Back!

Sorry for the absence. I was away for the weekend on my daughter's confirmation class retreat. We went to a United Methodist Church camp a couple hours from here--"we" being our associate pastor, eight Jr. High kids, and me.

Yes, I'm sane; at least reasonably sane.

The kids learned a lot. So did I, but not about the church. I learned that:

-The average attention span of a 13 to 14 year old is about five minutes.
-It is just as gross to clean up puke produced by someone else's kid as it is to clean up after your own. (No, Vicky didn't get sick this weekend, but one of her friends did.)
-There is no top limit to the amount of noise a group of teens can produce.
-The silence after teen noise is profound.
-The exhaustion produced by listening to chattering teens in an enclosed area for two hours is roughly equivalent to that of running a marathon. (Yeah, I've tried that one! Not!)
-Kids still think that a guy with a pierced ear is gay. (He wasn't, and he's engaged. To a girl.)

Anyway, I'm back and getting back to normal life. I did get some prewriting done yesterday, so I'll probably head upstairs later with a glass of wine and get some work done.