BrianJBecker.com

That’s when I’ll be boarding a plane for Chicago the day after tomorrow. Between now and then I’m surrounded by my incredible friends here in San Diego. In the car today I realized that I’d be hard pressed to ever find another place with quite as many wonderful friends in it. Maybe God will surprise me and prove me wrong, but if not I’ll be OK and I’ll be looking forward to my visits.

Speaking of Friends old and new, I’d like to give major thanks to Leigh Nottingham (old friend) and Matt McKinley (new friend of Leigh, new friend of me) who “happened” to be coming to town for a visit. They showed up while I was in Florida and by the time I got home Leigh had all of my things organized and ready to pack, Matt was already steam cleaning the carpet and using his own toothbrush to clean my bathtub. I asked Leigh last night what it felt like to be sent to a friend by God. She said it felt good. I don’t know if I’d have gotten everything done, cleaned, wrapped up, given away, without the tireless help of these two saints. I hope that I can help people in Congo half as well as Leigh and Matt have helped me.

Joel P. West helped me pick out the right digital camera, and I’d like to thank him for that here. You can all thank him too, unless I lose or crush that thing you can be sure that I’ll be posting pictures to the site soon and many of them will look sweet. If you are looking for a digital camera (people always asked me about this in my old job, usually at LEAST once a month) I will pass on Joel’s suggestion: just go buy the Canon PowerShot SD-400. You’ll find it on BHPhoto.com.

Goodbyes are hard. Someone told me that Doug Harrison said that we should live for hard goodbyes. (I think Doug may have been quoting someone, but he could have come up with it himself because he’s one of the top five most creative people that I have ever met.) I love the community I live with here. Yet I keep trying to remind my friends that this is not goodbye forever. It’s just that we won’t see one another face to face for a year probably. If we still want to be friends, technology enables ample communication and for better or worse it’s shrinking the planet every day.