How Oprah Stole Valentine’s Day

Hopefully, y'all were able to catch Hannah and our friend Erin on Oprah. You had to be good a recognizing the back of their heads, I guess we can use it as a judge of who our true friends are. So, if you want to be our friends then you better know the back of our heads. In addition to getting to appear on Oprah, Hannah also got tickets to be in the audience at another show. And if you promise not to let on to Hannah, this year for Valentine's I didn't have anything much planned. But the show that Hannah got tickets for turned out to be the Valentine's Day show. I was thrilled; I figured Oprah would come in and save Valentine's. I imagined that by going to the show we would get all kinds of free Valentine's goodies and Valentine's Day reservations at Oprah's favorite restaurant in Chicago. Well, I had class on the day of the taping of the show. So once again Hannah and Erin headed to Harpo Studios with a truck to put all of our free stuff in. I was at work at the lab school when I received the fateful phone call from Hannah. She was on her way home from the taping, with nothing. I was certain that we would receive a great bounty from Oprah, but instead we got nothing. Oprah had stolen Valentine's, and I was left to my own devices to assemble adequate Valentine's plans. My first idea was to wait for Oprah's heart to grow three sizes too big and return Valentine's Day to us down in Whoville. But it quickly became apparent that Oprah's heart was not doing any growing, and I just had to do it myself. We ended up having a nice dinner at the local Mediterranean restaurant with a bottle of Chilean Christmas wine, and all ended well in Whoville.

I also have some exciting news. I will be heading to Germany and Lutherland (I hear they have really fantastic roller coasters there) during Reading Week/Spring Break (March 20^th – March 30^th) with Pastor Chris and folks from University Lutheran in Clemson. I'm really excited and I am all set to go. I've got a plane ticket and the United States government has given me permission to leave for a while. Taking inspiration from my friend in the real world and the blogosphere, Matt Keadle, I will be blogging my trip to Germany. I hope to get the blog mentioned in the Chicago Tribune in order to trump Matt's Nebraska Rural Immersion Blog's mention in the Chicago Sun-Times. The blog will also serve as a great way to stay connected to my Ministry-in-Context site in Evanston while I am gone. But in order for my blog to be a great success I need a particularly clever and/or humorous name for the blog. In order to come up with the best name possible, I would like to announce the first ever Parris in Hyde Park Blog Contest. I challenge you to come up with the best name possible for the blog about my trip to Lutherland in Germany. Post your suggestions/entries in the comments segment for this post. I will announce the winner sometime in the next two weeks. If you win, you'll win my admiration and respect, as well as mention on the blog.

Also, any help making the Tribune will be greatly appreciated.

Good luck, Zach