I'm baaaaack!

Sort of -- this week looks like it will be extremely busy, so I will refrain from making promises about how often I'll be online. Nonetheless, I wanted to check in ... just because, I guess.

I had a wonderful, but exhausting, week in Dallas for our annual conference. A particular highlight for me was getting to spend most of the week with overseas partners of/participants in our ministry, including people from Peru, Bulgaria, South Korea, New Zealand, Mexico and several other countries. The Peruvians and Mexicans were gracious enough to allow me to practice my Spanish with them a lot, so I sometimes catch myself thinking to myself and talking to my dog in Spanish.

Speaking of the dog, he is now HUGE! Well, comparatively speaking, he's huge. I think he's about 33 lbs now, which officially puts him in the "medium-sized dog" category; he also looks like a small lab, rather than a puppy. He didn't have much obedience training for the week that I was gone, so that is a priority for the coming weeks (he has particularly lapsed in obeying the command to "come," which is key).

In other news: it's raining in Billings. Lots. Yuck. I now appreciate retroactively the warm weather in Dallas, since I don't think I'll see weather like that again until May. I slept for almost 12 hours last night; 1/2 hour after going to bed, I was sleeping so hard that I didn't hear my phone ring when a friend called. If it does stop raining, I hope to spend a few evenings this week and next Saturday working on some landscaping; maybe some day the area that could be known as my back yard won't be a mud hole.

Well, that gives you a quick update about my life. In my recent reading, I've come across some things that I'd like to share, so that might be the focus of my sporadic blogging for the forseeable future.

Vaya con Dios!

Update (5 minutes after the original post): it's now no longer raining; it's snowing. Am I ready for winter already?