So tired... but I'm back!

Wow, what a trip. As I've written, I spent last week in Bristol, Tennessee with my senior high youth group for a workcamp through Group Workcamps. It's a really well-organized program... basically, we just had to let them know we were coming, and they arranged the rest: a school to stay in, food to eat, tools and materials to use, sites to work at, work crews to work with, services for worship... We leaders didn't have a lot of work to do at all!

I was part of a double crew, crews 58 and 59. I was officially in crew 59, but we worked together on most tasks, and so we just thought of ourselves as one crew. Our resident, Betty Davis, was this sweet lady who was a food pusher. You know the type: always nagging at you to eat more. We stopped picking up our lunches from the camp, because she kept feeding us so much. But anyway, Betty needed a new floor, so my crew laid a new subfloor in her kitchen, then laid tile over that and her dining room floor. Once done with that, we helped the other crew with painting the house and cleaning up the backyard. By the time we left, the house looked beautiful, Betty was thrilled, and none of us wanted to say goodbye! On Friday night, Betty came to our evening program, and we stood around for about 5-10 minutes, because none of us wanted to be the first to say goodbye. A couple people were crying, too. Not me, of course. I'm a guy. I don't cry. :-p

During evening programs, I played mandolin each night... except for Wednesday. I didn't know we were playing on Wednesday. Oh, well. But playing really did lift my spirits, and I felt a lot better about just about everything. Plus, it got to be a conversation starter, being the one and only mandolin on stage! But overall, I felt like the evening programs, combined with group devotions and time alone to reflect, gave me a really nice spiritual boost that I've been needing. I'm inspired to do better with managing my time now that I'm back. Pray for me... we'll see how it goes. Those video games are mighty tempting...

So we drove back on Saturday straight through. I'm a bit tired now because of that. But I got back to some strange news. Gibson's 21st birthday is tomorrow, July 4. Larry, our mutual friend who's a monk and also a borderline alcoholic, wanted to take her out for her first drinking. Personally, I was quite offended. Who was he to decide what my girlfriend was doing on her birthday? What if I wanted to do something? Did it occur to him that I just might want to spend my girlfriend's birthday doing something special with her? Apparently not, because he took her along to Washington, DC (he lives near there) so they can do their drinking during the biggest Fourth of July party in the country. At least I was invited... but I have to work on Tuesday morning and they won't be back in time.

So they left this afternoon. Yes, I'm pissed off about that. Sorry, it's not especially Christian of me, but it's how it is. However, I am trying to not be so possessive. Lately, Gibson and I have hit some rocky ground in our relationship, and I attribute a lot of it to me being overly possessive and jealous of her time. I felt like she should be spending all or most of her time with me, which wasn't really fair, and caused a lot of distress for both of us. I'm trying to back off so we can actually have fun again. But this one does bother me, I have to admit. I don't think I'm being entirely unreasonable here... ah, well. She called a couple hours ago to let me know she'd gotten in safely. Nothing I can do about it now but pray that she'll be safe.