Lost in New Jersey

I've decided that New Jersey may have some of the worst signage in the country. I was warned about the "jug handles" method of making left turns. But I wasn't warned about how poorly marked all the roads are. Fortunately I spent some time studying my map and was ready for this on the road. I wasn't ready for this at the airport when I couldn't find the rental car counters. I asked two different workers at the airport and eventually learned that I had to take the air tran to get to the rental car place.

Overall this has been a good trip, except that we got here today instead of last night. Weather in Raleigh was a problem for us and our flight got cancelled. It was nice to have one more night in bed with Amanda instead of sleeping here.

Our training has been pretty simple. We'll probably be done by lunchtime, but our flight isn't until after 8:00 PM. Hopefully we can get an earlier flight. If not, hopefully we can spend some time in NYC. At least it's better than hanging out in the Newark Airport.

I guess my attitude toward NYC is softening a bit. I suppose it will only take a few encounters with some New Yorkers for me to change my mind, but so far just about everyone has been very pleasant. However, I did notice a strange thing about the civility here in that it doesn't seem very genuine or deep. For example, the woman who met us by the front desk smiled and welcomed us, but she never told us her name. Very strange to me.

So now the question is -- seafood tonight or NYC? It all depends on whether we can get that earlier flight. If not, we'll do The City tonight. If so, seafood at the beach. Got to maximize road trips...

Eye of the Whirlwind

I mentioned this in my last post, but now things are starting to feel somewhat overwhelming. I can't believe that I'll be in New Jersey at this time tomorrow, Lord willing. The more I look ahead to this trip the less excited I am. The good news is that I think the training class is only from 9 - 4, so I might not have to be up quite as crazy early as usual.

Part of me dreads going with a female coworker. I'm not really that concerned, but I don't intend to be buddy-buddy with her either. It's just not a good idea, as far as I'm concerned.

It felt good to be more or less in the routine today. Lily was her usual difficult self at dinnertime, so she didn't get any treats tonight. I took her out shopping and gave her frequent reminders of why she didn't get any treats and why she didn't get to ride in a car shopping cart at all either. Hopefully it will sink in eventually.

Amanda and I are just exhausted today. I hope that it gets better as we readjust to Eastern Time.

Forgive how this post was all over the place. I feel like I've been remiss in not posting more lately. Hopefully I can post after my trip to the Garden State.

Back from the Land of Beef

I can't believe that I haven't updated my blog in over a week. But I hope you will forgive me when you learn that I spent the last 5 days in Kansas City visiting my dad and stepmom. It was a great visit and we had many laughs. We also enjoyed many great meals together. The best thing was that they got to get much of the Lily experience. Dealing with Lily is not for the faint of heart, but she still impressed them with her great vocabulary. It's a little spooky to see how well she communicates for a not-quite 3 year old.

Still, the visit was not all about beef and frozen custard. I got to spend some great time with my dad. He and I have not been very close over the years, but it's getting much better. Although neither one of us is very expressive, there is a real sense of a bond of love there.

It's also incredible to think about how tough things used to be with Susan. She and I didn't get along so well 16 or 17 years ago (wow!) But things are much better now. I don't walk on eggshells around her anymore. And we can joke around and laugh about things. For example, she is rather compulsive when it comes to ironing clothes. She irons bedsheets, for example. She also irons my dad's underwear. So when she talked about the days of her sons' youth and how she washed cloth diapers every other day for 2 years, I had to ask if she ironed them too. She seemed to get a kick out of it.

I know that there are things about our lives that they disapprove of. They would prefer that we care more about maintaining our house, for example. I'd like to see them more passionate about Jesus (as I'd like to see everyone more passionate about Him) But none of these things got in the way of a good visit there.

Now I'm home for two nights and am flying out to Newark, NJ on Wednesday night for some training. Then I get home well past my bedtime on Friday. I'm looking forward to some rest at some point. I keep thinking that, but it never seems to happen...

Boiling Bacteria

Amanda and I have been homeowners for about 2 1/2 years now. We finally experienced something new this weekend. Our town detected E. Coli in the water at some house on Friday. We're supposed to boil all our water for at least 3 minutes before it touches our lips. Based on what I read, I'm not too concerned about our water and have actually drank several glasses of it over the weekend. I'm pretty sure I'd feel the effects of it if I had the little bugs in my belly.

But what's weird is how irrational this whole thing has made us. I boiled a pot of water to use when cleaning Lily's milk cups. Amanda drank bottled water today, but she brushed her teeth with regular water. I had a salad for lunch with leftovers from a salad we made on Friday, but I wasn't going to wash any veggies to make more salad. So are we afraid of the bacteria or aren't we?

I think about how we live this way in so many areas of our lives. As we learned in church today, we're all hypocrites. There are things that we feel like we should obey, but we just don't. Why not? When we get down to it, we decide that it's not really that important. Frankly, that's the only explanation that makes sense, right?

Doing Things Right

Today got off to an interesting start. The phone rang at around midnight and, since I'm on call, I was sure that it was the Command Center calling me instead of paging me. Or I thought maybe they paged me, but I messed something up and didn't hear it as I've done that before. But as I made my way downstairs I saw an unexpected number. I called it back and got a tired-sounding female voice asking me if I was calling from Amanda's house. Amanda has a pregnant friend from church who was not due until September, but Amanda volunteered to help out in case of labor while her husband was away. Turns out she needed the help, so Amanda drove over there around midnight to sit with her daughter while she went to the hospital.

I slept in until 6:00 this morning and discovered that Amanda had to spend the night at her friend's house. Turns out that she was in real labor and got admitted. All this time her husband was in Pinehurst taking care of his elderly mom and her broken foot. Amanda's sister Tiffany was supposed to come over today anyway, so I called her and asked her to come over a little earlier (OK, much earlier) so she could watch Lily. Once she got here I took our car with the carseat over to Amanda so she could take the little girl to the hospital to see mommy and her little brother. Fortunately, this woman's sister showed up to help out so Amanda was freed from this burden after doing one taxi trip to the hospital.

It felt good to help out with this. It didn't even occur to me to get upset about any of it, which I consider to be encouraging. Now we're going to have Bill and Tiffany over for dinner tonight and I look forward to searing some beef on the grill and quaffing a few Great Lakes Beers with Bill.

Meanwhile, I got a really nice surprise in the mail today. Setting Captives Free sent me a check for $500. I don't serve for money. I don't expect it. But I certainly do appreciate it. Now I'll have to talk to Amanda about what we should do with it.

I also received our rebate check for our dishwasher installation. It's nice to get that quickly too.

I guess what inspired this post is that things just feel sort of right today. I even got some work done, though not tons. It just feels good to be a part of helping someone out. And I do consider it a blessing that the Bank gives me a little flexibility to help out with this kind of thing. Overall, life seems good right now.