Monday Meanderings - 3.26.2018

Indulge me here. Like most old-timers I like to reminisce from time to time.

On a regular basis, our minister has a couple participate in the worship service by reading the scripture for the day. Most often it is a husband and wife that does this; sometimes it's a mother and son. Yesterday it was Barb and I.

After church Barb remarked that there is a new edition of the Jim Bishop book "The Day Christ Died" - some 50 years after its original publication in 1967. She mentioned it because that is the book that started it all.

Fifty years ago we were living in Abilene, starting a family, and attending Highland. This was the Mid McKnight era, and Mid regularly had me "warm up" the audience by reading scripture 5 minutes or so before services began. Then I would step aside and spend the rest of the service in a small recording booth adjacent to the stage area (absent from my wife and young child - a fact that Barb still brings up from time to time).

One Sunday the verse was from Genesis - the section where the Serpent, in response to Eve's assertion that they must not eat from the tree, lest they die, responds, "You will not surely die" - and for some reason, I literally hissed that sentence. And a light came on. I realized that there was a dynamic in scripture that I had never heard growing up. And the fact that I got positive reinforcement from several only sealed the deal.

At some later point, Mid asked me to read a section of the Bishop book. It dealt with the execution itself, and it is raw and emotional text. And I read it raw and emotionally, to bring it off the page.

And that was the beginning of 50 years of reading scripture aloud, like it was meant to be heard.

Monday Meandering - 3.19.2018

Bluebonnets have appeared in significant numbers this week. Earlier, we had seen just a few scattered plants in St Mark's Wildflower Meadow. That's what the church up the street calls their expansive front lawn. I think it's really just an excuse for not mowing the area much of the year. Designate it a Wildflower Meadow and nobody cares that it's overgrown.

We are taking the appearance of the bluebonnets as a sign that spring is full-on in ATX, so all the plants got moved outside today, including Fred the Avocado plant/tree (and yes, Fred did a severe branch-ectomy - that's what happens when you over achieve). We trust that we (and they) will not get surprised, though I remember the April 1st that it sleeted on us.

When you eat at Chuy's as often as we do, it's not unexpected that we get to know the staff and management. One manager that has lasted a while is Marty from Duluth - a guy that moved south to avoid the Minnesota winters. We talk about Texas and kids and religion and life in general. This week we were chatting about favorite authors and I asked if he read John Sanford, an author whose stories play out in Minneapolis and the Minnesota area and he said that he did not because he didn't want to be reminded of the weather in that part of the country!

After he moved away, our very new, very nervous waitress came over to our table and hesitantly inquired if everything was okay. She had seen us talking to Marty the Manager and hoped that it was not about her service or something she had done. We assured her it was a non-Chuy's-related conversation, and she was doing just fine. Felt obliged to leave her a big tip to let her know that all was well.

Friday we were making our shopping rounds, which usually includes a trip to Central Market, where it is often hard to find a parking place. There was an open space, but there were a couple of grocery carts left in the way. I decided that if I nudged them just a wee, tiny bit, I would have enough room to park. The rule of unintended consequences reared its ugly head, though, and instead of moving the carts just a wee, tiny bit, I managed to disentangle them and one took off straight into the side of an adjacent pickup (to be sure it struck the step bar, and not the actual side) and the other took off for open territory.

I was cringing about how fast and far that cart was going to go, when it veered into a woman walking toward the store in the next aisle over. She snagged the cart without incident, but really gave me the stink eye. From my standpoint, I was helping her by putting a cart at her disposal. From the nasty look she gave me, she viewed it differently, however.

Monday Meanderings - 3.12.2018

Two  apocalyptic events this week.

The first - well underway - is the annual ritual of inviting half the free world to come to Austin for SXSW and then trying to persuade them that no, they really don't want to move here! We can, for the most part, avoid the SXSW mayhem by staying north of 45th Street. Of course, if for some really strange reason we actually needed to go to South Austin, we could always loop around by way of Oklahoma City to Shreveport to Houston and come up that way.

Then there is Daylight Saving Time, that biannual exercise in insanity that I truly love so much. Enough! Not only do you walk around like a zombie for a week or so, you have to go around and change all the clocks. And who remembers how to change the clock on the car radio? Not me.

Changing the family heirloom clock involves advancing the hand a quarter of an hour, waiting for the clock to go through its chime repertoire for that time segment, then advance it another 15 minutes, etc., until you have moved the hands forward an hour. If you don't let it go through all its chimes, it gets confused. Setting it back an hour is worse. The experts say "never turn the hands backward on this clock" so you must stop it for an hour, the restart it and reset the time.

Speaking of, the clock is on probation. It kept stopping every few days and I finally took it back to the repair shop for more than just a cleaning, and they quoted both an outrageous price and a 6-month (at least) wait. I grudgingly left it, but after some research, I found I could send the mechanism to a shop that specializes in that repair for a fraction of the cost and time. So, we retrieved the clock (not without a bit of anxiety - they couldn't find it at the shop!) and when we got home I restarted the clock... and it's behaving very nicely at the moment. Maybe it doesn't want its innards shipped to Illinois. We'll see.

You know how you get those emails from Amazon suggesting things to buy - or buy again? Like the one suggesting that I might want to buy another copy of the TurboTax software for 2014. I admit I sometimes put off paying taxes until the last minute, but 2014? That would mean that those phone calls from the "IRS" that the sheriff is on the way if I don't pay right now might actually be legit.

And here's a photo I have been meaning to post for some time. I took it outside the beach house on Monterey Bay. That's in California, mind you, so that may have a bearing on this strange looking plant that I have been trying to identify. Perhaps it's not a plant at all, but an alien life-form that has taken up residence there. Blow it up and note the other-worldly organisms growing on the ends of those stalks.Any ideas?

Monday Meanderings - 3.5.2018

March signals that true Spring is coming; some of the trees are budding, lawns are greening, Bluebonnet sightings are coming in. I say true Spring because the weather has been funny around these parts. A real roller coaster ride.

I showed you last week that Fred, the resident avocado tree has reached its maximum indoor altitude. Evidently, Fred heard us talking about "lopping" and "trimming" and decided to take evasive action. We came in the other day to find him in full mufti mode.

Not sure how to break it to him, but we were not fooled. "Move the plants outdoors" day is coming soon.

State and local elections are on tap. Consistent with my long-held belief that we should be able to mark out ballots "None of the above" we trudged down to early voting last week to make our dislikes known. And when we got back, Barb was sporting not one, but two "I voted" stickers.

Maybe there is something to this voter fraud controversy after all!

I turned on the TV last night, expecting the news, but got to watch the last hour of the Academy Awards. Pretty much explains why we only go to the movies once per millennium

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