Wow.

Well, talk about a pretty packed week/weekend for me. It all started with the Bucksbaum talk at Drake on Tuesday evening. It's an annual talk that takes place twice a year and the university invites world renowed people to speak. The guy who spoke was Nicholas D. Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times. He spoke about the situation in Darfur, Sudan. Talk about a very tragic situation. It was a very good talk and he had some gut wrenching images from Darfur. If you want to learn more about the situation in Darfur, check out www.savedarfur.org. On Thursday, I went up to Ames for the musical Evita. I'm familiar with Evita from the movie and the music is well known. However, I was surprised how good the musical was. I had a good time watching the musical. Friday was a pretty laid back day as I did not do a whole lot which was nice. I had something or another going on every evening of the week.

Saturday was another eventful day. It started with the Alzheimer Walk around Waterworks Park. There's a colleague who has been part of the walk for a number of years and when I realized that I did not have anything going on Saturday morning, I figured it would be a good way to get the morning started. I biked to the park from my apartment and that got my blood pumping. The walk was a very leisurely walk and there were quite a lot of people there. A number of those walking were there in memory of someone they knew. After the walk, I biked to the farmers market and it's been quite some time since I've been at the market. I did not get anything, but it was just nice to walk around. I took a shower and headed to the downtown library. Later that day, I was off to Ames again and this time it was for a jazz concert by an up and coming jazz artist named Rachel Price. She's just 22 years old, but she has an amazing voice and I won be surprised if she wins a number of grammy awards in the not too distant future. All of us in attendance thought that it was a great concert. She's not released any cd yet, but she did inform us that it will be coming out soon. Talk about a great day to end a Saturday night.

Today, the young adults served coffee and donuts and there were a good number of us there which made the job so much easier. We had fun and it was nice for the congregation to get to meet other young adults. In the afternoon, I was off to Joel and Kathy's place before heading to Costco to get food for student supper. The 2nd Sunday Group served supper this evening and as always we had a fun time. However, the grill was not working properly and that was a little disappointing, but we survived. We ended up boiling then broiling the brats and the students thought it was very tasty.

Once in a while I have a pretty packed weekend and this was definitely one of them. I really do not mind it as long as there's some down time. I guess my downtime was this evening. I believe next weekend will be a much calmer and manageable weekend. However, life has a way of providing a number of surprises. We'll just have to see what the coming week brings.