotion that made me administrator of the Presbyterian Panel (random samples of Presbyterian church elders, other members, and ministers whom we send questionnaires about various topics four times a year), and yet I had not finished that report or any for the three or four surveys that I have worked on since becoming an administrator – something my managers were not happy about and was not good given the impending layoff date (May 14). This week final hard-copy versions of two Panel reports (the long delayed one and one for the first Panel survey I wrote entirely – the May 2009 survey on the Environment) came out and I distributed them. If I can just finish two more Panel reports before May 14 . . .

--Perry