Stories and other stuff

I said something the other day that wasn't right.  I didn't lie but the reasons bad things kind of started to happen again had absolutely nothing to do with speaking to my dear friend Tami Jo.  Those things seemed to happen in the past to keep us apart but what happened Monday had nothing to do with her.  I just didn't know it at the time. They happened to let me know about stewardship.  I wanted to take a class on stewardship and I am.  Just not the class I wanted.  My instructor has far far better lessons than any man could give and that's what started on Monday. The truck issue is attributable to a lack of stewardship.  I checked the oil the other day but didn't check the other fluids.  That's on me.  My truck is the only vehicle I have and I need to pay closer attention to her needs.  Chevron is a girl because I say so.  She's also a tank and dependable.  I need to keep her that way. The getting torn up by the pussyca...

I'm on this kick lately to fix stuff.  I'm still upset about my truck being low on anti-freeze and having to leave work just a bit early because I want to start building my leave balances back up.  I've tried to divest myself of the things in my life that were causing me problems.  I kind of tongue in cheek blamed those things on the "Tami Jo" curse which of course doesn't exist. There were times I think that God did use circumstances to keep us apart but the things that happened to me on Monday evening had nothing to do with that. It's just mischief and a lack of attention to detail on my part.   I check the oil in the truck and it would have been so simple to just do the same to the coolant.  It has a plastic bottle and I could have lifted the cap to check the level instead of glancing at it.  From the bottle it looked like the coolant level was up but there are some deposits in the cooling system that will require it to be flushed out.  For ...

I'm not looking for something for nothing.  However, if you'd like to send the following items over I would appreciate it. I could use a gallon of Benjamin Moore Aura paint in a medium gray tint.  Don't have the money for Aura?  Neither do I.  Super Spec will do just fine.  Same shade, please. If you have a clothes dryer you're not using, I could use it.  If you have two clothes dryers you're not using, I'm pretty sure my roomie downstairs would love to have it.  If you'd feel really good about buying me the shiny new red front-loader washer and dryer, by all means, who am I to deny you? I could use a car that doesn't get ten miles to the gallon.  I love my truck, but I'd like to park it more than I drive it.  My roomie again could also use a newer car.  If you have a couple laying around, feel free to drop them off here. Another handy thing to have would be bathroom vanities.  I'm in the market for two of these.  I wil...

I don't know why these things happen except to say that I talked to my friend Tami Jo today.  And the onslaught of things that generally happen when I do that started at lunchtime.  It's been merciless. I was in the truck listening to a Bible study program about being in God's will when the heater started blowing cold air.  I pulled out the headlight knob and checked the temp gauge which was climbing toward hot.  I let it sit until it cooled off and told my boss I didn't want to deal with trying to have to get the thing home at one a.m. in case I didn't make it.  I didn't want to leave early.  My boss had a good idea to run to the shopette and get a gallon of coolant.  They were closed for inventory. I decided to come home.  There is a gallon jug of coolant that may be coolant.  It may also just be water.  It wasn't mine.  It's a leftover from when my old roommate/GF's car got totaled on our first date. I have a story for ever...

I am almost finished painting my bedroom. Almost. I used to have this thing about not finishing things I started.  There are still little bits of projects that need just one more thing to make them done.  It seemed that when I almost finished them, it was late at night and almost done never quite changed into done-done.  You'd probably not notice the imperfections, but I know they're there. Almost in this case will turn into done-done tomorrow and Sunday.  I need to paint closet doors and repaint the trim around them.  I've touched up everything and I'm satisfied that no yellow or purplish-pink (which was supposed to be lilac but didn't quite turn out that way) is showing through the "in the midnight hour" blue.  I painted the ceiling a flat white and the trim and doors will be a bright white.  The trim I added around the window really makes the room look different.  The white really contrasts against the blue and makes the windows look bigg...

I have a couple of praises to God to share with you today.  It's going to be short, but worth mentioning. On Saturday, the oven downstairs didn't work.  It does now, thanks to a reset circuit breaker.  My roomie told me it didn't work.  I cycled the breakers but missed one.  A quick check of the outlet showed that one of the two wires wasn't carrying power.  I was pulling out of the driveway when I thought maybe it would be a good idea to turn off the breaker for the power so I didn't burn the house down, so with the aid of a couple of two-way radios I own, we determined the breaker for the stove was the one I missed. Just for fun, I cycled it and had the roomie check the stove.  It works; that's all it was, and we're back in business.  God is good to me so I didn't have to call a repairman or worse. Bucket got out this morning.  I have absolutely no idea how.  I didn't even know he was gone until I got the phone call.  I know...

My bedroom got purplish pink because someone asked me to paint it.  I picked girly colors.  I didn't paint it that way for me.  I painted it that way for the former when she said she was coming home.  It was yellow.  Now it's blue. With white trim.  Tomorrow I get a fresh gallon of the white I used to paint it the trim before and prime and paint the trim I added around the windows.  The ceiling is white again after two coats of ceiling paint.  The walls are now "In the Midnight Hour" blue; it's close to the cornflower blue Crayola crayon.  With the white trim it looks just like the picture I saw online. Painting it was not cathartic.  I was excited when I painted it last time in the hope that I was gonna have a second chance.  It didn't quite work that way.  Hey, things happen, though, and I just never got around to painting it. It wasn't that I didn't want to .  I just didn't want to. Yeah, I know, but it's the best...

Xander left a comment on my blog yesterday that I didn't see until today.  He believes that he's created in God's image and that God made him to be gay.  That's his right to believe and I don't agree with it.  We'll agree to disagree and my response was just to simply ask him to consider stopping engaging in sinful behavior.  It's up to him to decide what is sinful and whether or not to do that. It's a tough place to be to have to disagree with someone on something like that.  Matters of the heart are tricky.  I heard on a radio program I like to listen to a story about a man telling a pastor that he'd left his wife and was living with another woman and saw himself perfectly in the will of God in the matter. The pastor clearly saw things just a little bit differently. My mind wonders about things like that.  I don't get how you can read the Bible and come up with the conclusion that it says this when most people agree it clearly says somethin...

Today started off as well as it could around here.  Carloada is a good word to describe things happening around me today.  Carloada stuff that isn't happening to me per-se and was just an interested bystander to.  Until about twelve-thirty.  We'll get to that in a minute. I woke up and had breakfast with the guys from church.  I made myself go because that fellowship is important and I don't often make the time for it I should.  When you work six days a week, it's tough to make yourself hang out for a few minutes after church.  Gotta get home and get stuff done, you know.  I need to get OUT of that habit.  I'm missing out on being sociable. I went to the HD and got the rest of what I needed for painting the bedroom.  I have drop cloths paint pan liners, foamy brushes, TSP, rubber gloves, a new sponge, and a bucket so I can wash the walls.  I knew I had to work today, so I just did the shopping.  I came home and removed the ...

Today's blog is about politics.  Yup, yer favorite subject, I know.  And me on my soapbox isn't probably the greatest thing in the world to read.  I hope though, that at the end of this you'll at least look at things through a different lens. Often, those on the right complain that there is too much government.  Too much regulation.  I agree that we shouldn't try to regulate stupidity out of the workplace.  Those kinds of things can be cumbersome and expensive.  On the other hand, though, a lack of regulation on dangerous things can cause problems for all of us. If you've seen the news lately, you know a chemical spill polluted a river in West Virginia.  What I didn't know until last night is that said pollution flowed into another major river and is flowing downstream to Ohio and beyond.  People have been made sick and nobody knows right now what the long term effects will be to the environment.  If people got sick drinking the wate...

One of the things it took me the longest time to get over is the whole concept that God somehow keeps score of the things we do in life; good and bad.  If the balance tips to the good side, we go to heaven.  If not, well, even if it's only temporary, hell awaits.  I think too we want to believe that because God is love that He wouldn't condemn us to hell for eternity.  We want to think about God in the contexts of how we want God to be so we can justify what we do and don't.  I don't think it's unfair to say those things because I used to live this way. I told you I have a friend who claims not to be a believer.  He had a lovely picture of his Christmas tree on his Facebook page, though.  I see the irony in this.  I see the irony in lots of things. Anyway, I came across this little Facebook meme the other day.  Here's how salvation doesn't work: I wanted to , but didn't put the following in the comments section on Facebook: 16 For G...

I can't sleep.  I have a feeling that I will be able to as soon as I finish writing this, but for now I can't sleep. I just got bit by a cat. OK, not just, but about 20 minutes ago.  It'll play into the story. One of our furry house guests decided to be adventurous and go into the garage several hours ago.  I forgot about this.  And when the immigrant came home earlier this evening and opened up the garage door, Mel the pussycat got out. It's Mel's first foray into the great outdoors and it wasn't a positive experience for him.  When I remembered he was gone it was too late.  Mel was out of the garage.  I found him though, howling outside on the back patio.  And scared to death. I mention that sometimes things point back at me.  The pastor talking about the problem of far too few men raising children these days and the large number of males fathering them hit home.  I also knew that part two of the same themed message would be ...

There are days that I just wonder what the Good Lord has in store for me.  Other times I think I try to figure it out too much.  Sometimes I think it would just be better if I let go and let God. This is me letting go. There are so many things I've learned about being a man lately.  I don't mean a male, I mean a man.  I just finished reading a book that took me down a path of looking at the man I was and quite honestly, I didn't measure up.  Not by anyone's standards and I have no excuses.  Although forgiven, I will answer to God someday on behalf of my failures, especially the marriages and being a father. I have some 'splainin to do and I don't think "I didn't know" is gonna get it done.  I never quite understood the responsibilities of a man to his family.  As I drove home, the point was made yet again and it just pierces me to the soul.  I let my kids down.  I let a lot of people down. My kids are grown now and there's no way...

I want to be an apologist.  It's someone who uses facts to make a case for or against something.  It's a lot like being an attorney. The reason I do is because I always did like a good argument.  I just had one with my pussycat.  He did not get the better of me.  I have no scratches and he didn't get whupped.  He was just mad.  I won the argument by just petting him and not letting him do what he wanted to. He'll get over it. Anyway, I was reading some stuff on Facebook and a friend of mine (the same guy with the Christmas tree) posted something about gay marriage and why would the State spend good money to defend the ban.  On this one I had to respectfully disagree with his position.  We had an election and we said no.  I voted in the negative on this one. Here's why: When Wendi and I were living together in sin, we were penalized for that.  Because we were single, there were rights she didn't have.  We paid much mor...

My friend is downsizing some things and in that downsizing she gave me some construction paper, coloring books, and crayons.  I can always find people who need that kind of stuff so I asked the Sunday school teacher if she could use them.  She was tickled to have them.  I was going to give the stack of coloring books to someone else, but decided at the last second just to give them to the Sunday School lady.  If she wanted them, great.  If not, she could just tell me and I could find someone else who maybe wanted them. The story she told me was priceless.  She told me she needed coloring books but hadn't told anyone yet.  She was just going to start buying them here or there.  God used my friend to meet her need before she'd even asked Him about it.  It was pretty cool to be the middle man.  The other really cool thing was that a friend of mine at church got to see that and gave thanks for the little miracles God does and the little bl...

To further my part in distancing myself from 2013, I've decided on bedroom colors and bathroom colors.  A friend of mine helped me cement the choice of colors for the bathroom by posting some photos of his own remodel. For the bathroom, white trim, grey walls, black vanity.   For the bedroom, dark blue walls, bright white trim.   I bought a pint of the blue and put it on various walls in my bedroom so I could see how it looked in its' various configurations.  It's a little dark at night but in the daylight, the color is perfect.  I got the idea from houzz.com  They were kind enough to tell me what color and mfgr. the paint was.  I had to find a dealer here in Ogden and I'm helping a small business in two weeks when I can afford to buy what else I need. I never paid much attention to things but to cheer things up with the white against the blue, I need to frame in the windows with some trim.  I'm also gonna have to paint the alumin...

Dear Xander, Congratulations!  You gave me more to say about your last comment than would fit in the comments section of the blog.  You rate your own post, which doesn't happen often. For those that missed the comment that started this post, here it is: Xander said... You sir are what we call a bible thumping bigot. My apologizes for such language but your comment about Christians "cannot accept us and don't ask us to" just chaps my hide. For your information we ARE Christians!!!! And are greatly welcomed in our church and community with open arms. We are all GODS children (Colossians 1:16) and God loves the entire world (John 3:16) What I really said was this:   That's it in a nutshell. We're not to judge others and I'm not. But I can make a judgment about things by applying Scripture to them. Christians, Xander, cannot accept homosexuality as a lifestyle choice. Please don't ask us to. And maybe Xander should have read this:   And now, to...

If I could change one thing about me it would be that sometimes I tend to get excited like a little kid.  I find myself there again today. There is just something exciting about this new year. Maybe it's that there's something happening this year that hasn't happened for so long. I have hope. It's a different thing than the hope I've had over the last three years.  For the last three years, I've hoped that things would work out.  They didn't and it's like the last week of 2013, as I've mentioned (too many times!) it's as if the books on 2013 needed to be closed.  OK, they're closed. So, I find myself today a hopeful Christian.  I'm available for whatever God has for me, whatever that will be.  I'm unencumbered by stuff.  I'm OK with being alone.  I'm ready for something new and maybe, just maybe the good things I tried to sow in 2013 will be reaped this year. I've been beat down for so long, gang, that I can...

Notice I didn't say resolution.  These are not resolutions to fix this or that.  I'm having a personal revolution.  I have to change some things and this year I will do it. First on my list is that I revolve to being a better employee.  My life fell apart six weeks after I started at Hill field.  I will not take another day off for personal reasons until I have 100 hours of leave on the books. I revolve to take a stewardship class.  I need to spend my time better and my money as well.  At one point in my life I was good at both; after all I bought this house and I bought Giddyup (the Hyundai I was almost killed in).  The kid will finish school in May or June.  Then the heavy chains that have been weighing me down lift up.  I will finally start reaping from the seeds I've been trying to sow since April of 2010. I am OK with being single.  I don't particularly favor it but I'm OK with it.  In God's time.... Those are thin...