Saturday… Near the Park

Today might possibly be the best day in recent memory. Despite a severe lack of sleep (due to last night’s gigging in Greenville… which rocked… recordings will be forthcoming and Lee McDerment IS MY DAD who rules me with a Rhodes piano fury) I woke up prior to the hour of 8:00 (AM… a rarity) to head back to the aformentioned city of green to take pictures and talk HRTWRK-related business with emediagroup. Their facility is amazing… thousands of square feet of old Greenville goodness, flat file after flat file of woodblock letters and numbers… 2-ton print presses from the 50’s and 60’s (that are cheaper to let sit unused than try to move)… they moved into an old building whose previous occupants NEVER THREW ANYTHING AWAY. I will be forced to make many return trips for more photos. Forced… and loving it.

Lunch with Chris and Tara was full of laughter and swine consumption and more laughter. It’s refreshing to have friendships outside of the typical circle. Working at your own church is great, but it also means that there is no seperation between my job, my church, my peers, my friends, my fellow employees, etc. Almost everything about my life revolves around New Spring. I don’t regret that… but being intentional about involving myself in friendships and conversations that don’t revolve around it has been a very tangible means of maintaining my sanity lately. Add Coca Cola Classic and tasty pork to that mix… and that’s where the magic happens, kids.

The weather was scrumptiously amazing… 70’s, windy, blue skies and sunshine… the kind of weather that makes you want to run out of whatever perfectly good (and, up to that point, mildly acceptable) building that has quickly (due to the aforementioned gloriousness of the weather) become quite UNacceptable and spread your arms out and spin around like an idiot or jump up on the nearest park bench for no reason other than to take it all in. Yes… THAT GOOD… weather that you have an uncontrollable emotional response to. I spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying it… skulking around downtown, taking pictures of alleys and graffiti and buildings and textures (i’ll try to post some of those pics next week sometime) and then straight DIGGING driving 85 with the windows down, singing what a glorious day, what a wonderful day today…*

Too rare. I felt alive today.