Phil

Every week, I send out a weekly “announcement” email for our church, Oasis Madrid. And almost every week, I get a smart-aleck reply from our friend Phil. Phil used to live in Madrid, but now he lives in Miami. But he doesn’t get off the list, mainly I think, because he really enjoys sending me those replies. And they usually come from his crackberry Blackberry.

Phil was here on a business trip this week, so he came over for dinner last night. I don’t know why I bothered to be there, because really, Phil comes to giggle with Troy. Seriously. They giggle like a couple of girls, only worse. Constantly. They are very very loud.

The pair of them think they are the funniest creatures on the face of the earth. When Phil (and his lovely wife Jina) attended our home group, Phil and Troy had this whole comedy routine about how we were always going to run out of food. Even though I am a good hostess and that does not happen. Once, even though they were FULL, one of them took the rest of the food and put it on his plate. The other then looked around pathetically and whined “Isn’t there any more food?” Yeah, WHATEVER! I’m on to you, boys. And of course Phil mentioned several times in emails that he hoped there would be enough food last night.

Then there is the small matter of them taking on Hurricane Ernesto. You can read about it here and here.

I have been friends with Phil for over 5 years. He moved to Madrid in 2002, but has since returned to his stateside residence.

The first time I met Phil was when I drove to the train station near our house to pick him up for a church event we were hosting. I knew a little about Phil already from a mutual friend of ours, so I knew before we met that Phil was, ahem, a lawyer. I hadn’t met many lawyers at that point in my short life so I remember thinking when I saw him for the first time, “So this is what a big fancy lawyer looks like…Impressive.”

Since that first meeting, I’ve come to see that lawyers are just normal people, too. You know…the kind of folk that, um, go body surfing while the arrival of a hurricane is imminent (more specifically, the kind that get filmed by the local news as an example of “crazy folk gone stark raving mad.”)

I love hanging out with Phil because we agree on many key points in life:

1. we share a concern that Heather prepare enough food for dinner guests.
2. we both think “bacon makes everything extra special”.
3. we both think I’m funny.
4. we both cackle like maniacal mad-scientists and giggly teenage girls, alternately.
5. we both drive Heather crazy.

Phil was at our place last night, on a short visit from Miami. He came, he saw, he laughed. Miss you, buddy!