Tony’s Guatemala

Well, I’m here again, but at two different places that previously had been unrelated…

Less than a year ago, I lost my dad, and I’m still coping with that loss…

I’m in New Orleans, Rachel and I drove here on Saturday after hearing that her grandmother was very ill. we arrived Saturday evening, and went directly to the hospital. We spent a little time with The family members that were there, and then went and checked into the hotel. Rachel’s sister was at the hotel already, and helped us get checked in… 4 people, 4 hotel rooms. but apparently there was a surplus of rooms open in the hotel, so it was no bother.

Sunday I couldn’t handle going back to the hospital, as it brought up too much memory of my dad’s passing. I spent the day in quiet reflection, as I was trying to just be at peace. The girls had  good day spending time with Gan, and I ended up grabbing some coffee, and a little food.

Monday morning came the knock at my door that seemed inevitable… Gan had passed away. Rachel’s dad was on his way to town a few ours later, but since he had a 13-14 hour drive, we knew it would be the next morning before he arrived.

Tuesday was Rachel’s birthday, it was also Gan’s. Rachel and I went and had a quiet lunch in the quarter, and then we all went to dinner with 2 uncles, and their wives/ girlfriends. It was surreal. Rachel’s Grandmother would have been 79 that day. We had dinner at a restaurant that you could see from Gan’s bedroom window. No-one knew how to act, that to say, or what to do. We celebrated life the best way we knew how, in the midst of death.

The funeral is tomorrow, and I better get some sleep between now and then…

Well, I’m getting ready to make another road trip.

Rachel’s Grandmother Gan is in the hospital in New Orleans, and the prognosis isn’t good. We’re getting ready to hit the road to go see her.

Gas prices are scary right now, with a rise from $3.65 a gallon to as high as $5.49 a gallon on my trip from Quincy to Tallahassee. I hope we can find gas along the way. The unknown is kinda scary.

The hurricane, Ivan I think his name is, is bearing down on the refineries in Texas, and they’ve shut some down. The panic is the only reason for the sudden jump in prices.

I saw a sign today that said “Hurricane season is only 2 days away, are You ready?” I thought that was funny.

Well, I never found all the missing posts, not sure exactly what happened to them. kinda frustrating, but alas, more posts are on their way!

I turned another year older over the weekend, and oddly enough, I’m now the same age as my grandmother’s been for years.

Yup, I’m 29.

Got some Bad news from Rachel’s family on my birthday, and if you could be praying for them that would be much appreciated.

Well, hurricane season is officially here I guess, and we got hit with the tail end of one running through.

3 trees down across the driveway, 20+ inches of rain, and all kinds of delays on things.

I made it through unscathed, but I need to fix my mom’s roof some!

I guess that the reality is that life is getting more and more complicated, and the ways that we keep up with it are more and more complicated as well. Every day it seems that some piece of the software that I use to interact eith the rest of my life gets updated, and it seems that with every update I become just a little bit more behind the curve as far as everything goes with keeping up!

I’ve been using a software add-on with firefox (my web browser of choice) that allows me to Blog to this site more easily, about 2 weeks ago, firefox downloaded an automatic update for the software that didn’t fit very well with the way I wrote content, and sure enough, when my user interface went out the window, I started blogging a lot less.

I wonder how often we find ourselves in a situation that teh way that God wishes for us to grow, and maybe communicate with Him changes a little bit as we mature, and suddenly we find ourselves feeling passed over when truly, God is just trying to grow us as people?

We had an attempt to hack this site last night! I guess since I accept donations on here, that it makes the site a target, even though I’ve had a total of maybe 45 unique visitors in the last month.

I can take the fact that someone tried to hack the site as good news, since that means it was worth hacking, or bad news, since with hardly any traffic, the likelihood of someone trying again after the site gains popularity will probably go way up…

Oh well, they weren’t successful, and that’s the main thing…

I actually started an exercise routine today in an effort to be in better shape when I make it to Guatemala, and I realized, I’ve gotten pretty soft here lately, it’s probably a good thing that I’m exercising now, otherwise I might not be able to keep up when I get to Guate’.

So far my routine consists of: walking about a mile, and bicycling about 2.5 miles, I should incorporate some other exercises, and I plan to in the next week or so, but I’m notorious for being unable to maintain an exercise regimen, but I figured out a few things that might help me with the things I’m doing so far:

I fear that I really enjoy gadgets, especially mechanical things, and I always have, ever since I was a kid, and some gadgets keep me occupied indefinitely. One of the gadgets that’s always been interesting to me where bicycles. I haven’t had a decent bike in about a dozen years, but I had one all but given to me a few weeks ago, and I suddenly remembered how much I liked bicycles. that bike had some relatively major repair issues, and I decided that I couldn’t fix it on my budget so it had to go.

About a week ago, another bike popped into the picture, a very well maintained, and very small, Schwinn road bike with a lot of racing type gadgets installed. I was instantly interested, thinking to myself “Well gee, those parts ought to fit my road bike frame at home” and I haggled my way to a very reasonable price for the bike (less than a tank of gas, and I have a small tank!) and brought it home, thinking I might would swap all the nice gadgets onto another frame and ride away into bliss.

Unfortunately, I quickly realized that my old frame was set aside a dozen years ago for good reason; it was bent beyond repair. Sad day, right? Well, here I was with a very small road bike, in fact, the frame is at least six inches smaller than the size that’s recommended for someone my height! Well, after a bit of research online, I discovered that it was a lot less about frame size, and a lot more about the fit to the rider.

Well, if you saw a picture of me standing next to my new (30 year old) bicycle, I would appear to tower over it, and I guess I do, but it’s actually pretty comfy to ride, and hopefully the tires will last a few more weeks before I have to replace them, by then I should know if the gadget factor will be enough for me to keep up with my riding.

Still no sign of that photo backpack, which is admittedly a little disapointing, but hey, I only paid like $25 (yikes! thanks Ebay) in shipping on a 6 pound item, so what can I expect, right?

Well, I’m a little late wishing everyone a happy easter, but I figure, better late than never!

I was out of town over the weekend, and made it back in town just in time to go to the easter service at the church that one of Rachel’s friends is very involved in, okay involved might be an understatement, her husband is the pastor.

They had the service at a local nightclub, called the moon, and it was an interesting experience.

Otherwise, the drive was relatively un-eventful, although, I probably looked like an idiot driving down the interstate with strips of duct tape holding th front of my hood down.

You see; on Friday I decided I was gonna try and fix something that had been bothering me for a while. My hood didn’t latch properly, ever since a kid backed over the front of my car with his pickup truck last year. I’d replaced the hood, but the core support that the hood latch is atached to was depressed. ever since then, the only thing holding the hood down was the safety catch, which isn’t very safe, but it was a tight fit, at least until Friday when I decided to “fix” it with a screwdriver.

Well, the only thing I managed to do on Friday was to bend the latch up a little bit, and make the safety catch fit very loosely, but the hood latch was still too low, so now I had the hood rising with every gust of wind, and I was scared of the hood flying open, crushing the windshield etc. so I added a few strips of duct tape, I looked stupid, but I felt a lot safer with the tape.

I fixed the hood properly today (well, I don’t now if the technique was the “proper” one…) by using an engine hoist and a padlock to bend the core support back up. I used a padlock, because the shackle is about the same diameter as the latch bar on the hood, and it was the only thing I could find. My Method: close the lock, press the shackle into the hood latch until it latches, hook the engine hoist to the lock, and pump the hydraulic handle until it’s bent up.

I was lucky and got it at about the right level on my first try, but I wouldn’t want to try and do that for someone else’s car!

I’m also working with a local company to help them sell some stuff online by taking good photographs for them to use in ads, and I went and worked on that some today…

Well, I’m about to leave on my last driving trip for a little while.

Tomorrow I’ll be leaving for Tampa, seeing a bunch of Rachel’s Friends (and several of them are my friends now)

It’ll be a good trip, but Probably another 10 hours of driving in like a 24 hour period.

I hope we make it back in time for church since it’s Easter Sunday!

Driving is getting kind of old by this point. I’ve been sick for the last 2 weeks, and driven about 2,000 miles in the same time.

After getting back from Atlanta late Sunday evening, I got a little bit of sleep, and then took back off for Jacksonville on Monday, and back Monday evening. I had a blow-out of the passenger rear tire on the way back, and had to drive the rest of the trip on the donut. I lost about 25mph in speed, and it took a lot longer to get back. I ended up getting home about 6am.

One more trip, and then I’ll be done driving for a while, I look forward to that.