Moving?

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered that my website domain for my primary website had expired (the notifications went to an old email address) and somebody else snagged it. That didn't make me real happy with myself, but that's the price you pay for not staying on top of things. I have no idea what somebody who doesn't share my name would want a website address with my name in it, but I just moved on and set up a new website at www.leewarren.info. I've been thinking about moving my blog home over to that website as well. It makes more sense to have everything on one website. Come on over and check it out if you get a chance. I'd love to see you there. Here's a link to the blog.

Traffic Encounters

I stopped at an intersection this afternoon, with my turning signal on—ready to turn left. A car was coming from the opposite direction, so I waited for him to pass so I could make the turn. Another car stopped behind me and waited for me to make the turn. He had no choice. The approaching car stopped and turned to the right into a place of business—never even getting as far my car or the car behind me. No turning signal; no regard for me or the people in the car behind me. It irritated me, but it won't be the last time I get irritated in traffic.

A couple of minutes later, as I was pulling out of a parking lot, another car approached the same exit I was headed toward. He didn't see me at first, but from what I could tell, he had the right away, and even if he didn't, I knew he hadn't seen me, so I slowed down to let him go. He noticed me then and stopped. I waved him on and he put a hand up thanking me. And then he did it a second time. As you might imagine, I had a much different attitude about this driver than the one I encountered just a few minutes prior.

You never know what is going on in another driver's head. He or she might have just received terrible news and is consequently distracted. Maybe he or she is headed home to care for a terminally ill spouse or child and the thought of doing it for even one more day seems too much to bear. Or yeah, maybe the other driver is totally self-absorbed and doesn't care about treating other drivers with courtesy. But with so many other possibilities, it makes me want to give other drivers the benefit of the doubt.

Photo credit: Rita Mezzela

Melanie Oudin: Believe

Before the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Melanie Oudin designed a tennis shoe for Adidas with the word "believe" stamped on her heels. That should tell you a lot about her fighting spirit. The 17-year-old set a goal for herself at the beginning of the year to make it into the main draw of the U.S. Open. She did. But the 5' 6", 130 pound ball of tenacity wasn't content to simply show up. Once she made it into the draw, it was time to fight.

She won her first round match. In the second round, she shocked the tennis world by defeating Elena Dementieva, who was seeded number four. Oudin's belief grew. Then she knocked former number one player in the world, Maria Sharapova, out of the tournament and not only did Melanie's belief grow, but ours did too.

Check out this video on YouTube, shot by somebody who was in the crowd. It's the last point of the match; pay special attention to the left side of screen--when a woman shouts "We believe" and see if doesn't give you goosebumps. Then watch what belief looks like when the crowd reacts to Oudin's win.



Most recently, Oudin came from behind to beat Nadia Petrova, the ninth seeded player, to make it to the quarterfinals. Who knows where her run will end? Personally, I'd like to see her win it all. Imagine how the crowd would react if that happened.

Over the Rhine in concert

One day last week, I pulled out my Blackberry to read my email. Over the Rhine had sent out one of their e-newsletters and I always find them thought-provoking, so I read it. I didn't get very far before I saw that they were scheduled to play in Omaha on August 17. OTR is one of my favorite groups and I've never had the chance to see them live—and from what I hear, live is where they excel, so I started begging friends to go with me. Thankfully, one caved.

We got to the club where the band was scheduled to play and we were stunned by how small it was. I think I counted eight tables on the main floor and there were maybe another eight tables on a level above us. We got there early to get a good seat and we took one of the tables on the main floor. By the time the show started, there were probably 150 people packed into the little place—many of whom stood near the stage when OTR came out.

I found this photo on Twitter that someone took at the show:

OTR is mostly comprised of the husband-wife team of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist (shown above). They hire musicians to tour with them to make up the rest of the band. If you haven't heard their music, I'm going to have a difficult time explaining what it sounds like. The funny thing is, iTunes can't squeeze them into a category either. I own six of their CDs and here is the genres iTunes lists them under: rock, classic rock, pop, and singer/songwriter (that's a genre?—wouldn't all groups fall under this category?).

But forget their genre. Their music is magical, emotional, hair-raising, honest, real, gut-wrenching, playful, soul-searching, and as close to describing the human experience as any music I've ever heard. Listening to them feels like you are being opened up a by word surgeon who isn't looking to fix your body, but instead is focused on your soul. The difference is, a normal surgeon works on you while you are asleep. OTR performs surgery while you are wide awake.

They opened the show on Monday with a song called "Born" from their CD entitled "Drunkard's Prayer." It was a perfect way to start the show. Here are the first few verses:

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I'm gonna learn to love without fear

Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows what we'll find

Intuition, deja vu
The Holy Ghost haunting you
Whatever you got
I don't mind

Put your elbows on the table
I'll listen long as I am able
There's nowhere I'd rather be

I love the way this song starts—a person who is born to laugh must learn to laugh through her tears. It doesn't come naturally. And while we might be born to love, it doesn't come naturally either. We have to learn to love without fear.

Deep down, humans long for intimacy. We want one other person to know us for who we really are and we long to be accepted once we are uncovered. As a single person, I dream about finding a wife who would sit down in front of me with a glass of wine saying, "Tell me everything, I'll listen as long as I'm able—there's nowhere else I'd rather be."

People listened to "Born" in silence. I think we were all overwhelmed by the intimate setting of the place that seemed like a rundown club just a few minutes prior and by the power of the music.

A couple of songs into the set, they played "I Don't Want to Waste Your Time." I've written about that song here. On the band's website, Detweiler elaborates on the message of this song:

"Believe me, we don't want to waste anybody's time. When we stop believing we're doing our best work, we're done. Every song has to be good, every record has to be great, every concert has to have some spiritual significance—something that we can't quantify, something bigger than all of us."

From my perspective, they are succeeding.

They went on to play so many great songs: "I'm On a Roll," "The Trumpet Child," "Drunkard's Prayer," "Don't Wait for Tom," "If a Song Could be President," and "Ohio." I got goosebumps when Bergquist sat down at the keyboard and began playing "Ohio." I wrote extensively about that song here a few months ago.

As I look through their catalog of music, they could have played so many more great songs—most notably "Latter Days," but they would have needed to be on stage four or five hours to do so.

I told my friend on the way home that OTR puts a voice to so many of the changes and hardships I've gone through in the past five or six years while at the same time making me completely aware of what I crave: an understanding wife, a slow deep life, and the belief that God is the overseer and orchestrator of it all.

If you've never seen OTR live, you must check their tour dates to see if they are coming to a city near you.

Dancing in the Rain

"Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain." --Unknown

My mom called me this morning. One of the first things she said was, "What a depressing day this is." It was raining and overcast and she hates days like these. I, on the other hand, love days like these. Always have.

The funny thing is, after hanging up the phone with her, I flipped the pages on my desk calendars (yes, I'm actually vein enough to keep the desk calendars I've compiled for Barbour Publishing on my desk) and the quote above appeared for August 19 in the 365 Inspiring Moments from the Great Outdoors calendar, which prompted me to say, "Yeah, exactly."

I like gloomy days because they set the mood for staying in and when I think about staying in, I think about reading a good novel, or writing in my journal, or watching a good movie. This is how I dance in the rain. It's almost like the weather is giving you permission to stop running around long enough to enjoy yourself. Yeah, I know you can have fun in the sun too, but it's not the same for me.

The Ordinary

Have I really been gone for an entire month? Wow. Guess that's how it goes in the life of a blog. You spend time with her whenever possible, but sometimes life pulls you away. And so it goes.

A few of the things that have been on my mind lately include:

• I started reading The Diary of a Young Girl recently (better known as "The Diary of Anne Frank") and it's confirming so much of what I believe. I'm moved by how ordinary Anne made her life sound in such volatile circumstances. On one hand, she was afraid that the Gestapo would find her family and she knew what would happen if they did, and on the other hand, she went on with life while in hiding. She read books and journaled about them. She studied math and French and complained about them. She chronicled the squabbles of the two families (hers and another) who were in hiding together over such things as which linens and dishes should be used. The ordinary routines of life seemed to give her a sense of normalcy, and when it comes right down to it, that's what most of us are after—even in the most extreme of circumstances.
  
  
  
• I'm writing a couple of news features for a local newspaper this week. As I interviewed the subjects of the stories, I found it fascinating to listen to the ways in which God is working. In one case, a family feels called to live in a foreign country simply to be a light in a place of much darkness. They don't have any agendas. They simply want to help people. In another case, a pastor shared his heart with me about the people of Scotland. He recently returned from a trip there, and seeing God at work there has stirred his soul. Good stuff from people who are making a difference.
  
  
  
• The Moleskine notebook I'm currently using has plenty of room left in it, so I'm not in the hunt for a new one yet, but somebody needs to convince me not to cheat on the Moleskine brand with the new (to me) Piccadilly brand. From what I can tell, they both offer acid-free paper, they both have a similar look and feel, and Piccadilly is about half the price. Piccadilly also has fewer pages, but not enough to detract me. Has anybody tried Piccadilly notebooks? If so, what is your take? I found this review that really makes me want to give them a try.

The Male Code

“All plans between men are tentative. If one man should suddenly have an opportunity to pursue a woman it’s like these two guys never met each other ever in life. This is the male code.”

I watched an episode of Seinfeld last night in which Seinfeld said the above. I tend to think he accurately captures single men pretty well with the quote, but the code needs some explanation because it makes us all sound like inconsiderate skirt chasers.

Contrary to what most men say, most of us want to be married. There is something within us that drives us to seek until we find. From what I understand, our track record isn’t the greatest regarding what we do after we find, but that’s a topic for another day. But since most single guys desire marriage, we are always painfully aware that time is passing us by, and therefore we are continually hoping to find a compatible women. When we think have, she becomes our focus. When we call “the guys” to let them know what’s going on, there’s no need to formally break plans because, as Seinfeld said, they were tentative anyway. The guys get that. “Go! Go!” they say.

As for the skirt chasers charge, there’s a segment of the male population that is always going to be about the conquest for the mere sake of it. But I really don’t think that’s the case for most single guys over 25. Of course, I’m not saying that a beautiful woman in a skirt doesn’t catch our attention. She does. But deep down, what most of us really want is to meet a woman who understands us and who doesn’t tear us down who hopefully finds some quality in us attractive enough to want to make a life together.

So, for most of us, the male code is all about wanting to get married. Really, it is.

Bad Excuses for Not Blogging

1. Divided blogging attention. Who has just one blog any more? I’ve nearly lost count of the number of blogs I either run or write for. It’s still fun though.
   


2. Divided life attention. If there’s a worse multi-tasker alive, I’d like to meet him. And the scary thing is, I’ve improved in the last couple of years.
   


3. It’s the middle of baseball, NASCAR, and tennis season and I follow all three sports extensively. Who can blog when he’s busy watching his favorite sport(s)? Well actually I can blog while watching sports, I just tend not to.
   


4. Netflix. I have more than 100 movies in my queue right now. You can’t blame me for wanting to get my money’s worth can you? And if I’m getting my money’s worth, something’s gotta give.
   


5. I’ve been working on my farmer’s tan (somebody has to since it’s a dying practice). Well, I haven’t really been working on it, per se, but I need to work on it.
   


6. I’ve been busy convincing everybody who hasn’t tried Twitter to do so. It’s not easy convincing people that not everybody is writing boring tweets about what they are putting on their hamburger at lunch.

The Pharmacy

So I'm sitting in a pharmacy waiting room. It's one of those 24-hour pharmacies that seem to always have people waiting for meds. I haven't been to this one in a while but every time I'm here it is choas. I have no idea how it stays in business other than the fact that it's only one of a couple of 24-hour pharmacies in the city so everyone just tolerates the madness.

There's a guy sitting next to me. Sounds like he's recently been diagnosed with Diabetes. I know his look of confusion and I hear the uncertainty in his voice--the same confusion and uncertainty I had when I was diagnosed with it last October. A clerk behind the counter goes to pick out his lancets and test strips toward the front of the store and she returns with two boxes in her hands.

"Are those the smallest needles you've got?" He asks as she walks by him on her way to the cash register.

"I have no idea," she says. "You'll have to ask Ginger." Ginger is nowhere in sight and she doesn't apprear to be coming his way any time soon.

The man is currently talking to another clerk who seems equally as lost. The lost leading the lost. That's how it is in the land of the 24-hour pharmacy.

A Night at the Dirt Track

Over the weekend, I went to a local dirt track with a friend and his stepson to watch a little racing. We didn’t stay the entire night, but we saw some good action before we left.

The first few heats we saw featured new drivers—I think the proper term for that division is “hobby stocks,” but I could be wrong. It looks like some of these drivers are doing anything they possibly can just to be able to race. I loved some of the numbers on their cars. One car was A1. Here’s a photo:

Later in the night, we saw a car (the number 18 car with M & Ms painted on it) that had a similar paint scheme to something Kyle Busch would run on his number 18 car:

And of course, even later we saw cars that look more like I was expecting (this was a three car accident in the middle of turns one and two):

But I think I got the biggest kick out of a little boy who had all of the flags sitting in a stand in front of him who took out the proper flag and waved it vigorously every time the official flag man did so. Here's a picture of him in action:

I stood in a long line and paid $7.00 for a meal that wasn't horribe and it wasn't great. While I was standing in the line, a few small rocks flew off the track as cars sped by and one hit me in the leg. I survived and now I even sound tough for having survived.

Okay, not so much.

By the time we left, dust hovered over the track. And as we reached our car, dusk was settling in, making for one more nice photo:

Which State are You?

I glanced down a list of 50 conversation starter questions recently over at Suite 101.com and one of them intrigued me: “If you had to be named after one of the 50 states, which would it be?”

I’d hate to be named after a state for a couple of reasons. First, it sounds a little too Frank Zappa to me. Second, one state wouldn’t suit me for my entire life. 

Early in my life I was introverted, shy, and avoided risk. I’m thinking I would have been called Kansas. In my early 20s I was a partier so I would have probably had to submit a name change to California. In my late 20s I became a Christian so I would have had to bug the judge again to change my name to one of the states in the Bible belt. In my 30s I was heavily involved in conservative politics before the movement became everything it said it was not; maybe I would have chosen one of the U.S. territories for a name as a form of protest. In my 40s I find myself immersed in the publishing industry with a strong desire to be immersed in community, so maybe I should be New York now, but I suspect I would probably end up being Colorado.

Why?

New York has too many people. I wouldn’t know where to start to fit in. Colorado seems to have a nice mix of secluded areas and gathering places for community. And several publishers are located there. Yeah, I know about upstate New York and it’s beautiful wooded areas and I know that NYC has a vast number of publishing houses. But Colorado seems more my speed.

What about you? Which state would you be named after?

17 Again

When did the dollar show become the $2.50 show? Not that I'm complaining. It's sort of nice not dropping a twenty spot when going to the movies.

A friend and I went to see 17 Again at the $2.50 show last night (my friend snapped the photo you see on the left on this Blackberry). I haven't been to this particular theater in years. It was in better shape than I expected, although certainly nothing like the digital movie theater that opened in town a year or so ago. The last time I was in this theater, the seats were tiny and they didn't have a head rest. Thankfully, they've done some remodeling since then and it turned out to be an enjoyable evening.

The movie itself was better than I expected. The story line intrigued me because who among us doesn't have regrets? It's about a guy who gets a chance to back to high school to see if he'd still make the same decision to marry his high school sweetheart. His life hadn't been all that he expected and he blamed his wife for that. I won't spoil the ending for you if you haven't seen the movie. But seeing the movie does make you wonder what you would do if you were given the chance to go back to high school to make the same life changing decisions you had to make during your senior year. Even if I had the chance to do it, I don't think I would take it. The mistakes and poor choices we make are part of who we are. They feed our wisdom and presumably prepare us to make better choices in the future. Besides, the real world doesn't allow us to become 17 again.

Admittedly though, that means that sometimes our wake up calls come too late. Not too late in the sense that we can't change, but too late in the sense that sometimes we can't undo the ramifications of a poor decision. Sometimes we just have to accept the ramifications and move on. And sometimes we can redeem the situation, but it's much harder to redeem a failure than to have our circumstances changed magically. In redemption, there's a price to be paid and the magic is slow, imperfect, and painful. But that makes it more real.

Drive-in Theaters

A couple of weekends ago, I drove past an old drive-in theater south of Kansas City that had been closed for some time. The screen was torn down. The grass in the field was quite high. And all that really remained was the old concession stand, which was a cylinder shaped building with peeling paint. I wish I would have stopped to take a photo of it because it really brought back a lot of memories.

I miss drive-in theaters. I miss getting there early with a carload of friends to stake out the best available parking spot. I miss rolling down the window and then rolling it back up again to secure the speaker inside the car. I miss walking through row after row of cars to get to the concession stand. I miss the opportunity to laugh as loud as you want to, and as often as you want to, without being concerned about bothering somebody else. I miss seeing children playing on the playground below the screen. I miss the double and triple features that drive-ins used to offer. I miss getting home at 2:00 or 3:00 AM after the double and triple features were finally over.

The last drive-in theater in the metro area in which I live closed in 2007. I wish I had taken better advantage of it before it did close. The last movie I remember seeing at a drive-in was Purple Rain, which, if my memory is correct, came out in 1984—the year I graduated from high school.

I did a little searching and found this website that says there are 494 drive-ins that are currently open in the United States. At one time there was 4,000 to 5,000 in operation. The same website says that there are only two drive-ins remaining in Nebraska—neither of which are anywhere near where I live. It sounds sort of crazy, but I wouldn’t mind going to visit one anyway, making a weekend out of it. And it would be even more fun if they were showing showing three classic movies in a row from the 80s.

On Summer

I know that summer doesn’t officially begin until this weekend, but when the temperature is hitting 91 degrees, I don’t think we can call that spring, can we? My thoughts about summer:

Likes:

• Reading.
• Cookouts.
• Watching friends play softball (I retired after rupturing my Achilles tendon).
• Wimbledon.
• July 4 celebrations.
• The summer movie-going season.
• Fishing.
• Going for ice cream.

Dislikes:

• It lasts too long.
• It’s way too hot (about 40 degrees hotter than I prefer).
• Bugs, more specifically, bees.

What I Miss:

• Going to the drive-in theater.
• Taking one my nieces to an amusement park when she was small. She’d squeal on the rides, and demand my attention, and I loved it.
• Cruising with friends for the mere sake of it.

Truths:

• The A/C can never be set too low. It just can’t.
• Baseball is still a great sport—even if many of the current occupants have tainted it.
• Dressing down is more accepted—that’s a good thing.