You get to watch it.

We had to try it.

Sorry for the sporadic updates…we’ve been busy! Thank you for praying for my mom. She’s in some pain but came out of surgery okay. It was already scheduled when we left, but still, no fun.

Yesterday, we went to the West Coast - Glasgow, Loch Lomond and Erksine, where Chris met with some worship leaders from a church out there. We took a lot of photos on the way…click on the photo below to be taken to all the pictures!

Here is the video from the first day. Enjoy!

(for more pictures, click the photo above!
Video coming in a few minutes, Chris is editing now.)

It didn’t take long to adjust to the new time zone. We realized how out of shape we were after last night, walking along the streets of the Bonaly area, where James & his family live, after getting off the bus. He took us around Edinburgh today, and we walked a few miles again, up and down the streets.

Although Edinburgh is absolutely gorgeous (truly, these pictures don’t do it a bit of justice), it’s easy to see that people here are searching. There are some more run down areas, as every city has, and homeless people. It was barely lunch time as we were driving through the city, and encountered a few men who had already hit the bottle a little too hard. This isn’t a rare occurance here…alcohol-related death is the number two cause of death here in Scotland (only trumped by heart disease, which is also caused by drink.) Suicide is the number one cause of death for men under the age of thirty.

It’s been fun learning a new culture - although they speak English, we don’t know some of the words they use…and I learned to be really careful when holding up my hand, trying to show two fingers (as in two sugars in my latte, please.) I’d like to say a thank you to James for not spitting in it after I unknowingly gave him the UK bird.

Tomorrow we are driving to the West Coast and will spend some time in Eriskine and Greenock. Chris will be hanging out with some worship leaders from a church out there. We’ll be starting to work on some video & web ideas in the next few days.

So, that’s it so far. And no, we haven’t tried the haggis yet, but it’s sitting in the fridge. I did touch it today. Baby steps, people. Baby Steps.

We arrived, no problems here this morning. It’s been fun trying to catch our bodies up to the time zone but I think we’re doing ok. After taking a short nap, we ate dinner and went over to Princes Street & got some UK currency, and went to a great, 2nd-floor Starbucks overlooking the castle area. I gotta say it beats the view from the Rockwall Starbucks.

Not a lot of time to write now, but we’ll post a video Wednesday on our first day here!

Today, I popped into my site stats to see what’s been happening lately. In December 2005, when FlowerDust.net was officially published, the site had about 130 daily visitors. Last month, the site averaged 437 daily drop-bys and almost 24,000 pageviews. So, if you’re new here, thanks for coming by!

According to my WordPress dashboard, there are almost 2000 comments. Maybe the 2000th commenter will get a special prize? From Scotland? I think that sounds fair. So, here is the one rule to win the 2000th commenter prize: No duplicate commenters. Post yours and be done. We’ll see where lady luck falls. And I promise the prize won’t be haggis!

Another random thing I was looking at was “referring keyphrases” - or what people type into search engines like Google and Yahoo, and for some reason or another, they ended up on FlowerDust.net. I decided to pull out the ten most random things people typed in and landed here. Most of these make no sense whatsoever, but that’s what happens when robots are running the internet.

1. telling the wife i wear pantyhose
2. big misquitos of Kansas
3. warning signs of a lying deceitful internet lover
4. poetry about cardboard
5. sexy 50-something year old women
6. how to roast chestnuts - martha stewart
7. how do i blow out my gallbladder
8. i look like ricki lake
9. SMU girls too skinny
10. blogging poems for grandmas

Have you ever checked out your stats to see how people have found your site?

Thank you for all your prayers & emails and kind words regarding the passing of my computer. Shortly after posting that, JJ, who oversees the technical/media stuff at Lake Pointe offers me his Dell laptop. A couple hours later, Los instant messages me and offers to let me borrow his 17″ Powerbook. And a few hours after that, my old boss & friend from when I lived in Dallas five years ago sends me a message on MySpace and says if nothing works out, he’ll let me borrow his Powerbook G3. Next, Rich writes a post, pimping my need to his audience.

So, needless to say - God has provided more than enough to get me through the trip! And maybe beyond. Thank you for your generosity & trust. Thank all of you for your prayers.

I’m still not giving up hope on Steve Jobs & the MacBook (hey, a girl can dream) as a permanent solution, but I have been blessed, and humbled beyond words. I am so glad I can share with you all what God has done on this crazy day!! Yay, God!