So I'm sitting at the remote ordering station at a McDonald's drive through. Wind chill below "0" with an air temperature of around 9 degrees Fahrenheit and winds gusting over 30 mph. After a long pause I finally said, "hello?". No response. Eventually driving on around the corner to the window I was met by a nice, unapologetic lady, who asked me what I wanted as if this is how things are always done here. "A number 6 with ketchup only and a large sweet tea please". Having observed that a large tea was on sale for a dollar I was looking forward to getting a large drink while paying the usual price for my meal. "That will be $5.09, please". "I thought the tea was on sale", I replied. "Not when you get one in conjunction with a meal", said she. "Oh". "Then I need a double hamburger, just the sandwich, and a large tea". "Ok, that will be $3.42". Geepers, either something is on sale or it isn't. Kinda ticked me off. My wife, a retired McDonald's employee, knew the end of my story before I got there. She remembers people pouring out their coffee right there in the drive through lane because their meal came with coffee, even though they didn't want it. Just seems like there would be some way to do things more efficiently. Doesn't McDonald's want to save money? It's not like the meals are pre-packaged, I mean, they have to pick up the cup and put coffee in it. A cup they bought and coffee they bought and brewed. If it's an inventory thing then they can hire the programmer the Turnpike uses to make it all happen seamlessly and accurately. I know it could be done. Anyways, lets move on to more important things. We start the year off with a new commercial for the Prostate Treatment Center. Gotta love 'em. They always list all the problems related to an enlarged prostate and then offer a solution by way of their center. Someone wasn't paying attention when this commercial was written. I kid you not, one of the questions the "matter of fact" announcer asks is, and I quote, "do you wake up to urinate?". I said, out loud, "my gosh, I hope so". The alternative is called wetting the bed which is a phase I left in my childhood. Look, I know all about this progression of the enlarging of the prostate. It is a reality in my life. But, not waking up to urinate, is not one of the symptoms I don't believe. The two of you would have had a great picture to look at on this blog if I hadn't taken off for work this morning without my camera. I forgot my tea too. Knowing that my journey's would take me through the freshly whited Flint Hills I was going to have my camera ready for a few nice shots. It was a wonderful drive with the wind pushing clouds of snow over the naked hills and valleys. Even with the clouds breaking later in the day it looked blizzard like in some places. Sorry, I'll try to remember it next time. This has been a rambling blog. Oh, hang on, I thought of something marginally humorous today, let me go get my day-timer and see if I can find where I wrote it down. I'll be right back. I'm back but it wasn't worthy of publication. While this may seem curious given some of what I have deemed worthy I believe you will thank me later. As I close, a quick thought, that is quite worthy of mention. My wife showed me a note she had received from a lady in Texas who has recently lost a son in Afghanistan. The note was full of encouraging words to my wife and me about faith and family. These words are a special gift from a grieving mother. No mention of her sorrow, just encouragement to us. Thank you Lord for Your never ending ways of surprising us with Your love. Please pray for our troops and their families.
It was snowing harder now. Coming down very heavy and with those big wet flakes. I love the snow. Ever since the big storm that hit Wichita during my Freshman or Sophomore year of high school I've been a big fan of those lovely crystalline flakes that greet us from the grey winter clouds. We were friends before but that storm cemented our relationship for life. We were out of school for a whole week. A week full of snow forts and sledding. Pushing stuck cars and snowball fights. Gloves and hats occupying the heat vents around the kitchen and living room while we ate our sandwiches and planned our next adventure. What a week. It all started on Sunday morning. It was beginning to snow in earnest as we headed to church. By the time we came out of the service the snow was several inches deep. The anticipation of missing some school was already part of my thought process and the excitement continued to build as the day wore on. By night we were out tromping around in over a foot of snow and it was still falling. My recollection is we ended up with 21" total. Monday morning began our dream week with several consecutive fun filled days in a row. That memory will accompany me the rest of my days, Lord willin', and it is a significant part of my appreciation for snow. Now back to the previous tale. The snow was coming down heavier now and I just thought it could be a sign that I should go ahead a make the call. My room mate at Southwest Baptist College had talked me into going on a double date with he and 2 ladies from the women's dorm. He really wanted to go out with this one girl but she refused to go out with just him on a first date. She required it to be a double date. My room mate can be very convincing and he managed to talk someone who had never been on a date before to go out on this double date. That someone happened to be me. I wasn't exactly a ladies man. I had called a girl up in high school to see if she wanted to go out and get a Coke or something. The answer wasn't no, it was, I can't tonight. Nevertheless, a "no" would have been no less devastating and I tried to avoid her for the next several days because I felt embarrassed. That had been the extent of my social life at least as it pertained to the opposite sex. So after several "no way's" he finally got me to say yes. Now I was trying to get up the nerve to ask this same lady out to a concert of the St.Louis symphony. It turned out she was ok, for a girl, and I wanted to pursue a more substantial relationship with her. The snow was what pushed me over the edge. The snow might have been a sign, I thought, and if not, it still seemed like something I should do. So I met her outside her dorm and asked if I could escort her to the concert that night. She said "sure", or something like that, and the rest is history. We eventually got married and my room mate and her room mate never really hit it off. So now there is another reason to like snow. It's like they say, "just follow your snows".
A very general topic indeed and one that will take a specific look at people I consider friends and what they choose to do with their time. I guess I'm responding to yet another comment about how horrible the United States is and how other countries are friendlier and "better" than our "Christian" country. I suppose my first thought is to challenge the notion of our country being Christian. While most name Christianity as their faith of choice I'm not sure we are a Christian country. I'm not even sure a country can be Christian. I think people can be Christians. Countries on the other hand, are ordered, either casually or very formally, by the principles of government they choose. Force is sometimes used, as in a coup; a constitution or other founding document can give the order and state principles to be followed. Those principles are often based on some kind of foundational truth or good that is supposed to benefit those who are citizens thereof. Our founders cited, on several occasions, a divine influence which they believed gave each person an intrinsic right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is a foundational truth upon which our country started and one which has a universal application. While this principle is a comfortable fit with what I understand about Christianity, it does not make our country Christian. It simply establishes a focal point for the basis of a government which was hoped to always protect the basic worth of each individual. Now if one is to read the papers, magazines, watch some TV news, etc, one will see that there are many events taking place in our country that are decidedly unChristian. Nevertheless, many of these activities are protected by a system which has placed on each individual the right to choose their behaviours. If we were a Christian nation in the way that some nations are Muslim nations, then divorce would be rare, sex outside of marriage would be stigmatized, not idealized and prayer would still be welcomed in schools. Nor would we have politicians taking more and more of our freedoms from us. This is not a Christian country. It is, however, a country with many Christians living in it. These Christians are not on the nightly news. They are not trumpeting their works on the street corners or finding ways to move to the top of the Google search list with their tales of goodness. They are, in fact, going about their faith in relatively quiet ways. Much of the 6th chapter of Matt. talks about this type of Christian. The government takes 50% of their income and yet they still give a tithe and offering to the church to help people around the world. They are busy with their jobs and families, yet find time and resources to go to India, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Mississippi and anywhere else someone needs medical attention, a well dug or food and water. While they go as ambassadors of Jesus love, offering help to the least of these, they go, in a less obvious though very significant way, as representatives of a free people. A nation that understands each person's worth and intrinsic rights. A nation that offers people, regardless of religion, a place to freely pursue their lives. After all, without a nation that has flourished and grown the way the United States has, we would be left to feel sorry for people around the world. Without an economic engine that has produced the richest nation the world has ever seen we would not be able to offer billions of dollars to a nation fighting AIDS. We would not be able to win, and help countries rebuild, after a war against an exterminator of Jews. We would not be able to move other countries toward a more civil society where people of all ideologies and faiths can work toward very lofty goals with the hope of reaching them some day. From my perspective, though a limited one it is, I see this country as a great country. We are a collection of free individuals living our lives, to a large degree, how we want. And many of my friends want to help others. My fear, moving forward, is that the political class will continue incrementally wrestling away our freedoms until we are a country of monolithic mediocrity unable to mobilize our individual desire to help others because we no longer have the ambition or freedom to do so.
You know how something relatively small can signal, in a very definite way, something relatively big? For me, when I was playing soccer, it was always an early spring soccer game that told my heart what my head already knew. IT IS SPRING! The emerging greenness, the slight chill in the air, the feeling of freedom as you ran, unencumbered, up and down the pitch. A real celebration that involved all of the senses. That's when spring officially started for me. Well, the new year came at midnight on December 31st, but today, for me, is the official start of a new year. Since coming to work for the Kansas Turnpike Authority I have come to depend on the day-timer I carry with me everywhere. It contains reminders of things I need to do, of things I did, of things I did wrong so that I may avoid those mistakes in the future. It always has a handful of orphan phone numbers, part numbers, song lists for gigs or nursing home visits and short, allegedly humorous lines that are waiting for a joke to be constructed around them. After distilling the mess into bits of information deemed worthy of passing on to my new day-timer, the old one is stuffed in the back of the drawer with the others. To help you understand on a deeper level that this is indeed a new year, I would like to share with you, some of these pennings. Please note that you are viewing notes that were collected throughout the year and therefore are not necessarily related one to the other. The day-timer please: (by the way, these are most of the ones that made the cut)1) Mobil radio transmissions may interfere with a K-tag read.2) Alarm reset to Bosch is handled through the strike output.3) It's fair to say, you have a fare to pay.4) 78144642 - 23.1mm rollers.5) Kurt - 555-1212 (this number was changed to protect the innocent. 6) A medical advisory board, (I think this story came from England), will only OK you for a drug to save the sight in an eye after you have lost sight in the first eye.7) Gibson - DG2222 / Goya G - 10. (these are guitars that I was hoping to help a cousin sell)8) Energy savings idea. Disable all bathroom exhaust fans.9) Hope passed away. (this is a sad note referring to a friends baby named Hope.At Hope's funeral we were all reminded that Hope, in Jesus, will never pass away but continues even beyond our understanding)10) It wasn't a flathead when I caught it. (a punch-line waiting for a joke)11) The small mouth bass is the male, the large mouth is the female. (see above)12) Bosch - trouble on all devices usually means a battery problem.13) This came to me while listening to one of those wonderful commercials about your prostate."Are you having trouble with Urine flow?" my response is "no, I'm having trouble with my outflow".14) 135 kids die every year with injury's sustained while riding a bicycle.15) 22 million affected by H1N1, 4,000 dead. This is 1/10 of the normal amount for a year.16) Fruit of the Loom is coming out with a new, inexpensive brief called, can liners.17) 40 to 50 percent of health outcome has to do with lifestyle choices. 15 percent has to do with availability of healthcare.18) This is the last day of the rest of your work week. (delivered to a cow-orker on Friday)19) In a year, one tree can produce enough oxygen to support a family of 4 for that year.20) Amtrack receives 30 dollars in subsidies for each passenger.21) Goofball sized hail.22) Someone embezzled 87,000 to buy lottery tickets.23) "I don't think anything can go wrong now.(thoughtlessly uttered by a cow-orker after numerous problems with the contractor installing siding and windows on his house)24) Alt-F2 while booting shows what config.sys is loading.25) Social Security has become an enabler for dysfunctional families.26) Ethernet data pairs: org/org-wht and grn/grn-wht.Alrighty then, Happy New Year!
I'm fully aware that this is my second entry for the day. You see, time got away from me last night and after a lengthy stay in front of the TV the time had slipped past mid-night. So one entry this morning and one tonight and I've sort of kept my one-a-day string going. (work with me here) While my wife, daughter and granddaughter were in Texas my son and I were the only two people occupying the house. Kind of nice actually. The volume can be turned up a bit on the stereo or TV without disturbing anyone. No quick scurries down the hall with a towel precariously held around my waist trying to make it to the bathroom without offending anyone. One would think that, in the absence of a need to go to work, that one might sleep in as well. Turns out, one would be wrong about that if he lived here. Apparently the newest member of the K-9 wing of our family knows what an alarm is for. As soon as my watch alarm went off he began making of himself a nuisance. He is quite good at this and succeeded in getting me out of my nice warm bed to care for he and his friends. After feeding all three dogs and taking them outside for their morning duties I retired, once again, to the bed. It is very cold right now here in Wichita, Kansas, and is, apparently going to be getting even colder. We're looking at several nights of single digit lows and maybe one or two minus 0 lows and highs around 20 with one day's high being forecast at 9 above. That ought to kill off several million of those pesky insects that can't wait to greet us in the spring. I wonder if cold weather kills an endangered insect if the environmentalists would file suit against Mother Nature. After all, that insect may have held the secret to curing a disease that we haven't even discovered yet. Ah, but I digress. So with the cold temps and a central air unit that is barely sufficient for the square footage of our home, there are areas of our home that are a bit on the cool side. One being our bedroom. This isn't a big problem since we mainly just sleep in there, and occasionally watch a little TV. Actually, it's a fairly big TV that we don't watch very much. Anyway, as good fortune would have it, we have three dogs. Thus, when faced with a 3 dog night we have 3 dogs to accommodate the situation. With my body heat combined with theirs I'm comfortably warm. However, that extra heat comes with a price. Once set, the two pugs don't really like moving. They just lay there like sacks of sugar. You have to use a good bit of muscle to manipulate them to a more suitable position. Given my habit of rolling from one side to the other these bags of sugar become quite the annoyance. They are sort of like rolly polly's. Once the maneuver is under way they just roll into a ball until I'm settled again at which time they evaluate whether it's worth the effort to relocate. Fortunately, I still have good strength in my legs. The Golden can be a problem too but with my wife absent he just stayed on her side of the bed. The pugs seem to like being in close proximity to me thus presenting more of a strategic problem than the Golden. I hope this was instructive and will help you make a more informed decision when shopping for K-9 companions.
Thanks to my sister-in-law for this great picture from her trip to Alaska.We do indeed live in a culture of "looking out for #1" as it were. One of the challenges of my blogging is trying not to inundate my postings with the I's. Even though the blog is about my thoughts and ideas and experiences there is a way of communicating without constantly using that personal pronoun. It is equally as hard to live a life that is not focused on me. I love the line,"enough about me, what do you think about me?". That line seems uncomfortably instructive about our culture and my life in particular. I try to filter some of the more obviously narcissistic flurries of thought that enter my brain but alas they eventually surface after a short fight. In my defence there are a lot of influences that would suggest focusing on one's self is of utmost importance. Ever heard of Dog and Cat Theology? It's a several week study of the Christian faith and what would seem to be the overriding theme of God's work among us. While there is a personal component to it all the suggestion, a well supported one at that, is that the ultimate goal of God's work is to bring glory to Himself. Most of my head scratching during this study was due to my trying to grasp this relatively simple truth. God's focus in bringing salvation to us wasn't us, though thankfully salvation is indeed offered to us. But His desire, His intent, is to bring glory to Himself. This was received as an affront to my ego and is yet being examined for possible loopholes. I get the God wanting glory thing, but His glory should be derived from what He did for me. And while that statement is not entirely a false one the premise puts more emphasis on me then God's work on the cross. God is glorious due to His saving me. Actually, God's glory is derived from His nature. He is wonderful, powerful, compassionate, forgiving, etc., etc. My salvation flows from and points to His nature. His glory and worth does not flow from my accepting of His goodness. I reckon at this point I've pretty well lost anyone who has happened on this blog and I apologize for that. The string is getting a little thin for me as well but it was, and still is, a matter of consideration for my heart to try and understand the finer points of my faith. It is important enough, however, to keep trying. I hope God's glory has, or will, find it's way into your life on a personal level.
Ok, here's the deal. Don't ask my wife if she knows about the electronic picture frame I bought today. And don't tell her that I bought an electronic picture frame today. If my instructions are not clear let me know and I will attempt to articulate them in a more precise manner. I went to the store to buy a few things this morning. Double and triple A batteries, toilet paper some chips, etc. Well, while there I just did a little window shopping. I've been eyeing these electronic picture frames for a few years now. I never think to ask for one as a Christmas gift. Plus, they are a little pricey to expect someone to purchase one as a gift. Anyway, I decided it was time to spring for one. An 8 incher to be exact. I really like it. My son noticed it when he came in and commented that he liked it too. So anyway, I think my wife will like it as well and if she doesn't then that's just too bad. Too bad for me that is, cause I'll be taking it back. I really think she'll be ok with it but I need to be the one to break the news so I refer you to the opening sentences of my blog today. As far as New Years days go this one has been pretty low key. My daughter headed to a short work day early then headed to Texas to meet up with my wife at her fathers house. My son worked today so I was home much of the day by myself. Don't worry, I wasn't scared. I've done this on several occasions though none in my recent life. Watched a little tv, took a nap, ate some taco soup for lunch and sausage and eggs for supper. A quiet day all in all. A good day to contemplate my daughter's statement that she was glad I was her dad. I never know how to respond to something like that. The shortcomings I have exhibited in my attempt at fathering seem so blatantly obvious to me and yet with God filling in all the potholes in my road to being a father my daughter is grateful for me. I'm so glad my daughter has turned her life around and is now looking to her Saviour for strength and guidance day to day. I guess the secret to being a good father is having a good Heavenly Father. Lord, I'm thankful you are my Heavenly Daddy.
