The winter of warm weather

I'm sure you all have noticed that we've had an unseasonably warm winter. I was looking at a weather map today that showed that the only places in the country that have experienced cooler than average temperatures are the southern tip of Florida and the Northwest corner of Washington. I can't complain, though. Cory and I have both been training for a marathon in April and so we've enjoyed occasionally running in shorts and t-shirts this winter. Unfortunately for XD (the team that I work for), the lack of snow accumulation has forced winter trips to be cancelled. There was supposed to be a ski trip this coming week that was called off.

This has been a very busy month. My sister-in-law, Kristen, and my dear friend, Sara, came to visit the first week of January. We now have fine-tuned our Tour de Pittsburgh for any future visitors... and Kristen and Sara can probably attest to getting a good earful about architecture from Cory.  As soon as they left I launched into an intensive Wilderness First Responder Course. This 80-hour course on backcountry medical rescue skills is required for all XD staff guides. I now know how to reduce a dislocated joint, apply traction to and splint a compound fracture, recognize a host of ailments, and how to properly document it all for the hospital and authorities. Though some of my classmates buckled under pressure and refused to play a helpful role in group scenarios, I realized that I actually am good at getting things done and directing people in a stressful situation. Hopefully I'll never be in a situation where I need to use these new-found skills...

After getting my WFR certification, I returned home to find that a few staff had quit at the bakery Cory works for. Needing a little extra income, Cory got me an interview and I now have a second job. Training has been enjoyable and the perks are great. Every time you have a shift you get a free loaf of bread. So between Cory and me, we get 7 loaves of bread a week!  We've started giving it away to friends because we aren't able to finish it. Another reason to come and visit us!

Mid-January, I attended a quarterly conference that the CCO holds for staff called Staff Seminar. Every time there is a different topic and speaker. Last time David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, spoke to us about the statistics regarding beliefs held by this generation of college students (which is funny to hear about because I very much feel a part of the current generation of college students). The topic of this most recent staff seminar was sexuality, and Tim Geiger from Harvest USA, a group that works with people struggling with sexual sin, was our speaker.  Because the topic was so complex a lot of us staff left the seminar unsatisfied with the depth to which the topic was addressed. To be fair, there is only so much a speaker can cover over the two days we were at the seminar. It is easy to get bogged down addressing the "sin" surrounding sexual expression and I was hoping for a little more talk addressing the practical issues of talking to students about sexuality.

And finally, I had this last week to catch up on work and spend time with my husband, who, I'm convinced, is the best husband in the world.