Say What?

It was 19 years ago yesterday that I moved into our home. That sentence sounds a little odd in that the 'I' is not a 'we' but it refers to a time when I was still back in my former life with my former wife. Tammy and Rachel wouldn't come and bless my presence for another 7 years. (There's a whole other life of mine that I've written very little about or for that matter, discussed much and I'm guessing it will probably remain that way.) Our home has seen many transitions over the years with Tammy being the inspiration behind the majority of them. We've still got two large projects waiting in the wings and they'll remain on hold until Rachel's education is paid for. Mom stopped by Thursday morning to check out our gardens . I had her take my arm and walked her to the backyard much more slowly than she would've made that walk just one year ago. It's been a difficult year for her but she's a determined woman and not one to sit ba...

I was disappointed to see all the press given to the supposed prophet and his ramblings about an impending rapture. Sadly, many will see him as somebody who speaks for Christians everywhere. He doesn't speak for me or any other Christian I know. Hopefully, his legacy will be for the goofball he is and not as some seer acting on direct communications from God or a special ability at divining scripture. My niece Melody's post to her Facebook said for me what I believe: "This "rapture" thing makes me sad:1. Because of the frenzy, you can tell that people are searching for something, and it makes me sad when people don't take the Bible seriously. 2. Tons of money was given to this organization that claimed a lie as the truth. That money could be better spent helping those in need, which is what Jesus made clear to do, until the day He does return." I did have to laugh at something somebody posted to our union's message board, wondering if the FAA sho...

I've been a Mac user since last summer. I have no regrets about making the decision to leave my Toshiba laptop and its frustrating slowness behind. However, I have a few PC based programs that I continue to run on my Mac through the use of VMware Fusion . Macs have a program called Bootcamp that allows you to run PC based programs by dedicating a portion of your hard-drive for that purpose but the only downside is that the Mac and PC platforms can't be run simultaneously. VMware Fusion fixes all that. One such program that can't be used on my MacBook Pro without VMware is a lava lamp that I like to have on my desktop. It's soothing as a lava lamp should be but best of all, it's very realistic. Here's a link for those of you with PC platform capabilities. Check out this screen-capture . When you get it installed, right-click and go to configure to adjust the size and color. I use 3x and random. Rachel is back home from college for the summer. Tammy and I too...

Since my blog is by-and-large a time capsule (that never gets buried) for me to look back on, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the death/killing of Osama bin Laden last Sunday. Tammy said that she doesn't take any satisfaction or glee in his death but that she does find happiness in knowing that he will never do terror again. That's well said. Me? I admit to welcoming the news with an inappropriate Facebook status update which I later removed and replaced with one exclaiming my happiness that sleeping air traffic controllers were no longer going to be front-page news, at least for a while. We lost a dear member of our small-group last Thursday afternoon when Marilyn finally lost her battle with cancer. It's difficult to come to terms with this as she was just at our home maybe a month ago and was always such an active member of our group. She seemed to be holding steady in her fight and for a while appeared to be making progress toward recovery but the last time ...

I don't get it—was the Royal Wedding really that big of a deal? If it was, the importance of it was lost on me, but I can't speak for Tammy. She, like (I would guess) the vast majority of females on the planet, was captivated by it. Even Rachel had a Royal Wedding all-night party at her apartment to watch both the build-up and the ceremony. I suppose I have no room to talk. I watch bicycle racing. We were in the glassblowing studio both Thursday and Friday this week. I'd like to say that we continued to raise the bar on our abilities but we didn't, at least not that I could tell. We both found ourselves struggling more than anything but through our trials, we're finding more and more determination to learn this art. We've all got our talents and I hope that someday I can say that glassblowing is one of mine. Someday. But for now, I find it every bit as challenging as learning air traffic control—maybe even more so. I was mentioning to Tammy last week how I...

We had our final small group meeting for church last Thursday night. We've been getting together since last fall and going through the book of Acts as have been the other small groups at church. I hadn't realized we'd been meeting for that long. We took a group photo but we're two people shy as Marilyn and Phil couldn't be with us. It's been one of the better small groups we've been involved with. Tammy led our group and did a nice job developing discussion questions each week along with occasional input from Tom and me. We'll throw our hat in the ring again next year when they put out the call to organize. It's a nice way to make some more personal connections in a church so large. Tammy had what I would consider a breakthrough day glassblowing this week. She'd been discouraged because she felt she was stagnating and not keeping up with whatever small successes I was having. I disagreed with her but it was how she felt. Steve worked with us ...

Tammy continues her daily watch of the Decorah Eagles . She was concerned for them this past weekend when some nasty weather rolled in. She was continually checking to see how they were managing. I have to laugh. I can't think of anything online that has captivated her more than these little guys have. Well, possibly me when we first met online 12 years ago. (insert smiley face here) Yes, winter made another appearance this past weekend with a few inches of snow along with some cold, blustery winds. I had to wonder what the pups were thinking when I let them out Saturday morning. I know what I was thinking. I'm sick of this! But, thankfully this time of year any snow we get is usually very short-lived as was this. Tammy and I were on a walk this morning under a bright blue sky with the snow all but gone. Hosanna is gearing up for between 15,000-18,000 guests this coming Easter weekend. It places a huge demand on the church as well as the main roads which lead there. I we...