VBS, Power Outage, Found Friend

Today is Thursday, right? It should be Friday. I'm just sayin'. **** Tonight is the last night of VBS and we're havin' a Hero party. The theme (curriculum?) is Hero Headquarters: Where Kids Join Forces With God. It's been a blast. So last night we passed out little invitations to each of the kids and told them to give them to someone who is a hero to them and invite them to the Hero party tonight. There will be a closing assembly at 5:30, then we'll eat (dogs and burgers etc) and then we'll have a party. Our Youth Director rented 4 huge inflatables, a bounce house, a slide, a Velcro wall...and something else I can't remember at the moment...and a cotton candy machine, a popcorn machine (which actually belongs to the church, I believe) and a Sno-Cone machine. It should be a great, carnival-type atmosphere and I hope it doesn't rain. It has been clear and hot and beautiful every night so far and of course, the one night we really need it NOT to rain, it's forecasting scattered thunderstorms. So we'll see. **** There was a power outage last night at my office. About 3:57 PM the air conditioner thumped and shut off and about 10 seconds after that all the lights and power followed. The power went out and 5 minutes later the phones died, too. (I am reminded of something from Robert Fulgum's All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. To paraphrase: "The washer got all lumped up on one side and did this herky-jerky lurching dance across the floor and blew itself up. It was frothing around mouth because I guess I must have fed it too much soap, too. Five minutes later, the dryer expired. Like two old people who follow each other closely in death, so closely are they entwined.") So we set up in one of our windowed small conference rooms and dialed in to the Command Center (where anyone effected by an incident calls in to determine what to do) and proceeded to beat the situation to death. In my mind it was simple: No power. No phones. No network or Internet or email. No Light. No air-conditioning. 103 outside. 80 inside. Send. People. Home. It's already after 4PM for goodness sake! But of course we didn't have a hard-copy of our Business Continuity Plan to refer to. And our Emergency Response Plan was in electronic copy, too. So we had a mad rush to find someone, via cell phone, who had access to that information and tell us what to do. About the time the decision was made to send anyone home who had the ability to telecommute, the power came back on at 4:47 PM. Needless to say, I have several copies to print and bind today. **** I was upset on Monday because I was thinking about a friend I thought I lost...and couldn't figure out why. I was even about to write a little blurb about it on my blog here. But I decided against it because I couldn't come up with the right words. And I'd worked myself into feeling a bit hurt. Anyway - about 11:30-ish that morning, I get a text from her. BAM! Outta the blue! She texted (that's a hard word to say, but not so tough to type) me a picture of the cover of a book in a series she and I have been following. I couldn't really see it so I asked her which one it was and she told me. I said, "Oh, I've already read that one! It's been out for about 2 months!" She'd gotten me all excited thinking ANOTHER one had come out already and I was going to have to make good use of the Barnes & Noble gift card that is burning a hole in my wallet. I called her a bit later on my way back to the office just to say hello and make sure everything was OK with her. She's busy and she said she's kind of fallen off the grid, so-to-speak, and hasn't really talked with ANYONE in months. Sad to say it made me feel a lot better to know that, because I really that I'd lost my friend. I'm glad to know she still thinks about me, even if we don't see each other at all any more! Hey G? You know Eclipse is coming out next week, right? I'm headed to the theater on Saturday night - wanna come? TTFN JMS