I could post for days about all the things I observed and thought about and learned while at the music festival last week, but after driving more than 8 hours today on 4 hours of sleep, all I want to do is go to bed. And tomorrow we're headed off again for at least a few days of family time.

In brief, it was a great trip. My spouse and daughter have been going for years now, and every year they've tried to talk me into going. It sounded like the Aunt BeaN version of hell, to be honest-- lots of conservative Christians hanging out in one place (like 20,000 of them), temperatures in the upper-90s, and nary an air conditioner, sink or flush toilet in sight. And all of that turned out to be true. But the thing that outweighed all of that was how good the music was, and how much fun the kids were having. Toby Mac, Relient K, Switchfoot, and David Crowder were just wonderful. I even would say I enjoyed Kutless and the Newsboys, although Kutless leans toward what my spouse calls "pile driver" music and Newsboys is a bit conservative for my taste. They also had a featured speaker each night, which I didn't care for-- more about this another time, I hope-- there was even an altar call every night with hundreds of people streaming down the aisles, just like the revival meetings I went to as a child. But you know, I've become very good at re-writing conservative speakers and sermons on the fly. Often what they're saying contains some sort of universal spiritual truth that I can learn from, I just have to re-word it in my head so that the ideas that piss me off are less prominent. I've learned some great stuff doing that, and this week was no exception. So all in all it went pretty well, and I was very proud of myself for keeping the chip on my shoulder down to a reasonable size.

Stay cool. It gets hotter and hotter around here-- after our hot, dry summer, the forests are starting to burst into flames all around us.

Aunt BeaN