What is interesting me right now:

** On Monday, I had a group of teens following me and as we were about 2 blocks from my house and the church that they were staying, I saw that there was a small object on fire on the sidewalk. There was no sidewalk on the other side of the street, so I decide to turn to the group and announce “there is a small fire on the sidewalk up ahead, please walk single file until I say otherwise”. We then walked past the coat that was on fire safely. I was quite proud of myself for being so calm and collected in the moment even though I have never seen an object on the sidewalk on fire. I thought that the group would not be alarmed because I was not. I was wrong; when telling about this event to Brian – my calmness made them believe this happened everyday. Brian said it did not, and that he would have reacted quite differently to this event including screaming. Boy howdy, when I think I make the right decision, it never is!

**I am getting back in the group groove – we had 54 participants this week. I was up at 5:30 each day to make sure I started breakfast preparations at 6 am. I often wouldn’t get home until 10. I am pooped. Welcome to my world for the next several weeks.

** I become a big mean boss who uses her power on Tuesday. I looked at Brian who looked like death warmed over and said – Go home. He looked at me and said, “No.” I said, “You don’t have a choice, your boss is telling you to go home.”

** I am following the Barack Trinity story quite closely. Here is a link to several stories about the story. Then Barack’s blog post about it. I understand as a politican that Barack must distance himself from the radical statements that news reports are mostly taking out of context, but it disappoints me. Trinity is a voice of the much of the time voiceless and I see hope in Barack in that way – but instead of advocating for what is true, he must focus on the politics of it all now. Please, if you read this blog, do not believe what most of the press is saying about Trinity UCC. It is a wonderful church that believes in upholding people and social justice issues and because of that is being dragged through crap. If they were a run of the mill church, none of this would be happening and I wouldn’t love them so much.

**Tomorrow, we are going to the St. Patrick’s Day parade downtown and watching the dying of the river green (a silly Chicago tradition) and then going to a screening of King Corn before heading out to celebrate Jaime’s (Jim’s dad) birthday.