Hertzler Outpost

The Pile of Bricks To Move

Cathy and I have had plans for years for what we would do if we ever had a pile of bricks. Our friends recently replaced their brick patio, and they offered to give us all their old bricks for free! It all seemed so easy; just get the bricks from our friends’ house, put them in a pile at our house, and complete our various brick projects at our convenience.

Our old minivan can only haul about a quarter ton each trip, but that wasn’t the limiting factor today. I was. After four trips I was done. Unfortunately the pile of bricks in our friends’ driveway was not done. It was only barely smaller.

I also think we will end up with enough bricks to pave our entire yard. That would certainly cut down on lawn mowing, but it’s not what we had in mind. So I’m going to have to figure out just how many bricks we want and come up with a plan to fulfill my promise to my friend to get all the bricks out of his driveway!

On the left is what one of our brick projects will look like. On the right is the measly, small pile of bricks in our driveway that finished me off today.

Cathy left me today.

She left for a week-long NILD conference in Virginia Beach (National Institute of Learning Disabilities). Throw in some good friends from Budapest who are there, a room with an ocean view, and a meal package, and this is shaping up to be a great week for her. She deserves it, and I’m happy for her. The ongoing education will keep her teaching skills fresh, too.

On the home front things really aren’t bad for me. Andrew and Audrey could take care of me rather than the other way around, if necessary. After the leftover food runs out they might be.

Anyway, this afternoon Andrew came home on his own, did homework, then went skateboarding with some friends in the neighborhood. He was in his element; friends and skateboarding.

Meanwhile, I kept busy at the office until the end of the day. I left Lake Hart and went to retrieve my daughter from our friends’ house. When I got there I found them doing their homework in the sun on the roof!

This is when I began to realize how good my life is here. My whole family is doing things they enjoy, and I didn’t have to work to make it happen. Maybe that’s just being lazy, but it was a nice feeling anyway.

And yes, they had permission to be on the roof.

Blues legend and Grammy winner, Buddy Guy, came to Orlando for a free outdoor concert tonight. It has been a long time since I have been downtown at night, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere. Cathy and I went with friends.

Blues Concert Rocket Launch

The show began with a rocket launch. I’m sure it wasn’t coordinated, but it made for a spectacular beginning anyway; something you would only see in Central Florida.

A few songs into Buddy Guy’s concert he jumped down off stage and walked around with the audience, all while playing his guitar. We were off to one side when he headed over to where we were sitting. This was at least a hundred feet from the stage, but his wireless pickup kept working. I walked next to him while he played as the crowd closed in around him. This was an unbelievable experience.

Buddy Guy Blues Concert

Click here or on the photo to see a video of him playing off stage.

I think tonight was the most interesting thing I’ve seen since moving back to Orlando!

Later update: You can also watch this video on YouTube.com. Click below.

Project24 Community Prayer Gathering

My friend, Scott Puckett, pastor of Christ Kingdom Church, led an interesting initiative this winter with the churches in our area. He organized Project24, a cooperation of the churches in east Orlando, Florida to pray for our community and help meet community needs. The goal is to show the love of Jesus during the Christmas season.

Today there were about eight different community prayer meetings scattered around. This was the one in our neighborhood.

Ted, David, Dan, and Jerry

This year’s Orlando half marathon was better and harder than any other I’ve done. It was better than any other because of all the friends I ran it with. There were 7 from Campus Crusade, and our neighbor, too. Training for this race was the best part, as every week I’ve done a long run with a group of guys on Friday mornings before work.

The fun ended in the middle of mile 6. That’s when I knew for sure that I wasn’t in shape to finish the race as fast as I started. By the end of mile 6 I knew that finishing the race at all was going to be a challenge.

I did finish, but with a new slow time; 1:41:11. I’m trying to decide now whether I’m motivated to make that time faster next year or not.

Surf Class

Andrew recruited his friends and youth leader to try surfing, so today there were seven of us on rented foam surfboards. The waves were better, and we all got to stand up on at least a few of them. Compared to last attempt, these waves were easy to navigate. But catching a wave and then standing up while riding it is a lot harder than it looked. This trip gave us progress, but we still have a lot of learning to do. And the water keeps getting colder, so we’ll probably need wetsuits next time.

Learning To Surf

Surf was up this weekend, so Andrew and I tried to learn how to surf. My last experience at this was back in 1991 the day before Hurricane Andrew hit Florida. Conditions were better today, but we both found surfing more than we could master in a day.

The waves look small from the boardwalk. As your feet get wet they begin looking bigger. As you paddle out and bob over the first two footer you realize that four foot wave you saw earlier is bigger than you thought. Finally when you’re on your belly paddling toward a roaring, foam capped, five foot wall of water rushing toward you, it begins to feel like the ocean doesn’t want you to pass. It looked so easy from shore.

By far the hardest part was trying to get these big blue foam boards over the final break of waves. With a smaller, fiberglass board you can push them under the big breaking waves and keep your forward position. The purpose of these big foam boards was to keep 165 pound bodies like mine afloat on top them; no going under. And there is really no going over a five foot breaking wave either without getting pushed back to the point where you began the ascent.

So neither of us got past the point where the big waves were breaking such that we could catch them on the way back in. Instead we caught the smaller waves as they reformed closer to the beach and practiced standing up on the boards from there.

We were both exhausted before our two hour rental period was over.

And we’ll be out there again next chance we get!

Hertzlers at Cocoa Beach

Today was part of Andrew and Audrey’s fall break from school, so I took a vacation day, and we headed to the ocean. In the four months we have been back in Florida, this was our first trip there. We went with friends from church and had a great time. (We missed you Seelys!)

Cathy remembered what we did on this fall break three years ago; we went to Slovenia. Only the weather and conditions were quite different; snow and mountains. We went with friends and originally planned to camp until we heard about all the snow. It turned into one of our all-time best family trips.

Hertzlers in Slovenia, Oct. 2003

Hertzlers, Rodds, Parkers, Burroughs

Jack and Diane Parker are in town, so we got them up to the house along with two other couples who moved from Budapest to Orlando this summer. There is a unique experience we all share, living in Budapest, which makes our friendship in this context extra meaningful. Only this group would appreciate one of our prized possessions from Budapest; a menu from the Adler. We’re all making adjustments to our new lives, and it was good to dump those things out around friends who were in the same process. We miss Budapest, but it’s nice to have some of Budapest here with us, too.

The Bloggers’ Party

Grant (and Amy) called the party at High Tide Harry’s tonight, and we all had a great time. It didn’t take long for us to agree that we missed Rob and Patricia but didn’t feel sorry for them one bit. (Vancouver beats Hwy 50 and Semoran Blvd.)

Andrew and Virginia we met for the first time. We hadn’t even read their blogs, but we found out that Virginia will soon be our working neighbor over at Wycliffe, and Andrew is doing something both Cathy and I envy; going to a school of design. They moved to Orlando this summer and are in the discovery mode and seem to be doing quite well at it, too.

Paul and Cathy kept us entertained with stories from Warrior, Alabama where Paul was a band director. They said it probably wouldn’t rank high in the list of most desirable cities in the U.S., but it is apparantly so far off that list it sounds compelling. And yes, we discussed the post. [And I made sure the apostrophe in this post title is in the right place.]

It didn’t surprise me to find out that Grant never edits himself. Write then post. Let someone else read it. That’s one of the reasons I like him so much; OCD types like myself admire the things so lacking in ourselves when we see it in others. And we found out what got fixed on the car and why. D’oh.

Cathy and Amy were the only ones who could relate to the group as normal people who don’t blog, but by the end of dinner even Cathy was starting to think about writing one.

And all the guys said that I had inspired them to start swimming in Speedo’s, too. Don’t believe them if they deny it.

Our good friends, Scott and Laura Puckett, started a church while we were gone, Christ Kingdom Church. It is one of several new churches in east Orange County Florida in the metro Orlando area of Central Florida. Right now we meet in a school, Avalon Middle School, as do most of the other churches in the area. One of the ways I help out in our new church community is by webmastering the site, or at least helping a bit. Scott set the site up himself and did a good job. But like the former Danube International Church site, which I also helped out on, it has a limited range of options.

It’s my goal to have Christ Kingdom Church rank high in search engine results for “churches in Orlando” and other related search phrases, but acheiving this goal requires making changes to the site which are not currently possible with the system in place now.

In the mean time, posts like this which link to the site, will give it added weight in the great minds of Google and Yahoo.

Ernesto’s Predicted Path
across Central Florida

Instead of getting hit square between the eyes with our first hurricane, we’ll just get some rain and wind this afternoon. Ernesto veered east back toward the ocean this morning, giving us a sigh of relief and a day off school. Campus Crusade closed the office today, too.

Rob found this cool map. It’s a cross between Google maps and a weather prediction site; a “mashup.” (Say that in passing to impress your friends at being up to the minute on Internet culture).

Ernesto’s 5-Day Forecast Path

Hurricane Ernesto threatens to give us our first direct-hit hurricane experience this Wednesday. We were happy to have missed the hat trick of hurricanes in 2004, but it looks like our turn is next.

Chipotle’s t-shirt

Free dinner for the family. Free t-shirt for Dad.

The neighbors said Chipotle’s near our house had just opened, and they were giving away the food. It was true.

Chipotle’s is probably my favorite restaurant here, so I would have paid extra to eat there on opening night – but instead it was free.

In exchange for some helpful feedback the manager gave me this t-shirt.

Their website is really cool, too.

Life is good around here!

My New Desk Cart

Moving to Budapest, Hungary three years ago gave me culture shock, but not the kind you might expect. Hungarian culture was different, sure, but I expected that. Nothing shocking. Campus Crusade for Christ culture in Budapest shocked me. I had not expected differences, so when differences appeared I was surprised. They were all minor changes, but they required unexpected energy.

There were nice changes, too. My office was relatively enormous compared to my 8′ x 8′ cubicle in Orlando. It had a great view of the hills behind our village. It was normally quiet but had enough people around to avoid the deserted feeling. I knew that moving back to Orlando meant giving all this up, but I was prepared for whatever cubicle God had waiting for me.

Reverse culture shock hit me today. Having not learned the first time around, I was surprised to find unexpected changes at Campus Crusade for Christ headquarters. Apparantly God didn’t have a cubicle waiting for me at all, but rather a cart. Really. While my seating assignment has not finalized, judging by the looks of the partially redone work area I’ll be in, my new location will be a cart!

Words cannot express my befuddlement over this discovery.

Once you place a phone on this working surface, and then a small laptop computer, there no longer remains any free space. I am a paperless kind of guy for sure, but occasionally I like the feel of using wood-based products such as paper. Have I become this old fashioned in my absence? Frankly, I don’t know what I’ll do. The situation looks so bad that, for now, I will assume I have been sorely mistaken and that I will either wake up from a bad dream shortly or will find that the carts I mistook for desks were really intended for the espresso machines they will be issuing each of us.

The sounds of our backyard are one of my favorite things about our Florida home. After it rains the tree frogs sing like birds. Listen.

Before Departure

After Arrival

I’m sure in six months we will have a better perspective on how things have changed in our new world since the last time we lived in it, but for now it feels like we stepped back out of Narnia’s magic wardrobe into the life we left three years ago. All the kids are three years older, but it seems like no time has passed otherwise.

Today was comparatively easy. I set up insurance for our first car – by myself! I drove across town without a map. I went to the bank, and it was easy making a deposit, getting a cash withdrawal, and getting temporary checks. Cathy even managed the Internet setup appointment herself.

Best of all was our first visit back to our house. The first amazing thing was discovering that our new church home group (old friends) had furnished our house! We couldn’t believe it. It makes the next six weeks of waiting on our container very much easier. The next amazing thing was seeing what good condition the house is in. We knew our friends were taking good care of it, but there is hardly even a sign of wear. What a blessing to come home to this! Finally, Andrew and Audrey were amazed at the loaner TV in our house. Our three year TV hiatus has officially ended – as you can see in the picture.

There were two bad things today, though. First was hearing that our friend, Dan (who rented our house with his family) was diagnosed with a brain tumor today. Join us in praying for them, as this is a tough time for them. The second (hardly worth mentioning in light of this situation) is that 5 of our 8 boxes have not arrived. The airline website says one remains lost. I hope the one with my clothes isn’t the lost one.

Today I began establishing utility service at our house in Orlando. Progress Energy (electric) had a nice online form that saved me making a phone call during their normal hours. One down, several more to go.

Next was gas. I once again shake my head in disbelief at the name of Central Florida’s natural gas company, Peoples Gas. Their parent company is TECO Energy, and they’ve named their other divisions normal things like TECO Coal, TECO Transport, and Tampa Electric. So what’s with an S&P 500 company naming their natural gas unit “Peoples Gas”?

I can just hear the CEO: “What? I don’t get it,” as he tries in vain to surpress a smirk.