Lucy and Laura are in California , hopefully enjoying some top quality spring weather. We’re back here welcoming the daffodils with happy white confetti falling from the clouds [a very reliable source informed me that we have not had this crazy cold sort of April since 1892].

Usually when Lucy and Laura are gone, we all go into “not-quite-as-amazingly-productive-mode,” but this time around Frank and Austin have decided to kick things into high spring-cleaning-gear. Austin rearranged his whole office, and now has a comfy chair in one corner so visitors will feel more welcome. Frank has turned our room into less of a storage unit and more of a cheery, organized office. Maybe now the creative juices will start flowing in the form of book covers for Face to Face (my very favorite book ever), Angels in the Architecture, etc. In the meantime, we are all looking forward to having L& L back in the office, and can’t wait to hear the reports about their kicking-back-on-the-beach time and selling books at the conference. Happy Friday!

What would a water cooler be without a little March Madness? For this transplanted Tar Heel living in Cougar country, the tournament won’t get much better than today’s game between WSU and UNC. My call: WSU’s stifling defense will hold Carolina’s fast-break offense to twenty-five points less than their tournament average so far. Bad news for WSU, that still puts Carolina on top by about 20.

86-62, UNC.

It’s been just over a week and two countryside moves, and our customer service is new for spring. Faith, who many of you have no doubt chatted with over the last year, has moved home to Texas, her family, and a cute new apartment (with a red corduroy couch), conveniently only blocks from her adorable nephew. She’ll be going to school to become an ultrasound technician, which we think is such a perfect fit!

And right as she was heading out, Emily was arriving, direct from Maine. Emily lived in Moscow a few years ago, and we hope she’s back to stay! She’s only been at Canon a week, but she’s a natural. Seriously. Sure, we have a lot of ground still to cover—does she say the “t” in “often”, play any instruments, like Turkish delight, drink the colored milk after eating Fruit Loops? Feel free to ask her next time you call. (And we’ll try to hurry up and get her picture up on the ‘About Us’ page. Feel free to bug us about that too.)

Although I wrote this for a class at NSA, it really has nothing to do with any classes. When I was in Pompeii, I could see over the broken fences and iron bars, I could see some special mosaics and a gazebo. Maybe these were special because they were closed, but I like to think otherwise. So a Pompeii poem it is:

Gnostic floods now roar inside, but not in
paths of sacred reconstructions,
closed for sorry amutations.
Iron bars stand here, a gate that’s wooden, rotten.
Now, where thousands used to sit or wander
through the fields in afternoons or
drag their groceries past this eyesore,
Pompeii’s bars have taken all her thunder.
Locked behind this fat façade, you only
look where glass gazebos hide their
colored chips in walls of brick, where
crumbling stones can leave the beauty lonely.
Genius, not for human eyesight’s feasting.
Ruins meant for those that scurry
grounded. Lizards, not in hurry,
walk alone in silence, Pompeii praising.

It’s good to be back. It’s even better to be missed. I love my job and I love working at Anselm House.

I spent the first hour sitting in the comfy chairs in our reception area waiting for someone to arrive with keys to my office. I must have dozed off. I heard a noise and opened my eyes to find Nate Wilson filling the doorway. He caught me up on his book tour news. Lord willing, one day we’ll send our authors out on book tours. By then, Nate will have been on so many he’ll be able to tell us how it’s done.

So we’re all back behind our desks. God is gracious for bringing us home safely. Let the laughter begin!