Lately my mind hasn’t had much time to slow down and rest. In less then 10 days I will be back in the US. It has so many implications for my life that it is taking a long time to wrap my mind around from; Leaving France, getting married, leaving Midwest Skier, and even projects from France.
For the last eight months my work, leisure, and life have all been taking place here in France. Aside from my sparse phone calls to friends, and weekly phone call to my girlfriend (now fiancé), I was here, everything was here, and there was no imminence to that. Now I’m getting ready to leave, actually I spent most of the day packing up and doing last minute things to be ready to leave. Now there is this lingering truth and reality that in two weeks I’ll be moving into my apartment in a small Wisconsin town. From the third largest city in France to a small nothing town on the side of Wisconsin.
Never have Jordan and I lived in the same city before. We are now engaged and will both be living at school. This is one of the reasons that the transition out of France has been made so much easier for me. Knowing that she will be a matter of blocks away and no longer seven time zones, and thousands of miles. To sit down and eat dinner together, to come over just because we have the time, and to be able to see each other. I’ve been so blessed and I can’t wait to hold her again, to see her and spend time with her.
Planning the wedding has started, I more then likely won’t be writing much of anything up here about it because you aren’t invited. It’s going to be small with only those closest to us. There is a lot of planning involved though and it reminds me of when I used to spend the year organizing my ski events in Duluth. Speaking of skiing .
I’ve taken my final step out of the ski industry, I’m selling off Midwestskier. See the previous entry for the press release. This has been very hard for me to do, but finally see it as the necessary step. The last two years I have relied on others to supply the content while I oversaw the details of the company. Traffic and content both dipped considerably. While there is no empirical evidence I feel as though it was related to ownership and momentum. When the events and my traveling stopped it felt like everything came to a halt. Now it will be turned over to those who have the same vision I do for the skiing scene in the Midwest. A group of young men/women who will take the site to levels I never could have dreamed of. This will free me up to spend more time with Jordan, school, and ministry.
Other news I have more or less finished up the website for Agape Toulouse!! It is www.agapetoulouse.org and the last several months have gone into everything from designing the logo with suzy to working on different CMS systems (finally settling on XOOPS, which is great stuff for projects like this) and a couple modules that needed some light modification to meet our needs. I would love feed back from people (I haven’t really had a chance to look at how the layout builds on other platforms/browsers than OSx w/ Firefox and IE).
God bless!!
~paul