Friday

  • Awake and out of bed at 5:50, anxious about the decision I had to make regarding the scheduled Diocesan Council meeting. After seeing some more "regrets" emails, and being informed by IDOT road condition hotline that both I-55 and I-72 had significant ice and snow coverage, I pulled the plug. Though it may not have been inordinately unsafe (temperatures were above freezing), none of our business was so urgent as to justify subjecting people to that sort of stress.
  • So I sent out the email notification about 6:15, then camped out in my recliner to begin processing my inbox. Around 7:30, after breakfast, I geared up and started shoveling off the driveway, bearing in mind that, while not necessarily impassible for the YFNBmobile, by the time it thaws to slush and refreezes tonight, it would be a mess tomorrow, I stayed the course, and got it completely cleared. After a shower, I was dressed and out the door around 9:45.
  • Met with a priest who was in the office because I had an incorrect email address for him so he didn't get the message about Council. Fortunately, he hadn't driven very far, and we did have some fairly important stuff to discuss anyway, so it was serendipitous.
  • Took a phone call from another priest over a pastoral concern.
  • Took care of some business pertaining to my Title IV Respondent status.
  • Conferred with the Archdeacon over an administrative issue in one of our Eucharistic Communities.
  • Hooked up the video camera to my laptop to begin downloading the file from Wednesday evening's Lenten series talk in Bloomington. It takes a while, so I headed out to McDonald's and then home to consume my McNuggets.
  • Began the process of importing the now-downloaded video file into iMovie. The process required the better part of three hours. Fortunately, I was able to just let it run in the background.
  • Did the rough development of next week's Lenten series presentation at St Matthew's. This is fun, but giving birth to new material is time-consuming.
  • Made an initial homiletical pass over the readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Why so far in advance, you ask? First, because I don't have anything from a prior year that is appropriate to rework for the occasion, and, second, because much of the time between now and then (like the whole month of April, for starters) is already heavily-scheduled with travel.
  • Evening Prayer in the cathedral.
  • More video processing (this time uploading the iMovie file to YouTube, where I hope to make it available to Carl Slaughter for editing) in the evening.

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