Mike Paschal called yesterday and asked if I could direct at church this morning, but fortunately everything was set up already so I didn’t have to go in extra early. We didn’t have to break down either, so we got to go a little early. Michael’s car was in the driveway behind mine, so I had to drive the Jetta to church. Amanda came to the Port City Community Church 8:30 service with Michael and Sarah. They went downtown to St. Mary’s afterwards while Amanda grabbed the car and I think grabbed some food with Jessica Lambeth before going over to New Hanover Hospital to visit her aunt, Anna Frazelle.

I updated a few people on Anna’s status. Matt Blair, who sometimes leads the band at Port City Community Church, has known Anna and Barry since he was little. I asked if he’d heard about what happened and he said he heard something but wasn’t sure of any details. In fact, the misconceptions I’ve heard so far includes Anna being in Africa and Anna jumping off a cliff. After the 8:30 service I saw Denise, who lives down the road from the Frazelles, and she asked how Anna was doing. She was over at the hospital a little while later.

Directing was pretty nice today. I think it mostly went well, and to top it off Mike and someone else (was it Chris? I can’t remember) brought me orange juice and doughnuts during the sermon, since it doesn’t take much on my behalf to keep things going during that.
I ate lunch outside with Ben Lambeth, Jessica’s husband. We had a nice talk about how we each got engaged and traveling and the like. We really should go out to Colorado with them sometime- they lived out there for quite a while and know places to go and stay.

During the 12:30 service Mike said I could go if I wanted, since there wasn’t anything left to shoot. I was waiting for Amanda to pick me up, sitting outside on the steps of Roland-Grise Middle School talking to David, a guy who plays the bass in the band when I saw her arrive. We went out to see Anna in the hospital. She was moved out of the intensive care and into a regular room and lots of people were coming and going. Their Uncle Ralph even came to see her while we were there. He lives in Raleigh or Cary but was at Oak Island on vacation.

We left after a little bit and came back to the house where Michael and Sarah were sitting outside playing Scrabble. Michael ended up barely winning. We watched a little bit of the World Cup championship, France versus Italy with Italy winning on overtime penalty kicks. We saw the Zinédine Zidane headbutt that is sure to be talked about. We DVRed the rest of it (for Michael more than anything) and went to Wrightsville to check on Anna and Barry’s King Charles Spaniel, Scout. Amanda and I were both pretty tired, so while Michael and Sarah went for a short walk on the beach, I stretched out and took a nice little doze on the porch hammock.

Amanda, Karen, Michael, Sarah and I had a dinner of salad, chicken and fresh corn on the cob outside on the patio, followed by ice cream for dessert. We tossed the spent corn cobs out on the lawn for Bruce and Paddy to chew on, and it’s amazing how much the flies left us alone after that, once they found something to snack on that we weren’t going to shoo them away from.