June 21 Update

• The Houston Theater District is ranked second, only behind New York City, for the number of theater seats in a concentrated downtown area, and Houston is one of only five cities in the United States with permanent professional resident companies in all of the major performing arts disciplines of opera, ballet, music, and theater.

In this second-only-to-Broadway district, one of the most significant facilities is the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. Our family was there a few months back to see "Seven Bride for Seven Brothers". Alicia and I will be there on July 1 to see "Sweet Charity" with friends Andy and Lanetta. But we may be back again on the other side of the curtain next year. "How to Succeed" had such a successful run that we may be reprising it next June, onstage at the Hobby Center. I did have a friend tape three production numbers at Final Dress Rehearsal, which you can watch here: The opening number; "A Secretary is not a Toy", and the smash closer, "Brotherhood of Man".

• I've just tried something that is absolutely cool & being the geek that I am. I've got it all set up, it's called SpinVox & it turns voicemail left at my cell phone into email that come to me in my inbox. You gotta try this thing.

(By the way, I didn't type any of the preceding paragraph. I left it as voice mail for myself and then copied it out of the resulting email and pasted it here. It even interpreted "gotta" accurately!)

• ElenaClaire will be among nearly 80 who leave on Saturday for the annual youth trip. This year it's a mission and rebuilding trip to Valdosta, Georgia. For the last 3 years, she's been part of these trips, and one of us has gone along as an adult leader. This year, her final trip, she makes without us. She'll be fine...we all will.

Valdosta, the birthplace of Doc Holliday, is a modern Southern town with a big heart-in a world where too many people just look the other way. The citizens of Valdosta are determined to fix the homes of their less fortunate neighbors. The entire community has made a commitment to eliminate all substandard housing by the year 2020. It's an amazing opportunity to help with this, tackling projects like…replacing rotten siding for an elderly widow, giving a disabled man the gift of mobility with a wheelchair ramp, fixing rickety front steps for a single parent with low income. Or, boosting a struggling family's self-esteem by making their house look like a million bucks with a bright new coat of paint. The City of Valdosta and Group Workcamps received the Community Development National Achievement Award for the Workcamp here in 2006!