I love Mondays

It's not very often that you get to celebrate the arrival of the first day of the work week - perhaps during your yearly vacation when you realize that the dreaded day as rolled around and you don't need to be in the office or on the job site - on on those all-too-rare stat holidays when you have an unexpectedly long weekend. Well one of the job perks of being in ministry is that you get to have a whole new appreciation for the beautiful day that begins with M - for Mondays are my day off!

However the originators of the Lenten traditions didn't see the world that way and instead worked their math around Sunday's being off so I still have the obligation to blog today. So alas, here I am.

Yesterday at Church was another wonderful Sunday with God's people and I'm seeing some really cool things happening in people's lives that is evidence to me that God is moving through our congregation - and the coolest/most humbling part of it is that as the pastor - none of it is anything that I can really take credit for! Last night I performed for the second year in a row with the Estevan A Capella Singers at the Estevan Music Festival and we did wonderfully scoring high marks for both our songs and having praise heaped upon us by the ajudicator. For those of you reading this blog who grew up with me attending festivals like OVJF (Ontario Vocal Jazz Festival) Music Fest Canada and the IAJE (International Association of Jazz Educators) Confrences the Estevan Music Festival may seem like small potatoes - but I don't care.  It's a lot of fun to be involved and singing in a choir like this makes me feel young again (and we're actually pretty good!) We sing again tonight in a more contemporary category and look to meet or exceed the standard that we set yesterday. I'd encourage any who are interested to come out and see the performances tonight at St. Paul's United Church in Estevan.

Today's Transformer is another figure from the Classics toy line - this time I'm putting up for Auction a Voyager (read - bigger) class figure in Classics Jetfire.

Jetfire is a character with a complicated history. He was a carry over from a different toy line altogether in the 80s when Takara in Japan and Hasbro in North America licensed a Macross Valkyrie figure and repainted him to make the much sought after and reasonably large 80s toy. The resulting confusion in copyrights and trademarks led to his television character adopting a different name and a distinctively different character model - even though he was similar enough to be recognized as Jetfire. He was therefore known both as Jetfire and Skyfire for the bulk of his existence.

This figure was Hasbro's attempt to reconcile that divided history into one recognizable figure. This all new figure is based loosely on the Macross Valkyrie but is different enough to avoid patent infringements - that and Hasbro now is uncontested in it's ownership of the trademark Jetfire so everyone is happy. Everyone that is except me - who has to say goodbye to my only Jetfire. You see the original figure is extremely valuable - being both unique and large. It also has literally dozens of pieces that can get lost (making a complete figure even more rare) and is prone to excessive yellowing of the white plastic (making a mint condition figure about as common as a unicorn!). Farewell Jetfire I hope you find love in the arms of another owner.

Chris