Or so Katrina recently called it.  That's as she introduced Pieces of Flair, yet another Facebook application, to me.  Here's my Flair Board:



Note the SuperHero Row (including me and my summer interns from '06).  Note the "Phil Talk" flair - created by yours truly.  Note the centrality of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Note Phish Food, Singing Frogs, Volkswagen, and (sigh) even the Apple logo.

Here's the odd part.  I could easily blog and photojournal on Facebook.  But I won't.  Yet wasting time looking at Flair, taking the Traveler's IQ challenge, or any other activity (not to mention finding old friends, but that's hardly a waste of time) isn't a problem for me.  I can't really place my finger on my absolute refusal to post photos there, but it isn't any less real for my inability to articulate. 

Perhaps there's Flair for that.  I should go look.

So one day I come to work with two large (the 3" x 4" kind) of band-aids wrapped around my neck.  Not exactly discreet, but the idea was to reduce the scarring that was going to be left on my neck - this is after a week and a half of careful band-aid, neosporin, and second-skin applications.





       This, of course, begged the question from many a fellow staffer, "What happened?!?"

       And this, of course, led me to invent many a story.  Absolutely NO ONE would believe that a drunken vampire visited me the night before and made a mess of the whole thing.  Yet EVERYONE believed me when I - with straight face - said, "There was an accident last night - I wasn't in it - but being a former Red Cross person I stopped and helped.  We were pulling the last person from the car that had flipped when the tank blew, and I was caught by some of the shrapnel..."  Everyone, that is, but my roommate Angela who apparently possesses the rare knowledge that gas tanks don't actually explode on impact. 

       Other good stories included "I had a hot date last night and one thing led to another..." and "Well, I've been planning on breaking into the whole vigilante crime fighting scene for awhile now and on my very first night out one of the Foot manages to catch me with a ninja throwing star.  All I can say, is the Turtles make it look easy".  No one really believed those, either, so I mostly stuck with the car story. 

       True Story?  A feral cat has been coming into our house and picking fights with my boys.  So I, being the genius that I am, figures that if I scare it badly enough, it won't come in again, and I won't have to deal with the guilt of bringing it to the pound where it will likely be put down.  So I set the cat door to only work going in but not out, planning on grabbing it by the scruff of it's neck, spanking it, holding it in the shower while soaking it, then throwing it outside (this treatment was fairly effective in teaching my boys that spraying in the house is not acceptable).  The cat comes in and is trapped.  So far, so good.  I go to grab it and it explodes, leaps over my shoulder, splitting open my earlobe (result of claw going into earring hole) and raking several lacerations into my neck. 

       The next grab I made at him I used a towel.  Good tip to know if you want to catch a stray cat...

So this past week I was the adopted missionary at Camp ACC in Unicoi, Tennessee - check out the full album (Camp ACC) for more pictures.  I have the Rochelles to thank for this connection - yet another example of the work they do on my behalf.  I flew in on Sunday and was picked up by Steve and Carolyn.  After looking at a handful of wedding pictures from a few weeks ago I got into one of their cars (loaded with water, sleeping bag, directions, and well wishes) and drove the 45 minutes SE to the camp.

The campsite itself was beautiful - nestled in the woods in the foothills of the Smokies.  There were 43 4th and 5th graders and any number of counselors and game leaders.  I was one of the counselors of the orange team, spoke at almost every large group meeting, and was one of two dorm counselors for the girls of room #3.



Actually the six girls were one of the highlights as Abigail (the other dorm counselor) and I got them up in the morning, tucked them in (including kissing their various stuffed animals goodnight), and generally mothered them when they were homesick.

In the large group meetings I spoke about - what else - missionary work, but did so mostly through stories; it helped that the theme was "Once Upon a Time Jesus Said..."  So I told stories about kids lost in the woods, Dragon-racers battling trolls, and a land being destroyed by a Darkness which could only be defeated by the song of a bluebird hatched from a diamond egg, then with their help drew out the morals and lessons of Kingdom work that I wanted them to know.  By halfway through my time there I could walk into an area and by greeted by cries of "It's the Storyteller!"

       There are worse things one could be known for.