A good Good Friday

I have plane tickets to Iowa, and I'm rather upset about that fact at the moment. No I'm not upset that I'm going to visit Dubuque, I'm upset that the price I had to pay for the tickets doubled overnight before I purchased the tickets. I guess that's chalk one up to the whole don't procrastinate rule. Not a happy lesson. I am excited about going to see the University of Dubuque campus though. I should be able to meet with the housing and financial aid offices to help me get squared away for next year. I'm hoping that I will also be able to meet with my faculty advisor while I'm there as well. I also think I will be able to sit in on a class and see what that experience will be like, as well as attend a lunch function for the Presbyterian students on Wednesday. In all I will travel to Dubuque on Tuesday the 24th, and fly back to Denver on Thursday the 27th. A quick happy trip.

So yesterday was Good Friday, and it was a good Friday. Due to some difficult goals my team accomplished during the last quarter, we earned a Friday afternoon off with the company buying drinks for us at the Rio, a popular Mexican Restaurant with the best margaritas in town. I like the people I work with, but I don't think I will ever have any strong connection to any of them. Most of this is probably due to the fact that I'm not letting myself get close to anybody, and I feel I have to be guarded around them, so I don't slip up and let everybody know my plans to quit in a few months. There are other reasons as well though, that I doubt I'll ever get too close. Most of the people on my team are probably close to my age, or younger. I know a few are pretty much straight out of college. I had a fun time just sitting back over drinks and just listening to everybody's conversations, and realized that while my path isn't theirs, it very easily could have been 6 years ago. This is a group of young people who are very good at their job, and I'm becoming very aware of how different this job can be at times. With most professional jobs you work in one industry, but by selling advertising space, we are working in a lot of different businesses across the board. We work with business owners who are plugged into the community every day, and these owners come to know us. In every other job I have had, when you get together with friends after work, inevitably you start to talk about your job and your company. This group doesn't talk about the paper; they talk about what is going on in all the other businesses around town. They talk about what is big news as insiders because they find out from the sources everyday. It's a unique way to be plugged into the community, and to know the people who make a difference in town. Most of my coworkers are able to do it at a young age, when most of their peers are only concerned about what time the local bar closes. I would have loved that opportunity in my younger days, when making money and obtaining status was more important to me.

I skipped church last night as well. Maybe I should have attended a Good Friday service (I never even bothered to check if and when Mountain View had theirs) and I was invited to hear a friend of mine sing in her choir in Fort Collins, but I decided that I wanted some alone time to worship. I went to my absolute favorite church in the world, Rocky Mountain National Park. I have always loved driving there at night after the park closes and just finding a place off the road to pull over and watch the stars as I lay on the hood of my car. I was able to roll down the windows of my car and listen to the wind gently blow, and enjoy the silence of the park after dark as I read my Bible. Can you imagine a quiet night about 2000 years ago as Jesus prayed in the garden? The quiet that was broken by a legion of soldiers coming to arrest him to set forth in motion the most amazing thing ever to happen in history. That would have been Thursday night. Can you then imagine the quiet of Friday night, as the friends and family of Jesus had to come to grips with what had happened in only 24 hours? What would it have been like to be there 2000 years ago?