Blues and Greens

Vivian and I have been enjoying a fairly quiet March as winter gasps its last as makes way for what seems to be a beautiful spring so far.

I got to have some unexpected fun at work playing director at Mosaic recently. Every year the company has an "Employee Campaign" that involved asking different agencies to submit videos of themselves to combine into one large collaborative montage. Our department created a "teaser video" to encourage people to submit their own, and since this year has a road trip theme, I wrote a script based on the Blue Brothers (with the "we're on a mission from God" line playing a prominent part, since Mosaic is a Lutheran organization). Starring in the film as the Blues siblings are my co-workers Davina and Dan, while Matt Sheffield plays the role of Park Ranger / State Trooper (written by my counterpart, Ed). You can see the whole teaser video here.

In other news, Vivian and I have been enjoying some festive meals together this month, including jambalaya for Mardis Gras and corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day. Vivian even managed to color her hair green for St. Paddy's day, so after washing down our dinner with an Irish cream or two we watched the film The Secret of the Kells, which was about as Irish a film as I could find on Netflix instant play list.

I've also started a personal finance group at our church and have started meeting on Tuesdays to go over chapters from the Dave Ramsey book, "The Total Money Makeover." I've been absorbing information from personal finance podcasts and blogs for some time now and have been eager to share what I've learned. I didn't want to go through Dave Ramsey's system at first, since anyone who actually believes that commission-based funds cost less than commission-free funds over time needs to have his head examined. Enough people asked about doing his "system," though, that I thought it'd be worth a look, especially if I can add a few doses of good advice from other points of few, particularly my hero Clark Howard.