On the road (with a hotel recommendation)

If your travel needs should ever take you to southern Illinois, let me recommend the Hampton Inn in Mount Vernon. For about $80, including taxes, I got a very clean and comfortable room with lots of channels on the cable, free evening cocktails, a better-than-average free breakfast, free high-speed internet (wired in the room, wireless in the comfortable lobby), a small workout room in which all the cardio equipment actually worked, and cheerful and efficient staff. I didn't use the indoor pool, but that looked nice too. An excellent value!

Anyway, I'm on the road to visit my family, and since I'm the kind of person who can't drive more than six hours or so a day, I stopped over in Mt Vernon last night. I'll make it the rest of the way today. I'm especially eager to see my nieces, whom I haven't seen since Christmas. They'll have a changed a lot, I'm sure.

After that I'm off to the 55th Sewanee Church Music Conference. As far as I can tell, this will be the first time that celebrated event has been blogged, a novelty that I am sure will break important new theological and musicological ground. This is my first time at the conference, which I've been wanting to attend for a while. I'm particularly excited because Bruce Neswick, of whom I'm quite a fan both personally and as a musician, is on the faculty, as is Craig Phillips, whose music I know and admire. I'm not familiar with the conference chaplain, the Revd Dr James F. Turrell of Sewanee, but he's leading a session called "The seven deadly liturgical sins (and what a church musician can do about them)," which suggests a certainly spiritual affinity with me.

What I should be doing this summer, of course, is attending a class or two to fill in gaps in my theological preparation, not doing music at Sewanee and then liturgy at Nashotah House -- two of my best areas. Well, tough.