Oh, the lovely days of summer! And there was much rejoicing over...

*my best friend coming home for a visit

*a car test-driving adventure with another dear friend at a pakistani gas station

*time to pour over great new books that have been on the reading list forever

*time to sip a good cup of tea every morning

*a soon-to-be-installed new radio for my little truck, so my friends won't think it's possessed and i can listen to my ipod again

*good phone calls

Would you guys please pray for my uncle this week? He is having both his kidneys removed on Thursday. The pain and recovery will be unimaginable, and he'll be on dialysis as soon as he gets out. He goes in today for fluids and such. Please pray for peace for him and his family, as they went through this a month ago and dread repeating it. Thanks.

For all my Florida girls who visited a few summers ago, there is a new redneck pastime that involves (you guessed it!) speed and mud. ; ) Because of the drought, our lake has shriveled up into a pond, the grass is crispier than Cap'n Crunch, and all the swamps where people used to airboat have dried up. The swamps have turned into a Florida version of the Serenghetti, with trails that twist through tall weeds, thick brush, and oak hammocks. If you're lucky, you can even catch sight of elusive Florida wildlife (like armadillos, alligators, and deer) from the back of a... 4-wheeler! My dad and I went out this weekend for a long drive, aka "scouting trip". It was so strange to think that a year ago the water would have been up to our necks, but now we could spin out in a sand pit. The layers of dried swamp muck have turned into a brown, flaky soil. When your ATV is not in the lead, face, hands, and clothes get quickly covered with the blackest dust you've ever seen. You have to wear goggles to see through it, and at the end of the day you still look like a chimney-sweep out of Mary Poppins. Nevertheless, 4-wheeling sets a new standard for exciting activities in the Florida drought.

On a cleaner and more refined note, one of my dad's friends took me up for a ride in his helicopter a couple of weeks ago. I had a mental picture of something out of Black Hawk Down or at least one of the silent choppers out of Conspiracy Theory. My idea was way off (although I wasn't disappointed), as it turned out to be a small, white, two-seater chopper that he kept in his backyard. It looked like a mega version of a Lego helicopter. The owner had taken the doors off because they were "too restrictive". When we were buckled in one of my shoulders was brushing the pilot while the other one, I am sure, was hanging out of the doorway. It was amazing.

The pilot took me over my hometown, even over my house, and followed my dad (who was driving below us) back to his own home. He even let me take the stick for a few minutes to get the feel of steering left, right, and forward. I have so much respect for helicopter pilots now. While I had the stick, my friend was still controlling two other devices and a panel full of switches to maintain our altitude and who knows what else. It is something like driving a stick-shift that uses all your hands and feet, and demands you to change the radio stations while your flying through the air. Did I mention the wind? And let me say, it was a strange feeling to know that if I had had total control of the aircraft we would have surely  died. I did okay going in a straight line, but Mr. Davis let me try hovering. As he said, it was like trying to balance on a beach ball-- the world was spinning. The brave pilot soon took the stick back into his confident, capable hands.

About ten years ago, my life-long dream was to be a pilot. Now I got to experience a small taste of something that my grandfather loved and I dreamed of-- flying. It was almost a shock to be several hundred feet above a place that I had grown up in, driven through, and to see it laid out as it really was. Flying, or simply repositioning, gives such a new, fresh, and even startling perspective on life. I came back to earth with half of my head still in the clouds and the other half strangely yanked out of them-- could I learn to see all my life from a higher perspective?