I have discovered just how much of a nerd I am. While other folks probably have their mp3 player filled with hip tunes — I have mine chock full of lectures, sermons and audio books.

I have had it half and half, George Strait, K.T. Tunstall and Offspring sharing space with lectures on Calvinism, Church History and other edge of your seat exciting ear candy. But my small 1 GB player has had to make room for more podcasts on latin and productivity.

After spending hours a day reading and writing I find listening a way to continue to study when I’m too tired read, or when I’m driving, jogging, doing housework or other things that would make a book difficult or dangerous.

Anyway, last night I listened to Frederica Mathewes-Green’s lecture at Calvin College’s January Series. Excellent take on the generations. For the past few years I’ve noticed the absence of the same type of leadership we had in previous generations. She offers a pretty plausible, if as she admits overly general, reason for the difficulties and trends in the boomers and generation X. (By the way do we have a name for the generation born from the slackers?…any suggestions?)

I’m back in Glencoe Alabama now. Michael came a visited the last week and helped me get my stuff back home. (He said the real reason he came was to get on the blog.) Here’s some pictures. We visited the regular sites, he went to Stirling and got a tour of some smaller villages south of Glasgow.

I thought I would post some pictures that I’ve taken over the past few months. These were taken with my Palm so the quality isn’t as good, they’re just things that struck me when I was out without our camera.
These are:
a Picture of Edinburgh taken from Arthur’s Seat
some pigeons on a frozen pond
and an old pub in Belfast

Been awfully quiet without Robin and Keelyn around. Fortunately I’ve had some more visitors to keep me company and I’ve been busy making arrangements to move back to the states and work on the American side of my research.
Michael Chesnut arrived just as Robin and Keelyn left, he stayed a few days before going on a whirlwind tour of Britain. Barry and Philip arrived yesterday. I was taking them around the campus and after a small shower we saw the most amazing double rainbow. It covered Kelvingrove park from one end to the other. The pictures turned out okay, but don’t really show how vivid it was.
Before leaving Robin sent me out to take some pictures of the University and neighbourhood so here’s a couple from the Uni. Cloisters and Wellington Church.

Robin and Keelyn will be flying home tommorrow. They’re packed and are ready to go. We’ve had our last trip to the park (we saw pipers practicing) and Keelyn’s Sunday school class gave her a going away gift — a copy of Grey Friar’s Bobby.
Here’s some picks of us around the neighbourhood. And one of Keelyn’s favourite toys.

We’ve had a nice week. It’s in the low 70s today and beautiful. Sam and Patti are with us, they’ve visited the highlands and kept Keelyn today while Robin and I had a day out. Here’s a picture of them in front of a mattress store. (They have a mattress store in Florence.) We went to the Burrell collection and out to dinner.

I’ve turned my doctoral upgrade paper in and have a big load off of me. Sam and Patti are here visiting us, they’re on a tour of the highlands for the weekend. We had a quiet night in and played cards last night.

Things that interest me
Here’s a link to John’s blog. He’s posted some pictures of his trip.

John’s here. They’ve been out seeing Glasgow. Went to Pollock country park today where they had twin highland calves.

We’ve had company. Luther, Cissy, Michele and Lauren have been here this past week. Had a nice time. Keelyn’s very excited. We went to Church and she got to wear her new dress and shoes since she was sick Easter. Here’s her with her basket and some pics of their visit. John just got in so we’ll have more pick’s of his visit next week.