The "I love Orbitz!" dance

I just spent 500 bucks... and I'm so insanely happy that I'm doing the airplane-ticket-happy-dance right here in my office chair. Wiggle, wiggle!

I can hardly fathom this: I am going to be home for Thanksgiving, in a country where everyone else will be celebrating it, too. I love Thanksgiving... no Santa Claus hoopla, no pressure to come up with thoughtful and appropriate gifts - just pumpkin ice-cream pie, family, a few construction-paper hand turkeys and my cousin Nick and I kicking everyone else's butts at Trivial Pursuit (hey, you gotta have your traditions!).

And then the pleasure to beat all other worldy pleasures... a Road Trip!!! The "road" part is only OK in my head, but the multiple destinations with friends waiting for me there? That, my dear friends, is heaven. ("No, it's Iowa!" *groan*) It's really and truly going to happen! Yippie!

I am such a geek. And so are my friends. Thorsten and I just had the randomest of all random conversations, which included the phrases "ex nihilo," "tohu wabohu," and "aus dem Nichts"... by the end of the 5-minute conversation, I realized that we had casually thrown in theological phrases in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, German and English. It's been quite a while since I could say the word Septuagint without getting funny looks. :-) Seriously, sometimes I forget that I have studied theology for umpteen years, or that I am supposed to be a minister here. It just skips my mind for weeks at a time, and I start focusing on the contracts and grant applications that have to be written, the brochures that need designing, the emails that I must answer, the programs I have to price. Hey, I want to poke myself in the head and shout, this is ministry! Don't forget! 'Cause I do, I really do.

That has nothing to do with Thanksgiving! or my plane ticket! but right now I am not too worried about coherence. I'm coming home! In 86 days! I am so totally making a paper chain and ripping off one link every day till November 23rd. I am a huge geek. :-)