I brought a kid home with me on Thursday night…

I’ll try to make this a quick entry since things are slow here at work for now.

During Geoff’s concert, he shared about the continued efforts of Compassion International around the world.  Listening to him, I thought about the good situation that God has currently placed me in and figured it wouldn’t be a burden at all to sponsor another child through Compassion.  So I went to the table during the intermission and started talking to Dana Weaver, Geoff’s guitarist.  He didn’t remember me from DCLA 2003 in Sacramento in July 2003 which was okay.  I don’t blame him since he’s seen thousands of people since we dropped him and Geoff off at the Sacramento airport.  What finally jogged his memory was that a friend and I made a late night In-N-Out run to get him something after he and Geoff performed because he didn’t have dinner yet.  I guess In-N-Out food can have a lasting effect on some people who can’t get it like we can!

At the table, I knew I wanted to get another boy from Brazil because Brazil and its people appreciate good race car drivers and racing.  I picked a kid named Felipe (just like Ferrari’s Felipe Massa) whose bio mentioned he enjoys playing with cars.  No, I didn’t read his bio before I selected him.  I only had two criteria.  The child must be a boy (sorry, girls) and from Brazil.  Now that I’m sponsoring him in addition to Jardel, I really need to get on the ball and write to these kids!!!

After the intermission, Mark Harris, who used to be a member of 4Him, performed.  He was pretty good and was definitely very passionate about the music he played and sang.  It also made me think I should pick up some of the group’s older albums.  As a finale, Geoff and Dana came back out and those of us in the crowd (pretty small – 50-60 people I’m guessing) all sang “How Great Is Our God.”  I thought about recording it, but figured that song is all about God and I should focus on worshiping Him over trying to get some video of Geoff, Dana, and Mark performing it.

Once the concert was all said and done, I waited around for Geoff for a few minutes.  When he came out, the first thing he did was give me a big hug!  I guess Dana had told him I was there.  Geoff told me he went jogging earlier in the week wearing the USC t-shirt I gave him in 2003 and that he wondered what I was up to because of that.  We caught up a little, but other people wanted to talk to him and I didn’t want to take him away from that either.  After he was done with them, we chatted some more and he signed a CD for me “for old times’ sake.”  I wanted him to sign a few more that I could give to others, but it was already pretty late and I understood that he and Dana both have had a long day as they flew into LAX from Nashville earlier the same day.

The drive home was nice and wide open.  Getting to the church earlier in the night was a different story.  I left Santa Monica at 6 PM (even though I originally was planning to leave at 4 PM) and got to Loma Linda (about 75 miles east) around 8 PM when Geoff was just starting.  While I was going through downtown LA on the 10 East, I was pretty tired behind the wheel and basically feel asleep for a second or two (I woke up early that day to get into work early which I did, but got buried with a request for advertising which kept me there until 6 PM).  The car began to veer slowly toward the center divider (I was in the number 1 lane going maybe 20-25 MPH in traffic).  When I’m tired or lazy driving, I usually place my fingers at the lower two spokes (there’s four on 2002-2004 WRXs, three on 2005-later) at the 5 and 7 o’clock positions (yes, I know that’s not the proper 9 and 3…btw, folks…10 and 2 is WRONG, even if the DMV handbook says it’s right).  I had a muscle spasm like the ones you get when you’re trying to fight falling asleep and somehow ended up honking the horn of my car.  If I had a 3 spoke steering wheel, my fingers probably wouldn’t have depressed the airbag cover and thus caused the horn to sound.  That honk woke me up so I could rein the car back in.  After that, I’m sure my heart rate shot up quite a bit and you can be sure I was WIDE awake the rest of the drive out there.  Getting out there in 2 hours was a very nice surprise because I was expecting it to take 3 hours had I left at 4 PM.  I also just missed a big accident on the 10 East at Baldwin that I heard about on the radio just a handful of minutes after I passed the Baldwin exit.

Now to quote a line from one of my favorite movies of all-time, Cool Runnings, “You know what Sanka (the push cart driver played by Doug E. Doug) always says?  Get back to work!”