Work, Church, Football, and Long Nights

Life marches on, and there’s not a whole lot to report that’s any different from my last blog post. Work is going quite well, and I’m slowly starting to make friends with some of my co-workers. There’s a couple of guys that go out to lunch regularly, along with a constantly rotating crew of other occasional lunchgoers, so I’m finding that hanging out with them is giving me great opportunities to meet and get to know people. The work itself is slowly starting to pick up, and as of today, I’ve been assigned 4 projects to work on. So far, I haven’t found the work to be overwhelming, but there is definitely a learning curve. The science of drug disposition is pretty fascinating, and seems to be a bit more interdisciplinary than the field I was working in before, which was more focused just on bioanalytical mass spectrometry. In my current job, I get to interact with biologists, organic synthetic chemists, toxicologists, and other pharmacologists to help study the ADME properties of these new drug compounds. It’s really quite interesting.

Freedom Church has had 4 Sunday services now, and we seem to have hit our stride as far as setting up and tearing down a church in a movie theater. We have an amazing team of people, and they’re all still very excited about the church, and also about what God is doing in Boone County. We’ve been averaging about 140 people (including children), which is such a blessing, and we’re really eager to get everyone connected and “plugged in”. We hope to have lots of service opportunities in the community, as well as small groups that will help people to build relationships and grow in their walks with Christ. Rachel and I have been a part of this team for nearly 2 years now, and we are thrilled with the outcome so far. It has been SO much work (especially for Rachel – it’s hard when you’re as talented as she is!), but the experience has been unlike anything we’ve ever been a part of before. And I mean that in a good way!!

In sports news, the Super Bowl totally rocked this year, with the New York Giants upending the New England Evil Empire (er, Patriots) by a score of 17-14, in one of the most exciting football games I’ve seen in a long while. It was definitely the most unlikely of outcomes. I’ve always found it interesting that in sports, especially football, there seems to be a constant flow of great games, close plays, and stunning upsets. As Americans, we love to root for the underdog, and more often than is probably warranted, that underdog comes through with a victory. So, hats off to Eli Manning and the Giants! Hopefully, Peyton and the Colts can get it together next year and return to the big game. A Colts/Giants Super Bowl next year would be the stuff of legend.

Tonight I made an attempt to actually go to bed at a decent hour (10:30pm) so that I wouldn’t suffer from the 3pm zombie-like sleepiness that’s been trying to overtake me at work for the past couple of weeks. Apparently, Erin thought that my plan was a terrible one and decided to let me know that at 1:15am at approximately 120 decibels. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, whether due to a bad dream, a bad diaper, or whatever other reason, she makes a point to make her presence and displeasure known. With force. If she were 6 months old, I might not mind as much. But, she’ll be 2 in April, and I thought that we’d be past this stage by now. I guess I’m just being grumpy, since I’m writing this at 3am, physically exhausted but unable to go back to sleep. I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and continue my tradition of a 3pm Mountain Dew for at least one more day. Here’s to caffeine!