52 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-28-13”

  1. I don’t have a favorite outdoor activity.
    What I do is cut grass and bushes and haul the stuff away.
    I am not a golfer nor fisherman.

    Good Morning everyone, BTW.
    Delay, BTW, is a good remedy for anger. It usually isn’t as bad as you thought it was, and they didn’t mean anything by that.

    Like

    Reply

  3. Good morning, everybody! I’m up earlier than usual and feel GREAT! Thanks for all of you who were praying for me over the weekend.

    Favorite outdoor activity: hiking in the woods.

    It’s a busy day for me today, so I won’t be around here much, but thought I’d check in here first to let you know things are going well, and don’t worry about where I am 😉 I’ll probably be hiking in the woods 🙂 and doing a lot more! Can’t wait!

    One more thing: after I finished my Bible reading this morning, I read a little devotion based on Jeremiah 17:8. I just love verses 7 & 8:

    7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.

    8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful [anxious] in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

    Have a great day, all! 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  5. Favorite outdoor activity- sitting on the beach listening to the waves come in and go out while reading a book or talking to a friend. As one who has fought a few rounds of depression I can only express what the beach means to me through Anne Morrow Lindbergh and just tell you that the sun makes me happy,

    “Don’t wish me happiness
    I don’t expect to be happy all the time…
    It’s gotton beyond that somehow.
    Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
    I will need them all.”
    ― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

    “I am very fond of the oyster shell. It is humble and awkward and ugly. It is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional. I make fun of its knobbiness. Sometimes I resent its burdens and excrescences. But its tireless adaptability and tenacity draw my astonished admiration and sometimes even my tears. And it is comfortable in its familiarity, its homeliness, like old garden gloves when have molded themselves perfectly to the shape of the hand. I do not like to put it down. I will not want to leave it.”
    ― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

    Like

    Reply

  6. Good morning y’all!

    Sixarrows: Glad you are feeling better today. Hope you have a fabulous day!

    QoD: Favorite outdoor activity is swimming, or in these cold months, hanging out in the hot tub! I’m not much of an outdoorsmen … too many allergies.

    Time to start the day. Need to awaken youngest for school. Talk to y’all later!

    Like

    Reply

  7. Yesterday I ran through Publix to pick up a late lunch/early dinner. The woman in line ahead of me made a big deal of complaining because the plastic container of watermelon had opened. In Florida they tape it shut. She just didn’t understand why they couldn’t do the same in Alabama but they don’t. When my turn came I told the cashier about a post on Facebook about not worrying if the glass was half full or half empty–just be glad you have a glass. As I was typing this it struck me that it is JANUARY! Watermelon is a summer product. In a different decade the woman ahead of me wouldn’t have had access to fresh watermelon at all!

    Let’s all try to look at the positives in life today!

    Like

    Reply

  8. QoD: Besides surfing, it is hiking. I would say downhill skiing, but I don’t do that as much as I used to.

    Kim, I don’t buy summer fruit in winter It doesn’t taste as good because of all they have to do to make it travel well from South America. But I thought duct tape was the acceptable answer to everything broken in the south 😉

    Heading home from Boise today.

    Like

    Reply

  9. I love bike riding but I can’t seem to keep my tire from going flat. Maybe I need to lose some weight. As for other stuff my skin burns so easily that I prefer things I can do in the shade.

    Like

    Reply

  10. QoD: I love to hike, sit in the sun, garden in the summer. Snowshoeing in the winter. Although I am not athletic at all, it takes hubby to carry the gear, food and extras – I just get to take myself 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  11. Speaking of hubby carrying all our gear, when we lived in the south of the province in the badlands/grasslands, we would go out hiking the coulees and buttes. There was actually less shade there than in the Sonoran desert and one day when we were hiking and it was around 100F, I wanted to sit down and rest – there were very few rocks and where there were rocks there was an abundance of rattlers, hubby pulled a three legged folding stool out of his pack and then asked if I would like some shade. He then pulled out an umbrella and shaded me while I rested and drank some water. He says “anything to get her out and hiking with me” 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  12. QOD:well, sit, walk, read, mow, garden, weed eat, milk goats, camp, hike, wade, mine for gold, play tennis, play volleyball, play badminton, watch duck duck goose, pull children on sleds, let the sleds go, I guess most stuff is my favorite outdoor activity.

    Like

    Reply

  13. QOD: garden, hang laundry to dry, take care of the stock, milk the cow, split wood, play with the children, watch the stars….If it is outdoors, I probably like to do it.

    Like

    Reply

  14. When you’re going to give a talk to an audience, plan what you’re going to say.
    I’ve mentioned this before. But often, people will give a talk to a large audience. They know what they’re going to talk about, but not what they’re going to say. Thus, they ramble on saying lots, but not getting to the point.
    We had a report last night in church from a group that had been on a mission trip to Russia. The men and women went their separate ways during the trip because the women were medical assistants. Six people showed slides and spoke. The meeting had gone an hour and a half when we left. And it was still going. Each person had something to say but there was no coordination. It was very interesting in parts, but the parts didn’t fit.
    We left halfway into the second hour. Not that the time was important, we didn’t have anything else to do. But we figured we had heard enough.
    At the Defense Mapping Agency, our division often had to give briefings to contractors, people from NASA and DMA management. We always had assignments and dry runs before any briefing.
    One of the ladies didn’t know she had to hold the portable mike close to her mouth.
    It wasn’t poorly planned. It wasn’t planned.

    At Southwestern seminary, a preacher boy was going to supply at a small church. (This wasn’t me, though I did supply at times.) When asked what his subject was, he said he would “preach out of the overflow”. (You may not know what I mean, but I’ll bet Roy does.)

    Like

    Reply

  15. Good Morning….we are promised much anticipated snow tonight and tomorrow…praying that the Lord will open the skies and let it rain or snow…we’ll take it!
    My favorite outdoor activity would be gardening…how I love to tend to our Lord’s beautiful creation of flowers….
    Hiking and walking are a favorite as well…I like to run…in moderation…not the 100 miles runs that Paul does….but, my knees are not so cooperative nowadays…I sort of meander now….
    A coyote was in the back this morning…he was limping rather badly…glad he limped away…he gave me the creeps….

    Like

    Reply

  16. Chas, I do too.

    Favorite outdoor activity: hiking. Either hiking a mountain (not a precarious one, one with a nice trail) or in the woods. I miss my favorite Nashville hiking spot, Radnor Lake. I’d see everything from deer (every time) to otters (twice) to great blue herons (about half the time), and an assortment of birds and turtles and butterflies and dragonflies. Plus some nice trees and plants, and a chance to get some exercise. And it continually amazed me that it was in the city.

    I see a lot of wildlife here, in the country (mink once, skunks, pheasants, lots of hawks, deer, and more), but walking along a flat road just isn’t as nice as hiking through woods and around a lake.

    Like

    Reply

  18. Interesting weather forecast here. Tuesday last week we had 13/3 (high/low). Tomorrow’s prediction: 60/47. (It’s supposed to rain, though. Our rain overnight melted our little bit of snow, and we’re supposed to have more the next three days.)

    Like

    Reply

  19. I love to bike and swim, but seldom do either now. My husband doesn’t care much for either pastime. He does enjoy walking, so we do that when our weather permits. Right now my walking is usually on a treadmill. Too icy on our road and colder than I like.

    Cheryl, I agree that Radnor Lake is a very nice place to walk. It is a great place to go to forget you are in a city. It has both more difficult and easy walking trails. The wildlife is fun to see.

    We mostly walk down our own dirt road, but sometimes will pick one of the area lakes to walk around. We have several little towns with trails around the lakes. We have a bike trail that goes through many cities and around a lot of scenic areas. We are blessed with a lot of great trails, parks and lakes.

    I have read that there are studies that show people’s brains are more refreshed by walking outdoors than on a treadmill. I don’t doubt it.

    Like

    Reply

  20. Favorite outdoor activity? Is that one I can do or one I wish I could do? I enjoy hiking in natural areas, taking a walk in the neighborhood, walking on the beach, sitting in a chair at the beach and reading or conversing as Kim said,

    I also really like badminton and tennis. I took badminton in college and my partner and I were the class champs. It has been the only time I have known what it was to excel at anything athletic. It was great fun. I was reminded of that when one of my son’s guests for our vacation time talked about his college badminton class and how much he loved it.

    I have really enjoyed water aerobics in a heated indoor pool also. I did that while pregnant to overcome gestational diabetes. It was wonderful to take the weight off the feet while getting needed exercise. I was the only pregnant lady in the class so I got lots of special attention. When our 10 lb.13 oz. son was born, I think he came out swimming! He was very strong, and I think it was from all that swimming he was doing in the womb while I did water aerobics. 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  22. Just remembering what a disappointment my college tennis class was. The instructor picked out those who were best and concentrated her efforts on them. The rest of us did not really learn anything. It felt like being classed as a hopeless dud. Such a different experience than I had with the badminton class. Did anyone else have such contrasts in their college P,E, classes?

    Like

    Reply

  23. Stupid tablet. 😦

    As I was saying…. but the weather isn’t cooperating. I was missing the outdoors, hence the question.

    Our weather stinks. The inch of snow is over, now the 6 hours of ice have begun.Snow days are at least nice, cuz everyone is home, 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  25. I thought of telling this in my post above. Then I decided against it. Then, I figured it might be good for a laugh. No harm done. In the 1960’s we did lunar mapping on contract to NASA. We would give monthly TEMs (Technical Exchange Meetings) and progress briefings. We used color slides in those days. (I have never given a PowerPoint briefing, though I think it’s real neat.) Meetings would go on for hours for a couple of days.
    True story:
    We were giving a briefing to a room full of people. Don L. was up giving his spiel. He was showing slides and talking to the people, not the slides –as it is properly done. In the middle of his briefing there was a stir and people started laughing. Somebody had inserted in his slide tray a slide of a naked woman. Not really obscene, like something out of playboy. Noticing the commotion, Don looked back. It took him a couple of seconds to recover. Then he advanced the slide. Then back to the woman; “This is more interesting”. It was fun and woke up the group.
    Those meetings could get tedious. I understand this is not unusual, but I’ve only seen it this once. It may be politically incorrect today.

    Like

    Reply

  26. You know you are from the Gulf Coast when:

    You know the four seasons really are: hurricane season, love bug season, tourist season and summer.

    I stole this from a friend, but it is so true!

    Like

    Reply

  27. For those of you watching Downton Abbey, there was a crack about gardening last night that made me laugh — Lady Edith was saying she might take it up as a hobby and Old Lady Grantham came back with something like “Oh surely you aren’t that desperate.”

    My mom loved gardening, I’ve always found it more like work. 😉

    Favorite outdoor activity for me is walking or hiking in a picturesque area with my dogs — along the ocean cliffs, on the peninsula horse trails (though the annoyance there that keeps me away is a good supply of ticks).

    Since I have today off, I’m thinking of taking the dogs out for a walk to the end of the long concrete fishing pier at the beach, we haven’t been walking out there in a long time.

    I love riding a bike along the beach paths, too.

    Not fishing, though. I only went fishing once, when I was in college, and I spent the entire time just dreading the thought that I’d actually catch one. I couldn’t bear it, I hated the idea of killing something that didn’t “have” to be killed. 😦

    It’s sunny, cool (still in the 60s) and windy here today. Perfect.

    Like

    Reply

  31. I used to love to run on moonlit nights. I grew up on a farm, so there weren’t any street lights anywhere. The first time I ever went running, it was a winter night with a full moon (or almost). The country roads on which I ran were dry, but there was snow all around in yards and ditches, and the moon shining on them was so pretty.

    I stopped running at night after an incident during one of my daytime runs when some creep in his car decided he was going to drive at the pace I was running and try to talk to me with his window down. Finally, another car came along, and he decided to give up the game and take off. I had no idea who he was, but I was glad when he finally left. I didn’t want him to know where I lived!

    That was unnerving enough in the daytime; I certainly didn’t want to have that happen at night. I guess I could have tried to find a running partner, but that didn’t work out.

    These days my running consists of running after kids…much more satisfying! 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  32. Karen, that was a little tongue-in-cheek. Everything below about 78 degrees feels cold to me. I don’t have much meat on my bones. So most of the time it feels like winter to me. 😉

    Last August, my husband and I and our kids were at a park after church. The kids played on the playground equipment, and hubby and I sat at a picnic table in the shade. It was a pretty warm day, as I recall, but a breeze came up, and I got goosebumps and had to get back in the sun.

    Hubby said mine would be the first documented case of frostbite in August [in this hemisphere]! 😛

    Like

    Reply

  34. 6 Arrows, I grew up in Phoenix, and my family laughed at me because every time it got down to 70, I put on a sweater. Sometimes I think it was more like 75. But after 115, that could feel like quite a drop! Then I took a four-month course in Missouri in late winter and spring, and I got the nickname “Sweaters.” How I ended up being the only one of my family outside the South or Southwest, I don’t know! (I now have another brother in the Midwest, but for 14 years it was just me.)

    Like

    Reply

  35. Wow, it’s a glorious day out here today. I took the dogs for a long walk out to the end of the fishing pier — the waves were crashing against the breakwater, sending voluminous sprays of white water into the sky.

    Saw a pelican dive bomb for a fish and several others glide gracefully through the air, waiting for the fishermen to haul in a catch. The water was a deep blue with white caps, you could see Catalina Island in one direction, mountains with snow on top in the other.

    Extremely windy, in the high 50s. Just about perfect.

    Like

    Reply

  36. Wow, it’s a glorious day out here today. High twenties, light snow coming down. The challenged children (11 and 6) are out doing the chores this afternoon, with the less challenged five year old to help keep them on task. They do a pretty good job.

    Like

    Reply

  37. I would welcome all your thoughts regarding witnessing to Mormons. (I have more specific information over on the prayer thread about a witnessing opportunity that just came up for me.) Thanks.

    Like

    Reply

  38. I got home from buying lunch fixings at Sprouts to find I didn’t get my red cabbage I’d paid for. Somehow it didn’t get put into the bag, so that’s a trip back there. I may take the big container of honey yogurt back, too, I noticed after getting it home that it was all caved in and bent at the bottom.

    Like

    Reply

  39. I hate it when that happens, Donna, especially when we come home with hundreds of dollars worth of groceries and three days later figure out that a key ingredient for the recipe we planned for that day never made it home from the store. Or the expiration date was last week. Or…grrr. 😦

    Like

    Reply

  40. Favorite outside activities?

    Yodeling.

    But a long time ago I used to enjoy playing melodies from the Old Country on my Swiss alpine horn, weather permitting.

    But, tragically, on a fall day long ago, somewhere far above the tree line on some nameless mountain range, my alpine horn – and my foot-operated pneumatic tuba, too – were utterly demolished in a bizarre incident involving an amorous elk, right while I was in the middle of a particularly inspired rap rendition of Edelweiss.

    And now, of an evening, in the twilight gloaming, when the last fading light of the sun bathes the western sides of the great, brooding mountains in its lurid, dying rays, and the first stars begin to appear one by one in the darkling eastern sky – if you listen very, very carefully, perhaps you might hear the sad, haunting notes of a lonely, plaintive yodel, borne by the fickle wind, from some distant, high alpine meadow.

    And that, friends, would be me, wandering, ever wandering, wistfully yodeling, yodeling in mourning for my lost alpine horn, ever yodeling in endless melancholy seasons, yodeling, yodeling, ever yodeling, yodeling – until time and times are done.

    Anyway. Yodel is a fun word, I think, don’t you?

    How are you guys doing?

    Like

    Reply

  44. O Happy Day! Drill is back for a visit. I hope he will stay around for awhile now. Perhaps you need to go yodeling up on the Hill (in DC) and wake up some of the folks who seem to be napping instead of making budgets.

    Like

    Reply

  50. Well, I had a busy day planned today, but a lot of those things didn’t get done that were on my list. However, the two most important things (my personal Bible time, and Bible reading with the kids) did get done, and a witnessing opportunity that wasn’t on my list was also taken care of. We never know what God will bring in a day, but it’s good to know that He’s with us every step of the way.

    Good night to you all.

    Like

    Reply

  51. Ah, insomnia. 😦

    At least I’ve had some sleep already. Hubby is still at work. Looks like the overnights may not be done yet anyhow. 😦 😦

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to drivesguy Cancel reply