46 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-5-15”

  1. Morning all. Welcome to the weekend. I spent my Saturday at school working on report cards. Almost done, but they aren’t due until Wednesday. Just four comments left.
    Any of you who get my newsletter have my address and it would be fun to get Christmas cards in April! Just saying….

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  2. for any of you who like photos of the very rugged outdoors, you might want to check out Jillian’s blog at thenoisyplume.com Her husbands family and mine have been friends for a long time.

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  3. Musical Advent Calendar – Day 5: The first of these two songs, ‘Mary’s Boy Child’, was written by Jester Harrison, the American composer and musical expert on choral music and spirituals. It first became popular performed by Harry Belafonte, known as the ‘King of Calypso’, in 1956. The second song ‘Oh, My Lord’ was written for this disco group by their producer, the German songwriter Frank Farian, and an associate.

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  6. So my Little Darling called me from work (phone) at 5:20 last night to tell me she is just leaving. I smile to myself because she is following the rules. She tells me she has to run by her Nana’s and she will call me from the house phone. Again, she is showing accountability. I am feeling like we are getting somewhere.
    At 7pm I call Nana to see if BG is there. No. Well dang it. She has lied to me again! I called her on her Trac Fone. She was almost at Nana’s. She had some excuse about going through two small towns that were having Christmas Parades. Well if she had come home the back way instead of the way that would have allowed her to swing by to see the boyfriend….. In a few minutes she called me from Nana’s. She didn’t get home until 8, but she walked in with two wrapped Christmas presents to put under the tree. They are for me. I am ashamed to admit she won that round. I was bribed out of my anger with her.

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  7. Good morning, all. I’ve been up since 4:30–guess I’m more worried about my parents than I’d realized….
    Becca-boo came down at 6:30 and we had a sweet time of snuggling by the glow from the tree. She is such a treasure to me. I cannot believe she’ll be eleven in March. Developmentally, she’s about a year behind–which is why I’m so glad we didn’t start kindergarten until she was six. She’s thriving in fourth grade. They haven’t had to give her any special accommodations and she’s earning mostly As with a B in social studies and PE (she’s definitely my daughter–I got a deficiency notice in PE in high school because I couldn’t master a proper layup in basketball). Her eyes are working so much better with her new glasses. I’m so grateful for the developmental eye specialist who caught her visual processing disorder. After a year of physical therapy and these special glasses, she’s reading fluently and slightly above grade level–which seems miraculous given where she was a short year and a half ago. Math is still a struggle–but she’s willing to try and we’re working on math facts all the time.
    I’m so grateful for The Redd School — it has been so good for her. And, I’m grateful my husband is good with money so we are able to afford the tuition even during this rather difficult time for folks in oil & gas…The more gas prices drop, the less money we make. So yesterday when I saw gas for $1.66, I almost cried…

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  8. The photos are from my dollhouse. My father built the house for me when I was about nine, so it has been around a while. Most of the furniture is newer, as I occasionally like to buy a piece. The tree is the one I made a few years ago.

    6 Arrows, I am in the process of answering your question over on the News thread.

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  10. I had a doll house before the Kid was born. I gave it to a young cousin because we didn’t have room for it. I hated to give it up. It was the first Christmas gift from Hubby and some of the accessories came from a little shop in Paris on our trip to Europe.

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  11. I figured that was a house for itty-bitty people. 🙂

    My friend still has an open doll house in their front room, a project made & nurtured when her two girls were little. I don’t know if they still add pieces to it here and there or not, but they loved the whole miniature world & decorating the various rooms.

    Got the Salvation Army bags moved out to the corner of the front yard for pickup — perfect timing for me, I’d already gotten several bags filled and was anticipating having either to schedule a pickup or schlep them myself over to the donation truck when a flyer appeared on my door saying they’d be coming through out neighborhood today to pick up anything left labeled for them in the front. Yay.

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  12. Good morning (or afternoon, Tychicus; evening, Jo)!

    Nice version of We Three Kings, AJ. Thanks. That’s my opening number for the solos I’m doing in tomorrow’s piano concert. (Followed by What Child Is This and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.) I play last on the program. (And my duet with the show organizer is first after the intermission.)

    Third Arrow is also performing — a solo — her first time doing a piano solo in several years. She’s playing out of a neat book called An Impressionistic Christmas: 10 Arrangements Inspired by Impressionist Compositions. Her piece is Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming, inspired by Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl With the Flaxen Hair). And 3rd Arrow is my girl with the flaxen hair. 😉

    Roscuro, thanks for your answers on the News thread. I’ve read them, and the links you provided, and would like to chew on them a bit before I respond. I’ve got other things I should get back to right now, though, but I’ll reply at some point. You’ve given me lots of food for thought. Thank you.

    Looking forward to listening to your Musical Advent Calendar Day 5 with the kids, too!

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  13. i really appreciate the doll house pictures. I did not see any clutter so I wondered if anyone lived there 🙂

    We are at the office again. The sky is so blue today. It should be a great day for the stores. I have very little Christmas shopping to do. With my brother out of work, we probably will not exchange as many gifts as usual. And of course, Art has not been working much lately. Right now he is trying to decide on Supplemental Medicare so that is his work for today. At least son has employment. 😉 Maybe we can put Miss Bosley to work, too!

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  14. I like the dollhouses. In Chicago, the house I rented had a very large buffet in the dining room, and I happened to find some miniature wood pieces one day while shopping, so I got a mini buffet and a round table with velvet-seated chairs, and they sat on the buffet. In Nashville I didn’t have a place for them and I think I gave them away, but I did like those little pieces with working parts.

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  19. My sister had a dollhouse that opened up in the center so you could see the room, and meeples for it (though I don’t think they were called that then). I never had one and never really wanted one, though we played with hers together so I suppose that was enough for me.

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  20. Back from my shopping excursion. BG has discovered Cracker Barrel Chicken and Dumplings, so I had a veggie plate. I have been working on the front door today. I will take a photo and send it to AJ. I need to find some fresh greenery to work in to the fake that is lit.
    I polished all the silver baby cups last night. I may cluster them together with a poinsettia bloom in them for my Christmas day centerpiece. We shall see.

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  24. The dollhouse is currently inhabited by a Charles Dickens action figure – a joke gift by eldest sibling-in-law – and one of those ethnic costume dolls, which I’ve had so long that I’ve forgotten which ethnicity if I ever knew. I took them out to conceal the scale to see if the eye would be fooled. It fooled my father. I showed him today’s header picture, telling him it was mine. He stared at it as if trying to remember where it came from and finally said, “Now, where is that?”

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  25. Roscuro, the beads of the Christmas tree gave it away as a miniature, and I opened one of the other photos and its title gave confirmation. The rug in the third photo also looks “miniature,” but nothing too super obvious.

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  26. Glad to hear your progress report with Becca, Ann. (And don’t either of you feel bad about not mastering layups in basketball — I couldn’t even legitimately put the word “master” in the same sentence as “layup” if talking about my basketball skills!) 😉

    I’m thankful I won’t have to do any layups at the piano concert tomorrow. 🙂 I just have to make sure I don’t crash and burn on The Nutcracker Miniature Overture, LOL! My duet partner and I start out the second half of the program with that number, and we’re playing it at a good clip, and have been desperately working on not running into each other on the keyboard. It’s the most tangled-up mess of notes I think I’ve ever seen on a printed page for a duo. Yikes! If we can keep from yelling out in the middle of it when a little something goes wrong (and I say “when,” not “if,” for a reason, ha!), and not die laughing at the conclusion of the number, like we usually do in practice, we’ll be OK. 😀

    It’s all fun, and we’ve always had great audiences, so I’m excited about the show, even if there end up to be some glitches. (Sometimes that’s the most fun of all!) 🙂

    Show starts at 3:00 Central. Third Arrow will play about five or ten minutes after the start of the show, and my duet will probably be around 4:00. Solos for me maybe about 4:30, 4:45? If you think to pray around those times, we’d be most grateful!

    I keep thinking with my solos, how to capture the moods of the pieces. In turn, they are mysterious (a quiet e minor “We Three Kings” with simple rhythms to a suddenly mezzo-forte — medium-loud — f minor section with left-hand arpeggiated 16th notes); to majestic (big chords — 3 or 4 notes per hand starting in the second half of “What Child Is This?”); to melodious, with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — trying (without sounding like I am) to get that piano to SING!!

    That’s it for me for now. Got other things to do tonight, and church and Bible study tomorrow. See you all later. 🙂

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  27. Hi all. I tried cleaning the mildew off the vinyl siding today. I think I’ll call a professional, as I didn’t have a tall enough ladder for the upper parts (~25 feet off the ground).

    And Mrs L bought a toy at Walmart for the grandchildren, but it seems the box is empty. It’s got tape over a torn opening slot, as well as other clues that it had been purchased once before. People these days have no conscience, do they.

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  28. Onions & garlic chopped for casserole. I’m taking a break and watching a 1952 episode of “The Adventures of Superman.” Lois Lane & Jimmy are stranded in the desert chasing a thief on foot (walking but briskly).

    “Miss Lane” is wearing high heels and a tight skirt. Jimmy is in a white, long-sleeved shirt and spiffy sweater vest. Doesn’t seem to bother them.

    Oh, but now they’ve been captured in an old Inca cave of some kind. Trouble.

    Even the thieves are dressed nicely, though, in suits and hats. 🙂

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  31. Musical Advent Calendar – Day 6: Begol, begol – This is an Ethiopian song of the Nativity. I was unable to find a complete translation of the text. Begol means stable in Ge’ez, the ancient Semitic language used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Ethiopian church traces its existence back to the Ethiopian eunuch who was converted by Philip the evangelist as recorded in Acts 8:26- 39.

    This post is in memory of the 30 Ethiopian Christians murdered by ISIS in Lybia in March 2015.

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  36. Good sermon today from Rom. 11, part of which reminded me of Chas and the 10 righteous men dialogue between Abraham and God he’s mentioned here — and it also touched on the difference between “fall and “stumble” (11:11a). Notes say:

    _________________________________

    … “fall” means to reach a point of no return — to be in an unredeemable condition. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to determine with any degree of accuracy who has crossed this boundary. … In all this talk of falling away, one might be concerned that they have a bad day and commit the unforgivable sin. And some discuss whether or not the unredeemable condition is a result of God’s unwillingness to redeem man or man’s unwillingness to repent. In its own way, it includes both, but what is important for us to note is that God will never turn away a repentant sinner …

    … Of course the Apostle is writing here of a corporate entity. Ethnic Israel — Israel as a nation — had not stumbled that they should fall. There was still hope for them.; Paul himself being an example. They had not reached that level that Sodom had reached (this may very well have been the concern since Paul had earlier compared them to Sodom (Rom. 9:29).

    Sodom was a nation which stumbled that they should fall. They were entirely unredeemable. One thinks of Abraham’s negotiating with God — if there were 50, 45, 30 20 or even 10 righteous, there would have been hope for Sodom (Gen. 18:22-33). But the Scriptures become explicit regarding Sodom’s full commitment to ungodliness (Gen. 19:4,5).

    As you know, Sodom was entirely destroyed (Gen. 19:25) and Israel would soon find themselves the object of God’s judgement. (the fall of the temple came 15 years later). … But they would not have the destiny of a Sodom. They would continue as a people with the hope of redemption — if they would abandon their works righteousness and rely entirely upon grace through faith in the Promised Messiah. Their hope would be the same as any sinner’s hope — the hope of grace …
    ____________________________________

    “

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  40. Well, it’s a wrap! Nice variety of music — some calm and understated, some showy, a lot of sacred Christmas music and a little secular. Duets. Solos. Some medleys, some individual pieces. A few improvisations by a talented improviser.

    We all, performers and audience alike, enjoyed the afternoon.

    Daughter performed well. Hers was one of the quieter, gentler pieces, and my eyes were misting up listening to her play. I was really proud of her. We had played a duet in church the night before Thanksgiving, her first time playing in the presence of others in several years, and we got out of sync for a while in our piece, and it was pretty noticeable. I was afraid that she might chicken out about playing in today’s program because of our Thanksgiving duet not going very well, but she went ahead and put herself out there today, and it went beautifully.

    About that little crash and burn I hoped wouldn’t happen with my duet today… it did happen, sort of. 😉 My duet partner, at one point, just quit playing and said, “We’re off — let’s go back to here.” And she turned back a page, and we started again from there. So then we finished out the piece fine, and at the end, as the audience applauded, we leaned against each other, shoulder to shoulder, and just chuckled. 🙂 The audience did, too, a little, when they saw us smiling and enjoying some lighthearted humor.

    I love small-town performing. Nothing stuffy, and we all enjoy being human. 🙂

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