My Blog

Here’s the cover for the latest anthology in which I have a story.  My story is called “Suburban Legend” and it probably is different from most of the other stories in the anthology.  The book comes out September 2.  Another story follows in December.

 Don

Fay has finally left Central Florida.

We had no problems with wind or flooding here at our place in Orlando, although it rained most of Friday. We’ll be heading out to the folks’ house on Sunday to check out the impact there. The folks are reporting that their screen enclosure needs a bit of repairing, but until we get out there and see it, I don’t know how bad it really is…

— Rich

Fay is still hanging around!

We actually had more wind and rain here in Orlando today than we’ve had with Fay so far. Nothing too bad, just wet and windy.

The folks’ area has been hammered over the last few days by Fay, receiving around 20″ of rain while Fay just sat off the coast! While there was wide-spread flooding in Brevard County (some of it pretty severe), their neighborhood seems to have weathered the deluge better than most. While they had some street flooding which kept them stranded in their neighborhood for a while, once Fay started moving again and they caught a break in the rain, the waters started to subside. The closest the water got was covering the street up to their next door neighbor. Luckily the lake behind them didn’t flood. Other neighborhoods weren’t nearly so lucky and lakefront and lakeview property quickly became lake property.

As I type this, the rain and wind has picked up again as a squall wraps its way through and they’ve just announced on the television that the inland counties have cancelled school again tomorrow.

— Rich

Fay continues to be a “non-event” here in Orlando, but the folks are getting tons of rain at their house. If you’ve seen the news footage of flooding in Brevard County, that is happening only a couple of miles from their house. The flooding is not really a problem in their neighborhood. One of the entrances to their subdivision does have standing water but the other does not.

Mom did report to me earlier that she’d seen a catfish swimming in the gutter.

— Rich

Or is it “feh”?

Forecasters didn’t really have much of an idea where Tropical Storm Fay’s path would take it besides “into Florida”, so we did the “right thing” and prepared for 80 mph winds and torrential rains here in Orlando. The storm has generally tracked south of us and we’ve only had a steady light rain and occasional gusty winds (30-35 mph) here. Unfortunately, this southern track has put it on a direct course for Viera and the folks wouldn’t let us put up their shutters for them on Sunday. Even so, I don’t expect they’ll have much trouble, just a whole lot more rain than us.

— Rich

I had the priviledge of attending Fun In The Son summer camp with our youth group this year. It was my first summer camp experience, since the only other away camps I have been to were Snow Camp and the Leadership Retreat at Cedarkirk, and it was a lot different than those trips. For one thing, we only had a four hour trip to get to Jekyll Island, Georgia and we took the church bus, which can hold around forty people. There were only fifteen kids going, plus Shaun and the new Intern, Kristyn Jones as chaperones, so we had plenty of room on the bus for all of us and our stuff.

We stayed at the Oceanside Inn, where most of the kids going to the conference stayed. All of the sports and most of the meals were also at that hotel. The way the rooms worked out I ended up in a room with two freshmen and two double beds, so I got an entire bed to myself. That room connected to the room that had the Intern, the two other freshmen, and another girl. The third girl’s room was quite a bit down the hall, but they had a graduated senior in their room so they were alright. The boys were on the floor below and they also had connecting rooms, with three people in each room, but they only had one queen bed per room.

Because the church bus had to go back to church we were stuck at the hotel a mile away from the convention center, so we had to go beg a ride. We ended up finding one with a group from Faith Presbyterian in Seminole, FL that had a twelve passenger van but only three people, counting the chaperone. They let us ride with them all week until the last program because they had to head back so that they could make it to Great Escape the next day. We ended up including them in a lot of our games when we played things that were not in the regular scheduled tournaments and saved spots in meal lines for them.

None of our teams ended up winning any of the tournaments, although one guy from our group won the 5k, and we did win several games. We had girls’, guys’, and co-ed volleyball teams, co-ed soccer and ultimate frisbee teams, and girls’ and guys’ basket ball teams. The volleyball teams did alright, although I don’t know if the girls actually won any games. The frisbee team lost the first game and got knocked out, so we only had to play that one. I don’t know how the guys’ basketball team did, but my girls played very well. I say my girls because, really, no one else wanted to play girls’ basketball but me. Four girls signed up, but two of them backed out at the last minute, so we had to find someone else to be our third person. It ended up that Molly and Monica were willing to play so that I could. I thanked them both a bazillion times for helping me have fun, but I don’t know how much they enjoyed it. We lost 10-1. I did make our only basket, though I might have made more if it wasn’t “make it-take it” on a half court in the parking lot.

The soccer team did very well, winning their first two games out of three. I was only signed up to play basketball and ultimate, but some of the girls decided they didn’t want to play again, so I got to go in for one of them. That we had at least two girls on the team so we could play in the co-ed tournament. Unfortunately, during the first game my knee was injured when the bottom half of my leg was wrenched sideways. I also got quite a bash to my nose just prior to that. I was in such pain that I had to call a time out to go limp over to the chairs where everybody else was sitting and I was unable to play any more games after that, including the one frisbee game. I was pretty disappointed about this, but I had a really fun time anyway. I am pleased to say that my nose did not sustain any permanent damage, althought it felt like it hurt worse at different points in time and my knee is continuing to improve through exercise. I have played soccer since and, although I am still hesitant to kick with that leg I have regained complete normal use of it.

The theme that our lessons focused on was “Collide”, or how Jesus came to earth and the effect was something that changed the world. The slogan was something about when the ordinary and extraordinary collided. I find this almost ironic, because when my knee got hurt, that is why: someone collided with me hard enough to change the outcome of my week.

Already church is beginning to plan for next year’s summer camp. I do not know yet if I am going to attend, because I am hoping to go to Bingle Camp for the first time in the upcoming year. If I had the chance, though, I would definitely go back. The proximity of the ocean and the fun atmosphere made Fun In The Son 2008 plenty of fun!