Do you remember going camping with your family, growing up? I don’t. Unless you count church camp, with its primitive ( = you’re lucky you had a toilet) cabins and its delicious dining commons food. (Said without sarcasm, by the way. This particular church camp had its food prepared by a Cadillac-driving chef, no joke at all, who volunteered his time for the week.) But the tent thing? My mom couldn’t sleep in a tent. She had the hardest time picking out a mattress, what, eight years ago? And had to have that pillow top thing to make it comfortable. My dad, too, would probably have scared the deer for miles around with his snoring. So the closest I got to tent-camping when I was little was the quintessential backyard parties. Sometimes we even stayed out there all night… notwithstanding the stray cat that jumped on my tent and scared one of my siblings half to death. When folks at church mentioned they’d be at a churchwide camping weekend this fall, I got excited. Enthralled. Exhilar

I sat down tonight to update my reading list. I haven’t written down the books I’ve been reading since… JULY?? How can that be? Noticeably, several of the books I’ve read in recent months (well, within the last year, I guess) have had to do with being single. Blame it on the local Goodwill, maybe, where suddenly a slew of books showed up having to do with being single and being Christian. Oh, and being a girl. My guess is somebody got married and thought, “hey! These have absolutely no use for me anymore, so I can make some room on my bookshelf!” That’s on top of the book I already owned (well, two now) and the ones I’d found via handy local libraries. So, for your edification, a rundown of the books I’ve read and what I thought about them. (They’re in no particular order and their inclusion doesn’t necessarily mean I recommend them, as you’ll see.) What is He Thinking? , Rebecca St. James “What guys want us to know about dating, love, and marriage.” What gal wouldn’t be interest

Yesterday I placed several miniature pumpkins – each about five inches across – atop plastic-covered tables in preparation for the annual Grandma’s Side of the Family Reunion. Now that I’m a Hoosier, I can actually attend these gatherings…. even with just a week’s notice. So much for advance planning, eh? Just about everyone who came was my aunt’s age or older. Mostly retired folks, it looked like, with the exception of one man who said he worked at Target; a son-in-law to one of my dad’s cousins… or something like that. I’m not entirely sure how he was connected to the family tree. I had one sibling and two cousins there to keep me company, but otherwise, all the cousins a generation older than me started gabbing about the Indianapolis Colts game or various and sundry family happenings that even my aunt (who is a bona fide member of that generation of cousins) couldn’t follow. The dirt pudding (an Oreo/vanilla dessert, for the uninitiated) was delicioso , though, and the Waldorf sa

I decided last month that I had found my home church here in my new city and that I’d become a member there. It’s the same church I’ve been attending since I moved here, but it takes a little time to get to know the members – to really discover if you and the church family are a good “fit.” Well, we are, it seems, and I attended the church’s membership class a week ago to learn more about some of this congregation’s distinctives (I’m already familiar with the denomination as a whole, the Christian and Missionary Alliance). Then last weekend, I went along with several families for a churchwide campout at a local campground. It’s an annual campout the church holds each year, but this was the biggest group, according to several families who’ve camped for several years in a row. Friday and Saturday nights were potluck dinners and Sunday morning was an informal worship service. (A couple gitfiddlin’ high schoolers and I were drafted to lead the singing.) The rest of the time was free t

Y’know, I can hardly imagine that many girls spend their Friday nights watching obscure movie renditions of classic Jane Austen novels. This girl? Well, if it was Friday, Sept. 7, that’s exactly what she did. I plucked a BBC version of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” from the top shelf of the library’s “P” section in the DVD collection on my way home from work. Somehow, this particular movie had escaped my notice in the tens of times I’ve poured over the movie section, wondering what movie to watch this or that evening. Fun fact: I’ve never been to a movie rental store on my own and can’t fathom why anyone would pay to watch a scratched-up DVD. What makes me giggle about these movies, first, is the blurbs. You know, the puffy promo quotes from publications that people-wh0-sort-of-care-about-movies are supposed to pay attention to. Ergo: “A fairy tale for adults! A splendid motion picture!” –from some woman named Georgia Brown writing for The Village Voice. !!s original. “The best pictu