I had a great birthday last Wednesday…nothing out of the ordinary. Mom and dad came by my office during the afternoon and brought me a freshly baked chocolate cake (my favorite). Mom cut the cake and we started handing out slices to my co-workers. As usual, the cake was excellent. I received tons of birthday wishes on Facebook as well as on my phone through text messages. It was really nice to have others remember my birthday. I think we are going to go out and have my family birthday dinner with mom and dad on Saturday evening. All in all, it was a great day.

Thursday morning, the alarm on my phone went off at 5:30 am. After I turned the alarm off, I noticed I had a text message that was sent to me last night that I had not read yet. It was from my co-worker, Anita. She had applied for a new position downtown and really did not expect to get it. Well……she got it! Her last day in dispatch will be August 19th. I am really going to miss her, but I know that she is tired of working the 4 pm – midnight shift Tues-Sat. and is ready to have daytime hours. Plus, I think the new position comes with a raise. I know she enjoys dispatch, but I also know that she has responsibilities (her mom) to take care of and working nights is hard on her. She is a super sweet lady that would do anything for anybody…….I always applaud those that can better themselves.


Since she will be leaving in two weeks, we will need to hire a new dispatcher to work her shift. I don’t know how soon that will happen, or what we will do in the meantime. I do know that one of our overnight dispatchers is not happy with what he is doing, so I suspect he will be the next one to leave. This job is not that hard, but you do have to work and know how to multi-task. Sometimes you are dispatching on the radio, answering phones and talking to another person in the office…..all at the same time. Some people can handle this, while others can’t. I love my job and enjoy what I am doing. I don’t plan on going elsewhere for another job because what I have is real secure. There are so many positions being cut in the City right now, that working for the water department is the safest place to work right now.

Thursday afternoon, I received an email from my dad. He informed me that the mother of one of my lifetime friends was in a nursing home, suffering from stage 4 cancer. They had gone to see her and said she was in very poor health. I haven’t seen this lifetime friend of mine for many years, but his mom was always a blessing to me while I was growing up. She was loving, kind and would do anything for anybody….and she had a good sense of humor. She was a country girl and believed in helping everyone. The more I sat at my desk at work, the more the Holy Spirit was telling me to go visit her after work. So, after work, I drove out to Midwest City the nursing center she was in….and found out she had been moved to a nursing center in McCloud. Gadzooks! So, I figured since I was already this far east, I may as well go ahead and drive out to McCloud to see her….so I did.

What a blessing! When I arrived, I ran into one of her sons and one of her son-in-laws….both of which I had not seen in over 20 years. We went to her room and we just sat and talked…with her….about life and about family. Even though she has lost her hair and she is very thin (she was always a skinny lady), she still had a great sense of humor. It was hard to see her in this condition. The lady that was always nice to me and always had good things to say about people…..is laying in a bed, dying of cancer. I stayed for about 45 minutes and then headed back home.

When I got home, I ate a quick dinner and then Wayne, by childhood best friend, arrived to help me add another phone jack. We had a phone jack in the living room, kitchen and master bedroom, but I needed one for my office so I could get my DSL hooked up and use my Internet. So, Wayne brought all the materials and his tools and we proceeded to go to work. We had to run a new line from the outside box, through the attic and down the wall to the office. I dreaded going up into the cramped, hot, attic….so Wayne did it. I looked in our attic and it seems to me like we had more room in the attic at the old house than we do at this house. There is not room for storage and it is cramped.

While Wayne crawled around in the attic, I stayed in the office, assisting him in feeding the wire down the wall and inside the office. Then, it came time to hook all the wires together. Wayne is a very smart man. He is an electrical engineer by trade, but he knows electronics, electricity and cars. He has a great sense of humor and he uses it while he works. He got the wiring ran and hooked it all up. We had a little interference with the phone line and the DSL, so we went to Wal-Mart and bought a filter for the phone line….and that solved the problem. After working on it for 2-1/2 hours, we were finally finished. Not only did he get my DSL and wireless working, he got our cable working properly on our TV in the living room. A very successful night.

Friday was a pretty good day. Teddy was off work, so I worked his radio. Normally, Friday's are pretty slow on his radio. That day was no exception. I was a little bored, but I was able to get some other things done at my desk. At 11:30, Gayla came by and brought me lunch. We had Subway sandwiches at my desk and was able to talk for a while.

After work, it was time to get ready for the Youth Evangelism Conference. I had to be at the church at 5 pm, so I could get everything finalized for the weekend. The conference was at the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman. It was from 8-10:30 pm on Friday evening and 10 am - 4 pm on Saturday. We had a great evening at the conference and got to enjoy Hawk Nelson in concert. Afterwards, we drove back to the church and started winding down.

There were 55 students altogether. The girls were sleeping in the fellowship hall, while the boys were sleeping in the Sunday School building. I went to the youth office to sleep, but I could not keep cool or comfortable, so around 1:30 am I headed home....where I got around 5 hours of sleep. I was up at 6:30 Saturday morning, took a shower and headed back to the church. When I arrived, I went to open the gym so the students could use the shower. After unlocking the gym, I checked in on the students.....and found out that most of them never went to bed.....they had stayed up all night.

We had breakfast at 8:30 and then headed back to the conference at 9 am. The conference started at 10 am and then broke for lunch at 12:15 pm. We had purchased a huge submarine sandwich for the students, so we met outside the Lloyd Noble Center and had a picnic lunch. At 1:30 pm, the conference started up again. One of our students complained that his tongue had swelled up, so I took him to the first aid station. Come to find out, he was having a severe allergic reaction to something, causing his tongue to swell and giving him breathing problems. A decision was made to call an ambulance and have him checked out.

He was given an IV and some Benadryl and was transported to Norman Regional Hospital. We actually had another church go with us and the student that got sick was from the other church. Because of that, I had his sponsor ride to the hospital with him.

At around 3:15 pm, I received a call from the sponsor, informing me that they were ready to be picked up from the hospital. Nona and I headed over to the hospital and picked them up. At 4 pm, the conference was over with, we boarded the bus and headed back to the church. I informed the students to call their rides so they would be there by the time we arrived back at the church.

In my opinion, it was a very successful event, but I was exhausted. I went home, watched some TV, surfed the Internet and was in bed by 9 pm. I laid in bed, tried to send a couple of text messages, but kept dozing off. I finally put my phone away and went to sleep.

I was up at 7 am this morning, but I was still extremely tired. I took my shower, got my stuff together and headed to church. Just as I figured, there were very few students at church. Two students that attended the conference were there, but the others chose to sleep in. During Sunday School, I went to the youth office to finalize all the receipts from YEC. I am the type that likes to get all the receipts and stuff turned in as soon as possible after an event. So, I turned all my receipts in to the office and closed the books on another YEC event.

After church, myself, Gayla, Karla, Stephen and Alissa (Stephen's girlfriend) met mom and dad at Cimarron Steakhouse for my belated birthday lunch. We had a great meal and the fellowship was outstanding. I had a REACT meeting at 2 pm, so when we left the steakhouse, I drove to my office (where we were having the meeting) and waited for about 45 minutes before the rest of the team arrived. The meeting lasted an hour and once it was over, I headed straight home and have rested the remainder of the evening.