Cross Dressers and Ping Pong

I would like to say that a large workload from college courses has kept me busy for the past few days so that I couldn’t post an update until now. However, the truth is I spent the last 72 hours tracing the perimeter of the White House to protect our nation’s highest officials from an impending alien attack.

Well enough of that, let me fill you in on what’s has happened to us lately. We started work at Chick-Fil-A on Thursday afternoon and worked Friday and Saturday as well. It has gone fine so far, the store here is considerably smaller than our previous one. The Beckley store will do less in a full day than the one in Baltimore does from 12:00-1:00. The food and service and the restaurant here are of a notably lower quality and reputation. But for that reason the operator hired us in as managers to help turn the store around. It’s both frustrating and exciting at this point.

An interesting (perhaps scary) story, Saturday morning Katie was running the front of the store and I was in the back stocking certain items. As I’m pulling lettuce out of the refrigerator some person in their street clothes walks into the back of the store. I say person because I did not know if it was a man or a woman. None of the employees seemed to mind so I figured it was a friend of one of the workers. After the very butch looking woman left the back Katie came to see me. She said to me softly “you gotta come out front there’s this weird person asking for free food and I don’t feel safe.” When I came out it was this same person that had spooked me only a moment ago. Apparently they let the cross dressing truck driver come back and get whatever food he wants. Yes, it was a “he,” that became apparent when he spoke in a voice much deeper than my own. It was awkward and comical to meet a person with short-shorts, pink toenails and a voice as deep as Barry White.

School is going great, homework is a little heavy, but I enjoy every bit of it. I cannot fully convey how much I enjoy school through written text, you have to see the big smile on my face. I’m excited to learn more about God every hour of the day. Katie is loving school no less than myself, in fact, it saddens her that she can only take one class this semester. We are eagerly awaiting the opportunity for her to go to school full time. We hope that will be next fall, but of course expenses would double and income would drop significantly if she goes full time. She tried soliciting her father’s help because back in 2005, when Katie was looking at attending Washington Bible College, he would have helped pay for school. He responded with a chuckle of unforeseen proportion.

We spent our Friday and Saturday night hanging out with Dan and Jennifer until midnight. It’s bad for our sleeping habits but good for our hearts to have friends that we enjoy spending that much time with. We did everything from playing an old 2-D racing game on Nintendo to competing in fierce ping pong matches. Dan crushes me in ping pong, it’s the first game that I have been totally obliterated in. I’m very used to winning everything but even though I lost 21 to 3 I still had a lot of fun.

Just before posting tonight we babysat for Drew and Emily. We watched their two year old son, Liam, for about 5 hours this afternoon. He’s a fun kid and we enjoyed playing parents a bit but we are very glad to give him back. Even though we may be one out of two married couples here that don’t have kids (out of at least 24 couples total) the temptation is not high at all for us to have our own bundle of joy. We quite enjoy a two person household for now.

Continue to pray for us, we need it now more than ever. School is stacking up along with work and expenses but God continues to guide us through.