Lakeland... the new Memphis

well there is no chance i will ever get homesick. turns out lakeland is the memphis of florida. so first baptist lakeland has their college/singles bible study on thursday nights so i went over there after a team barbeque (more about that later) so i showed up a bit late and found all the doors to the church locked. so i walk around for a minute trying to find an open door then went back to the main door and waited for a few more minutes before somebody walked by and unlocked the door for me. he said the reason all the doors were deadbolted was because there was a shootout going on between some guys and the police right behind the church! i was outside there for about 10 minutes! so needless to say i feel right at home.

but yeah tonight the lakeland chamber of commerce held their annual tigers' barbeque over at the stadium. its just a time for all the staff, front office guys, players, and local community to hang out. all tigers staff get in for free but the community is charged $50 per person! they had awesome ribs, shrimp, sausage, and steak. a lot of the big league guys like verlander, zumaya, rodney, and leyland were there. it was a pretty fun thing to experience and free food is always good.

so this is my first post in awhile for 2 reasons... 1) our internet sucks worse now than ever before... i'm suprised i'm even getting to be on right now. 2) i have lived at the tampa airport all week. monday i had to make 5 separate trips. i left for the first one at 2:00pm and did not get back from the last one until 2:04am! the afternoon flights were on time but of course the 2 evening flights were about an hour late. tuesday i was supposed to make 6 trips. there was a big group of dominicans coming in at noon but their flight out of the domican was delayed so they would be missing the connection in miami. but one of the dominicans was on a different first flight and was supposed to arrive on time. so i go to the airport only to find out that he missed his connection in miami. so i had to drive back to the office, sit for an hour, and then drive back to get him, bring him back, then go back with one of the other interns in a separate car and get 2 guys plus the dominicans all in 1 trip. there were supposed to be 6 dominicans... supposed to be. they get off the plane and there are 7 dominicans. 7 dominicans and one of the guys on the list isnt one of the 7 which means there are 2 guys in the group that we didnt know were coming in. well we just figure the list was wrong or the missing guy went by a different name or something so we pile everybody in and head back. ... theres a point in everybody's life where you will experience an event that you never dreamed would happen to you. this was mine... driving a pickup truck crammed with hispanic guys. we even listened to latin music on the wy back to get the true feel... no lie. every seat was taken and the bed was full of stuff. so we get back, drop everybody off then i head back for the last pickup of the night at 10. i get there a little early and go to the baggage office of the dominicans flight jut to make sure that the missing guy really wasnt on the flight. he wasnt. turns out he got here THE DAY BEFORE! ... i have no answers.

anyway jeremy is in orlando for the weekend so we're going to hang out friday and saturday so that will be cool.