Stories and other stuff

I've done a lot of things in my life.  I've been blessed to have opportunities that most only dream about.  For a very long time, I had opportunities to travel to places with my job that some people scrimp and save for years to be able to go.  For some, these places, like France, Italy, and the Greek isle of Crete will remain as dreams and pictures in books and on postcards.  I got to live in these places, albeit for a very short time, and got paid to do that.  Through those experiences I've built quite the resume'. Under what heading on my resume' does this title fit, though?:  Lion chaser OK, I just finished (finally) a book called "In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day". Took me six months to read the first six chapters and about three hours to read the last of the book.  At the end, I discovered that I'd been for the last 16 months, I'd been doing what the guy that wrote the book advocated, in a round-about way.  I'd been chasing a lion. ...

Ever had one of those really weird dreams that just seem to be full of all kinds of symbolisms and you're kind of stuck trying to figure out what it means?  Let me share this with you. What do two cars, three quarters, chasing lions,  a red light, a Bible verse, and "Running to Win" have in common? I can explain some of it. First off, chasing lions is about a book I've been trying to finish now for a while.  I like the book, but I've come to understand that some days I just get overwhelmed with things and forget what I'm doing.  The nice thing was that I picked up the book again yesterday and read something I really needed to read that would help me make sense of the rest of this. The two cars are just two cars that could have been from anywhere.  They weren't of course.  One was from Delaware.  The other from Colorado.  The cars themselves have no significance.  Let's face it though, it's not everyday you see a car in Utah from Delawar...

Today's blog is about the real war on Christmas.  It's not that little made-up one that right-wing talking heads like to grouse about.  It's a very small part of a real war on Christmas that continues day after day.  It doesn't stop when the tree comes down.  And, sadly, it's a lot more than just telling someone with a bit of defiance, "Merry Christmas". This happened to me at a store.  A lady defiantly told the customers in her line "merry Christmas".  I figured it must've been her last day, because the way she said it it wasn't sincere; it was defiance of the MAN!   The war on Christmas started over 2,000 years ago with the murder of innocent children.  The plan was to catch Jesus in the slaughter, but to be sure, Herod decided to kill all of the male children in the region where Jesus was born who were under the age of two years.   I'd say that made the war on Christmas very tangible.  Fast forward about three decades, and you...

I trust everyone had a nice Christmas.  We did here at Lark Circle.  It wasn't the affair it's been in years past but we had an unusual guest join us for dinner.  My mom's uncle, who passed away before she was born in 1943, had a daughter my mother didn't know.  She's LDS and serving a mission in Salt Lake City for a while and looked my mother up.  We were very blessed to meet this lady yesterday and to share Christmas dinner with her. The after-Christmas focus I think becomes over the course of the next few days, about putting things away until next year.  I got thinking about that earlier tonight.  June asked to leave the decorations up until New Year's Day and I agreed.  The tree is hanging in there, so a few more days won't kill us.  Then, the Santa figurines will go into boxes and be hidden until next year.  So will the nativity set.  It's a Christmas decoration to be sure, but among the most treasured of the ones I have. T...

Merry Christmas, everyone!  I hope you're enjoying a beautiful, peaceful Christmas day and hope you'll make time in the day to remember why we celebrate and remember to thank God for sending us His son, and thank Jesus for paying the ultimate price so our sins might be forgiven before our Heavenly Father. We're having a simple Christmas here at Lark Circle.  June and I exchanged gifts this morning and later on, we're having my family and a member of my family I've never met before to Christmas dinner.  We're all born-again Christians and my mother's cousin is LDS and here in Utah serving a mission for her church.  It ought to be an interesting afternoon.  I'm looking forward to sharing the meal we're preparing.  Rib roast has become our Christmas tradition and it's in the oven now.  It smells really good. I was hoping to see some of my friends at church.  Then again, I'm always hoping that.  I am happy to say that there was quite a large ...

Today's blog post is mostly for my friends that live in the Ogden area. I'd like to invite you to Christmas Eve candlelight service at Ogden FBC/NBCC on Saturday evening at 7:00 p.m. If you're looking for a place to celebrate the reason for the season this year, we'd be pleased to have you join us for this special service. The church is on the corner of 25th & Jefferson.  I hope you can join us.

I heard the dogs barking but figured they were just playing.  Shortly thereafter, I walked outside to get something out of the truck.  That's when I saw what the dogs were barking at. At the bottom of my neighbor's driveway, there was a herd of mule deer.  Not just one or two, but an entire herd.  I watched them as they formed up and started walking down the other end of the circle. The largest one went first, followed closely in single file by the second.  Then there were three sets of two, in perfect formation, side by side, looking like they were lined up to pull the sleigh.  They were just does, and I didn't see Rudolph anywhere. I kind of stood there for a few minutes, I think with my mouth hanging open.  I just couldn't believe how they lined themselves up and in my mind's eye, I could see Santa, his reindeer, and the sleigh.  But it's only December 19.  I just stood there and watched them walk down the middle of the street and ar...

Each Sunday during the worship service at Ogden FBC/NBCC we take time to share our joys and concerns with the congregations and pray for each other.  It's an important part of the worship service and I was very blessed to be asked to lead the congregation in that prayer yesterday.  Before I did, I shared with the congregation my personal feeling that it's an important thing we do for each other in this time and read from the book of James starting at verse 5:13. In that verse, James instructs us about prayer and the importance of not only confessing our sins to each other but to pray for each other as well.  I thought it an appropriate verse of scripture to share with the congregation yesterday and Im so glad I did because... (at this point, I need to pause to tell another story) I was supposed to meet someone in Salt Lake yesterday but the person was ill and asked me if we could meet today.  I agreed.  That put me someplace today that I hadn't planned on ...

We had our holiday dinner at church this afternoon.  This year, as we did last year, June and I volunteered to sponsor and decorate a table.  We have lots of stuff to do this, so yesterday she and I went down and put the table together.  This dinner is a tradition with the church and I see lots of families share this meal together.  As it was just June and I, we share our table with whoever sits down.  I like that we're able to participate in this. The table was decorated simply, with a tablecloth and Christmas china.  It looked very festive.  All in all, there were nine of us at the table; June and I, three children and their father, another gentleman who was a relative of the small family (all of these folks were part of a larger family that filled the adjacent table) and two other gentlemen who were visitors to our church.  The man with the children was at the other end of the table from me, so I didn't have an opportunity to speak to him unt...

There are seven days left to shop for Christmas.  I've completed about half of this task.  The other half is still to go.  I'm not worried though because my kids are older, I've given just about every $40 gift you can give, and Smith's is giving double bonus points on gift cards.   Cash works too. I waited to see if Macey's would let me down and not put rib roasts on sale.  They didn't and there is a large roast in the freezer.  We will have Christmas dinner!  Wanna come?  There's enough... trust me.  We only have six crackers left though.  They're the British crackers that you pull apart and find a toy, a silly joke, and a paper crown.  They pop when you pull them like the poppers kids throw at each other. Maybe I should have been specific when I asked the butcher to cut the roast for me.  I told him I'd like about a five rib roast.  Usually that's about 7-9 pounds.  Nope.  Not this time.  The thing wei...

I don't look at things the way I used to.  It's a gift from God that I'm so very grateful for.  I had an opportunity this morning to reflect on the man I used to be and how I dealt with being confronted with my past.  I think something I saw on television last night helped me learn a valuable lesson this afternoon. A commentator was interviewing a pastor and asking questions about one of the candidates.  He made the point that we do have pasts we overcome, but saying it isn't enough.  His point was that if the man in question had changed a pattern of past behavior, he should start small and re-earn the trust of people.  I can apply that to my own life today in a very big way.  I didn't go looking for a confrontation today but found one anyway.  At the end of it, I had an opportunity to say something positive and missed it.  Shame on me. The who or what was said are unimportant.  Before I edited this thing, I put down  the last t...

I found out this morning that the doggy alarm clock does not have a snooze button.  I don't think I was anywhere close to done sleeping this morning, but when I woke up and looked out the window, it was snowing. Snow was not in the forecast.  In fact, we looked at the weather at work last night and it was supposed to be clear and smoggy for the next several days.  Today, though, the ground is covered with a dusting of snow and it's a welcome December surprise. The weather today was just a physical reminder of this verse in Ecclesiastes 10:14 (NLT) which reads: Foolish people claim to know all about the future and tell everyone the details!  But who can know what is going to happen? I'm not saying weather forecasters are foolish.  They're right more than wrong, but it is snowing outside today and it wasn't supposed to.  Today, the metaphor kind of fits. I read this verse this morning but that wasn't the one that was my little message today.  M...

The bedtime ritual at my house continues to this day, even though the Mrs. has been gone for almost two years.  If Katie was bugging me, Wendi would clap her hands and Katie would dive under the bed at bedtime.  You have to understand that our bed was kind of like an ark.  The two pussycats had their spots, I had mine, and Wendi just kind of had to fend for herself because she would not disturb the boys.  The dog, though was another matter. To this day, most nights Katie at bedtime will dive under the bed even though it's just me.  OK, me and her.  OK, me and her and Bucket. My dogs have pet names.  Get the pun?  "Pet" names?  Kaite is known around here as Kaite, or the "did" (short for Katie Did).  Dumb dumb also works as Katie is not the brightest K9 that ever walked the planet.  She's very loving, though. Bucket also has his pet names.  Like "Slurp".  Bucket, the wondermutt, is very affectionate and also very jeal...

One of the things I like best about the blog is it gives me an opportunity to keep sort of an on-line journal of the things that have happened in my life.  If I get to the point where I forget something, or need to be reminded of something else, a post has an unusual way of coming back to me.  Mostly that way is someone will go back in the archives and read something.  Equally important are the posts that re written and never published.  Right now, there are quite a few and I'm grateful for two things:  One that I wrote them because they are relevant to the things going on in my life and two; that I never published them. I heard a very interesting program on the radio today called "Insight For Living".  In his comments today, Pastor Swindall used the quote from AW Tozer I shared with the congregation in October.  He added another one, unsure whether I have it right or who to attribute it to, but it went something like this:  "When God does somet...

Well, I'm still alive but it wasn't because someone didn't try to change that for me today.  Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but I thought either the person that cut in front of me or me, or both of us were going to get dead today. Yesterday a guy in one of those square bed work trucks decided he had to be in both lanes at once and almost wiped me out.  I'm not alone, and thankfully I'm unharmed. But the people in the accident I saw on the way home tonight are not.  It was bad.  Nobody was killed, fortunately (making that assumption on the number of police cars on the scene), but some folks had to be badly injured in the wreck.  It's getting dangerous out there. I know it's the holidays and we're busy and stressed and tired and all, but that doesn't excuse this little move I saw happen in front of my on 41st. Street and Harrison today.  The left tun light had just changed and through traffic also had a green light going north.  i saw a man in...

I do so love Christmas.  I ventured out today looking for the perfect budget Christmas tree.  I have a favorite place to buy trees but that wasn't in the budget this year.  What was, though was a lovely tree that meets my requirements.  It has to be bushy and taller than I am.  I'm 6'4".  I found a really nice tree for under $30. Christmas trees have good memories for me.  This Christmas though, there's a sad one.  June asked if we could enjoy a real tree this year.  Sadly, because of Simba's passing (Rip Simba & Snot), I could have a real tree this year.  I'm pleased with the tree; sad about Ba.  I guess it's just a bittersweet thing this year. I have the coolest tree stand ever invented.  You put the trunk into a sleeve, the sleeve into the base, step on a foot pedal and move the tree until it's straight.  This thing could have prevented so many holiday fights over the years!  The tree is in the middle of th...

Long about midnight, the lights came back on.  It was kind of weird to see the lights across the streets back on Thursday night but ours still out.  They were out for two days.  Needless to say, we have some things to replace in the fridge, but that's OK.  It's just milk and stuff.  The leftovers were finished anyway. We kept the house warm with the fireplace.  Surprisingly, it stayed at right about 50 degrees without the heat.  Not warm by any means, but not tooth rattling cold either.  We'd just stoked up the fire and I'd been in bed maybe 20 minutes and bang, there was light.  More importantly, there was heat. I gotta take my hat off to Miss June.  She figured out something so she could heat up some food over a grate in the fireplace.  I told her she could have used my dutch oven, that's what it's for.  But I'm proud of her.  She always keeps things stocked up around here and we were ready for a couple of days witho...