On Vacations

I neglected to mention in my setup yesterday that one of the key rules of this 30 day project is that it not be self-referential, i.e. talking about the fact that I’m writing every day. That’s a crutch that I’m not going to allow myself.

Part of my recent spurt of imagination stems from the therapeutic effects of a recent vacation. Hold on, you might say, aren’t you marginally employed and recently married? Didn’t you just escape to another island idyll just four short months ago? Yeah, but.

Vacations, by definition, force you to leave all of your normal day-to-day existence behind at the airport, to be picked up at baggage claim along with your luggage. Even the leash of a Blackberry can be severed (as it was in my case) by wonky cell signal and the urge to throw the damned thing into the crystal blue ocean like a Corona commercial. You exist as Yourself Minus; minus job (haha), minus extra-curriculars, minus most friends, minus your cars, house, and possessions that wouldn’t fit in the Samsonite. It allows you time and clarity to see yourself as you are without those things. Which, strangely, is not nearly as pretentious as it sounds; it’s merely comfortable in the way that staying in bed on Saturday morning is comfortable.

A brief moment creased the armor of this particular vacation, a phone call informing us that a tree had fallen on our car, followed by a second call downgrading the crisis to small branches on our more sturdy vehicle. The sheer panic of an unexpected Responsibility encroached and receded, and was forgotten except as a funny story to tell over rum drinks.

I’ve never been one for vacations. When I leave a job, I always have excess vacation days remaining, sometimes weeks worth. In the seven years since I graduated from college, I’ve taken the odd extended weekend here and there, but the only real vacation I’ve had was my honeymoon in March. Having two trips close together has implanted the importance of these breaks. As much as we all pride ourselves on work ethic and willingness to go the extra mile, we also serve a God who ordains rest. As thirty taps me on the shoulder and hands me its business card, I’m starting to see the wisdom in rest and reset.

Loose Ends

Well, I’ve successfully procrastinated on several topics to the point that I won’t be able to do any of them the justice that they deserve. Instead, you, o patient reader, will get a half-assed summary of the past couple of weeks. It’s just that I’ve been reeling from my devastating loss in the Ladies… bracket and getting out of bed was hard enough. (yeah right.)

First up, the Hunniford wedding in Columbus and the road trip that it necessitated. The things I’m most proud about here: I can finally say that I know how to drive a manual transmission, I saw the Chunky River (it flows with Campbell’s Big Beefy Potato Stew), and I tried Skyline Chili. But most importantly, two of my favorite people were finally united in holy matrimony, ending the awkwardness of what on earth to call the house that they purchased this spring together. “I’m going to the Hunnifords to watch Lost.” “But they’re not the Hunnifords yet.” “Dammit. Now I’m late and I’ll never know why Jack’s full beard has less grey in it than his stubble.” Where was I? Oh yeah: I’ve determined that rural Ohio is a great place to be from. As a place to be, well…

Next, a quick note in praise of the Hummingbird Brewery. The new beers are being cranked out and released on a bi-weekly basis or so, which makes the whole experience of tasting each new home brew not unlike tuning in to a favorite tv show. Each visit brings some new palate moving experience. Keep up the good work, fellas.

I really intended to do a right proper review of the new Ethan Durelle album, Talks To The Dark, but time and other musical interludes have washed away the first impression that I had when I first received the album in the mail. My fandom of their music is certainly no secret around here, but this album is truly a leap forward for them. From the jazzy breakdown of Big Ending to the sinister drone of Downtown Man, there’s new territory being explored all over. The biggest revelation for me is the album closer, Horns of the Altar. Knowing some of the personal band history that likely influenced the writing of this song, its raw, broken vocals and bleak yet faithful hope are an encouragement and a sure-fire “hairs on the back of your neck” moment with each listen. I can’t wait to hear the newer songs live in August.

While we’re on the subject of music, the new White Stripes album is great. The dark experimentalism of Get Behind Me Satan is gone, in favor of the time-tested formula of earlier albums like White Blood Cells and De Stijl. Still crossing my fingers that they’re going to hit Dallas or Houston around ACL. Also, just recently found this band Cabin. Whoa. Just whoa.

I cried a little when Craig Biggio got his 3,000th hit. I realized that he’s been an Astro since I was six years old. Six! Think about what you were doing when you were six. That’s the year that he got his first hit. In an Astros uniform. Of the 27 players to get 3,000, only 7 or 8 did it with a single team. Craig is Houston baseball.

Finally, props to my little brother JM, for not realizing what happens when you have sex with your wife. In so doing, you’ve bought me 12 more months of grace about my current singleness. I knew you’d come through for me when I needed it most.

The Most Intense Shit You’ve Ever Seen

I’m not really one for frivolous profanity (there is, I believe, such a thing as non-frivolous profanity); this is one of the many things that Criss Angel and I do not have in common. The title of this post is a quote from his tv show, Mindfreak. During a lull in the action this weekend, we watched part of an episode where Mr. Angel promised to put on a display of magic that would include “the most intense shit you’ve ever seen.” The “shit” consisted of the age-old “cut the string and then have it return to one piece” gag and almost running over Carrot Top with a motorcycle. At least the latter promised to be satisfying, uplifting even, had things gone wrong. In the end, we all agreed we’d seen more intense shit elsewhere.

I begin with the example of the magic show to demonstrate that it’s often hard to meet people’s expectations. After a stunningly awesome introduction to the Hotel Room Five back in March, any reunion would almost necessarily be a letdown. Group dynamics over four days instead of twelve marathon hours would be different. The joy of discovery would have passed, replaced by heightened expectations and closer relationships than those that initially existed.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I had an absolute blast tooling around the District and NOVA this weekend. We made a new set of memories that are in a lot of ways more significant and lasting than the flash-in-a-pan nature of the first weekend together. New running jokes (like the Angel quote) and catch phrases evolved, shared experiences told deeper stories about the members of the group, and some phenomenal food was consumed in the process.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t make mention of our pentultimate destination on Sunday night. Brickskeller’s is a bar in the DuPont Circle area of DC that features a beer list so staggering that I just sat there with a stupid grin for the longest time before realizing that the nice lady needed me to pick out one of the hundreds of beers to drink myself. Additional fun was derived from being the de facto sommelier of the group, and picking out beers for the members of the group based on their tastes and personalities. Regardless, everyone got to try the beauty that is Belgian beer. Mission accomplished.

Now that I’m back in Houston, the companionship and comradarie that we had last weekend is coming into tighter focus. It’s particularly special to think that this same vibe can be instantly recreated in almost any place on the map. I guess November in Denver will tell for sure.

APACHE!

Very Odds and Ends

As I approach my Memorial Day trip to The District, I’m reminded of how infrequently I travel for pleasure these days. I’m specifically excluding wedding-related trips since those matrimonially-inspired sojourns, while fun in their own right, hardly qualify as a vacation.

Naturally, I travel a lot for work. These trips are rarely to garden spots anymore (Goodbye, Miami. Hello, Sioux City!) and definitely have nothing to do with relaxation. Unless you’re a sadist. The romance and mystique of business travel is so far in my rearview mirror as to be virtually invisible.

Which is why DC is going to be so much fun. I love cities and Washington is one of my faves to visit. It’s busy, it has good public transportation, and great restaurants. Plus, four of my favorite people will be there, with the opportunity to add more as we go along. (Hi Jules!) I can’t wait.

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”Aspiring proto-deacon” was a phrase that I used to describe myself earlier this week. The problem with that description is that I’m a huge screw up. I hardly fit even the most liberal qualifications for the diaconate (well, ok: maybe I could pull it off if I were Unitarian), and recent experience has shown that I’m more likely to be the one in need ecclesiastical support than the provider of support. Still, it helps to have a goal in mind. At this point, I’d rather be a deacon (or otherwise formally bound in church service) than be married. Seriously. I think.

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Finally, I’m sitting on (not literally) some sweet looking pork ribs that I purchased at this week’s Farmer’s Market. My plans for them involve the words ”blueberry-bourbon glaze.” The one thing I lack is a place, time, and occasion for which to prepare them. I’m opening the floor to suggestions. Anything that doesn’t involve the words ”Roger Clemens Yankees debut” will be considered.

Home Stretch

It’s actually been more than forty days since Lent began, and the end of the tunnel is looming. Easter will mark the end of my experiment in self-denial and sanctification, and while I won’t actually be partaking on Easter (yay teetotaling family), the time of my alcohol-free existence will come to a close. Not to say that I’ve been perfect: there was some wine at the wedding in Birmingham, and a beer or two Sunday night when it became apparent that I wasn’t going to find a pint of St. Arnold’s ultra-limited edition Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout. But at least all of those drinks came on Sundays.

The Lent experience as a whole has been productive. I have been able to take advantage of the sobriety and put it to work in the interest of noting my own fallen nature, and the blessings that the Gospel has wrought in my life. I think that the chief accomplishment of this season has been a realization of the quality of friends with which I have been blessed. I’m been something of an up and down person to be around in the last twelve months, but there has been a core group of friends who have encouraged and challenged me throughout the good and bad times. When you have a Coke in your hand and you’re sitting back unfazed and looking at these people, you realize what they truly mean to you; these friends mean the world to me, and I truly perish the thought of where I would be without them.

I’ve also wrestled with a couple of particular sin issues in my life. I’ve found that my struggles are shared and sympathetic, and though there’s still as sinful as ever, I don’t feel quite like I’m alone in my fight (which I did a lot last year). I’ve also noticed that some behaviors that I thought were normative among my friends and acquaintances (based on impressions gleaned over the past five years or so) were not quite what I expected, leading to something of a paradigm shift in how I view this issue. I hesitate to elaborate any more, and I know I’m being vague; but you don’t want to hear me talk about sex, now do you?

It’s been amazing to me how easy giving up alcohol became. Over the past two weeks or so, I haven’t really struggled like I did the first seven days of Lent. It became a non-issue. I think that this is important because it teaches me that anything in my life that I love, even good things given by God for my enjoyment, can be denied or removed for a time for the purpose of drawing me closer to God. I’m looking forward to Lent again next year. I think.

I’m off to Omaha tomorrow for work. Woo yay. But Good Friday awaits upon my return. Last year’s Good Friday service at Christ the King was special on multiple levels, and I hope that some of the same beauty and truth will be there this week.

Also, a quick side note to close: check out This Will Destroy You. Like Explosions in the Sky, only they’re smaller and have played with Ethan Durelle.

Get Your Strut On

I’m not the most handy guy in the world. I’ll never be in danger of having my own home improvement show on TLC, much less a Man vs. Wilderness “look I’m drinking my own piss” show on Discovery. But I do remember “righty-tighty, lefty-loosey” pretty well, and so I’m just competent enough to cause trouble.

I’m also a meddler. I’m rarely content to leave well enough alone. This applies to many areas of my life, but in particular we’ll focus on how it applies to my cars. None of the three vehicles I’ve owned have ever been sold without some sort of modification. Now I’m in possesion of the most perfect stock car I’ve ever owned, and yet I can’t keep my hands off her.

Vesper’s first mod went on yesterday afternoon. I justified messing with a perfectly good Mini in the name of preventative maintenence. The area of the frame where the front struts mount has a tendency to warp and “mushroom” under normal wear if you have 17″ wheels as I do. When you consider the crappy quality of the roads in the Montrose/West U/Memorial areas that I frequent, my strut towers were probably going to warp sooner rather than later.

Into this desparate situation rides a cowboy on a white horse. Ok, a Brit with a blacked-out Mini of his own. Simon at Bavarian Hyper Sports sold me a strut bar and walked me through the all-too-easy install yesterday, and I even got the Houston Mini Motoring Society discount, which now effectively has paid for the cost of membership.

I dashed over to my parents’ under-reconstruction abode to borrow the necessary 13mm socket that I’ll need for the install, and the bar and braces go on with little fanfare. No muss, no fuss.

Ostensibly, the cross bar should increase the torsional rigidity of the frame (read: make the car handle better), but the difference in day-to-day driving is so miniscule that I can only barely notice it. On sharp turns and windy places, it’s a bit easier to pick up on, but it’s still a slight improvement. A few more minor tweaks like this, and she’ll be the track monster I hope she can become.

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A quick follow up on the last entry. On my most recent trip to Nashvegas, the LJV and I had occasion to drop by Judge Roy Bean’s, a Texas-style bbq oasis in a pulled-pork wilderness. As luck would have it, there were a bevy of women at the bar on the night that we rolled in, and every eye was upon us as we hit the door. Actually, it was more like the evil eye. See, somehow Friday nights at this particular place seemed to be reserved for lesbian birthday parties. After sitting at the bar and consuming brisket while playing a spirited game of Guess The Gender, we hightailed it out of there like Larry The Cable Guy at a Maya Angelou reading. Good times.

Finally, please be in prayer for the family of Dustin Salter. Dustin was the RUF minister at TCU, and he passed away this week after being in a horrible bike accident last year. You can find out more about Dustin here. I have several friends who were under Dustin while at TCU, and he touched a lot of lives. He leaves behind a wife and three young kids. I don’t really need to emphasize all the people who are hurting in this situation, because there are so many. I appreciate your prayers for them.

Southern Comfort

I really hate it when I procrastinate about blogging. The events that I want to talk about grow hazy in my memory due to the passage of time, with key details being the first casualties. If I sit down to write as soon as something momentious happens, I’m usually pleased with the outcome. All that to say, I don’t think this post is going to do my trip to Alabama two weeks ago any sort of justice.

I left out of Houston late on a Thursday night, neglecting the fellowship of my community group in the interest of being awake when I arrived in Longview that night. Turns out that sleep and fatigue were the least of my worries: when I left Houston, it was in the mid-upper 60’s, and I was wearing shorts, flip flops, and a thin t-shirt. Upon arrival in Longview and the campus of LeTourneau, my car was beeping at me to signify that the temperature had dropped below 37. The flip flops were now a liability. However, I was pretty much a zombie at that point after crashing down from the caffiene high that had propeled me through the moonlight forests of East Texas, and so I collapsed on the futon of an unsuspecting college student and slept the peaceful sleep of the righteous.

The following morning, I threw on a suit and had meetings with a couple of area hospitals before getting myself and Emily on I-20 in the direction of Birmingham. I-20 is one of those highways that shows you nothing but the generic parts of America; I’m sure that Vicksburg and Tuscaloosa and Shreveport all have fun, interesting parts of town (ok, maybe not Shreveport), but all you ever see from the interstate is a neverending parade of Shell stations and Applebees. At least Jackson had a Rasing Canes.

We arrived in Birmingham in time for the end of the rehersal dinner and a hearbreakingly beautiful video presentation about the bride and groom. I’ll pause the narrative here for moment for the sake of two points:

1. The occasion for the trip was the wedding of Katy King and Mark Hersey, who are respectively two of my favorite people that I never get to see. Katy was the photographer at my older brother’s wedding, and has a unique visual approach. I knew going in that this would be one of the most visually appealing weddings I’d ever been to, and I wasn’t disappointed. Mark is a 6′8″ complement to his statuesque wife, and one of the most laid back, approachable guys I’ve ever met. There are couples that you meet and when they say that they’re getting married, you nod your head and say “yeah, I can see that”; then there are others where you jump up and down like a five year old and do a fist pump like you just hit a walk-off home run. They are the latter couple.

2. The music behind the video presentation included the song “Kingdom Come” by Coldplay. For those of you not familiar, it’s a song that Chris Martin wrote for Johnny Cash to perform. The Man In Black was called home before he could record it, so it shows up as a secret track on X&Y. It’s done acoustic and sparse, just like the Rick Rubin Cash records. I bring this up not so much to praise this excellent song, but because I want to put it to use. I tend to burn cds for my friends, but of particular fun is making a mix for a girl in whom I am interested. There are a certain set of songs I’ve always refrained from putting on a cd because they’re just so powerful that I didn’t want to waste them on someone I didn’t think I could marry. During the last relationship that I was in, I had the confidence to put all of these songs on various cds, because I had come to the conclusion that we were going to get married. Do You Realize?? by the Flaming Lips and I’m The Man Who Loves You by Wilco were the two worst casualties, tarnished and cheapened by using them too early in the game. But having heard Kingdom Come in this context reminds me that there are plenty of songs out there for use when I do again have opportunity to throw together mushy music together for someone who drives me crazy.

Ok, enough sidetracking. As I left the rehersal dinner, I pulled Katy aside and asked her what they were doing for a getaway car. She and Mark are both crazy about origninal Beetles, so I assumed that they’d have one lined up; as it turns out, their reservation for one had canceled at the last minute, leaving them with the prospect of driving away in Mark’s rental car. No freaking way that was going to happen.

Other thoughts from the wedding: I don’t know that tuxes are really necessary. All the guys looked natty enough in their tan suits. Spontaneity and improv in wedding ceremonies is under-rated. People who are raised in ultra-conservative environments cannot tell the difference between a regular conversation and the initiation of a relationshp. Canadians are dorks, in the best way possible.

After the wedding, the out-of-towners ended up congregating in the Five Points area of Birmingham for food and drinks. Ok, for me it was just food. Regardless, it was fun to meet some new people and catch up with some friends I hadn’t seen in a while.

Eventually, I found myself in a hotel room with four other people, drinking wine (ok, I did finally take a Sunday exception to Lent) and throwing grapes at one another. This new group of five appears to be taking the place of the larger group that first introduced me to Katy, and I couldn’t be happier. These are peoople that I’m a lot more in tune with than most, and plans are already afoot to reconvene in our nation’s capital around Memorial Day.

We closed down the hotel room party at 6AM, and Emily and I left Alabama after lunch. Emily is my sister in law’s sister, and one of the coolest kids I know. Simultaneously insecure and confident in who she is, she’s asking hard questions, and fighting for the answers. It’s spooky to see someone else wrestle with a lot of the issues that confronted me when I went to college. I love her to death, and I can’t wait to see where she’s going to be in five years. CHUNKY!

I love it when my friends are in love. I love long talks over long miles. I love making new friends and establishing new inside jokes. I feel very blessed.

I guess that wasn’t so bad. Still remembered most of the good details, didn’t leave any major events out. Great success! On our next installment: good suits, bad weather, and lesbians.

Let It What?

Not only have I lived in Houston for the great majority of my life (my three year stint in College Station is growing smaller in my rear view mirror, and encompasses a much smaller percentage of my years than it used to), but I haven’t traveled nearly as much as most of my friends have.  Most of the travel that I have done has been during the warm weather months, when it makes most sense to flee screaming from Houston’s humidity and mosquito infested summer cauldron.  For whatever reason, my family opted not to travel during the winter, when Houston is actually quite nice.  The end result is that my exposure to cold winter weather is extremely limited.

Sure, I’ve seen snow before, and I’ve been in weather colder than 20 degrees before, but I’ve never driven in real, hazardous snow, and I certainly haven’t been called upon to do so in the interest of my job.  (One of the few things that I miss about PreCheck: having Florida in my sales territory.)  As I wait here in the airport in Oklahoma City, I can’t help but think that I’ve finally had an experience which many of my compadres has already had, and I have no idea why I felt that I was missing out on something.  Driving in snow isn’t fun.  It’s not all goofy harmless sliding and sticking your tongue out the window.  It gets old reaaaaally fast.

Today I drove from OKC to Tulsa and back so that I could visit a trio of hospitals.  About 45 minutes outside Tulsa, the snow started, and it would not abate until I was almost back to OKC again.  The snow eventually gave way to slush, and the slush gave way to numerous vehicles in ditches.  I thought that I’d have a leisurely trip back; between a 45 minute delay on 44 and the necessity of refueling my rental car, I found myself doing the 200 yd. Terminal Dash tonight.  Of course, the flight is delayed, because of the weather.  At least I had U2 and Cold War Kids to keep me company.

Why did I think I was missing something?