Sunday Night Random

-Just back from seeing Rob Bell. Which was great. Here's a link from a previous tour, which doesnt capture his charisma at all. It's just so inspiring to be in the presence of someone so obviously in control of their craft.

-He did great, even with a creeping bronchitis and the funny sort of crowd - not sure what they expected, but I think some of the folk around me, at least, were not getting what they came for. Unless what they came for was, as a brief survey of youtube suggests, more evidence of so-called ungodly behavior.

-Speaking of Rob Bell, I am currently reading Donald Miller's new book, so I wondered out of the corner of my mind if I would see him there tonight. ("Perhaps you know my friend Don. He is also a Christian...") Got to the Roseland a little early, so to pass the time, looked on twitter to see if anyone was tweeting the evening, and the only search result for "rob bell pdx" on twitter was a photo of Bell with Donald Miller. Evidently there ARE only two cool Christian guys in the world, and they take pictures of each other at breakfast.

-Speaking of books we're reading that make us feel all swoony, stayed up late into the night (or really early into the morning) finishing Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night. Careful readers of this blog (insert derisive snort here) may remember that this winter I wanted to read the Wimsey series and each one is not merely a little bit better, but incredibly, leaps-and-bounds better than the last. I already want to re-read it, but I think I get to read Busman's Honeymoon next, so I'm gonna do that one instead.

-Speaking of cul-chah, went to see Cosi Fan Tutte last night. Neither J nor I know anything about opera really, but still like to see one from time to time - it's so, you know, big. And really, any evening that begins with dinner at Mothers, it sort of doesnt matter what else you do. Fun people watching too. It's Portland, so everything from jeans to gold gowns with furs.

-Speaking of fancy outfits. A friend who divides her time between Portland and Seattle brought her son to church today. He's a couple of years older than E, knew him when he was small, and wanted to make sure that E got his sport coat, that he's outgrown. Also, he gave me his cell phone number (!! he's not THAT much older than my boy!) so I could text him E's response.

-Speaking of cool and unexpected things that happened at church. A young man came by totally out the blue this a.m. who said he provides "captioning" for deaf and hard of hearing and can he practice in our service? So he set up his little laptop and something that looked like a court reporter machine. He will not charge, and he emailed me what he did, so now we have a transcript of our service. Which is awesome for me, because I dont always write my sermons, so now I have a printed copy of the extemporaneous ones for free!

-Speaking of...well, I guess nothing goes with this, so I'll just end here.