HANNIBAL-- Happy Thursday, friends!

It's been a really busy week in Pastor Brian-land.  We're planning for our big outreach event/carnival designed to reunite all our Vacation Bible School kids in the city park in town Saturday, and I have a friend of our church in the hospital in Columbia after major surgery.  Needless to say, I've been all over the place.  But God is so good.  I've been really blessed this week-- but a part of me, honestly, will be glad when we get to Sunday.

This morning I did some pre-marital counseling with a couple (not my own!) and listened to a Junior Hill sermon online.  I need to hear a real rip-roaring old-fashioned Southern Baptist evangelist like Hill about once a month or so.  It tends to refocus my sense of seriousness about evangelism.  Then I ate a delicious Tall Paul's lunch while waiting for an oil change, went to Columbia, then came to Hannibal for the evening.

Hannibal has had a marvelous concert series on the Hill Street mall this summer called "Music Under the Stars."  It's really great to have those kinds of events in town, and tonight we heard from Columbia's solid, solid Tom Andes Quartet (jazz).  I'll confess, it was the first jazz concert I've been to since the last one I played in: Jazz Lab I and Combos, December 2005 at Truman, and that was just too long ago.  Of course I miss playing jazz all the time, I really, really do.  My problem is that I have nobody, really, to play with.  There are no gigs, and nobody who likes playing the same stuff I do.  I can only play Glenn Miller dance-band stuff so long, and the same goes for weird '70s-and-later stuff.  I would just love to get on as a sub in a big band somewhere, and play some places with small combos.  But circumstances don't really warrant it right now.  The Andes Quartet played so many of my favorites tonight: "There Will Never Be Another You," "All The Things That You Are," and the old Frank 'n Brian theme song, "All Blues."  It made me nostalgic.  Maybe somebody will come out of the woodwork.

The Cardinals salvaged one game from the Cubs series tonight.  I repeat: I still haven't given up on this team-- not yet.  Otherwise, there's not a whole lot going on.

Tomorrow's plans?  Plan for the Fun Day Saturday.  Enjoy my family.

Until tomorrow night...