It's Winter, but Spring Is Coming!

"Well, Cincinnati is beautiful in the spring and the autumn, but we have so many gray days in the winter." I made the remark during a visit with an old friend, Jack Reese, who teaches at Abilene Christian University and was in town doing some research for his sabbatical project. He had called and we ate breakfast together at First Watch in Kenwood. It was blowing and cold as I arrived at the restaurant at 7:30 and left at 9:00. Still windy and chilly when I arrived home this evening after my haircut after work. But at least the sun was shining. So I decided to snap this picture of the daffodils poking through the mulch under a pear tree in my backyard. I was on the phone today with a friend in Johnson City, Tennessee, who said the daffodils are blooming in her yard. Not so in mine, which is fine with me, since it's supposed to get down to 26 degrees tonight with a high tomorrow well below 40. As I remarked to Peggy, my haircutter, this evening, "Well, I'm getting a lot of good out of my sweaters!" Yep, I've set out a wool sweater and corduroys to wear tomorrow!

An Older Leader Looking at Young Leaders

Not much to take a picture of today. Spent most of the day looking at nominees for our Young Leaders Under 40 to be featured in our July issue. We have received maybe 4 dozen nominees plus a bunch from our contributing editors in their annual retreat in January. The only problem is that just today I discovered a folder of nominees I had forgotten Diane was gathering for me. This after I spent time with Paul Williams deciding on the fewer nominees we had without all those in the folder. And after having then sent our shorter list to the contributing editors to evaluate.
So today I made a giant spreadsheet of all the likely nominees--those I just saw today plus the names our contributing editors had, uh, contributed. I'm going to fess up to Paul tomorrow (I spent quite a bit of his time evaluating the incomplete list last week), and we'll decide on a final list.
Today was haircut day, and I stopped on the way home to continue my once-every-five-weeks habit.

Productive Days Are Not Always the Most Interesting Days

Had a productive day at my desk today. Finished editing the bulk of our March edition: it's the Christian college issue, with some good accounts of international partnerships and innovative mentorship programs. The paragraphs from all the colleges have yet to be edited, but we'll get to that. Meanwhile, cleaned up a bunch of smaller tasks related to marketing copy, our trip this summer, and the contributing editors retreat. Oh yeah, I read a Lookout proof and had a discussion with editor Shawn McMullen about the Lookout's new website.

I told Evelyn I always
like the way my hair looks
when I come home from
having it cut better than any
other time. I can't figure
out why.

Got my haircut after work. We had leftovers (yummy leftovers) for supper, and I wrote an e-mail to my Bible study guys. Not an exciting day (why is anyone reading this?).  :-)
But a productive day!

You Know It's Not a Big Day . . .

I wanted to get a cut like that
guy on the poster, but no
one seemed to think
that was a good idea.

You know it's not a big day when the best thing you can report in your diary is getting your hair cut. We'll see if the Tuesday five weeks from today is any more exciting; if not, you'll be seeing me with the blue plastic shawl and our excellent haircutter, Peg Wiggs, popping up on the blog again.

Trivia question for the record: What, in the personal grooming category, do the last two editors of Christian Standard have in common? 

Answer: For awhile at least, they both went to the same haircutter! When Sam and Gwen Stone lived in West Chester, he asked me where I got my hair cut, and I recommended Peg. He stuck with her till he and Gwen moved back to the West side of town. But she asks me about them often.

This doesn't usually happen, but Evelyn got her hair cut tonight too, just before I arrived. I wanted to take her picture in the barber chair, but she wouldn't let me. So she took mine! (That's her in the mirror snapping me and Peg. Now, don't you think SHE would have made a more attractive shot than I turned out to be?)