do you know the muffin man?

This has been a week of being busy at church.

This past Wednesday, I was at church for thirteen hours, with only maybe a cumulative time of 15 minutes being spent outside of the building once I stepped foot inside in the morning. I spent most of the day getting ready for Confirmation that evening. Which was frustrating in a number of ways.

First, I decided that I was going to use Power Point for the lesson, something I haven't done before but was the main reason we got a laptop when we replaced my work computer. So I spent some time coming up with fun slides when I was reminded by Cheryl, our custodian and jill-of-all-trades here at church, that my laptop wasn't working with the projector. We found that out the other day in church when we were using my laptop to show a Power Point slideshow while the handbell choir played, only to have it stop working about ten minutes before our first service. Luckily, Cheryl was also using her laptop to present her announcement about the brunch we are having at church as a celebration of our fall stewardship appeal.

So I went up to the sanctuary and hooked up my laptop to the projector only to find out that still didn't work, so I called Dell and spent about ten minutes talking to some computer hoping that it would transfer me to someone who could help me. I talked to the first person for about 10 minutes, giving him all the same information that I had given the computer I had been talking to, only to have him say that he was unable to help me and he'd transfer me to someone who could. So I got transferred again, this time to someone with an accent so thick it was difficult to understand him. Luckily, it only took this one about 2 minutes to say that he was unable to help me and he transferred me to someone else. My third person was a woman with no distinguishable accent, and we chatted for a bit, before she said she wanted to connect to my computer and that I needed to go to this particular website. Now, we only have internet in our offices at church, we don't have wireless or anything cool and modern like that, but there is a fairly strong wireless internet signal from somewhere else that we can pick up in the sanctuary. So I told her I could connect to it, but then my computer decided to be extremely slow, and then, finally, when I got connected to the website that I was supposed to connect to, I realized that I had been disconnected from my phone call.

So, I called them back, talked to the automated computer person for a couple minutes before getting connected to a guy who could immediately help me. He said to hit 'function' and 'f8' and it would then transmit the signal from my laptop to the projector. So I hit it, didn't see anything happen, hit it again and that's when hell broke loose. The best way I can think to describe it is that the connection between my laptop and the projector started to wig out and flash back and forth constantly. Only unhooking my computer from the projector would get it to stop. Turning my computer off, hooking it up to the projector and then restarting it did not help.

I decided that I would just have to suck it up and not do the Power Point thing. So I finished up the lesson in time for the Confirmation kids to start showing up. Since there are now sports for a few more weeks, I've noticed that we either have kids showing up extremely early or just right before Confirmation is supposed to start. I helped serve pizza to the kids, then sat with some 5th graders who are there for our new Wednesday night pre-confirmation classes for our 5th and 6th graders, and then taught Confirmation.

After that was over, we had our Senior High Youth Group in the youth room, led by Noah and Laura to great and awesome volunteers. Our Bible Study was led by Casey, one of the youth, and then we played this game called Intense, or Intensity, which involves hitting a raquetball ball with ping pong paddles. There are other rules, but it definitely is intense.

I happened to come upstairs when choir was over and Cheryl and her husband Curt were in the kitchen getting things ready for the brunch on Sunday. So, Sr Pastor Mark, Cheryl, Curt, Noah, Laura, and several others and I hung out in the kitchen and ate some ice cream that we needed to get out of the freezer so that they could have room for all of the food for the brunch.

So then, today, there was a group meeting over at church at 9:00 to help prepare food for the brunch, which is tomorrow. So I was over there a little ater 9 today, and helped make large amounts of cheesy hashbrowns, several pans of egg bake, I helped set the tables for 170+ people, and then helped mix up and bake 360 muffins of various flavors, and made it home a little after 2:00. At which point I sat in my chair and I don't think I've moved since then.

I don't really have big plans that include moving for quite some time, either.