Getting Ready for Travel, Getting Ready for Christmas

Today was a somewhat typical last day in the office before a trip away. I mentioned yesterday that I'm reading a book in preparation for attending a spiritual life retreat sponsored by the Stone-Campbell Dialogue. Well, I leave home about 8:30 tomorrow morning to catch a plane for Chicago connecting to Dallas, where the retreat will be held.
Today I spent checking items off my list, all of them items that really needed to be handled before I'm back in the office next week.
Had a productive couple of meetings settling on prices and procedures for a program I'll introduce to the Christian college presidents meeting before the ICOM next week. We're going to offer student subscriptions to Christian Standard, and I'm going to see how they like the idea, suggested by Matt Proctor, when I meet with them.
Did some planning with Diane Jones-Dunham and some last-minute consultation with Jim Nieman on the January issue of Christian Standard, whose layout he'll be designing starting tomorrow.
Meanwhile, our printed copies of the December issue arrived. We're thinking about the holiday as we send contributors' samples of our bright red, "Merry Christmas" cover.