I know.  You have been nervously refreshing the page every moment since last Friday, awaiting an update as to the Honda’s fate.

Well, people, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that I’m alive.

The bad news is that if oil were blood, my engine would be the beaches of Normandy.

The burning rubber smell of last week was due to an oil leak on par with the BP debacle of 2010 – but I had that under control, and it wasn’t the Honda’s demise.  The unrelated, unexpected, and ultimate downfall came when the timing belt snapped, and there was internal damage to the engine.

The good news is that this happened Sunday morning 8 miles outside of Kansas City, and I’ve been able to stay with my brother and sister-in-law and nephews.

The bad news is that I will never drive the Honda again.

I will never drive the Honda again.

This isn’t how I imagined it would happen.  After all I’ve been through with and in this small-but-mighty car, I envisioned the end to be the engine catching on fire, or hitting a bighorn sheep or something.  I kind of hoped for a more spectacular blaze of glory.  Instead, death came quickly and silently, rolling the Honda to a quiet stop on the shoulder of I-70.

The nail in the coffin was the price quote for a full repair.  I was like, “Dude, if I had that much money, I would buy Christian Bale to CARRY ME AROUND.”

So just after it’s 21st birthday, I am selling my beloved Honda for salvage.  The money I’ll get isn’t enough to cover what I’ve spent in the last 24 hours.  I know, it’s just money.  But still – lame, right?

As for me, I am stranded in Kansas City.

And I haven’t been home for 6 weeks.

I’ll let you figure out how I’m doing.

Rest in peace, old Honda friend.  Here’s to the good times.

Now, you know I love me some Nashville, but two weeks is a long, long time to be away from home.  After 14 days of suitcase-living, I will board a plane tonight, and head westward back to Denver.  I am grateful for the time I’ve had here with my Tennessee family, but ready to get back to my ever-loving routine.

I hope the thrice-stolen Honda is still parked where I left it.

For those of you who don’t live in the area (or… don’t pay attention to the national news), you may not know that this weekend, Nashville got 18″ of rain – over 25% of the average yearly amount in just two days.  Having lived in the Northwest, I thought that I was used to a lot of rain – but the storms in the Southeast are truly astonishing.  I have never, ever seen so much rain in my life – for 48 hours, it was unrelenting, turning the streets into rivers and basements into swimming pools.  Everything flooded.  Buildings went floating down the interstate.  People were being rescued from their homes in canoes.  So many people lost so much.

But I watched the people that I love jump into action on behalf of others.  Bailing water from basements, checking in with each other to make sure they had what they needed, braving the flooded streets to give each other (um, me) rides…  It reminds me that in my two short years in Nashville, I somehow became a part of a true community, one that tangibly demonstrates servanthood and selflessness.  I saw it offered to others, and I felt it offered to myself.

I am ready to leave today.  But I will never get used to saying goodbye.

I was awake from 2-5am for no real reason at all.  I just woke up out of a dead sleep, and my eyes stayed open for three hours.

I tried all sorts of things – reading, watching a movie, thinking about boring things, tossing and turning, changing the temperature, changing my blanket situation, moving out to the living room for awhile – but nothing worked.  Thoughts were racing through my head – stress, mostly, I think.

I had a lot of heavy things on my mind last night – Haiti being the biggest.  I’m a bit slow on the uptake, not having a TV; I knew that Haiti had been hit by an earthquake, but I had no idea the actual extent of the tragedy until I started reading articles and watching CNN.com videos last night.

If it hadn’t been for chemotherapy, my parents and my sister Sarah would have been in Haiti right now.

Sarah spent last summer working with Mission of Hope in Haiti, and fell in love with the people.  The plan had been to take my parents back with her in January – right now.  It’s a sweet mercy and a complete mystery why things happen the way they do.

These were the kids whose prayers were mine last night.  It’s important for me to see their faces.