It's never too late.

And I mean flushed in the non-bathroom sort of way

Weighing my pockets with stones of longing

Especially when those days are Saturday and Sunday.

They always come crawling back

February 11, 2003

Dear Family and friends,

January just kind of eased on out of the calendar this year! I can't believe it's February, and almost Valentine's Day. So, in order for all of you to get your valentine, hopefully on time, I am proceeding posthaste to get this done!

To say we have been busy is silly. If we weren't busy, we'd be having fun, probably on the beach in the Bahamas or some such warm place! Deryll and I enjoyed our Spiritual Gifts seminar at our church. It was interesting to see how some of my gifts have changed since I participated in a Companions in Christ study a year ago. At that time, we also did a gifts survey. (I don't know what she's talking about, either.) However, much has happened in my life since that I guess change is inevitable. Our Sunday School class has also made a change. We are growing! And, when 18 or 19 people crowded into our classroom, it was crowded and quite warm. So, one of our members asked another class, with a larger room, if we could swap places. They considered it and we did. Sunday, February 9, was our first Sunday in the new room, and it was definitely NOT TOO WARM. In fact, it was on the cool side. However, several of our members were out of town, ill, or whatever, and we only had nine of us present. We'll check it out when we have a better representation. We also decided that our study of the Acts of the Apostles had reached a point of low interest. We begin next week on a study of Paul and his "real" opinion of women and their place in the church. Would help if we could get our hands on a Greek-English New Testament for a closer translation of Paul's actual wording. Sometimes the translation from Greek to whatever to English loses something.

Deryll has not been out of town on any extended trips this past month. What a surprise! He has been keeping his regular schedule and meeting with his cluster group to make their plan for the year. His current project is a "Thinking Thursday" idea -- you'll have to get him to tell you what that is. It's another of those concepts in selling, I think.

Jeff is also keeping quite busy. As of Saturday, February 8, he received a promotion to team leader. That means you get to be responsible for more stuff! He came home with two cases of stuff, including the hardware required to connect them to the computers and phone systems at each place where they are doing inventory. He is also responsible for scheduling his team. Monday, he visited with the office secretary to see if she had any scoop on who can work when and who is good at what... This week is quite busy for everyone; they are doing 3 Super Wal-Marts! That means you show up for the inventory unless you are dead!

Monday night was our Pilot meeting. It was a busy evening. We received the report of the nominating committee and elected officers (purely a technicality as we only have one person for each office). We have four new members and the nominating committee wanted to put all of them on the slate for next year. I had to nip that in the bud! I understand their desire to use new talent, but we don't want to burn these new members out, and they need to get their feet wet and learn about Pilot. So, one of them will be our secretary for next year (that's where I started) and two of them will share a two-year term of office for director. That is the result of asking two people to fill one position. Nobody pays attention to the rules anymore! Then they asked me if we could change our standing rules and have more officers! I pulled rank and tried to get them to understand. Don't burn out our new members! And, let's get them interested and find out if they want to be president! Not everyone does! (And that has been part of our problem as well!) Following our meeting, we had our annual White Elephant Sale. What a blast. .... I got into a bidding war with one of our new members. We both spent entirely too much; she is retired and thought she might have to go back to work to pay for her extravagance.

Katharine is up to her eyeballs in hearts. Her heart ball (Cobb County Ball) is this coming weekend and the other three follow in quick succession. Needless to say, she is not available for much chatting and when she is available, she isn't paying much attention! Keep her in your prayers that the weather holds well and that all the plans go well! She called us Monday night to see if we still had a dot matrix printer; she was in need of a banner! Deryll informed her that Kinko's and their friends do these things and rather inexpensively. So she thanked him for the info and hung up.

Hope everyone is doing well, enjoying the winter, and looking forward to spring. Most of us, however, are hoping that the weather will chill some and kill the bugs! Hugs and stuff, and get your income taxes done! Keep in touch; we love you all! Alabama can still be reached by [Deryll's e-mail address] or [Lorraine's e-mail address].

An actual handwritten message was at the bottom:

Most of the time, I have no idea what she's talking about. But it's nice that she sends me stuff, anyway.

A letter from a more frolicsome Aunt Lorraine at 3:58 p.m.