Went to a garden party

If you're old enough, you'll have that Ricky Nelson tune stuck in your head for several days. You're welcome...

Tonight, my wife and I actually got a night out together. We were able to help a friend celebrate his birthday; since he's sure to have opened his present from us by now, I can tell you that everyone should be so blessed as to receive dulce de leche as a birthday present.

(International food aisle, Wal-Mart. I'm telling you, you'll love it.)

Marvelous music, lots of laughter, and a chance to show some love for a man who has unfailingly shared Christ and encouraged the faithful for several decades. And as usual, I was with the prettiest woman in the group. What could dampen, even slightly, a night like this?

The whispers.

I'm confident the guest of honor didn't hear them, which is good. He didn't need to hear them, and surely wouldn't have appreciated them. But they were there, at the edges of the get-together, two and three and four people at a time.

"Well, (insert name here) takes care of (insert area of staff responsibility here), so don't you think he knows about (insert rumor here)?"

Little things, in hushed tones, floating around the edges of the gathering.

The people who have been stirring the anti-Bellevue stew seem to be putting their spoons away for now (Talk about torturing a metaphor... my apologies), but the after-effects of those actions and that mindset will hang around for awhile.

In things like whispers at a birthday party.

Tomorrow, I will write about something else. I promise.

--Mike