2.28.2008

Dear Lance,

Here’s another one of those letters you wrote to yourself. I know, I know, just bear with me. Let me list a few things that became clear during our week in Mexico.

• Hard work is good. You like the sore muscles, leather skin, and deep sleep that goes with the territory.
• You need a girl who loves to serve in tangible, practical ways. You tend to put the pedal to the metal, and it takes someone special to keep up and love you through it all … especially at the end.
• You’re pretty good at Spanish … consider that.
• You need to work to make your joy evident to others, even if it seems obvious to you.
• You’re not as good of a teacher as you think.
• It is not good for man to be alone. You really need her, and need to beg God.

I hope that helps. Keep in touch, man.

love,
lance

There’s nothing on TV, I’m tired of working on the house/yard, it’s hot and balmy out, and my favorite person in the world is gone all week … so now’s as good a time as any to post an update on my life. Yep, that’s right … blogging is pretty much my last priority nowadays.

Sorry.

With summer this year has come something new in my life … more work. Yep … for the first time ever, I’m on the clock for both June and August, so I’ve been going in to school every weekday to work on lots of projects and preparation for next year. Here’s the to-do list:

1. Publish a website of resources for our Advisory program
2. Create a student lounge for our kids to hang out and have fun
3. Revamp our Behavioral Rubric to clarify how we do discipline
4. Reorganize my office and all of the junk that’s accumulated there
5. Take over our school socials, a monumental task
6. Consolidate all of my digital information
7. Redesign how our weekly chapels are put together
8. Run a one week Tech Camp in August for about 20 students

It’s weird, really … even after a couple of weeks of summer work, I can’t quite seem to get adjusted. My mind and body just want to check out … so I’ve been filling June up with lots of gruntwork. Hopefully I’ll be able to hit the ground running in August!

The homefront has shifted a bit lately … two tenants moved out in the past month while another moved in about two weeks ago. The changes seem good … and thankfully I should still be able to pay the bills and enjoy living where I do. Little by little, the house is getting organized … and along with it, so am I.

In News That Makes Me Smile, life with my lovely has been absolutely wonderful! Perhaps I should post more about her here, so y’all aren’t so surprised when I suddenly start gushing about how fantastic she is and how dramatically different my life has become. Then again, perhaps I should just leave it a mystery …

The next month should be pretty fun … weddings, a family vacation, some Cedar Point action, ultimate frisbee, a road trip, a conference in Atlanta, and a whole lotta summer. Sure, I might only get 1/3 of the time off than I’m used to … but I’m still gonna make the most of it!

A few days ago, Kristen and I came across the following note while rummaging through some of my old school papers. It’s from my first grade teacher, written at the end of the school year:

“I would like to mention again how strongly I feel about involving Lance in some kind of team soccer. In twelve years, I have never suggested to a parent any outside activity that I felt their child could have benefited from. However, it appears to me that Lance needs that extra release I feel he would receive from competitive sports. Lance is a superior student but he also shows talent athletically. Please call if you have questions. Good luck!”

– Mary Kase

Soccer, it seems, was the Ritalin of the 80’s … and I was a prime candidate. We laughed so hard … I guess that explains some things!

As I was driving down I-275 west on my way home from work today, I noticed something weird in the corner of my eye. It was white, and it was moving … right on the edge of the woods. I slowed down a bit to try to get a better look, when I suddenly saw something surprising.

It was an arm.

I quickly pulled off to the side of the road and put my hazard lights on, backing up until I got to the spot where I had seen it … and sure enough, there was a man crawling out of the woods, desperately waving his hand in hopes of getting someone’s attention.

I stopped my car and ran across the I-75 north exit ramp, where the picture became clearer. The man was on all fours with his head hanging to the ground, and behind him, in the trees, sat a totally smashed car. This older businessman, dressed in a white shirt with nice black pants and shoes with blood splatters here and there, had driven straight off of the road and crashed at highway speeds (there were no skid marks anywhere) into the edge of the woods.

I ran to him and asked him to lie face-down in the grass, then dialed 911. I then sat down in front of his head, holding his neck to try to stabilize his spine. As I was explaining our location to the dispatcher, a couple more cars stopped by, and we were able to ascertain that he had been traveling alone and that he had severe pain in his neck and back. One woman was an x-ray technician who thought to get his wallet and ask him about family … he had none, aside from his wife, who was in a hospital far away. Another woman who stopped had seen the accident … she reported that he had been run off of the highway by a semi-truck.

Thankfully, after a few minutes, the police and ambulance arrived, and we handed off the situation to the professionals. They put his neck in a brace, rolled him onto a stretcher, then asked us a few questions before carting him off to the hospital. And that was it.

So if you can, pray for John tonight. He is probably alone.

My hard drive failed last week … I hadn’t yet gotten to the point of installing OS 10.5 (and hence, Time Machine) … but luckily I had backed up all of my documents a couple of weeks ago, so I wasn’t really worried about it.

Until now, that is … I just got the machine back with a brand new drive, completely void of my applications and settings and bookmarks and everything. It’s gonna be a pain to get all of that set up how I want to. Even worse, however, is the fact that I just realized that I never finished uploading a couple thousand photos from my year in China to Flickr.

Oh, man. I really hope I backed those up somewhere …

I don’t really like it when people call me a “photographer”.

Ok, now here’s where my vacation gets tricky. I’ve got a plane ticket to Lexington from the tiny St. Pete/Clearwater Airport for tomorrow at 4:30pm. That airport, however, is a 50-minute drive from the island my campsite is on. And I don’t have a car.

So I’m planning to pack my bag at about 10am, hike out to the main road, and stick my thumb out. Hopefully some generous soul will have pity and at least take me across the bridges to the mainland, where I can try to figure out the public bus system or something. I figure that I’ve got about four hours, that should be plenty of time to somehow make it across town.

If not … uh … this might just become an extended vacation!

Yesterday I decided to stay ‘home’ at my campsite, taking a couple of naps, reading a bunch (I finished ‘The Witch of Blackberry Pond, meh), and letting my scorched skin cool a bit. It was nice and relaxing, the kind of pace that vacation should be about. I even stayed up “late”, reading and writing until 11-something.

So when I woke up at 5am and heard the strength of the wind pushing through the trees above me, I knew I was well-rested enough to explore. I brushed my teefs, packed a bag, donned my socks and jacket, and headed for the beach.

I was clearly the only one up … on the two mile hike, only one car passed me, and the beach was completely deserted. The frigid wind whipping off the Gulf of Mexico sent shivers up and down my body … it felt great. And I had no choice but to relax, letting myself sink deeply into the pulsating sounds and enveloping solitude.

The beach wasn’t technically ‘open’ yet, so whenever the rangers came around to patrol or empty the trash, I made a game of it, hiding in shadows and darting from tree to tree until the sun peeked over the horizon at 7:36, right on schedule.

And then, just as the people began to arrive, I quietly snuck back to my cozy little tent for a long morning nap.

mmhmm.

Today was fun.

I explored this place, searching for hidden beaches, taking in nature trails, swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, exploring an old fort, reading and reading and reading, and eating my famous Ritz Sandwiches.

I walked about twelve miles total, much of them barefoot along pristine beaches, and got way more sun than I probably should have (good thing I still have the ‘after-sun lotion’ I bought in Vietnam). I accidentally found way too many thongs (seriously?) and enjoyed a glorious sunset, and when I finally got home I downed some carrots, ravioli, pop tarts, bananas, and root beer.

I found that some people look at you weird when you’re alone, even if you’re obviously content or occupied. I suspect that they’re the very same people who are uncomfortable being on their own.

Tomorrow I expect to be quite sore, so I’ve already made plans to go to a much closer beach and take a long afternoon nap. And I think I’ll visit the dog beach again, that was my favorite part of the day.

Alright, time to (literally) hit the sack … if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll fall asleep before Ethan And Friends get home …

Well, this is the first time I’ve ever tried to post to my blog from my phone, hopefully it works. I should’ve waited to cut my fingernails … it’s harder to type on this little crackberry keyboard now.

I’m actually in Florida, tenting in a county park called Fort De Sota. This spring break is the result of a search for cheap flights (less than $50 each way) and the generosity of my uncle and aunt in St. Petersburg … and I must say, I’m really looking forward to a week of solitude, sun, and reading on the beach.

Then again, about an hour ago a family showed up in the campsite across from me, after the 10pm curfew, and have been loudly shouting to each other and their kid (Ethan) as they’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to set up their tents … with, of course, their headlights directly pointed at my tiny little two-man tent. So much for going to sleep and waking with the sun all week …

Still, it’s nice to be alone. No agenda, no responsibility, no expectations. I’m curious if it’ll become lonely or boring, if the time will speed up or slow down, if I’ll miss my lovely as much as I expect.

Ooo … the headlights are off, I think they’ve given up. At least I hope so, because I can actively feel the carpal tunnel creeping in …

In case you were wondering … dropping a Blackberry Curve off of the roof of your car while driving down the highway won’t necessarily break it, but it might leave the phone and its pieces scattered over several hundred feet of the lane you were driving in.

awesome |ôsəm|
adjective

Finding, in my mailbox, a re-used Christmas card addressed to “Rev. Lance Webel” from the guy who drives the shuttle van at the local Mazda dealership. This card is awesome.

So I jump on Facebook today, only to get a message from a female friend with an interesting question:

“how long after having pink eye do you think its safe to start wearing mascara again? i’ve been on drops and pills for 5 days, and the symptoms are pretty much clear. its just that the only makeup i ever wear is mascara and it’s killn me not being able to wear it.”

So she asked me a question about make-up … pretty humorous. But here’s the weird thing. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this in an email to my brother:

“haha … you’ll eventually find out that she’s VERY different from other girls. last night, for example, she called eyeliner “mascara”. yep, i corrected my girlfriend about female cosmetics … haha.”

Uh …

So long, twenties!