Summer update

Summer officially began on Memorial Day, 5 weeks ago.

A whole hodgepodge of things have happened.

• Lisa has been here for just over a month. So far that has pretty well. She does fit into the flow of our house… so it really hasn’t been hard at all. Finding volunteer work for her for the first 6 weeks just didn’t pan out. She did a few things for a charter school that is opening in City Heights and she did a few things for a non-profit I’m exploring starting in City Heights. But most of our other leads never materialized. Several organizations were super interested, but when it came time to do something they bowed out. Who would have thought it’d be so hard to volunteer 6 weeks of labor? Not me. It’s been great to have her here for the convenience factor. Kristen and I have love being able to go for walks, go to the store, or whatever we want without necessarily having the kids in tow. That said, I think Lisa is a bit weirded out by how many people asked if she is my wife!
• The kids get out of school this Thursday. We like the year-round school concept. But it does feel weird to tell them to get ready for school in July! It’s hard to believe that we’re just a week away from having a 4th grader and a 2nd grader. They’ve got an easy week ahead. There are parties every day and field day on Thursday. Both of them are something like 2 grade levels ahead academically… so moving up is a very good thing.
• I connected with the YouthWorks San Diego team twice this week. (Gold star employee that I am) I went over and met them on Monday at their ministry location. And then when I realized it was just 10 minutes from my house, we invited them over for a BBQ last night. They are four very impressive college students running missions projects for 10 weeks with 50+ students per week from all over the U.S. and Canada. The guys inhaled all the protein, no surprise.
• Kristen and I leave for Haiti in just 5 days. We are flying to Fort Lauderdale this coming Saturday night. We’ll have all day Sunday and Monday morning to just kind of relax and get used to the tropical humidity before flying over to Port-au-Prince Monday afternoon. (There may or may not be a beach and tropical beverage as part of this preparation.) We still have some pre-trip shopping to do. We need a tent, sleeping pads, and duffle bags. Outside of that we are set. I’ve got a lot of pre-trip thoughts for this trip. But I’ll save them for their own post.
• Work stuff is going great. When I compare what we we felt like last year at this time to this year… man, we are in a much better space!
• Speaking of work. I was afraid when the shake-up occurred that I’d somehow lose all of those friendships with now former co-workers. It’s been fun this summer to connect repeatedly with people who used to work for YS. Bit by bit everyone is landing on their feet. While I don’t see them nearly as often as I did when we worked together… it looks like those friendships are going to make the transition. And for that I’m stoked.
• I’m evaluating a whole menu of personal projects. (Web design, app development, writing projects, stuff like that) It’s cool to have so many opportunities to evaluate. At the same time its a bit overwhelming.
• It hardly feels like summer in San Diego. We’ve gotten a heavy dose of June Gloom that has carried over into July. This has been great for the garden, but not great for a nice warm summer. I’m thinking there will be a time later this summer when we’ll remember the coolness fondly. But for right now it’d be nice to get into the 70s.
• The World Cup has been fun to watch. The games certainly were a fun part of our vacation! Yet I’m glad it’s only every four years because I don’t really like soccer that much to watch it all the time. When I watch sports that are a bit boring on TV I always come up with fun ways to make it more interesting. What do you think of this one? When a team scores a goal they have to chose a player to take out of the game. So if they go up by 2 goals they are 2 players down, etc. It seems like that would result in higher scores and make it more interesting. And they should get rid of the shoot out. Once they get to the 3rd overtime they just need to add a couple more balls. Split screen because there would be shots coming from everywhere!