The proofs arrived from the printer for our three latest books. I’ve spent the last six or seven hours proofreading, which at this stage involves exciting things like checking pagination and headers, and also skimming every page for errors that I really hope I won’t find, because they are expensive to fix. I need to skim faster; it’s getting late and sleep is calling.

What with all the working and all the lying around sick, I never even blogged about going to the Japan festival, my experience checking out the kenjutsu school (and another karate school earlier this summer), or my current woeful lack of reading material. Hope to get to that soon. In the meantime: how are you doing? Talk amongst yourselves.

Right … so I got sick while my mom and sister were in town last weekend, which was super disappointing as you can imagine. I have spent the entirety of this week in bed. It takes too much effort to hold a book up and turn the pages, so I have been watching movies and catching up on a bunch of TV shows online—So You Think You Can Dance, Sanctuary, Dollhouse, some web series like The Guild and The Crew, and lastly the pilot for Stargate: Universe, which was execrably, intolerably, inexcusably bad; in fact the Gumby Ninja called me an hour ago so we could mercilessly mock it together and bemoan the fate of the franchise. All that was way too much TV, even for me. But what can I say; when one is recovering from torturous sinus infection 2.0 (version 1.0 was earlier this month) and subsisting almost entirely on ginger ale and Asian chocolate-covered pretzels, one’s capacity for intellectual or theological input is severely diminished. Don’t judge me. Well, you can judge me about the pretzels. So … many …

I’m going kind of crazy and am looking forward to being well soon. Must get out of the house and do something productive! (We will not count today’s excursion around the block in which I examined some weeds and got tired far too quickly.) But being in bed this long with that much TV has fried my brain a little. Where should I venture out? What should I do? Do I even have friends any more?

I’ve been busy the last few weeks with tons of work, but this weekend is shaping up to be awesome. My friend Holden had a birthday party on Friday at a rollerskating rink. How cool is that?!  I haven’t skated since I was like ten but it came back to me quickly. Not that I’m a super-experienced skater, but I didn’t fall down, get run over, or have an epileptic fit from the lights, so that was good. Afterward we went to see Where the Wild Things Are, which I loved. (Usually I pick apart every movie we see, but this one was different.) I thought it was a moving meditation on what it’s like to be a child. All in all, a great time, spent with some awesome people celebrating one of my dearest friends.

After helping kidnap a pajama-clad Holden for a day-after-her-birthday celebratory breakfast, I have spent the afternoon in a cleaning frenzy, because MY MOM AND SISTER ARE COMING TO VISIT ME IN ONE HOUR YAY! They won’t be here too long but I’m looking forward to hanging out with them and introducing W. to the prayer room. They will be staying in my apartment. Which reminds me, I should probably go buy some groceries so I can feed them while they are here.

Hello peoples, the brain has decided to function (though the sinuses have not) and therefore I get to blog at you today.

IHOP–KC recently had its ten-year anniversary, which was great—ten years of 24/7 schedule worship and prayer. We had a big blowout celebration over the last week, during which we all listened to the stories behind how this thing got started, watched some videos (kudos to the Media Department), and then had a giant picnic on Sunday.

So. I’ve been here 3.5 years out of 10. Which is not really a lot, but (1) around here people tend to view years as being approximately four times as long as they actually are, kind of like dog years, and (2) things at IHOP–KC change faster than the obscurest mechanics of World of Warcraft (i.e., weekly. Though here there are fewer complaints about getting nerfed after a patch). Anyway, once you’ve been here over two years, you tend to get people saying to you, “Wow, this place must seem so different to you now / IHOP must have changed sooo much / Are you like an Anna or something?”

To which I respond, “Yes and no. Definitely no to the last, because I do not have a cot behind the stage.”

Sure, there have been major changes, many of them necessary. The cameras in the prayer room took a long time to get comfortable with. I remember when it was easy to get an entire row of seats to yourself, before the remodel and the ushers and the partitions. We used to “war in the Spirit” during intercession sets. We sat in those anti-sleeping torture devices orange plastic chairs during church. All-staff meetings were held in the prayer room. I used to get the A/V room in back all to myself when I recorded for the Limited Edition.

Things have gotten bigger, too. The school’s branched out. There are new properties and new departments, and there are always new people.

But at the core everything’s the same: a bunch of people in a room praying to an invisible G-d, believing He loves to answer our prayers for unsaved souls and for justice. And outside of that room, we’re trying to live a life worthy of His calling at work, at home, on outreaches and in the mission field. So no, things haven’t changed—not the things that matter.

My internship, three and a half years ago

This post was going to be funnier than it turned out. But as I wrote it I felt the sober awesomeness of ten years (and I mean “awesome” in the “full of awe” sense) hit me. I’m not meant to be at IHOP–KC forever, nor am I meant to be an intercessory missionary for the rest of my life. Being stuck here with a bunch of people who are is often frustrating and confusing. Yet I’m so honored I’ve gotten to be a part of a house of prayer for this long. My life would’ve been very different without the experience of the last few years. I might never have known about the global prayer movement, or about the thrill of interceding single-mindedly with hundreds of people every week, or about the transcendent experience that is IHOP cafeteria food.

Maybe I could’ve lived without that last one. But anyway. Adding the good times and the frustrating ones in a highly scientific process, I would rate my time here a 3.5 out of 10. 1 being the highest, naturally. And despite all the people who’ve questioned my reasons for being here (if not my sanity and/or salvation) in the past, and may even jump on this post, I’m glad the L-rd brought me here for a season.

Busy editor is busy. And now sick. After over a week of being chained to my computer, nobly enduring lower back pain and throbbing headaches at the end of every day, I now have  a sore throat and an ominous feeling in my sinuses.

Personally I would like nothing more than to zone out and watch the Deep Space 9 season I got from the library . (I may not be a hard-core Trekkie any more, but I’ve always wanted to see DS9.) Alas, I have too much work to do. So I will leave you with this video: