Long-Distance Dance Party

Are you a student?

Do you go to college away from home?

Is calling your family and friends on the phone just not enough?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, then you better believe I have news for you!

Okay, okay, enough of that. But don't you feel like an infomercial when you tell people about a product or service that you like? I always do.

But really, I found a really cool new service that I wanted to share with you! Since I go to a school outside of my hometown, I spend quite a bit of time keeping in touch with people at home. Last year, we invested in webcams and started using Skype. Skype is great, especially for times when I hardly get to come home -- I can Skype with my parents to see what's going on at home and church, with my best friend to get some much needed encouragement and chat time in, and even with friends who have moved away to chat about their lives. It has been so handy.

Over Christmas break, a few of us at church decided to try a bible study during the semester. Since we are all over the country during the year, we thought we would Skype video calls. However, unless we paid, having a conference call with 7 of us wasn't going to happen.

Then what? Well, nothing happened at first, I'm ashamed to admit. But when I got down to searching for a great video call provider who would allow the 7 of us to all talk and see each other at once, I finally found a winner. Yesterday, I signed up for tok-box.

tok-box is a video call service that allows you to conference call (for FREE) with up to 20 people. So you can have business meetings, share exciting news with a big group, have a bible study, or who knows what else!? Now that I'm signed up and getting the hang of it, I'm attempting my first 3-way video call with a couple of friends this weekend. I'm very excited.

Now all I can say is: 20-person-long-distance-tokbox-video dance party GO!

Have a favorite new product or service? Share with me, my friends!

Conviction: Recap

So, as you might have noticed, I didn't hit my goal of writing one post for everyday of the month of December.

However, my desire to serve, love and give more is renewed by learning so much about the world around me. In the next few weeks, I'll try to fill in the blanks of what was left behind! I think I owe it to you readers and myself to give you all the information on these important issues. It's been a real discovery and learning process for me and I hope you've learned some from it all.

A couple thoughts on not finishing, though: After having a few days of feeling miserable and miserly for not writing those few missing posts, I realized it's really not about me. Duh, right? What is important is being in frequent communication with God. It's a relationship that needs to be nurtured, and when things get busy and get in the way of that relationship, even the best of intentions can be twisted around. So though I would have liked to do great and hit every post spot on, it's God who is in control of everything (including this blog!) and so I think it'll work out all right.

Until those final posts come in, I hope you do the service you can, and your new year's resolutions involve you and big changes in your world -- fill me in!

Things I Learned - College Basketball

So tonight, we got some tickets from a friend to go to a college basketball game. We're big fans of the game in my house, so it was a definite bonus! Though I had been to an NBA game when I was probably less than 10, I didn't have much memory of what it was like to actually be in the arena for the whole experience. It was an exciting game, and we pulled off the win.

Here's what I learned tonight about college basketball:

1. Some fans are really, really passionate about 'fairness'. You better call the foul on our player, but if we foul them? Eh... you know...

2. Watching all of the press' camera lenses follow the action is almost as fun as the game.

3. There are people in this world who easily redefine the accepted meanings of 'tall'. (Check out 14! He's 7'1"... I didn't think people got that tall!)

4. I would never make it as a cheerleader; too tall, too pale, too lazy!

5. Star basketball players should stick to their day jobs, and probably shouldn't sing christmas carols. :)

Are you as basketball fan? Favorite team?

(And in case you didn't know... It's Christmas Eve!)