Just sittin' on a fence w/ my buddy Pete...

When I was in middle and high school, in the summers I would go on mission trips to different parts of the country with the youth group at my church.  We started out going to Lamoni,Iowa (What?  Never heard of it?  No way!), then the next summer we went to Limon, Colorado, just outside of Denver.  We also, at different times, went to Piedras Negras, Mexico, and Miami, Florida (to help with Hurricane Andrew cleanup).  In more recent years, they've gone all over the globe - in fact, as I'm writing this, my mom is getting ready to come back from her second trip to Chaing Mai, Thailand!

Anyway, I was just a young little smart-ass kid when we started out, and I remember when we were in Colorado for that week we had, I guess, a "revival" of sorts - at least we were having church services every evening at the same church.  Our pastor, John Duncan, was preaching, and after about the third night, I realized I'd heard these sermons before (I guess that was a testament to the fact that I was actually paying attention the first time! :-D).  Obviously it wasn't that big of a deal - after all, the good people of Limon, Colorado hadn't ever heard them, and he does give good sermons - but I, for some reason, felt the need to call him out on it.  I asked him that third night at dinner if these, much like the sitcoms on NBC, were the "summer re-runs".  Everyone got a good chuckle out of that, and he did go ahead and address it the next night - not that anyone cared, because, like I said, they hadn't heard any of them!

Tonight's stroke, much like "The Cosby Show" in July of 1986, is somewhat of a repeat: the other night I did a big, wide swatch of matte gel just to see what would happen.  Well, it didn't get nearly as hazy as I thought it would, so I thought that tonight I would just do it again - see if I can get it to be a little more cloudy.  We'll see what happens - who knows.  If it doesn't do what I want it to do, we'll just do it again!