Katdish.net

In case you haven’t already heard the news, our friend and critically acclaimed author Billy Coffey recently signed a multi-book deal with Thomas Nelson Publishing. His next book, Into the Maybe will be released Spring 2013.

The fine folks at Thomas Nelson have arranged for a meet and greet with Billy in their offices in Nashville. Which is wonderful and exciting, but also creates a bit of a conundrum, because in order to get from Virginia to Tennessee, Billy will need to get on an airplane.

Now, this wouldn’t be such a big deal for many of us, but Mr. Coffey is a man who likes to stay close to his mountains, and his one and only round trip flight on an airplane occurred during the Clinton administration. The world is a different place these days, and knowing the do’s and don’ts of air travel is quite a lot of information for a country boy from the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Never fear, katdish is here to save the day. I assured Billy that I would tell him everything he needed to know before he heads for the airport, provided, of course, he would allow me to use it as blog fodder and have a few laughs at his expense in the process.

I know. I’m a giver…

So for Billy and anyone else facing the daunting task of modern day air travel for the first time, may I present the Hillbilly Guide to Air Travel.

I don’t travel often, but I have been through my fair share of airport security checkpoints. Often enough that I don’t give much thought to the post 911 security restrictions. They’ve become as second nature to me as knowing which side of the gas pump to pull my car up to. But things don’t become second nature if you never do them, and a person who never travels by airplane doesn’t give much thought to what you can and can’t bring with you.

It’s rare to find any self-respecting manly man, particularly a southern manly man, without his trusty pocket knife, but if you find him trying to get through an airport security checkpoint with his trusty pocket knife, you won’t find him there for long.

We carry handguns here in Texas, but they won’t let you on a plane with one of those either. Here’s the FAA list of prohibited “Sharp Objects” for carry-on luggage:

I feel safer knowing the guy sitting next to me on a flight won’t have immediate access to an ice pick, meat cleaver, saber or thrusting weapon, don’t you? It’s also nice to know that if you really need to take your meat cleaver with you everywhere you go, you can put it in your checked luggage.

And while some tools are allowed in your carry-on luggage, I’m sorry to say that you’ll have to leave Bessie at home, Tonto.

It’s a shame you can’t bring a cattle prod with you on a flight, though. I imagine it would speed up some of those slow pokes in the aisle during deplaning.

There are also restrictions for sports equipment in your carry-on luggage, so unfortunately you’ll have to leave your baseball bat in the gun rack of your hoopty.

I’m hoping the results of your meetings will be cause for great celebration, but any celebratory fireworks or hand grenades will need to be purchased and consumed while in Nashville after successfully unboarding your flight.

But enough about all the things you can’t bring with you. Let’s discuss what you can bring.

I know you’ll want to be looking and smelling your best for your big day of meetings, and you can bring just about any of your usual toiletries you use at home, you’ll just have to make sure they are in containers which hold 3.4 ounces or less and they’ll need to fit into a quart sized, zipped topped plastic baggie.

Here’s a brief summary/explanation from our friends at the TSA:

There is a detailed list of personal hygiene items you are permitted to pack in your carry on luggage, but for your convenience (katdish = giver), I have highlighted the ones which pertain to this particular situation:

"Scalp oil? You know that's right!"

*Mouthwash

TSA and FAA approved mouthwash - YES

TSA and FAA approved mouthwash - NO

In addition to any clothes, boots, cowboy hats and above aforementioned items which will fit into a 22″ x 14″ x 9″ carry on bag weighing less than 40 pounds, you may also bring your computer, ipad, notebooks and fancy pens in your man sack, er…briefcase. The captain or one of the flight attendants (who do not like to be called stewardesses) will notify you when you may turn them on.

In conclusion, just a few more suggestions:

• Plan on arriving 1 to 2 hours prior to your flight in case of delays
• Make sure you wear nice socks without holes in them because you’re going to have to remove your boots before you pass thru security
• Be prepared to remove your watch and/or any jewelry which contains a lot of metal or you’ll set off the scanner
• Don’t be nervous. Air travel is statistically much safer than driving.

I haven’t discussed the possibility of a full body cavity search by the TSA screeners, but I’ll tell you all about that in a separate email. Snort!

Air travel these days can be an enormous pain in the back side, but I hope these tips and suggestions will make your flight plans a little less stressful. Happy flying and think of me while you read the Sky Mall catalog! Good luck.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

A subtle state of melancholy comes over me as I sense things must soon come to an end.

That spark of excitement which comes with new relationships has deepened into something more; something that while in the throws of the excitement of adventure I temporarily lost myself in.

And while I’m just enough of a romantic to believe that not all good things must come to an end,

I’m enough of a realist to know that most good things do.

While I was at once rushing through with break-neck speed, impatient and excited to know what would happen next,

I’ve slowed down now.

Savoring each moment.

Wanting to glean the depth of everything.

Of what it all means.

For me.

For you.

And as the adventure draws to a close, there is regret.

But there is also gratitude.

For a story well told…

~THE END~

I close the book.

And look forward to the next adventure somewhere in the stack of books on my nightstand.

****

That’s what good writing does…

Read any good books lately?

A little red boat sat alone at the shore.

Each morning I looked for her captain to no avail.

On the third day, I decided it was meant to be set afloat by a captain yet to be determined.

And that captain was me.

Just a short trip around the bay I tell myself. No one will even know I’m gone.

That was before the storms rolled in…

The winds and the waves tossed the little boat for what seemed like hours.

When the storm passed and the seas calmed I found myself on the shores of Key West, where I shared a Cheeseburger in Paradise with Jimmy Buffett.

He asked me to stay for the band’s next set, but the day was waining and I knew I had to get the boat back.

So back in the little red boat I climbed and back to Gulf Shores I paddled. There were sharks and pirates and other perils on my trip back, but I survived and I prevailed.

My adventure took a grand total of 30 minutes

And my feet never left the sand.

Sometimes grand adventures are just a daydream away.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

I live a very comfortable life. Truth be told, many people live in want of things that I take for granted. I think most of us take things for granted until we lose them or there is a threat of losing them. I don’t pretend to understand why I have so much when others have so little. But the verse “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48b) doesn’t escape my attention, either. I know I have a responsibility to help others.

I suppose I should be content to live a life many people would envy, and for the most part, I am content. But there a certain restlessness in me that has always been there. Probably always will. I think a big part of this restlessness is an adventurous spirit. No, I don’t want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane or bungie jump off the side of a bridge. I’m not that kind of adventurer. What I desire is to do something in a way not done before. Whether that be writing, or painting or heeding God’s call. I want to be different. I want to ask Why not? where others ask Why? Even if it is from the confines of suburbia. Erwin McManus summed up this desire in the following passage:

For years, I have made it my mission to destroy the influence of the Christian cliche “The safest place to be is in the center of the will of God,” but just this week my wife Kim introduced me to one of the earlier uses of this adage. It’s found in the diary of Corrie tn Boom (concentration camp prisoner)…And although Corrie lived to tell the story, (her sister, who quoted the adage) Betsy died in the midst of it…Actually, God’s will for us is less about our comfort than it is our contribution. God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance. God created you so your life would count, not so that you could count the days of your life..

The Church Communication Network sent me an invitation to do a session on leadership at one of their national conferences..I would follow one of the most credible experts…I was honored..both excited and nervous as I prepared to follow the main speaker . Somewhere in his lecture he started to say something that totally threw me.. Point blank, he instructed, “Don’t be an innovator, be an early adopter.”

Hearing that created a crisis for me since I place an extremely high value on innovation. At Mosaic, the community where I serve as lead pastor in Los Angeles, we don’t describe ourselves as a modern church or postmodern church, a contemporary church or emerging church. The only description I use is that we are an experimental church. We volunteered to be God’s R&D Department. Anything He wants us to do that other churches do not want to do or are unwilling to do, we’d like to take on…

The speaker went on to explain that the innovator is the guy who eats the poisonous mushroom and dies. The early adopter is the guy right next to him, who doesn’t have to eat it. He can learn from the innovator’s misfortune. Made perfect sense to me. That’s why he’s the man. Curious to me was my perception that he had pretty much been an innovator, the kind of guy who had eaten some pretty bad mushrooms and just happend to live to tell about it.

Before I knew it, it was my turn. Whatever I had planned to talk about was irrelevant to what was banging around in my head: Should I stop being an innovator?….But my mind wouldn’t stop there: What happened if everyone became an early adopter…Without innovators, who could we depend on to die?

With all this running through my brain, I let my talk go where the lecture and perhaps God’s Spirit guided me. After thanking him for his amazing contribution to the Body of Christ and for mentoring me through his books and ministry, I went on to thank him for a new metaphor for my life.

I am a mushroom eater.

Erwin McManus, The Barbarian Way

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being an early adopter, but as McManus says, without innovators there would be no early adopters.

Someone has to be willing to die.

So, what about you? Are you a fan of mushrooms?

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Adventure, hosted by the lovely and talented Peter Pollock. For more posts about adventure, please visit him at PeterPollock.com.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

One of the great things about not having a 9 to 5 job is that I’m usually available to volunteer for school activities. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be winning any PTA volunteer of the year awards, although where I live the competition is pretty fierce. Me? I stick to helping out on field trips and making sets for school musicals.

One of the often frequented field trip destinations for elementary school age children is a place owned by the school district known as the Outdoor Learning Center. Here’s a brief description from the website:

The Outdoor Learning Center is nestled on 35-acres of land kept in its natural state. The OLC is a place where plants and animals live and grow and where science and social studies lessons spring to life as students at all grade levels participate in hands-on activities….

The school district is currently expanding the services and classroom experiences offered at the OLC. A living history classroom has been added where teachers and students participate in interactive lessons, and in the science classroom, students explore and discover native plants and animals.

My daughter’s 4th grade class visited both the living history classroom and the science classroom yesterday. I was assigned to one of the ten learning stations in the science classroom:

• Station 1: Seeds
• Station 2: Gourds
• Station 3: Arthropods
• Station 4: Animal Teeth
• Station 5: Butterflies and Moths
• Station 6: Fossils
• Station 7: Birds
• Station 8: Vines
• Station 9: Reptiles/Amphibians
• Station 10: Mammals

Yeah…my station? Station 2: Gourds. Which I suppose is a step up in the excitement category from Seeds or Vines, but notice how the stations are arranged. The room is a large rectangle. The kids, in groups of two, were assigned 5 minutes per station then moved around to the next station. So the kids who had just come from a table full of taxidermy animals and fur pelts got to come to me next. For whatever reason, the kids did not stop at Station 1: Seeds, or Station 3: Arthropods. I was, however, giving my fascinating 5 minute talk about the wonderful world of gourds while standing next to a tank full of angry crawfish and another tank full of African Clawed Frogs.

So yeah, that wasn’t at all distracting. And since Station 10 was right next to my station, some of the stuff that wouldn’t fit on the mammal table was on a shelf above the angry crawfish:


Oh, and did I mention that one of the frogs was about to give birth?

And that another one wasn’t actually from Africa but straight from the bowels of hell?

This frog started at me the entire time.

As you can well imagine, the children were riveted as I explained that gourds were originally from Africa and were carried by heavy rains into rivers and later oceans to eventually reach all parts of the world; that pumpkins, cucumbers, cantaloupes and other melons were considered gourds, and that there were many uses for the hollow, durable wood-like gourds that were on display.

I could tell they were fascinated by my station, because they asked thoughtful questions like,

“What’s a gourd?”

and

“Is that white frog dead or what?”

Okay, not really. The kids were actually pretty great. Especially after I told them it would take me roughly 3 minutes to talk about gourds, after which time they could look at the frogs and further provoke the angry crawfish…

So, what’d you do yesterday?

My mom and sister live about 20 minutes away from me in a gated community. Between social visits and dog and cat sitting, I’m over there quite a bit. Before my mom gave me a spare remote gate opener, I often felt the drive from my house to the front entrance of their neighborhood was only half the journey. Nowadays, I use the remote and I can enter through the back entrance. Once I gain access through this gate, their house is a mere two turns from my point of entry. It is truly a time and distance saver.

Contrast this to visiting before I had the remote. After pulling up to the main gate, I give the security guard my name, the address I would be visiting and my relationship to the resident. He or she writes down my license and make and model of my car, then phones the house and obtains permission for me to enter the subdivision.

Once through the main gate, I meander through the neighborhood towards the back where my sister’s house is located: left, left, right, left, left, right…A total of ten turns in all before I reach my final destination. Needless to say, I was grateful when my mom gave me the extra gate remote.

On my most recent visit, I again took the shortest route on my way in, but decided to take the long way back out. It’s been a long while since I took this route and I had forgotten all the sights on the way. There are beautiful homes of various styles ranging from southern colonial to Mediterranean splendor. There are small, man-made lakes with graceful fountains in their centers, beautiful landscaping and walking trails throughout. In the center of this community of homes is a large lake flanked on one side with a stacked rock cascading waterfall. It is home to several species of ducks and other water fowl. The stars of this aviary show are the graceful, white swans, which can be found here year round.

I decided to pull my car over and watch them for awhile. As I sat in my car, I thought back to the last time I had driven by this spot. Back then, there were four adult swans and six grey ducklings. I wondered if either of the two swans I saw today were once among the ugly ducklings I saw so many months ago.

I suppose I’ll never know for sure. Because while it’s true the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line, often the long way around is infinitely more interesting and educational.

To reward myself for taking the road less traveled, I got out of my car and chased all the ducks back into the lake. Cuz I’m mature like that…