I seem to be back in the website administration business. Just when I get out, they pull me back in.  Well, not quite, but I’ll explain.

For the uninitiated, through the years in addition to my personal ode to self-indulgence (this slice of life called joelipe.com), I have managed various websites for non-profit organizations. 

1. In the late 90’s until 2003-ish, I designed and administered a website for my church, the CSI Congregation of Hudson Valley. I got busy with life, and I stopped attending church there, so I handed off the reins.
2. I also designed and briefly administered a youth-oriented website for CSI youth in North America, but the site served an non-existent need, and it didn’t go anywhere.  URL is not important, as I don’t even think the domain is around anymore.
3. From 2002 to late 2008, I designed and administered a website for the NY Chapter of the Institute of Internal Auditors.  For various reasons that I shall not go into, I haven’t attended chapter meetings in more than 3 years, and been too busy to make all the regular updates.  I recently transitioned responsibility, and I’m a free man.    Looks like they’ve already redesigned it. Good for them. Seven years later, it was looking dated.

Yes, I said “a free man.”  Now I’m just challenged to continue to indulge myself here, on this website.  It didn’t last long.  At my church, they are in need of someone to take over administrative responsibility.  Long story short, I agreed to do it. Before I agreed to take it over, the lingering question was how would I avoid not getting overwhelmed with updates?

The problems with all the previous websites were performing the weekly/monthly updates.  The designs were aesthetically pleasing (yes, I can say that), but it was all manual.  The posting of content and formatting would take forever, and my old version of the joelipe.com website was no better come month-end when I had to archive the previous month. If I was going to take on another website, the update process had to be streamlined. The current website is located at www.stbarnabas-sbnj.org, and you can tell it’s a bit dated.  Callling it “dated” is okay, because everything gets dated after a while. 

My answer?  Wordpress to the rescue!  I’m exploring a streamlined design, and using Wordpress as the content management system.  Wordpress could do for this website what it did for my personal domain:

1. Multiple users could publish updates, so one person (me) wouldn’t be the bottleneck.
2. Themes are readily available, so I don’t have to work so hard to design one from scratch.
3. Archiving, searching, etc, are all built-in. 

Me smart.  It’s not an overnight process, but I’m researching in my limited free time.  I want to put something tangible in 30 days, and move to Wordpress officially in July.

Today was an eventful today.  First off, the kids’ school was closing at 5pm today, instead of 7pm.  In order to make the pickup in time, one of us would have to leave work early to get there by 5pm.  In the evening, we had the big farewell dinner for our rector (25 years of service) at Pierre’s Restaurant in South Brunswick. My wife was decorating, so she had to leave work early to help decorate, then get home and dress up. I left just before 4pm, and rushed through traffic to get home.  Why are the busy days always the busiest they could ever be?

Somehow, everyone was home and in various stages of getting ready by 6:30pm.  One of our friends came over to babysit, and we were out the door to get to the restaurant by 7pm.  We made it with some sanity.  How, after all that complexity?  I have no idea.

Back to the big dinner.  Yes, our church rector announced a few months ago that he would be moving on to other work in the diocese.  Why does this stuff always happen just after we join and get settled? Aw, I guess stuff is always happening at one point or another.  I really liked our pastor, and now there will be a long search process to find someone else to replace him.  We’ve been attending St. Barnabas Episcopal Church for the past two years, but we’re getting more involved this year.

I don’t have all the statistics, but Rev. Hubbard had done a lot of work in the past 25 years since 1984.  He helped double the average attendance to around 100 people per most Sundays.  A larger congregation led to more Sunday services for people to choose from.  The creation of a regular choir.  A multitude of outreach programs.  Certainly one of the most significant successes was leading the fund raising and final renovation of the church.  Before our time, the church was smaller.  In the 90’s and the early part of this decade, they built up an entire new chapel, converted the old chapel space into a fellowship hall / kitchen, office, and classrooms, and enlarged the parking lot to accommodate the larger church congregation needs.

The dinner featured a slew of guests speaking anecdotally about what Father Hubbard has done, and what’s he has meant to them.  There were plenty of gifts.  The neatest, I think?  They presented him with a plaque, which will hang over the fellowship hall, as they are dedicating the hall in his honor — The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard Hall. I wish I had the stats, because what he’s lead the church to do in the past 25 years is so admirable in my book.  I couldn’t have thought of a nicer way to show our appreciation for building up the church, figuratively and literally.

Farewell dinner with Father Hubbard

Quick update:

1. We spent the weekend cleaning up the house.  We had some free time, and took advantage of the free time to take back the night.  I mean, the house.  Having children means constantly battling against the tides of messiness.  Often, I think back to 2002 when my friend Leena was telling me how she spent an afternoon cleaning her car, vacuuming up all the Cheerios that her daughter Alisha left.  It took me 6-7 years later to understand what she was talking about. 
2. I find it humorous how some of these online vendors encourage you to spend extra on faster shipping by telling you that opting for free shipping will require you to wait 20 days or whatever for your much-desired purchase to arrive.  In the meantime, it shows up within 3 days anyway.  Happens to me all the time with anything I purchase from Amazon.com.  This happened with Circuit City too.  The website informed me that while the item would ship on 9/16, estimated arrival time was 9/30.  How were they shipping it?  By mule?  Later, I received the Fedex tracking number, and Fedex anticipates delivering it 9/16.  Yes, that’s right, 9/16.  Dear Circuit City, get a clue.  I can’t wait to try the new earphones out.
3. Joshua attended his first-ever Sunday School class this weekend.  He liked it, but I think he just did some coloring (he is only 3-years old.)  My little guy is growing up!

This has been a weekend of highs and lows.

Friday night, we went out with Num’s parents to celebrate her mother’s birthday. A little belated, actually, but better later rather than not at all. We went to a south Indian restaurant not far from Princeton.

On Saturday, Josh had his usual gym class, then a quick lunch, then we were all home packing for the day.  Num’s long-time friend from high school Barbara was getting married to her fiancé John. (BTW, did you know there is a difference between fiancé and fianceé?  I had no idea the French were so complicated.)  The kids were staying with my wife’s parents, as it was going to be a late night.

After we dropped them off, we were off to Wallington, NJ for the wedding.  Nice wedding, but we had a 2 hour gap of thumb-twiddling time between the end of the wedding (4pm) and the reception starting at 6:30pm in Morris Plains.  What to do?  We considered a movie, but nothing quite fit.  We drove over to Clifton Commons in Clifton, ate ice cream sundaes at Applebee’s, and dispersed at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore to occupy ourselves until 6pm.  We were the best-dressed couple at Applebee’s on that Saturday afternoon.

The reception was at the classy Bretton Woods house.We stayed until about midnight, dancing up a storm.  We went home to change into pyjamas, pack clothes for church the next day, and slept over at the grandparents’ house. Photos for the whole event are now online for your viewing pleasure.

Sunday was all about attending the early 8:30am church service, breakfast at McDonald’s, taking an afternoon nap (all of us!), then Josh and I went to the pool.

Now for the lows.  A family friend passed away unexpectedly this weekend, and we got word late Saturday night after the wedding reception.  Tonight we went to his wife’s house for consolation with some of the family.  More details to follow, funeral set for later this week.  Very depressing, and hard to figure out.