O-Dark-Thirty

Pastor Ron's sermon today was a continuation of "Back to the Basics." Last week he spoke about prayer, its importance to each of us and how to pray. Today he spoke about Fellowship, how and why we should do so. One of the first things he covered was a list - the excuses people make for not washing. 10. I was forced to wash as a child. 9. People who wash are hypocrites; they think they are cleaner than everyone else. 8. There are so many different kinds of soap, I don't know which one to use. 7. I used to wash, but it got boring. 6. Washing on Christmas and Easter is enough. 5. None of my friends wash. 4. I'll wash when I get older, like when I retire. 3. I don't really have time to wash. 2. The bathroom is too cold in the winter and too warm in the summer to wash. 1. The people making soap are only out to get my money! This list pretty much comprises the top ten reasons people give for not going to church. (I confess I h...

There's an old joke: If a vacuum cleaner sucks, is that a good thing? That's kind of funny. There's an old saying: Life sucks. Then you die. That's not so funny. I am not good at a lot of things. Some things I try to do, and it takes so long for me to do a bad job of it that I get frustrated and think there's something wrong with me. But there isn't. Learning to do a new thing follows a learning curve, a steep suckage scale, so to speak. Quite often I forget this, and just get depressed at my total lack of abilities. Yesterday I caught a pretty good article where Thorin Klosowski explained how he handles the suck barrier when learning a new skill . The article made me feel less alone in the great big dark and scary world of new skill suckage. I recommend the article to everyone, and sent it to my two youngest, who suffer from the same self-deprecating malady I do. Thorin (I am going to guess we are on a first-name basis unless he calls to correc...

I thought it was time for a quick update on moving from our current address to the smaller house. The new Living Room  Darling is handling all the contractors. It's a chore, and I (personally) would keep everything in a notebook which would never leave my side, but she handles it all in her head and on scraps of paper. I'm not that talented.    The floors are finished and they look absolutely lovely. It took a few more boxes of flooring than we planned, but Benito got those. I was disappointed in the customer service from  Floor Decor  since Benito's crew picked up the medium grade under-layer when Darling paid for the top grade. The store and store personnel refused to refund the difference in price (a few hundred dollars), claiming it was the crew's fault. I might address that issue with them when things calm down a little. Darling paid Benito already, even though the transition pieces are not yet installed. Normally I'd be nervous about ...

 Yes, it crossed my mind...  This particular story is delayed by about a month. I wrote most of it before Mother's Day but never finished it and, obviously, didn't post it until now. The Travel Travails of L's graduation… Let's make sure we have the back story. Darling was scheduled for her final surgery on Friday, May 11. I had to be there for the surgery, but still wanted to be at L's graduation so I did something I don't do often - I planned ahead. I booked a flight on Friday night from Houston to Abilene, and booked a car and hotel room in Abilene. I didn't get to reserve a room in our normal hotel since it was already booked for that night. My return flight was Saturday evening so that I missed about twenty-four hours with Darling and her recovery. Her friends stepped in, so we were covered. "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley" as Robert Burns said in his poem To A Mouse . This is more often heard as ...

Often attributed to Prince Otto von Bismarck is a famous quote that goes something like this "A man who loves sausages and respects the law should not watch either being made." He probably didn't originate the saying, but he might have said it. Reading through some of his other quotes, which are confirmed, it does sound like something he might have remarked. Our new house is like that. The one-story is a nice enough house. Significantly smaller than where we live now, we will need to get rid of much of what we currently have. There is still some debate whether we keep the pool table and squeeze it into the new dining room as a somewhat acceptable table substitute or whether we let it go. I'm for keeping it. Darling waffles on the subject. Darling is getting tired. She should be. Getting the new house ready is hard work and she's been shouldering the entire burden of doing so. If there's a lesson to pass on for this I think it would be "Don't...

This will be a short post, but it's my blog so I can do what I want. Darling and I got home a little late from dinner last night with our Monday Night Dinner Group. (I don't have a post about them, but I should! It's always a joy for us to be able to join them for dinner at IHOP.) As she sat on the couch, Darling tried the television, and it didn't work. We pressed most of the buttons on the remote and nothing came up on our television screen. Internet was working. We had electricity. The DirecTV box just wasn't displaying a picture on our Samsung. There was a little red light glowing on the DirecTV box. Did we forget to pay the bill or something? Darling called the DirecTV service people. As she listened to the elevator music on the speaker phone, I pondered the problem. Well, I thought, it is sort of a computer, and if my computer goes awry I do a reboot. Sometimes that's all it needs. That's the technical response anyway. Just as I unplugged ...

A friend of mine sent me a new joke which is currently going around the Internet. Having discussed some of our concerns about health care here in the US as we age, he found a new plan for me. You're a sick senior citizen and the government says there is no nursing home available for you. So what do you do? Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun and 4 bullets. You are allowed to shoot four Politicians. Of course, this means you will be sent to prison where you will get three meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating, air conditioning and all the health care you need! Need new teeth? No problem. Need glasses? That’s great. Need a new hip, knees, kidney, lungs or heart? They’re all covered. As an added bonus, your kids can come visit you as often as they do now. Who pays for all this? It’s the same government that just told you that you they cannot afford for you to go into a home. Plus, because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay income taxes anymor...