Response

(This is not addressed to any family member. It is in response to a comment.)

Ooh, good one. Thought you were headed for a gracious acknowledgement that you don't know it all, but you took a nice turn to superior sarcasm at the end, with an equally nice little knife in my back, given the comment to which you were responding. After all, if you can watch four kids without a tragedy happening then no tragedy should ever happen to anyone who's just paying attention like they should be. So that time one of my grandkids wandered off: I guess I wasn't watching over them, in the world according to your common sense? That is your implication, so just say it outright: there's no way a kid can wander off if the adult in charge is at all competent: therefore, I was being an inattentive grandparent.

Dude, there's only one reason I'm cutting you any slack at all over this.

Discretion

When you want to cheer because someone else said what you've been thinking for over a decade, but you know that you will always be on the wrong side of the balance sheet, and that still counts for something.

Maybe I'm really just as vapid as the rest of the world.

A birthday successfully celebrated

The cake was delicious. I needn't have worried. The vanilla buttercream frosting was nice with it. A nice turnout of friends and family; although oldest daughter was busy prepping their camper for the weekend, I went and got her younger two of our grandchildren. It was a nice time, even if the dinner plans didn't work out as we hoped.

Happy birthday

Well, I hope that leaving the unfrosted cakes uncovered overnight doesn't result in them being stale. It's going to be yummy if I didn't ruin it.

I give thanks to God today for blessing my life with you, for the opportunity to love you and be loved by you. I thank Him for the supportive wife, mom, and grandma that you are.

Sorry I wasn't able to get more of the house squared away for you. What I did in the kitchen - the cake and the cleaning up - was all that I had time for.

I pray that God blesses you with a really great day, full of fun and joy and friends and family.

(Oh, did I forget to say:)  I Love You!

Today's words: Understatement edition

litotes /LYE-tuh-teez/ - understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary.

I love learning a word that describes something I do all the time. This one's not bad!

meiosis /mye-OH-sis/ -  the presentation of a thing with underemphasis especially in order to achieve a greater effect.

I was, of course, familiar with this from of cellular reproduction, but not with this sense of the word. This one is okay, too!

Relay for Life

Was so glad to go out and support our friends, the Heils, at Kettering's Relay for Life last night. Continuing to pray for them as they deal with the latest bout in Andy's fight against cancer.

Number weirdness

Why do I get a small thrill when my current number of pageviews is palindromic?

A strictly hypothetical answer

That would depend: would you be testing me, or would you have lost your mind?

"I can't help how I feel!"

True enough words, as far as they go.

But our decisions affect our feelings.

(No, no one has spoken to me recently. Just an idle musing!)

A blessed Pentecost weekend

We had a really great Life in the Spirit Seminar weekend using the videos As By A New Pentecost. How wise God was to select these men and women to pour forth his Spirit afresh on the Church in the U.S., almost five decades ago. It was my privilege to give testimony to the need for continued growth after we give the Holy Spirit permission to pour forth God's transforming power in our own lives, as well as to help with supplies, music, and to emcee the day on Saturday. I am always amazed that people don't utterly reject me when I share the darkest parts of my own story, how I became what I detest, in the context of how abundantly greater God's love is than our own failings.

Many received new spiritual gifts, including an older couple who have been in the renewal for years but have never prayed in tongues before. It was a deeply moving day, and as we emphasized, only the beginning of the new life in Him that God desires for all of us.

A chance to share God's love

This has been a lot of work, and everything has not gone off perfectly, but God is at work here.

Join us in praying, please

Trying these videos for a Life in the Spirit Seminar this weekend. Come, Holy Spirit!

My plate runneth over . . .

. . . both at work and in my personal life.

The potential new writer they interviewed today was not a good fit. We need versatility, and it sounds like he wants to be a head-down technical manuals writer. We don't have that much manuals work, and even though it's what's eating my lunch right now, that isn't what they were trying to hire him for. So it looks like I'm going to be trying to keep our contract deliverables on time and high quality for the effort that I worked so hard for us to win.

This weekend we're doing a video Life in the Spirit seminar, and since there were so few people involved in the planning, I have a lot of extra stuff to take care of. Most of it is purchase; mostly just need to by ice and some breakfast stuff for Saturday. This will tie up Friday evening and all day on Saturday. I'm emceeing, too.

Well, better get some stand-along song sheets printed, in case there's a problem with the USB port on the computer at the QAC activity center.

In response to a lament

I decided not to wrestle with a pig. But I still want to say what's on my mind. 

Donald has no more respect for the Constitution than Hillary; neither of them cares a whit about the Constitution. Donald thinks he can issue illegal orders to the military and they'll follow, "because I'm a leader," as if any true leader ever had to say so. Yes, you're right: Hillary would trash the 2nd Amendment, but neither of them respects the 1st nor, more fundamentally, the separation of powers that is essential to our democratic republic. They are both dangerous in similar ways to different purposes, and both firmly stand for whatever suits their own whimsical agendas and aspirations in the moment. No, I will not help put Trump in the White House just to keep Clinton out. I will vote my conscience, and will not be driven by fear of what I cannot control. I am not so foolish as to believe that my fellow citizens are likely to rise up and do the same. That has always been the risk of the great American experiment: democracy always holds the threat of tyranny through mobocracy, and no constitution can entirely protect us from ourselves.

But I am tired - completely disgusted, actually - that some people cannot disagree with others without disdain. Donald wants to "make America great again," but anyone who disagrees with him about anything is an adversary to be belittled and crushed. That is not the road to greatness. 

I don't want to send my country in the direction that either of these candidates will take it. I realize that one of them will probably win anyway, and that I may be hard pressed to find someone I can wholeheartedly support. I certainly won't be voting for the Libertarian candidate. 

I will do the best I can and trust in my Savior for the rest.

Is that all I've got???

Really? For the record: even a change in breathing would have been all the encouragement I needed to press on in the first place.

Here's to a good night's sleep

After Thursday night post-run cramps, I was awake or restless for a couple hours last night, too. Oh, and there was another weird dream this morning, but now I can't remember it. Still, it was a nice day with another bike ride, a successful meeting in the middle of it, a recovery nap, a chance to shop a little with Nicademus, a separate successful mother's day shopping trip (I think; we'll see what she thinks tomorrow), pizza for a late dinner, another video watched from As By A New Pentecost, and now even a short entry here.

The three youngest grandchildren are spending the night because mom is at a concert. They'll go home tomorrow after mass. Mom said she wants to come, too.

Thanks for nothing

Seriously, you wait until my final freaking draft to give me the feedback that completely changes the structure of the document and makes me recapture and reannotate every. freaking. screenshot? Where was this feedback two weeks ago?

Cramping my style, aspirations

If I'm to have any hope of either riding a century again or (less likely) running a half-marathon, I'm going to have to get this cramping under control somehow. My doctor tells me to "Drink. Drink. Drink," and I thought I was doing fairly well with that yesterday, although not great. But after a little over two miles last night, I was awake four times during the night with cramping in my feet.

It's going to be tough stay alert and productive today . . .

Hard work pays off

I was nearly fired last night in my dreams. A company president whom I've never seen (because he doesn't exist) was the one to outbrief me, and I insisted that he overcome his reluctance to tell me why I was being let go, because I needed to know so that I could avoid similar mistakes in my future employment. He explained that it was ultimately because I was too loud, which had especially disturbed him when he was on a phone call with a customer. I became even more insistent at that point that this was unjust. I pointed out that I'd mentioned my hearing loss as a disability on my hiring application (true in real life) and discussed it with my coworkers at the outset and when new people came on, as well (also true). I told him that I was pretty certain that it was illegal to fire me over this (though I'm not sure how this would actually play out in an at-will employment state, I'm pretty sure that handicap status is a protected category). We were approaching the CEO/owner at this point, who smiled with relief that I'd found the leverage she needed to keep me on as she apparently wanted (in reality, this entire scenario of my firing is completely unrealistic; the CEO and CTO, a married couple, run the place), and agreed with me afterward that I would have won quite a sum of money in court over the issue.

The timing of this dream is rather odd, as I haven't been loud at work - although I also can't hear low conversations very well - and especially as we just won a contract as a direct result of many long hours I put in preparing a proposal and our responses throughout the subsequent discussion period. It was very rewarding news, given the potentially life-saving implications of the device we're going to help make!

Too busy, but in a good way

Last night I just had to go see the grandchildren for hugs. I feel as if there is so much continual conflict in their lives - due to their own behavior, but whatever that may be rooted in - that I just wanted them to know that their grandpa loves them enough to stop by for no reason, just to show them that I love them.

I then went home and watched the next video in the series that we're going to be presenting in the Life in the Spirit Seminars on Pentecost weekend. Two down, six to go.

I'm hoping to get in a short run after work tonight, and maybe a ride tomorrow, but I'm not actually counting on either thing, with cooler temperatures and thunderstorms in the forecast for the next several days.

I also haven't had much of a chance to post since leading my first prayer session based on the 5 keys of the Unbound prayer model. I love this approach to prayer and deliverance. The gentleman with whom I prayed called me a few days later to let me know how much better he was doing.

Finally, I don't believe I've posted about the blessing of Saturday, even if it did involve 14 hours on the road and 876 miles of driving - half of it in the rain and several hours also in the wonderful combinations of rain and fog or rain and dark. Still, it was a great gift to be able to honor a deacon whom I much respected, and to minister with his dear family, offering a song I'd never sung before that will now be a regular part of my prayer time (10,000 Reasons). It was nice seeing Teri's brother and his wife, there, too; I'm glad it wasn't just us there representing her family, given how close these two families always were.

The best identity example

Who, being in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped. - Phil 2:6

I was thinking this morning that there has never been anyone with a greater right to insist on his own identity. So many of the things we insist upon are not our true identity at all! Rather, they often interfere with our ability to live out our true identity as sons and daughters of our loving Father. Although Jesus was always Son, his confidence in his relationship with the Father was so great that he could live it out even as it cost him unspeakable suffering and death.