[Tranquil, by Lance Webel]

In February 2007 I traveled across the Cambodian border into Vietnam to meet up with Rick, Natalie, and Amy. We spent our first few days in Mui Ne, a sleepy little fishing village on the eastern shore … and it was glorious.

Here’s a set and slideshow of the nineteen shots I got before my batteries ran out. Oh, how I’d like to be there right now, sipping on a banana milkshake as the ocean breeze swirls all around!

“Uncle Lance, you’re such a monkey’s uncle.”

– Nephew Nathaniel

Tomorrow I’m taking two of my nephews, Nathaniel and Caleb, to the last Cleveland Browns game of the season. We’re gonna ride the train into the city, getting there just early enough to explore the stadium and get hyped up. Then we’ll head to our seats in the corner of the upper deck to brave the cold weather and cheer them on to victory!

At this point, it’s still a secret … I’m going to reveal it first thing in the morning, and I can’t wait to see their excitement!

I have three huge bins full of books. All sorts … comic books, coffee table books, Christian self-help books, journals, reference, you name it. I even have a book called How to Read a Book.

Yeah.

Here’s a comment I recently left over at Sarah’s about my growing resentment for this static medium:

Lately I’ve come to realize that paper is pretty much my mortal enemy. I’ve tried and tried, over and over, to listen fairly as people have told me the two main arguments about why books are all that and a bag of chips:

1. Books leave more to the imagination.
2. Books do a much better job of rich, detailed descriptions.

To me, those two ideas are completely contradictory. Plus, I have no interest in spending a week reading something that, if put into a richer medium, would only take a couple of hours to get through.

I’ve held on to my books through the years for many reasons … sentiment, interest, the hope of actually reading them, status, laziness … but now I’m considering just getting rid of them all. Maybe on Amazon or eBay, maybe to friends, or maybe with a giant bonfire.

I think I want to go paperless.

[original photo]

“Your Chinese is a little bit better than terrible.”

– Daisy Zhou

Shouldn’t it be “heels over head”?

What a fantastic Christmas present. Thanks again to all of you for your generous support!

This morning my church did a unique outreach … at the beginning of the service, we asked for volunteers to go out to a local shopping center and give away 100 ten dollar gas cards.

We returned before the service was over and wanted to show some clips to the congregation, so I had about ten minutes (during the car ride back) to import the footage and create this video. It was a tight turnaround, but it went off without a hitch!

I spent a large portion of the day today fixing up small things around the house … adding insulation, putting some accent lights out front, decorating my Christmas tree, yada yada yada. Every time I crossed something off the list, however, two or three things were miraculously added. It was like the Fountain of Youth … except more like a Fountain of Never-ending-things-to-do.

At about midnight, it was time to call it quits, so I sat down in front of the electric drug (the TV) to wind down a little. My butt had barely hit the couch when I heard some banging out on the front porch … someone was going in and out of my tenants’ front door, over and over. Eventually I got up to see what was up … and I discovered that it had been left open, on one of the windiest nights of the year. Yeah. One tenant had come down, bewildered, and was trying to pull it shut.

A quick glance revealed that the screen door had been bent by the wind, and the inside handle had broken off from my tenant’s efforts to rein it in. Argh … and here, I suppose, is exactly the kind of situation that everyone had warned me about when I decided to become a landlord. Honestly, I’d rather have clogged toilets than broken doors … but at midnight it’s all about the same!

In denial, I just got out my screwdriver and took the door off, figuring that I could deal with it tomorrow. And as I skulked back to my bedroom to retire, my cell phone rang. It was another tenant, asking me to come to the door. At 12:40am.

I did, expecting to find a collapsed porch or car protruding through my living room window or [insert dramatic catastrophe here] … but when I opened the door, he was simply standing there with a small present and a Christmas card. How fantastic! I ran and got the gift that I had prepared for him, and we chatted a little about our Christmas plans before heading off to our respective rests.

Ok, maybe I can do this.

When a product’s packaging and instructions warn you to wear gloves at least eight times … do it.

A couple of weeks ago I found a website called Pick Your Candidate where you can rate your feelings about different issues and see how they align with the current presidential candidates. I didn’t realize how interesting my results were until now … here they are:

 32: Kucinich
 26: Biden
 25: Obama
 23: Gravel
 21: Dodd
 20: Clinton
 19: Edwards
 15: Paul
  7: Richardson
 -2: Cox
 -5: Thompson
 -9: Brownback
-10: Huckabee
-16: Giuliani
-17: Romney
-21: McCain
-23: Tancredo
-28: Hunter

To be honest, at this point I’m still listening to the candidates. Some of the above are definitely off the list, and I think I need to investigate why it says that I align (or don’t align) with some of them.

The overall stats (they take a while to load) are very interesting. And I’m not sure if my brother and I are actually related … his results were almost the opposite!

How about you?

Ok, I’ll admit it. There’s no good reason why I haven’t been posting lately … I’ve got lots of interesting stuff going on, I’ve been online quite a bit, and I’ve been finding or thinking of dozens of new post-able things every day.

In a strange way, I think I’ve been subconsciously using this blog as a way to connect with people as I’ve lived a transient lifestyle (or, as my students would say, as I’ve been a hobo) for the past 11 years. But now that I actually have an address, a real place to call “home”, I think that I’m subconsciously hoping to connect with people on a more tangible level instead. I don’t know, that’s just a guess. Or a rationalization.

Regardless, here’s an update, bullet-style, of some new things going on in Webelworld:

• This past weekend my brother and his family came to visit … we got to swim in their hotel pool then hang out at my place while a huge snow storm blew in. I even won a rousing game of Monopoly (it’s becoming a favorite among my nephews and nieces).
• The house is really coming along … many of the little fix-it projects have been getting checked off of the list, and much of my spare time is still spent finding furniture and items to fill in the gaps and cozy this place on up. In the past week or so, I’ve added a door in the basement, a couch and loveseat, a dining room table and chairs, a basketball hoop, a window blind, some kitchenware, and a Christmas tree … all for free!
• The semester is almost over at school (only a day and a half left!). Classes have been alright, and in general the year has been flying. Most notable there is the tremendous blessing it’s been to connect with two other “special” teachers … for the first time in a while, it’s safe to say that I’m part of a “clique”. Yay for friends!
• I think that a piece of China got accidentally lodged in my heart … and now it’s growing. I just can’t get enough of those beautiful people and the fascinating place that they call home!
• I had a great visit from Austin, my closest cousin … we really haven’t connected much in the past few years so it was so good to watch some football, argue like Webels, go see Andrew Peterson, set up my living room, and go to church together.
• I’ve been keeping my house at 55 degrees. It’s more of a “why not” thing than a “why” thing.
• Morning carpool duty still sucks [the life out of me].
• In the five days since I’ve put a “For Rent” sign in front of my house, I’ve received about a dozen emails and phone calls. It scared my current tenants into turning in their new rental applications … and it’s been encouraging to know that I’m in a desirable location with some good curb appeal!
• I still haven’t gotten groceries since I moved here … not quite sure what I’ve been eating.
• It’s probably good that I just lost to my nephew, Nathaniel, in the quarterfinals of our family fantasy football league. Watching the NFL has been a fantastic release and a great way to get lots of things done on the weekends, but it’s undoubtedly turned me into quite a couch potato. Now I can focus all of that extra attention on the Browns and their playoff run!
• I finally thought of this post’s title. It makes me happy.

Goodnight!