Sometimes I Amaze...

...Even Myself

Somehow, I managed to relax today and in the afternoon decided to cook. It has been a while since I last had pizza, so that is what I began to crave. I have made my own bread for the last, I guess eight years now, so a pizza crust is nothing, but the topping can be a little tricky. I searched the kitchen and decided I wanted a spinich pizza which worked because I had frozen spinich in the freezer and all the fresh basil and oregano and rosemary growing in the garden. I have enough of the herbs growing at this point that I could have had a purely herb pizza if I wanted. Basil grows like crazy in the right soil and environment as does the oregano. The rosemary is practically a native plant around here - it is fantastic for the xeroscaping in the dry central Texas rocky soil. Also as people in the suburbs know very well - deer don't eat rosemary.

After chopping and mixing for a little while - with some added fresh onion and garlic and then the parmesan cheese grated and mixed in, the aromas began to take over the kitchen and I was not certain I would make it to the actual baking of the pizza.

By the time the topping was complete, the dough was ready to be worked into pizza shape. I had preheated the stone, so the dough would start rising as soon as I put it down and I could form a nice bowl to hold the sauce and melting cheeses. It worked beautifully and soon the nice round crust was piled with fragrant herbs, cheeses, and spinich.

After rising another thirty minutes it was ready to bake and that just made the anticipation worse as I could smell every bit of it's goodness fill the house. About the time it was done, I turned on the broiler and set the pizza under it for the last few minutes

I LOOK LIKE THAT????

I think it is is time to find a good cosmetic surgeon. I tried three different photos before I went with this one and none of the three ever brought up Lance Armstrong, and Lance is the guy I'm always being told I look like. I guess you have to be in Austin to truly appreciate that.

I just know I'm going to be googling some of these names - especially Mr. Redondo!

Reason # 2 W hy I Love Austin...

God loves live music!

He really must. Tonight on day three of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, thunderstorms were building to the west as a hurricane which hit the west coast of Mexcio and a cold front were merging and stirring up all kinds of fun.

As we watched the clouds approach it started to lightning to the east of us. Then it started to lightning to the west of us. But it never started to lightning over us and with only one pause for a downpour, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers showed why they were the headliners and closing act for ACL Fest. #5.

A Sermon to Ponder

Two months ago my pastor preached a sermon about the rejection of Jesus as the Christ in his home town. The people there could not see beyond the man they watched grow up. They could only see him as "the carpenter."

And that made me ask the question - "Did Jesus ever build a wobbly table for someone?" If He cut a board the wrong length, did He just say, "Fit!" and everything was good.

Today the lesson looked at a passage of scripture where Jesus responded with racist terms to a gentile woman who came to Him to heal her daughter. Perhaps, the response was to test the woman's faith. Perhaps the response was Jesus's humanity showing through His divinity. Whatever the interpretation of the response, it leads to an examination of one's personal Christology. Because the Bible teaches that Jesus was both man and God, there is the possibility that as a person, Christ was influenced by the society around him.

And that has had me pondering the question: if Christ, as a man, could be influenced by the society around Him, how much more so are we?

As an educator, though I am no longer at the campus level, I constantly consider the effect the decisions I make has on the staff and students of the 29 campuses I with which I work. When I make a decision, it creates a certain response from the people who work on the campus which leads to a reaction by the students.

At the campus level a certain environment develops. In some ways, each campus has it's own culture which evolves over time. Through systems theory, one can understand how changes take place and that the influence of certain key people can determine the entire climate that surrounds a place, just like the gravity of a celestial body determines the atmosphere which surrounds its mass.

I would be deluding myself to think that every move I made affected the effectiveness of each campus, but then again, with systems theory: a butterfly flaps its wings in a rain forest and a hurricane strikes the Caribbean. Given that understanding, I do consider the ramifications of all my actions on the 40,000 students.

No wonder I suck at relaxing.

I SUCK...

...at relaxing.

I took a vacation day to have a four day weekend, but by noon, I was frantically worrying about the meeting I have scheduled for tomorrow morning. I worried so much, I was getting sick to my stomach.

I tried taking a bath and decided I would scoop out the water into a bucket to water some of the plants in my garden (surely the phosphates in the soap would be good for them) but then it started raining.

I have been gone for three days and my dogs didn't make too much of a mess. I was very proud of them. Today, for some reason, two of them pooped on the carpet.

I thank you for your kind attention to my whining. I'll go work on my powerpoint for the training I'm doing Friday.

A Day Off

Ahhhhh.....so nice to have a day off.

I have a hard time relaxing - I've already made a list of things to do. I'm resisting. We'll see how it goes.