Who ever thought, months ago - when my excuses for not blogging included falling asleep on my deck, or spending 12 straight hours on Soldier of Fortune - that come spring I'd be unable to blog due to...dare I say it...work.

They kept telling me its a feast or famine business. For weeks on end I begged for work to do, and no one I talked to had anything for me. Then...bam. 20 people need my services and the one that I did go with needs more hours than I can possibly give. And I'm fearing that it will be this way for the rest of my stint in consulting. No wonder the vacation plan is...generous.

I'm headed home the weekend after Easter, to reap the benefits of a late snow season. There were 3 days in March that some part of Tahoe actually did not get snow, so there is an awesome spring base going, its snowing right now, and its going to keep snowing for the next week and a half or so until I arrive. To reap the benefits.

Thursday I will ski. Friday, I will ski. Saturday. I will ski.

This is the longest I've ever gone in a ski season without skiing, thanks to a late snow season almost everywhere, including the northeast, which had basically no snow season at all. Although...in late August, I'm trying to put a trip together to Chile. Dave conquers Las Llenas. Yeah.

What else...

Youth group is going super awesomely. I haven't really done a good job of putting as much time as I should towards my lessons, but God's grace seems to be working, still, as ever, in spite of me. We have a core group of kids that continues to grow - new and old alike. And its totally a New York group of kids. We have kids from every walk of life you could imagine. With every kind of problem you could imagine. Its a challenging and rewarding experience.

Peggy and Kuz got married this Saturday - wedding on the UES and the reception was at an incredible restaurant in Tribeca. Pictures to come, hopefully. Needless to say, it was a blessed day with blessed friends. P and K are two of the most graceful, kind people I've ever met, and are obviously (and that's a word I'm trying to eliminate from my vocabulary) perfect for one another.

So that was Saturday, and Sunday...well, it started out normal - church, youth group, but then I headed back to Hunter, where Redeemer was putting on the first open forum in a while - The Spiritual Music of John Coltrane.

It was truly a spiritual experience. Grammy award winning musicians, playing the music of a deeply spiritual, deeply humble man - a night I'll never forget.

I closed my eyes when they played Alabama. Its the song Trane wrote after hearing MLK Jr.'s sermon after the 4 little girls were killed in the church bombing. Dave's dad introduced it that way, as Trane's musical rendition of that sermon...and that's exactly what it is. You can feel all the emotion of the era...the south...the pain and the sorrow...the trust and the perseverance. There's no way to put it into words.

The music takes you there. You feel it.