Jayson's Inner Kelly Clarkson

Not a lot of excitement today.  We slept in a little then hopped in the car and headed toward Redfield for lunch.  Along the way I spotted a little point of interest in Benton, AR that I at least wanted a picture of.  It's the world's only building made from bauxite which is a beautifully colored aluminum ore.

We pulled into Redfield just in time for lunch and made our way over to the Mammoth Orange Cafe.  It looks just like it does in the pictures I've seen!  The food and atmosphere are exactly like every Dixie Dog, Tastee Freez or small town Dairy Queen on the planet.  The Green Family walked in, sat down, and immediately whipped out our cell phones to take pictures, update our FB status and answer a few texts.  At the same time, a rippling silence fell across the Mammoth Orange as its people detected alien beings in their midst.  The deafening silence caught my attention and when I scanned the diner I saw that we had no hope of blending in with these plaid clad patrons.  I didn't even know you could still buy shirts with pearly snaps on them.  Or maybe you can't.

They had some background music playing but I wasn't really even aware of what it was.  Maybe country music, I'm not sure.  Jayson started singing along and Taylor got all embarrassed and told him to stop.  I told her to lighten up, we're on vacation and Daddy is just having a little fun.  Taylor said, "Omigosh, Mom, you don't know what it's like!!  When you're not home Daddy will bust out into a Kelly Clarkson song for no reason!" Wow.  I had no idea.  I hope CPS doesn't get wind of that.

Our food was good, nothing spectacular, just good.  It reminded me a lot of Gene's Tasty Burger back home but with less grease.  Everything I've read about the Mammoth Orange said to make sure you have a milkshake so we got one to go before we left.  Omigosh.  That was the most fantastic chocolate shake I've ever had.  I'm not sure what that girl put in it but the flavor was perfect and the consistency was exactly as it should be...not too thick, not too thin.  I hope we can make it back through there on the way home.  I want a butterscotch shake.

A few minutes later we cruised into North Little Rock and landed at the Old State House Museum.  It's a beautiful building that used to be the state capital but now has some interesting exhibits.  One is called "Badges, Bandits and Bars" and is all about Arkansas law and justice.  We got to see 2 retired electric chairs, Old Sparky I and Old Sparky II, as well as the Tucker Telephone and other torture devices from Tucker Prison.  That's just fun for the whole family!  They had information on lots of local criminals and gangsters which made us feel all smart and educated since we already learned about most of them at the Gangster Museum.

As soon as you step into some of the rooms in the museum, a recording automatically starts playing and tells you about the things you're looking at.  Poor Taylor seemed to forget about that from room to room because every time it happened she jumped 10 feet off the ground then crouched down and covered the back of her head like a 3rd grader in a tornado drill.  She's a jumpy little thing but then so is her mama.

It rained pretty good this afternoon but hopefully tomorrow it will be dry enough for us to visit Pugh's Mill Park before heading north to Harrison, AR.  I keep looking over my shoulder half expecting to run into Tim & Trish again.  Our luck, they'll show up the next time we're caught in an embarrassing situation...or when we're naked.  But that won't happen because we've vowed to never be naked again.

The Road to Little Rock

We have a somewhat leisurely day planned as we head to Little Rock by way of Redfield.  One of the things I'm most looking forward to on this trip is having a milkshake at the Mammoth Orange Cafe in Redfield, AR. I love small town soda fountain/cafes like that and they are an endangered species.

There's not a whole lot in Little Rock that really catches my eye, which is odd, but then again maybe not.  Being the state capital, there's all kinds of stuff to do and see and visit but it's regular stuff like you can see in any other town.  I want offbeat, quirky stuff that we will remember, not just another museum that we will get confused with all the other museums we've seen.

We might actually visit the Old State House Museum because one of their current exhibits is about the "history of Arkansas law and justice".  That's the blurb on their website which sounds like a big snoozer to me.  After a little further digging, I found that this exhibit includes Old Sparky I and II (retired electric chairs), an actual jail cell, and torture devices such as the Tucker Telephone.  Now that's something we can sink our teeth into!  I'm not really into all that stuff but Jayson is and there's this art thing that I really want to see in Eureka Springs that I haven't told him about yet.  So...this is not about electric chairs, it's about leverage.

Those who think I'm being devious and manipulative are obviously single.  All the married women reading this are giving me virtual high fives with a fist pump.

Mini Mountains, Strip Karaoke, and Serge the Bathing Attendant

We started off our morning with a short drive to the Hot Springs Mountain in the Hot Springs National Park to go to the top of the Hot Springs Mountain Tower where we can see 140 miles worth of Hot Springs. It wasn't quite like the Victoria Peak Tower but it was nice.

The Ozarks are very pretty with lots of trees but for some reason I expected them to be bigger. I haven't seen a lot of mountains in my lifetime but the ones I have seen are...well...mountains. I've seen the Canadian Rockies and the Swiss Alps and I guess I just assumed that all mountains looked like those. Yeah, not so much. The Ozarks are the Mini Me of the mountain kingdom.

During our drive up  Central Avenue Jayson, Taylor and myself each chose the roach motel we would stay in on our next trip and we each picked out own personal tattoo parlor.  We're not in a bad area of town or anything, but there is a colorful mix of businesses in the area. We were sad that we wouldn't be able to visit one "gentleman's club" that advertised strip karaoke.

After admiring the view from the tower, we drove up the street to the Gangster Museum.  Just the name of it screams cheesy fun.  It delivered about what we expected which wasn't a whole lot.  We did learn a lot of fun facts about some well known gangsters, one being how a lot of them came to Hot Springs to have their syphilis treated in the thermal waters. My life has been enriched by that little factoid.

Taylor wasn't very impressed with the Gangster Museum because she thought we said "gangsta" so she was expecting this whole hip hop experience which she did not get.  But at the end we got to take some pictures with a big plaster Al Capone which made the whole trip to Hot Springs worth it.  We could have spent all day snapping goofy poses with Al.

After the Gangster Museum we decided to grab some lunch so we headed over to Bill Clinton's favorite barbecue place, McClard's Bar-B-Q.  Evidently the McClard family is on vacation so they've locked up the shop for a week.  Plan B was Stubby's Barbecue, a place we spotted on our way into town.  It was pricey but we have enough leftovers for at least another meal, maybe 2.  The meat was excellent, the beans were baked instead of pintos so that's a strike against them and the potato salad was just so-so.  They have this thing called the pot-o-beans which is their baked beans, sauce and ham that's all baked up in this little crockery bowl.  It was pretty darn tasty.

After lunch, it was time for a bath.  We chose the Buckstaff Bathhouse because it is the only one on Bathhouse Row that is still operational.  Recently the Quapaw Bathhouse has opened up but it has been refurbished to be a modern spa.  You can't spit in Hot Springs without hitting some kind of spa that uses the thermal waters, but we really wanted the traditional bathhouse experience.  Okay, so "I" really wanted it and I planned the trip so we went to the Buckstaff.

Before we went, I explained to Taylor that the bathhouses are swimsuit optional and no, this is not inappropriate it's just the way it is. She asked if Jayson and I were taking our swimsuits and we both said no, we're old, we've both had massages and stuff before so we're good.  Or so we thought.  Taylor was completely mortified at the thought of her parents being nude at the bathhouse but we both just rolled our eyes at her and told her to get over it.

We each signed up for the traditional bathing package which includes the whirlpool bath, a hot towel treatment, a sitz bath, the vapor cabinet, a shower and a Swedish massage.  Oh, and your own personal loofah mitt.  We were there for 2 hours and got all that stuff for $55 each.  You don't get the opulence of a fancy day spa but you get the same services at a heck of a price!

Jayson went to the men's area on the first floor while Taylor and I took the old elevator to the women's section on the second floor.  I loved the architecture and decor of the bathhouse which looked to be mostly original. There were some modern fixtures here and there but the bathing area still had what looked like original pipes, tubs and solid marble enclosures around the tubs.  I snapped a quick picture of the dressing room but they don't allow cameras or cell phones in the bathing area.

After we disrobed, we were wrapped in a big sheet toga style and waited for our bathing attendants to come get us.  Mine was Latoya, who has been an attendant at Buckstaff for 6 years and loves her job.  Latoya removed my sheet, helped me into the tub, asked if the water temperature was okay and pointed out the cold mineral water waiting for me on the ledge of the tub.  I am amazed that I can remember any of that since the only thing going through my mind was OMIGOD I'M NAKED I'M NAKED I'M NAKED I'M NAKED OMIGOD OMIGOD!!!

I knew we would be discreetly wrapped as we walked from section to section in the bathing area, but I hadn't given a moment's thought as to how that wrapping would have to be removed as we got in and out of tubs and steam cabinets and sitz baths, etc.  There I was, lying in the crystal clear (and very warm) water listening to Latoya and trying to act like I was naked in front of people all the time.  I was SO glad Taylor wore her swimsuit and I would have given anything for one at that point.

Latoya asked if I was ready for her to start the whirlpool and my heart skipped a beat. Dear God, YES, please give me some bubbles to hide behind!  Oh how I wish I had a picture of the whirlpool device that was hooked up to my tub.  These were old claw footed cast iron tubs that didn't have any kind of fixtures attached to them.  The whirlpool device was a separate unit mounted to the wall and inserted into one end of the tub.  It resembled one of those stick blenders that the chefs on TV use, only a lot bigger.  The top part of it was red and looked just like an old gas can.  I half expected Latoya to pull a string and start that sucker like an outboard motor.

Once I got over the initial trauma of being naked in front of my bathing attendant and worrying about one of my feet getting too close to the whirlpool blender causing me to be instantly pureed, I really enjoyed my 20 minute bath.  Latoya came back in and loofahed my arms, legs and back then wrapped me in screaming hot towels for 10 minutes.  There was an icy cold one over my head so it wasn't unpleasant at all.

Then she walked me over to one of those metal steam cabinets like you see in the movies where just your head sticks out.  I baked in there for about 10 minutes then went to the sitz bath for another 10 minutes.  After that was a cool shower then about a 20 minute massage.  Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Jayson's bathhouse experience was similar to mine and Taylor's yet oh so different.  He got exactly the same services we got but apparently some of that comes with an ick factor if you're a man.  Jayson called his bathing attendant Serge (a la Beverly Hills Cop) which I am sure is not his real name but it got his point across.  After disrobing, Jayson was handed a sheet to cover up with but when he got to his bath tub, the sheet disappeared and he didn't see it again until he went for his massage.  When he stepped out of the bath tub, Jayson was handed a towel that he wrapped around his waist but the ends didn't quite meet in the front.

Jayson said all the guys were walking around buck naked and there were no privacy curtains.  He didn't even get the little lap towel thing during his sitz bath! He was quite traumatized by all the swinging junk he saw but nothing could come close to the creepiness of being loofahed by another man.  His voice actually broke when he told me that.  Poor baby.  Despite the trauma, he did enjoy the experience and was glad we did it.

Jayson & Taylor finished up a few minutes before I did and when I met them in the lobby they were chatting with Tim and Trish Osborne.  That was just weird.  A person normally doesn't expect to run into their Mission Pastor and his wife at a bathhouse in Arkansas.  I seem to remember hearing someone say something about the Osbornes going to Arkansas but I didn't know exactly where or when since keeping up with Osbornes' travel schedule could be a full time job for someone.  We had a nice chat and discovered that we'll be following the same path to northern Arkansas so we may run into each other again.

I didn't get really creeped out until we got in the car and Jayson started telling me and Taylor about his bathhouse nightmare and I didn't want to ask but I couldn't help but ask if he saw Tim in the tub room.  Fortunately he said no, he never saw Tim in there and I just knew that the hand of God himself had blinded both men so that later they wouldn't have to deal with any kind of naked fallout.

Poor choice of words.

Swimsuit Trauma, Gangsta Shorts, and Clinton's Propeller Beanie

Typical for the Greens, we planned to start our Arkansas vacation at 10 this morning but didn't actually hit the road until 11:30…which is a good half our ahead of our usual lateness.  I guess it's mostly my fault since I don't plan ahead well, but I did hit the ground running early this morning.  There was no dawdling, just lots to do.  I had to finish washing clothes, clean out the fridge, notify the neighbors, make arrangements for the dog, make ALL the travel arrangements, secure the house, then try to remember to pack my own stuff.  Jayson & Taylor just throw some clothes into a bag and they're done.  I asked Taylor if she had everything together and she said, "I have make up, underwear and big hoop earrings.  That's all I need."  Jayson does try to help me by saying "let's go!" about every 10 minutes.  Maybe he thinks that will make my hair dry faster but actually it just makes me want to do everything in exaggerated slow motion.

I knew we would need to take swimsuits on our trip but I must have put up some kind of mental block about it because I know that I can't get one thigh into the suit I have but I didn't bother shopping for another on.  I tried mine on just to be sure and confirmed that indeed, I resembled a tube of toothpaste that had been squeezed from the middle.  Jayson asked me what was wrong after I tossed my suit back into the dresser and slammed the drawer shut.  I explained to him how my swimsuit had shrunk therefore I couldn't take it on the trip.  He said that was no big deal, we'd just buy one along the way.  He walked out of the room before I could go into my tirade about how completely insane that suggestion was.  Does he really think I can just pop into Wal Mart, grab a suit off the rack and be good to go?! I am a 44 year old woman!!!  Buying a swimsuit requires weeks, if not months, of preparation.  I have to whine and complain about it first, that's a must.  Then I have to pre-shop online to prepare myself for the kind of trauma I will face in the store.  Then my friends and loved ones will have to gather 'round and pray for me.  They'll lay hands on me to cast out the cellulite demons and break the bondage of a poor self image. Then of course I will have to wait for a sale because I never, ever buy anything full price.  I will tell myself that if I wait until the clearance sales at the end of the season I can get a really good deal on a nice suit that will last.  Then when the end of the season rolls around I will work up the courage to actually go shopping by self medicating until I'm so numb that a root canal sounds like a happy adventure.  I'll go to the swimsuit store, flip through the extremely picked over selection of suits on the clearance rack, then complain about how they never have my size.  To be honest, no one has my size because not only is my top side a different size than my bottom side, my left side is a different size than my right side.  I have never owned a swimsuit that fit right and probably never will.  This doesn't stop me from blaming the store for not having something to fit me on the clearance rack so I go home empty handed vowing to try again next season.  The swimsuit I have is 9 years old, if that tells you how long I've been using this shopping method.

I was almost ready to go when I glanced at Jayson and saw what he was wearing.  Normally he does a pretty good job of dressing himself mainly because most of his clothes are mix and match.  That is not by accident.  Occasionally some rogue piece of clothing will throw off our system and he chose one of those pieces today.  It was a pair knee length black satiny shorts with silver on the sides.  I'm not sure where they came from, but I can usually tolerate them when he wears them around the house.  Today he paired his UFC gangsta homeboy shorts with a nice, maroon colored golf shirt with big cream colored Hawaiian flowers on it.  It was a painful ensemble.  I wanted to take a picture but didn't want to hurt his feelings so I'm blogging about it instead.

We got in the car and when we pulled out of the driveway the Garmin started telling us how to get out of our subdivision.  Jayson immediately went off on her yelling about how she doesn't even know where we're going yet!  I grabbed it before he could throw it out the window and programmed our first stop in Texarkana.

We did the whole straddle the state line line thing, grabbed some lunch then headed for Hope, Arkansas, the birthplace of Bill Clinton and the home of the largest watermelon ever grown.  I really didn't care about the Clinton thing, but I sure had hoped we could see the replica of that watermelon.  Apparently Hope is closed on Sundays so we couldn't see the watermelon.  But the good news is that we will be driving back through on our way home next Saturday which also happens to be the 34th annual Watermelon Festival in Hope!  How lucky are we?!  We're penciling that into our vacation agenda.

We strolled around in the yard of Clinton's first home for a while, sitting in his porch swing, and admiring the tricycle that I can picture him riding wearing a 3 piece suit and a propeller beanie.  There were some other interesting photo ops around Hope, you'll have to check my Facebook Photos to see them all.

Jayson and Taylor have gone in search of food and I'm so tired I might be asleep by the time they get back. I'm looking forward to tooling around Hot Springs tomorrow.  It's a very clean and beautiful resort type city but the Green Family is here to keep it real, know what I'm sayin'?  I wouldn't say that we're white trash or anything like that.  In fact, we're so classy that we rotate the tires on our house at least every 2 years.

Leadership Summit Day 1

Today and tomorrow Jayson and I (and maybe 40 other people from Trinity) are attending Willow Creek's Global Leadership Summit at the East Bayou satellite site.  Even though Willow Creek puts on the summit it's not just for church leaders.  In fact, they always have a good mix of some of the best spiritual and business leaders from across the globe.  This is Jayson's first time to attend, my second, and several times today he mentioned that he wished everyone that he worked with could come to this.

Bill Hybels, the senior pastor at Willow Creek, gave the first talk of the morning.  I'm not a huge Hybels fan but I can't put my finger on exactly why.  His talks are always good, his books are good, his church seems to love him, I'm not sure what it is about him that makes me cautious.  It's probably his cheekbones, apparently I have issues.  Anyway, he talked about how one of the roles of a leader is to move people from 'here' to 'there'.  Hybels tends to speak in a way that makes every single sentence sound like it is extremely profound.  Or maybe it is, I dunno.  Remember when you were taking notes in school and how you knew what you should write down by the way the teacher said it?  There's something about Bill Hybels' diction and his voice inflection that makes me think I'm supposed to write down everything he says.  So I do.  And then when I go back and reread it, I realize that I wrote down a bunch of common sense stuff that I already knew but I didn't realize it at the time because he made it sound like a brand new important concept.  I feel kind of deceived and stupid but that's not really his fault.  Then like all authors, and I can't really fault them for it, he pitched his new book "The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond".  I think there's a DVD study that goes with it.

During the break, I went to get some coffee in the hopes of remaining conscious for at least most of the summit, and was extremely entertained by the coffee urns at East Bayou.  Most of them were labeled with whatever kind of coffee was inside but there were a couple labeled "preschool".  I know this is probably because these urns belong in the preschool area of the building but I couldn't help but think that maybe this coffee was for the preschoolers to drink, or even better maybe it was made from freshly roasted preschoolers.  When I went to fill my cup I said, out loud but to myself, that I was going to try the preschool roast.  The lady standing next to me absolutely busted out laughing like I'd just said the funniest thing she ever heard.  It was humorous and made me chuckle but she was carrying on to the point of tears.  Then she wanted to continue to talk about the preschool roast long after it ceased to be funny.  Poor little thing.  I couldn't imagine how stale and boring her life must be if she got that much joy out of a ridiculous coffee joke.  She must have been a Junior Leaguer.

Being a church employee, it's a little strange when I visit another church.  Good strange, not bad strange.  Churches are different and I think they all have their place and serve a purpose but it's just natural to compare them to your own.  Not that I'm trying to figure out who is better, I just love to get a different perspective how things can be done...then I go back to my own church and make sure we do them better.  Just sayin'.

There are a few things that East Bayou does that I would love to see happen at Trinity.  One of those things is these clever cooler stands they had stashed around the snack area.  Some people might think, "big deal, so what"?  Those people are not my friends.  This is one of those small, seemingly insignificant details that are easily overlooked but when given the attention they deserve they can have an enormous amount invisible impact.  What good is invisible impact, you ask?  Well.  Let me tell you.  It can make or break an event, in my humble but usually right opinion.

I just deleted 2 paragraphs of me going on and on about invisible impact and how seemingly insignificant little details can be a catalyst for a major wow moment.  You can thank me later.  Those kinds of things make me positively giddy and it's one of the things I love about my job.  Suffice it to say, as an event attender (not a church employee) matching coolers on stands makes me think that whoever planned this event cared about my comfort, my convenience as well as the aesthetics of my environment.  The bottom line being...I felt valued and yes, silly little cooler stands are just part of what created that feeling.  Well done East Bayou!

Another thing I love about East Bayou is their totally black auditorium.  The walls, ceilings, everything is black.  Some people might think this would create a heavy or depressing environment but it really doesn't if you use it well, and I think they do.  Black is a good neutral background and you can do a lot of really cool lighting techniques with it.  It also makes an effective camouflage for things like music stands, mic stands, amp cords, pedals and all those other technical gizmos that are a necessary part of the stage on a typical Sunday morning.  What I love best about a black background is how it can make other visual elements pop.  What do popping visual elements have to do with church, you ask?  More than you might think.  No one is going to come to Jesus just because I put some kind of cool looking decoration on a black stage, but it might bring them back to church next week where they'll meet the person who brings them to Jesus.  That's another one of those little things with huge invisible impact.  I would love to see us have an all black stage area if not the entire auditorium at Trinity.  I might get strangled in the parking lot for saying that out loud but dang it, black is not bad like people make it out to be!  Decorators used to tell people to stay away from dark colored walls, they'll make a room feel small and closed in.  That was before they knew how to work with dark colors and use their potential.  Black gets a bad rap but black is our friend.  Black is the new black.  That's profound, write that down.

The second session of the day was from a man named Jim Collins who is a business guru and author of "Good to Great" and "Built to Last", both of which are on my long list of books I must read some day.  His talk, which was very good, came from his latest book "How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In".  He talked about organizations in decline, how they got there and how they can work their way out of it.  He gave examples of several well known companies and their leaders.  These leaders were very diverse but all shared some common practices and ideals that keep their companies successful.  Really good business leadership stuff.

After Jim was this little dynamo named Christine Caine who is a pastor from Hillsong Church in Australia and founder of the A21 Campaign whose goal it is to abolish human trafficking.  They do everything from rescuing and providing after-care for the victims to helping them prosecute the perpetrators.  How cool is that?!  This woman overcame incredible obstacles, abuses and injustices in her own life and has an energy and passion that are so genuine they are infectious whether you want them to be or not!  She had me wanting to jump out out of my seat, run up on stage and give her a chest bump...which would have been weird since we were watching her via satellite.  I'm definitely going to pick up her book "The Core Issue: Authentic Living That Impacts the World".

Marti picked up Cane's for lunch so all the Trinity folks went over to her house to eat.  I love a house where 40 people can comfortably have lunch.  I sat on the couch which is in the living room that's off of that other living room and let me tell you that couch is made for napping.  It's probably 8' long and the seats are deep and the cushions are extra cushy and I would never leave my house if I had that couch. 

Even though Mark and Marti have a large beautifully decorated house, it is very comfortable and homey and not at all a stuffy show place like some big houses can be.  Sometimes my allergies act up and will cause one or both of my eyes to water and that started happening during lunch.  I asked Jayson if he could find me a kleenex since I was much too busy eating and talking to be bothered with it.  Jayson came back and handed me a wad of toilet paper.  He said he asked Mark where he might find a kleenex and Mark looked a little perplexed and suggested he check the bathroom.  Jayson didn't find kleenex in the bathroom but he knew that I would find toilet paper to be an acceptable substitute.  If you come to my house and you ask for a kleenex, there is a 99% chance that you will be handed a wad of toilet paper.  Since Mark didn't instantly produce a kleenex when Jayson asked, I figured that meant that he also found potty paper to be an acceptable substitute which made me feel slightly less white trashy.  Or maybe it just made me consider him to be slightly more white trashy.  Either way it was a good thing.

We were one of the first to leave Marti's house after lunch and head back to East Bayou since Jayson has this annoying habit of always wanting to be on time.  I just don't get that.  Anyway, it was lightly raining outside so I stayed in the garage and asked him if he would pull the car up into the driveway for me since we all know that my kind melts in water.  He obliged but not without an eye roll and a comment about how it was barely raining at all.  When I got into the car, everyone was starting to file out of the house and head for their cars as well.  Jayson said, "you're such a prima donna...look at those ladies, they're all walking to their cars and are not afraid of a little rain".  To which I replied, "they have UMBRELLAS!!!" 

I'm too tired to describe the rest of the afternoon sessions but they were all good.  Craig Groeschel did an interview with Tony Dungy who talked about mentoring.  Adam Hamilton, the senior pastor of The United Methodist Church of The Resurrection in Leawood, KS tackled an unpleasant topic.  Two of his staff pastors were caught having an extramarital affair and he talked about how their church handled that and offered advice on how to resist temptation in general.  Good stuff but difficult stuff.  After another break we heard from Dr. Peter Zhao Xiao who is a Christian Chinese communist economist.  Through a translator he talked about how China is warming up to the idea of Christianity since they have done studies that show how the prosperity of American business is linked to Christian values.  This struck me as incredible.  China has always been very resistant to allowing Christianity into their country as a religious choice for their people but they've warmed up to the idea after seeing how it could help their country to prosper.

Okay, maybe I'm not as tired as I thought.  I love the Chinese people, they are so precious and so misunderstood.  China used to have the largest economy in the world and they have a goal to gain that status again.  They are very business oriented and they want to be a great country again, to lead others and to influence other countries.  They're doing well in economics, politics and sports but they fail on the platform of faith.  This adorable Dr. Zhao is teaching Chinese leaders the importance of morals and values in their efforts to become a great nation.  Think about it.  This is an important man in China.  He is advising the leaders of his country.  He is telling them that their success is linked to Christian churches.  And he's here, in America, speaking at a Christian conference that will be broadcast all over the world...with the blessing of his government.  They know what he's doing, they had to give him a visa to get here and they're okay with that.  This is a very good thing :)  Right now China might think this whole Christian thing is just good business but once it gets into their hearts, stuff is gonna happen.  Good stuff.  It's very exciting for their people!

Andy Stanley was the final speaker of the day and of course he was good.  He talked about how all organizations are going to have problems and tension that they simply cannot resolve and he suggests they shouldn't resolve it.  He talked about how to determine if your tension is one of these unresolvable kinds, then he described how to leverage that tension to benefit the organization.  One of those tensions that doesn't go away is the balance between work and family.  If you work too much you can lose your family, if you stay home too much you can lose your job.  How do you solve that?  You don't.  You manage it.

At some point during Andy's spiel I noticed some of the stage decorations behind him.  They were the same exact little stage thingies that East Bayou had on their stage.  What a cool coincidence!  Or maybe they had seen the Willow stage and ripped off their idea.  Kudos either way.  It's hard to see in the picture but the lighted thing on the right is on the East Bayou stage and on the left is the screen showing the stage at Willow Creek with same stage prop thingie.  I pointed this out to Jayson and he looked at me like I had just sprouted a third eye.  Apparently he noticed it as soon as the satellite feed began and I didn't see it until 8 hours later. 

It is a misconception that all artsy types (that includes me most of the time) have an eye for detail.  Some have an eye for detail and some have an eye for some detail some of the time.  Then there are those who are strictly all about the big picture and simply can't get bogged down in details.  I'm one of those some detail some of the time types.  My closest friend could lose 75 pounds and I would not notice.  Is this because I pay so little attention to her that I have no idea what size she is?  No.  Well...probably not anyway.  She's one of those no detail things where I just see the big picture of who she is.  I might not notice if she shaved her head because the state of her hair, or lack thereof, is not one of those details that grabs me.  I am a terrible proofreader because I don't notice words that are misspelled.  I can read a word 10 times, slowly, out loud and never realize that it is misspelled.  But if there is a mistake in the size or consistency of what I'm reading it grabs my attention like a stick in the eye.  If there's an extra space between sentences in a paragraph, I'll see it.  If the font size of a word is one point more or less than the font size of the word next to it, I'll see it.  It's very bizarre.  So you see, the fact that Jayson noticed the matching stage thingies 8 hours before I did is because of a difference in perception, not because I am oblivious to my surroundings.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.