2 September 1999

Soon it will be fall. School starting, leaves falling, football fall. This year seems to have gone exceptionally fast. Perhaps it's the anticipation of the millenium, the glee and fear of the unknown, the Y2K madness that seems to be lurking but maybe is just a ghost story told around the campfire, a Blair Witch hoax that promises much but fails to deliver. Fall. I like fall.
I've been home, for the most part, for several weeks now. And wouldn't you know I'm getting eager to travel again. I have had a couple of domestic trips since my last evangelist sojourn. Last week I flew to San Francisco for a meeting with my team -- an off-site. And the week before that I flew into Memphis to join a friend in the small town of New Albany, Mississippi, which is just 25 miles from Tupelo, Mississippi, which is the birthplace of Elvis Presley. But anymore, travelling domestically in the U.S. is like taking a bus ride. The trip seems short and the country seems small. I guess that's a perspective gleaned from world travel. And I'm missing it now.
September shouldn't bring much travel either. I do have a committment in Chicago this month, but that should be it. Come October, however, I'll be seeing Johannesburg, Istanbul and Moscow in a two week period. It's been seven years since I've seen Moscow and I've never seen the other two cities, so it should be interesting. I had thought we'd have cancelled the Istanbul trip, given the recent earthquake there. But we are moving forward with the event anyway. It should be interesting.

Orientation for school takes place tomorrow. I recently learned that this Ph.D. process I'm embarking upon is a program, as opposed to taking a few classes in my spare time. That means I will be expected to take a fixed number of classes within a finite amount of time -- a full time student is the expectation, I think. And now I'm starting to worry. Do I have the time for this? Is this something I really want? What about evangelisim commitments? What about acting? I'm not changing any plans at the moment, but I am beginning to have second thoughts. We'll see how the orientation goes tomorrow.