Bobble Heads and Silhouettes

So the Oscar party last night was a success. Friends from town, Linda's and mine and also the girls', came by, made their picks on ballots, and we laughed and enjoyed the show and each others' company. In the end we had a second place prize and a grand prize. Congrats to Ned Utzig who sprinted to the finish line with the final few categories and took second place, winning a set of movie passes! And congrats to yours truly, who took the grand prize by a margin of only one answer. My prized trophy (pictured, a Bilbo Baggins bobble head) is being proudly displayed on our shelf. We had a couple of issues with parking because we hadn't gotten plowed out so one car was stuck - special shout out to my neighbor Ernie for helping to push it free and letting us use his driveway for a spell. Neighbors are cool that way, and we have some good ones.

I'm tired still. The show ended at midnight (kudos to host MacFarlane, he did a great job) and by the time we settled in and slept it was after 1:00... And today, I have to drive an hour to church tonight for the men's group. This session we're doing another Andy Stanley program called Defining Moments. I've enjoyed these programs, meeting in a large group, then breaking out into smaller discussions afterwards. This time around, I'm one of the small group leaders. Figured it was worth a try. I didn't do too well as a facilitator the first week. I might be just down on myself, but I felt I was stumbling for words  - this time, hopefully I'll remember to simply stop trying so hard and be myself. Not like this is a management position (which I do not like doing), simply a person in a small group who helps keep the conversation going, etc. When we're put into any kind of attention-getting position (i.e. people looking to you for whatever) we sometimes forget to relax and simply be real. Just do what you'd do if you were anyone else. I guess. We'll see.

Another thing I did yesterday was try to make the painting I'm hoping to auction off Saturday at the mission market (see the end of yesterday's post below). It didn't come out the way I'd hoped, so I tried to fix it, gave up (though the result looks interesting enough I might continue it later in another direction). On another canvas Linda managed to recreate the one aspect I had trouble with (the silhouette of a man praying) - so now I'm going to take that and work a background in behind it, the opposite order one normally does but her silhouette is really good so I want to retain it if I can.

Not sure how much I'll get for the painting, or the signed books I'm auctioning, but hopefully something. Amanda is making her journals to sell. I'm going to try and sell on-the-fly poems (gotta think and pray on this some more), and we're going to sell food... chili, or something else (might have to change since someone else is selling chili, too). We're still way behind on our fund-raising goal (ony 33% of the required money for the trip), and this market could help greatly.

You know, I'm feeling too tired today to be anything more than a mild distraction today. Sorry. Talk to you tomorrow....