Someone Else Does My Work For Me Muahahaha

Ok, so a couple of weeks after Urbana I went on another road trip, this time to the Navigators Southeastern ISM conference. I kinda forgot where it was, but it was a few hours on the road to get there. I got to start taking note of these things.

Kevin Zinn was there too, and he kindly went ahead and put up a website chockful of video, photos, and mp3s, and saved me the trouble of having to describe it myself! So here you go. That link starts at a page with MP3s of Bill Mackenzie's messages. Bill was the speaker at the conference, he and his wife Crystal have a ranch in Mississippi, and they're pretty swell folks. I don't know them too well, but these kinds of things I guess you can just sorta tell.

The other pages have photos of us at the conference and at Rock City, Georgia, which we visited en-route. Rock City is significant in my mind for two reasons:

1) It is home to a grotesquely lit exhibit of fairy tale locations populated by frighteningly misshapen gnome statues. Scary clowns have nothing on these monstrosities! The exhibit must've must be for kids, because I didn't like it. Oh, wait.

2) Lookout Mountain is here! That's right, all ye die-hard Transformers fans, Autobot City in the classic 1986 Transformers animated movie is located in Georgia! I was at the spot where Daniel and Hot Rod spotted the Decepticons as they infiltrated Autobot airspace in a hijacked spaceship. Supposedly you can see seven states from there, too. That's one heckuva tourist location.

There are pictures taken from Lookout Mountain on Kevin's site, but none of the gnomes, which is probably for the better (it's a family-friendly site!). The conference itself was great... a really relaxing time after the somewhat more hectic Urbana conference. Bill's messages were good to soak up, and there was quite a bit of stuff to do between sessions. I did the zip-line (there's video of that on the site), a bit of canoeing with Chung Hao, and some hiking. I'll put up some pictures of the hike that I took, maybe in a couple of days. Kathy Brackman, Wisam Lazim, and I also did a couple of songs for the talent night. Personally, I think we'd make a pretty decent worship team if there was ever a need! Kathy and Wisam have great singing voices, and were both enthused singers.

Aside from that, I got to know a couple of folks better. I spent some time talking with Katie Slay and her good friend Rebecca, who'll both be going to UT soon, *probably*. Katie's still speaking in non-committal terms, even though she hasn't been looking anywhere else lately. Doesn't hurt to keep your options open, I suppose! She's a bright young lady, and she could go anywhere she wanted to; I'm sure everyone's glad she's leaning towards staying in town. I know I am.

I never got into a deep conversation with Chung Hao, but we hit it off as usual. He is nothing if not personable. Wisam was a big goof as well, but I did find out that if you want to talk about more spiritual matters he could switch back and forth between serious business and turkey business pretty quick, and stay pretty lucid either way. That's the sort of guy you wouldn't mind having around a lot.

Phew... I need to get to bed. It's getting late. I'll put those hiking photos up here soon... hopefully by Sunday.

EDIT: Kevin posted my pictures for me =). He's a swell fella. Here's the link.