My son’s newest favorite joke: “When do astronauts eat? Launch time!” (Just don’t let him know you’ve heard the punch line if he comes up and asks, “do you want to do jokes?”)
The countdown to launch is an exciting time. Thanks to the Internet you can listen in when launches are broadcast by NASA television or streamed by Spaceflight Now. You can hear the launch director ask each person responsible for a part of the launch, or a function of the launch vehicle, if they are a “go/no-go” to go ahead with the launch.
“Weather” “Go”
“Flight software” “Go”
“Fuel” “Go”
And my favorite from The Simpsons: “Make rocket go now!”
(For an idea of how intense and involved this is, check out the countdown for a Space Shuttle launch. And that list is only a summary; a lot more goes on behind the scenes.) The countdown may be exciting to those watching or listening in. It is exciting for the lay-person. But I guarantee you it is stressful for those involved. Months, if not years, of preparation have come to fruition. And even the best preparation does not completely eliminate the risk of the entire thing blowing up.
I mentioned before that I’m working on small group curriculum for my church. Well my countdown is now at t-minus two weeks and counting. Am I ready? Are you kidding? There is so much to do between now and “launch” that it is hard for me to picture how we’re ever going to get there. Thankfully, I have a group of great people who have been working very hard to make sure the details all fall into place.
If you have a small group campaign or a curriculum launch, please pray for those preparing it. They need to seek the best way to launch the small groups, make sure they cover the essentials, take the proper steps, and prayerfully figure out the secret to being successful. (and as helpful as all these links are, I’m not really doing any of these- at least not in any traditional sense)
So to say the least, I’ll be pretty tied up the next couple of weeks. Not to mention it’s my “busy season” at work which means I haven’t had the down-time I usually have during the day to work on this like I would normally. And I still have a lot of irons in the fire.
In the meantime, here are a couple important announcements. First, the Antelope Valley Christian Writers’ Conference has been cancelled. While that takes some burden off my shoulders it is bittersweet. I am friends with the person who organizes this and I know how much hard work he’s put into it. Second, I haven’t been as active in social media as I would like. One reason is the busyness of work, but the main reason is that I haven’t updated my phone in pretty much forever so none of my mobile Twitter clients work. What also doesn’t help with respect to this blog, is that StumbledUpon no longer supports link-shrinking with su.pr, so I’ve been using HootSuite. I like that platform a lot, but I don’t like its interface on my phone. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers. Regardless, this post needs updating when I’m finally back up and running fully.
Given all that, you won’t see any posts here for a while and you might not see me around on social media (but I’ll still be posting links on my Facebook page!). Please pray for my “launch” and I’ll be back in the swing of things before you know it.