I was sooooo close to not posting this evening. I was going to do a post on Tuesday. Then, I was going to do a post on Wednesday. Today, I finally told myself to buckle down a do a post, for crying out loud – my five readers would be wondering where I went!

It’s been one of those weeks – the best intentions are waylaid, and things get out of hand, and next thing you know it’s so late at night and you STILL haven’t watched the last three Sprint Cup races… or the season finale of Warehouse 13… or the season finale of Eureka… or anything else you’ve DVR’d, either. So – do you stay up late and watch one or two items? Or do you be the responsible type person who has a job to go to in the morning and go to bed so you can function? Or, as I did, do you choose to try to do both by falling asleep in front of the tv?

I gotta quit doing that.

No staying up late for me tonight though – I have to get up earlier than for work since I’m re-lighting “The O Word” on BlogTalkRadio tomorrow morning at 0700 Mountain Standard Time. Sure hope to see you in the chat room or on the switchboard – I’ll be the host wearing a red shirt!

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

Sorry I haven’t been posting as regularly as I used to. For some reason, I’ve been extremely tired most of the time, and I think it has to do with trying to keep up with a ball of energy known as MEG. She is so over taking naps in the afternoon, and is now sleeping only eight or nine hours per night. Doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for me to surf or catch up on blogs. Do me a favor, though – be sure you visit all the fine folk over in the sidebar – each and every one of them is truly worth reading.

Last night we had a great session of praise and worship, with live music. We have a third guy joining us on guitar, and Pastor is still playing guitar, so we have two guitars and my bass. The sound is coming together. The new guy, Jay, is really good on the guitar, and he is slowly learning the ropes for becoming a worship leader. Afterwards, the message was on John 12:20-36.

Started a small project at the church yesterday – covering a shade awning (kind of a tent frame) with aluminum channel that used to be the porch covering for the old horse barn. The porch covering had to come down, because the previous property owner had never gotten a permit for the awning – or the barn itself, but that’s another story – and the city has been oh-so-helpful in allowing the church to get permits for improvements on the property, but temporary structures don’t need permits, so – re-purposing the awning material to cover the tent frame. They need to be cut to length, notched in the middle to go over the center frame, and then I am pop-riveting the ends to the frame work to secure them. I’ll have pictures later.

I’ve been working on an extended eBay auction for my friend Harold. He is slowly divesting himself of fifty years worth of kits, models, and model railroad stock. One of the items that he was going to put up this next week is a beautifully detailed 2-8-0 locomotive that had been painted in Black Canyon livery. Several years ago (in the mid-nineties, if memory serves) I bought a locomotive that had been hand-built from the builder’s widow – the sale was handled by Harold for Mike’s estate at the time. The builder, Mike Granville, was a master machinist and had built a 2-8-2 from scratch. I was not running the 2-8-2, because for some reason the front pilot was not tracking correctly through turnouts. When I mentioned that I hated to see the 2-8-0 go on the block, Harold suggested a trade, for the Granville loco. I accepted – because I could run the 2-8-0 on the layout, and Harold wanted to have a piece of Mike’s handiwork as a memento. It’s going to live out the rest of it’s days on a shelf, but it will be loved and appreciated for the piece of fine artwork and craftsmanship that it is.

Just thought you’d like to know what I was up to.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

…but she doesn’t love blueberries and whipped cream. Actually, she does love the whipped cream part – but not the blueberry part. I found that out when a nice clean blueberry appeared in my bowl of blueberries and whipped cream after she said she wanted to taste what I was eating.

Fatherhood is great.

As a side note – Happy Birthday to my youngest brother, BK.

I would be remiss if I did not mention today being the 54th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, an act which saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives on both sides of the war.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

Sometimes, life gets in the way of trying to keep a blog up-to-date. Take this week, for example. I’ve spent most of it trying to get this new computer updated with the stuff I can’t live without from the old computer. I haven’t even started working on the stuff that TMBWitW needs on the new computer.

Yes, a new computer. No, we couldn’t afford it – but we also couldn’t afford to be without a computer at all, as most of you are in the same boat – your lives are inextricably intertwined with, through, and around either email, electronic checking and bill paying, or some other aspect of the computer in your daily lives. Originally I was just going to replace the hard drive in the old ‘puter and use the existing drive (reformatted) as extra storage. Fry’s Electronics had a one terrabyte hard drive on sale for $90 – isn’t technology amazing? – but then I started looking at the price of an operating system to make the new hard drive go. You see, the old hard drive was transplanted from the original computer, and it still had Windoze XP (home) on it. With the need to replace the hard drive (I have removed and replaced everything BUT the OS, and it still wouldn’t let me get on the internet in anything but safe mode) came the need to have a new copy of an operating system.

Don’t you love when the manufacturer gets to preload what they want to sell with the computer and not have to supply the original disks?

So – in the end, it was cheaper to buy a new laptop with Windoze “Vista” on it than to buy a hard drive and the OS separately. I know – I’m in the process of downloading Linux and getting it ready to run sideways on this computer. Then, maybe I can avoid this problem in the future. Maybe.

TMBWitW also took some time off this week – paid, this time – and suggested that I drive cab for most of the days she was off, to help make up the deficit from when she had to take a “furcation” – furlough, with out pay – last month. So, I drove yesterday, a twenty four hour shift. When I got home, there was a surprise from my wife waiting for me (remember, this is a “G” rated blog!):

Her note touched me. I cried. Can’t wait until I have enough time to sit down and watch the movie.

Got in bed this morning at 0515, got up at 0800 because the bug service was going to be here “promptly at 0830” – which, of course, means they didn’t show up until 1030 and then only after I had called and asked where they were.

Then, I managed to finish a project that needed installed for some time. finally, got BACK in bed about 1300, and slept until 1800. I’ll be going back to bed shortly, and getting up early tomorrow morning so I can do the cab thing again, this time for two days running. If I don’t see you for a couple of days, you’ll understand, right?

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

Hey there – remember back around Easter time this year, when David and Mary Jones were told by San Diego County that they couldn’t hold a Bible study in their private home?

Aren’t you glad it couldn’t happen in your own town? I was sure it couldn’t happen in my town. I was positive it couldn’t happen in my town.

Imagine my surprise when it happened, not only in my town, but to my own Bible study group.

Yes, the same place that I’ve been working on the gameroom – that had to be called a gameroom because the City of Phoenix wouldn’t let the Pastor build a multi-use room on his own property for the use of his family and friends.

We’ve been meeting as a group for a couple of years at the Pastor’s house. We used to meet in the garage, but it was going to be uncomfortable in the summer and we knew that. The Pastor started applying for permits shortly after moving into the house to build a building specifically for the Bible study group. His first mistake was in saying that he wanted the building so the Bible study group could meet in comfort. (the garage, while somewhat insulated and having two AC units fitted to it and having ceiling fans to help spread the cooled air, was still warm the first summer we were meeting there. in fact, the city inspectors noted that there were ceiling fans in the garage area – and then wrote a warning about them!) The city, in it’s wisdom, decided that he couldn’t build a church. Pastor didn’t want to build a church, he wanted to build a detached, separately cooled and powered room that could be designated as the meeting room for the Bible study group.

So, the hoops started. Pastor would jump through five or six that the city would set up, only to find out that he didn’t need to jump through the last two, but these seven over here instead. More than once he was given conflicting information by members of the same office in the City of Phoenix. During the same time frame, one of his neighbors was handed a permit for a media room – over the counter, without having to submit plans – while Pastor was spending lots of money on an architect and a General Contractor to get his smaller room built.

Here’s the kicker – video of the cops and the inspectors swarming the property: pardon my non-video embededness.

Like I said, I never thought it would happen in my own town.

Chat ya later…

Thank you for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, God bless you all, don’t buy or breed cats or dogs while homeless pets die (spay, neuter & adopt a pet, one by one, until there are none), Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!