All kinds of craziness:)

So, even though it's January I still have a lot in the mix. I have two J-Term classes in the next three weeks. Both are one hour long ethics courses: Creation and Evolution and Death and Dying. I got my books yesterday and am ready to get em' done. I've also been working on my commissioning paperwork that is all due in two weeks. I just finished putting together the 4 DVD's I have to turn in for preaching and leading worship- that took a while! I also finished all the tedious "fill in the blank" pages of information collecting and about half of my theology questions. So, I can almost taste sweet victory:) I'm also in the midst of planning a packing trip to the Smoky Mountains. Once again, anytime I need to work hard it always helps to have a "play hard" goal at the end to keep me focused. Brandon (fishing buddy) and I are going to attempt to climb a mountain, hike and camp out for two nights and three days in JANUARY!! It sounds risky, so I like it:) It'll give me a chance to utilize the new 0 degree bag I got in light of a broken zipper on the last bag. The new one is a Kelty, Cosmic 0 degree mummy bag. I look forward to posting an update after the trip. The last thing I've been working on is an independent study. I decided I wanted to be more efficient in my IBS (Inductive Bible Study) skills. Professor David Thompson (author of Bible Study that Works) has agree to tutor me through my Isaiah Exegesis Course (Sandy Richter), especially in the areas where I would utilize IBS. I'm very excited about this opportunity and look forward to hopefully becoming a lean, mean IBS maching:) So, now I'm going to open a bag of expensive coffee (Starbucks employee perk) and have breakfast!

My Great Adventure!

So I went on another fly-fishing, overnight trip again this weekend. It was an opportunity to try out some new gear and get out into the wild:) It was a great 23 hours. Here are the trip highs and lows, combined with some outdoor gear comments:
Highs:

• Beautiful weather
• New rubberized trout net worked really well; flies and hooks didn't get caught in the net!
• Coleman Peak 1 Single-Burner micro stove worked very well. Heated up food and water in a hurry and was super compact and packable!
• Had some good snow this morning while I was fishing. Made for a beautiful view and was a pretty awesome moment. Nobody was around this morning while I fished; just me, the river, the snow and palisades.
• I stayed on the camping spot on the island near the beginning of the Dix River. It was difficult to find a place for my tent, but there was fire wood galore! I practically had a bonfire going for four hours and a fire in the morning for breakfast. Nothing like free firewood that requires no cutting!
• Caught quite a few fish! I caught my limit both days; nothing huge but most were decent.
  

Lows:

• There was a beastly wind at my face on my way home this morning. I'm pretty sore from rowing my rear off because of the wind.
• My new 0 degree, feather lite, Ledge sleeping bag was kind of a bust. It was very tight, and I could probably use an extra-long bag. However, the worse part was when the zipper broke in the middle of the night. I got up to take the rain fly off the tarp (it was windy, but no clouds). When I got back in the zipper snagged as I was zipping it up so that it didn't zip as it went up. While I was pulling it the zipper piece broke off. I finally got the seems to match up and managed to zip it up using the inside zipper piece. I was a little bit cold when I woke up at 3am. It's supposed to be a 0 degree bag, but at 23 degrees I'd be afraid to take it any lower.
• I didn't sleep as well as I would have liked: wind on the rain-fly, took the rain-fly off, zipper broke, woke up a little cold, etc.
  
• Had to leave for work. I really wanted to stay a couple more days! It was a great trip, despite the zipper issue!

Did I mention it was a solo trip? It was fun, but solo trips always make me a twinge nervous. Nothing like hanging out in the woods of Kentucky by yourself to live on the edge. I might go to the Smoky Mountains with some friends in a few weeks. That will be another adventure to share later:)

A scatter minded persons dream come true- OneNote

So I recently bought a Sony Vaio laptop from someone at Asbury that was used but only 8 months old. It came with Microsoft Office, Student Version. One of the software products that comes with Student Office is called "OneNote". OneNote is a program that is like Word on crack, with tabs! The tab system allows you to keep every document open, organized and editable in a few clicks. You can basically organize everything in the following way: Theme>Sub theme>Page. So I have a theme set up for Seminary/Spring '08. Off of that I have all of my classes each as it's own sub theme (ie.- Concise Greek, Methodist Polity, Matthew, etc.). And then off of each I have my lectures listed as their own pages off to the side (ie.- 2/12/08, 2/14/08, 2/19/08). I also have the syllabus listed as the first page of every sub theme. This has also been great because I am blitzed by ideas all the time and have always struggled with finding a way to keep and organize ones that I like. So, now I have a "Church Planting" theme folder. I have it broken up by the following sub themes: ideas, resources, events, rules to live by. Since I just attended a Wesleyan Church Planters Event I made a page off of "Events" named "Wesleyan Church Planters Event" and took all my notes there. So, instead of accessing "File", then "Open" and then opening the file "Church Planting" it's all one the page in front of you. So, you go to the left and click "Church Planting", go to the top of the page and click "Events" and go to the right of the page and click "Wesleyan Church Planters Event". Now that I have thoroughly confused you, let me just say I highly recommend Microsoft OneNote to anyone who could use a software system that will organize and compile all of your thoughts, ideas and work! I think it would be invaluable to anyone who is writing a book, in marketing, enjoys chaos journaling (yes, I made that up) or is in ministry and enjoys brainstorming. It has tons more features that make the software three times as user friendly as any other Microsoft Office software program. So, two thumbs up!!