Element Commercial, Pt. 2 ;-)

After a great week of camping, fellowship, fishing, and hiking, Tom, Scott, and Mike returned from Sequoia.

(They say married couples and people and their dogs start looking alike after they spend several years together. Maybe it's just the shirts and hats, but might the same be said about guys who spend a lot of time fishing together?)

We Could Do a Honda Commercial :-)

Tom, Scott, and Mike headed off for a week of camping and fishing in Sequoia National Park on Sunday, and watching them pack our Element, I was struck with how much our car can hold. Take a look at these photos:





After repacking and moving stuff to the roof rack, they were off to Sequoia!

Wikiality Discussions

I mentioned to Tom recently that I had "gone to" a virtual seminar on using wikis as a collaborative tool and thought it could really come in handy in a number of situations. Since he didn't know what a wiki was, I explained it to him and introduced him to Wikipedia. This led to a discussion on how anyone could possibly rely on something as a reference tool when anyone could make changes to it. There has been a lot of online and media discussion about wikis recently (or maybe I've just become more aware of the discussion) and after the Steven Colbert bit on Comedy Central, wikis have become the topic in more places. Take a look at Michael Calore's blog and follow the links to the YouTube Colbert video and a response by a Wikipedia moderator:

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/index.blog?entry_id=1531623

For more on Wikipedia and how it is reviewed and updated take a look at their Help pages.

Tom Has His Masters Degree!

I can't believe that nearly a month has gone by since my last entry! We've seen a lot since then, but most importantly, we saw Tom's notification of receiving his M.S. in Education this weekend! So here he is enjoying a glass of well-deserved champagne Saturday night.

Cal-Pac Annual Conference in Redlands

Tom and I left for Redlands after work on June 21 and arrived in time to check-into our Melrose dorm room (our annual U of R "home-away-from-home"), unpack, and get a pretty good amount of sleep before we were off and running the next morning. This was a better-than-average annual conference - it was shorter, daily Leadership Circles were added to the schedule, and Marjorie Suchocki gave us great Bible study lectures. Legislative sections only met once (I joined Johan in presenting our Board of Higher Education and Campus Ministry resolution to the section voting on it) and although it was removed from the Consent Calendar, it was approved at the last plenary anyway.

I volunteered on the video team again, spending time engineering and logging. Tom and I sang in the Conference choir again, and although we were small (only three altos!) we did a pretty good job singing at the Retirement and Closing services.