My Dad Is Insane

Okay, before a single word gets said about Hungary, Robinson home front news gets priority. 

So this morning I was up early because my internal clock is all thrown off  (it's dinner time in Budapest right now) and my family decided to skip church in order to get our lives back in order in between Europe trips. We did some laundry and had breakfast on the balcony because it's such a beautiful day here in Zville, and about halfway through breakfast my dad tells us he needs to show us something.

Now, my dad is an outdoorsy guy and he's always showing us something. Normally he finds something around the property like some snakeskins or a bluebird nest and we all have to go tromping out in the woods to go look at it. So when breakfast was interrupted so Dad could show us something, I figured we had a bit of a walk ahead of us. We didn't. Dad led us outdoors, straight into the garage... where an enormous Harley Davidson motorcycle was parked.

Evidently while the Robinson women were away and unable to counsel him against it, my dad pounced on the opportunity to get his motorcycle license and a motorcycle to go with it. In true Dan Robinson fashion he "sought the advice of some godly men" (thanks for your wisdom and leadership, Zionsville Fellowship elders) before getting it, and wants to use it to come visit Bloomington this fall when he gets out of work. Which of course invites the question why he can't just come visit us in his car, but who am I to judge?

I think when I get passed the shock of my dad taking his life into his hands on the interstate, though, I'm going to get a license of my own. :)

This little anecdote is why we need women elders at ZF, by the way. 

In Lieu of Some Hungary Posts

So I had this great idea of posting some humor articles about ELF -- the European Leadership Forum-- in Eger, Hungary, but my plan got snarled in a few ways. One, because Hungarian keyboards look like someone ripped off all the keys and rearranged them (definitely not QWERTY... this is something totally different) and two, working fourteen hour days makes you a lot less funny. So here's how we're going to do this. Over the next few days I'm going to write those articles as if I was blogging as I was going, and you're going to read them sequentially and thus play along that I'm still in Eger, while I am actually sitting on the floor of my bedroom in Zville. Sounds good? Okay, I'll get cracking on those articles. 

Food Service Blues

Most college students have pretty lame jobs, but I think there's something about working in food service that makes you wish there were less people on earth. My The-USA-should-totally-test-a-nuke-in-Zionsville job is at Carter's Ice Cream, a soda fountain that normally makes for a pretty enjoyable and colorful place to work until total nutcases and screaming kids decide they want sundaes. I have a number of stories from my two years there, but we had a customer today who was particularly noteworthy. 

During a busy period an elderly lady comes in asking for a double waffle cone, which is roughly the size of your head. So I dip it up, she pays, and just as she's getting ready to leave she hands me the cone, tells me she has to go to the bathroom, and that I need to hold it for her. I can't set the thing down because it's enormous and cone-shaped, and after five minutes it starts to melt on me, so I stick my hand in the freezer and tell my manager that I'm going to need a moment. Thirty minutes later, the lady comes out of the bathroom. I was starting to think she'd had a heart attack and died in there, but obviously I couldn't check because I was stuck holding her stupid ice cream cone in the open freezer while my ticked-off manager handled the whole crowd by herself. So that was my morning.

Shhh.... neurotic people sleeping.

Okay, I am just way too proud of this to keep it to myself. My room normally looks disgusting so I've spent the last few days getting rid of junk, organizing what's left, and alphabetizing the bookshelf. What you're looking at is my newly cleaned writing desk with theology books A-L by author. On the shelf is narratives and prose, anthologies, resource books, and creative writing manuals, and on the white shelves in the wall are theology books by authors M-Z. And nothing on the floor! (if you ignore the blue hairdryer.) It's the perfect bedroom/home office for... someone who's leaving in six days. Oh well, it's the thought that counts.

Where to get your Laura fix while I'm abroad :)

So I pretty much created this blog a few months ago so I could do something with all the thoughts I have in a day but don't necessarily get to say out loud. But since then I found out that I'm spending an extended period of time in English L'Abri, where internet access is a precious commodity, so I had to find a way to send a large number of people a regular update of my life in not very much time. So, here we go: everyone who wants to know how England is going, just check this somewhat regularly and I'll try to keep you guys informed.

Basically I'm only in Zionsville long enough to unpack my college suitcases before I have to repack them for Hungary. Mom, Sar, and I leave on the 20th, then get back on the 30th, and after that I've got twenty-eight days in the soda fountain before I can get back on a plane and go back to Europe. Then I come back, unpack, repack, and go right back to school again. All this packing is making me wish that human beings required less clothes. Can't we just all agree to run around wrapped up in bathrobes or something? I feel like that would make everyone's lives a lot easier. 

So that's the plan. Anyone who wants to get the inside scoop of my journeys to, from, and in Europe, you know where to look.