Top 10 Reasons I Like Fall (a.k.a. Autumn)

10. It immediately follows summer.
9. It's the only season with two names.
8. It's a nice change of pace from summer.
7. It isn't winter.
6. It's a season of moderation, not extremes.
5. It's something nice to think about in the middle of winter.
4. It means summer has ended.
3. It's cooler than summer yet warmer than winter.
2. It's the most wonderful time of the year.
1. It isn't summer.

Is it fall yet? :)

Is your Starbucks closing?

I have a friend in Turlock who works at one of the Starbucks targeted for closing. I didn't realize they'd made the list public yet. Here are two URLs for the list, if you want to see if "your" store survived the cut:

PDF version/download

HTML version

The location I visit nearly every day isn't on the list, which is good news for me. But it's a bummer about the Turlock store.

Time to garden?

I've thought about creating a garden in my back yard to help cut down on food costs. Of course, "thought about" is a wildly different stage from "did something about." Came across this piece on cnn.com about growing gardens during tough economic times:

As American families try to stretch their food budgets during the recession, some are turning to the backyard, rather than the grocery store, as the place to look for produce.

Recession gardens are catching on with many first-time planters who want a healthy meal at an affordable price.

The gardeners are following seed-strewn paths laid by Michelle Obama and Eleanor Roosevelt, both of whom have used the White House lawn to show the value of a garden during tough times.

The scope of today's trend is shocking even to those in the gardening industry.

W. Atlee Burpee & Co., the largest seed and gardening supply store in the country, says it has seen a 25 to 30 percent spike in vegetable seed and plant sales this spring compared with last.

Look out for the Cult of Snuggie

I asked for one of these for Christmas but was denied. Just kidding. I don't think I'd ever be caught in public wearing a Snuggie... but some people in San Francisco didn't mind:

The faithful lined up, two to three deep at the bar, looking like Druids in electric-blue fleece. Tim Jester and Brian Griffiths, two young San Francisco guys in polo shirts, leaned against a railing, surveying the scene.

They had gone to the Rouge nightclub on Polk Street on a Friday night without any idea that it was the starting point for a 200-person Snuggie pub crawl and were a bit confused.

"I think they need more colors besides blue," Griffiths said. "It needs more diversity."

"It looks cultish. Very cultish," Jester said.

Dedicated wearers of the fleece-blanket-with-sleeves would have a hard time disagreeing with that statement, seeing as many of the hundreds of Facebook fan groups set up to celebrate Snuggies list it as a "religion."

The Snuggie is not the first product to imbue fleece with robelike properties - figure-obscuring leisure wear has been knocking around catalogs for years - but since hitting the market in October, Snuggies have hit a cultural nerve.

Twitter vs Facebook

I use both Facebook and Twitter, although for very different reasons. Twitter can be a fun immediate tool for finding out what friends are doing, but I have a lot more "friends" on Facebook than "followers" on Twitter.

Anyway, I came across this article on SFGate (website for the SF Chronicle) about the relationship/competition/overlap between the two networks.

Increasingly, Facebook and Twitter are overlapping, setting the stage for one of the biggest Silicon Valley rivalries over the next few years.

Both companies want to play a major role in how people communicate online, a potentially lucrative business but one that is hardly settled given the ever-shifting online landscape.

Although different in their approach, both services enable people to post updates about their lives. Did your baby make a funny face? Did you enjoy "Slumdog Millionaire"?

The budding rivalry between the two companies heated up last week when Facebook introduced a major redesign that makes it more of a destination for real-time posts, turf that Twitter is famous for.

There's gonna be a strike in Paris.

So, wouldn't you know it? I'm going over to Paris next week with my dad and stepmom, and it turns out that on Thursday there will be a major strike. If you read French, you can go here and see more. My French is about as rusty as a nail that's endured a dozen Minnesota winters. (I don't know how rusty that nail would be, but it sounded like a good analogy.) All I really know is that Thursday, March 19 will be a great day to WALK around Paris instead of using public transit. And who knows what else will be closed for the day!

I've returned to "my" Starbucks.

After a multiweek absence, I've resumed using a local Starbucks as my office. A few weeks ago, I decided to turn a vacant room in my house into a home office. Within a few days, a guy at church had asked me about the possibility of renting my empty room. After some words of wisdom from my girlfriend, I decided I would sacrifice the home office. With the new roommate's arrival just a couple weeks away, I figured I should get back into the habit of working from Starbucks.

Apparently, I'm one of the "Norms" for this location. They still remembered the details of the drink I buy (venti unsweetened iced green tea, with 5 splendas), and I feel right at home once again. For three days straight, "my" spot has even been open. Sweet!

I need to buy a CD...

In a few weeks, I'm making an international trip, and I need your help. One of my personal traditions is to buy a CD before a trip overseas and listen to it a LOT during that experience. Then, once I'm home, I've made an emotional/memory attachment between that CD and that trip.

The first attachment was accidental, during my first trip with the fam to Europe back in high school. I only had 2 tapes with me (CDs recorded onto tapes, old-school style), so I listened to those 2 tapes for the entire trip. It's been 20 years since that trip, but anytime I hear either CD, I'm reminded of the experience.

So, I'd like your suggestions on a recent/new CD that I should consider buying for my trip in mid-March. No boundaries, no rules on the suggestions. Maybe I'll pick a suggestion that falls way outside my usually tastes. We'll see!

Blogging from the NYMC.

Apparently I'm part of the "official" group of bloggers from this weekend's National Youth Ministry Conference in Columbus, Ohio. Josh Griffin has the whole list on his blog, where I previously made this short, simple statement:

Rob C
i’ll be there but no guarantees on how much blogging or twittering i’ll be doing…

In any case, I'll try to post a few things during the weekend. I'm going to be doing some behind-the-scenes type work, so I don't know how many sessions or workshops I'll be attending. In any case, I'm looking forward to the weekend, seeing a bunch of youth ministry friends, making some new connections, and seeing God do some cool stuff in people's lives.