82 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-9-16”

  1. Good morning everyone.
    Does anyone else think the bird looks like a teddy bear dressed in a bird costume?
    I hear children so I suppose it will get up and find coffee

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  4. Good afternoon. I found out why the freezer fix it man didn’t come. But what I didn’t find out was when he might actually be coming. If he shows up tomorrow I won’t be happy. I don’t like handling that kind of stuff on Sunday. Here obviously, Sunday is just another day. It is still part of the weekend though. Our weekends are Friday afternoon through Sunday, not Thursday and Friday like many Islamic countries. But that may change. Changes are coming.

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  5. ajisuun- For all too many Americans, Sunday is just another day. I am not a Sabbatarian, but I do think Sunday is “the Lord’s day” and we should worship God with others that day. Christians should worship God every day, but we need the rest of the body for added strength and fellowship at least once a week.

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  9. This book I am reading, Jesus Culture, Calling a Generation to Revival, makes some really good points about the interactions within the church body between the older and the youngers. With each group acting independently there is no real going forward or revival. The young need to learn from the old so they don’t repeat the same learning process and lose time in Kingdom building.

    My church has both an older group and a younger group, but even though we share a worship service, I do not overall see much interaction between the two groups. How does your church work in regards to having interaction between seniors and juniors?

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  10. Anonymous at 8:40 is correct, wrong (but close) at 8:41.

    Kim, the header photo is for you; it’s Alabama’s state bird, known to most of us as the northern flicker (or yellow-shafted flicker), but to Alabama residents as the yellowhammer. The second bird is a downy woodpecker, but I said “close” because as well as I know the downy by sight, when I saw a sapsucker at my mother-in-law’s house, my first thought was “That looks like a downy, but it isn’t quite right, so it must not be.”

    I have tried for years to get that “landing on the feeder with wings and tail spread to show the color” shot. But the flicker doesn’t come to the feeder very often, and when he does, it’s hard to know when he is going to fly. (The mustache on his cheeks shows that this one is a male. But see the crescent-shaped mark on his chest? That’s a normal flicker marking, but we also have a local male in which that mark is shaped like a heart.) Anyway, this one was on the tree, and I was pretty sure he was going to fly to the front suet feeder, so I focused on that feeder, turned the camera to action mode, waited till I thought he was about to take off, and pressed the shutter. And I finally got lucky. I think the downy (and the downy’s shadow) add something to the photo as well, so I didn’t crop her out.

    The morning light was so bright I thought I might have a “perfect” shot, but it actually ended up dulling the flicker’s color a little instead of brightening it and being not totally in focus. From a distance on your lawn (which is where the flicker is usually seen, since it mostly eats ants), the flicker looks mostly brown. But look close and it’s actually a patchwork bird, with red on the back of its head, purplish gray on the top of its head, black and white spots on its breast, yellow under its wings and tail, a cottony white patch on its rump, and so forth. It makes me think of a bird made from quilting fabrics.

    In Phoenix we got the variety with red under its wings, formerly known as the red-shafted flicker but now just considered a different variety of the northern flicker. The red-shafted variety has a red mustache rather than black, and no red on the back of its head. Both are gorgeous birds, especially in flight when you can see the color of those wing and tail feathers.

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  11. Yesterday there was a bit of talk about the annoyance of being told a repairman would arrive within a certain window of time, but then him being late.

    Years ago, I worked for a company that had technicians who did carpet cleaning, & we would give the customers a window of time to expect them. Often, the technicians would be late.

    The thing is, there are unforeseen situations that come up that slow repairmen (or other technicians) down. In the carpet cleaning example, sometimes a customer would have scheduled to have a couple rooms of carpet cleaned but decide at the last minute to have more rooms cleaned. Or an appliance repairman could run into something that is more difficult & time-consuming to fix.

    So it’s always a good idea to kind of expect to be waiting longer than expected.

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  14. They should call to tell the customer that they would be late.
    They are good about that in this part of NC.
    Sometimes they even call to say they’re on the way.

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  15. I just made egg salad and tuna salad. I use celery seed in both and put some dill seed in the tuna salad. Dill seed is high in calcium and adds a nice mellow depth to the tuna salad in case anyone here might like to try it. Do you have any special seasonings you add to such foods?

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  16. Our technicians always call to say they are on the way, too. I usually call the day of the appointment to confirm I am on the schedule for the day in case there may have been a scheduling mix-up.

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  17. Miss Bosley has been busy sharpening her claws lately. She has the sharpest in the house. I told Art that we need Edward Scissor hands for her to have competition. 🙂 Even he would be slow to the draw with her.

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  19. Janice, good suggestions!

    When I make chocolate chip cookies, I use two or three times the amount of vanilla extract the recipe calls for.

    With mashed potatoes, I add either garlic or chicken boullion–something to add just a touch of extra flavor for those of us who don’t use gravy. And my husband likes to have sour cream in them, too.

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  20. Good morning. We’re taking down the final Christmas decorations — a little late….
    It’s chilly here and wet. Becca had a friend spend the night last night and they’re happily playing upstairs. Lindsey’s at the barn. I love Saturdays!

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  23. Many years ago, I got pregnant in the height of the harvesting season and couldn’t bear the smell in my garden. I figured carrots were fine to winter over and left them in the ground. The following spring, with baby in tow, I dug up a bushel of carrots!

    Yikes! Now what?

    I grated them and stuck carrots into everything–spaghetti sauce, Spanish rice and one day, tuna salad.

    Only once, though. 🙂

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  24. Janice – Morning is probably safer, before many problems have a chance to crop up. 🙂

    But the company I worked for insisted on scheduling the techs a certain way, so that the farthest house (we covered a lot of territory) was first, & then they made their way back toward the office. So that made it tricky when a far away customer preferred afternoon, or a nearby home wanted morning.

    Towards the end of my time there, I was the one doing the scheduling of the techs. (This was in the early 80s, before computers were ubiquitous.) It was challenging, but kind of fun, too. I had 3 x 5 cards with the info, & I had to divide them up by general location, & then turn them into routes for a number of techs. Sometimes I would go against the usual method, & have them working a route “backwards” (near to far, rather than far to near) because of customer requests.

    That was frowned upon.

    But at the end of my time there (I left for another job), I was told that the corporate office was pleased with my work. 🙂

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  25. I guess the key is to be the first person on the list for the first (a.m.) time frame. 🙂

    Cranberries in tuna are really good, they add a tang of sweetness. I’ve not made it myself, but have sampled it from the deli at Whole Foods.

    Sent an apology for being “testy” on the phone yesterday to a source (although she was very rude). Honestly, some folks just have such a prickly edge about them. Too much drama. But I feel better after sending the apology. I shouldn’t have reacted to her aggressive attitude.

    Wish I had time to scoot the dogs up to the snow, levels are exceptionally low today. But I have to visit Carol (who’s still in the hospital for the 2nd time for low potassium) — and I’m also hoping to do more cleaning out of the kitchen cupboards for a Salvation Army run if there’s time.

    Strange dream last night, I had a tiny orange kitten and Tess was playing (nicely) with him in the backyard. Looking on and laughing (and also in the yard, I was inside) were my mom and an aunt who also died many years ago, in the 1990s, years before I moved here.

    Ajisuun, when you speak of changes coming I assume you’re referring to the government leader’s recent declaration that Gambia is now going to be (formally) a “Muslim state” ?

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  28. Now there is a thought. I have a can of cranberry sauce, something Art likes. I wonder if I put some into my tuna salad if he would eat it. Maybe he would think it was Kim ‘ s Cranberry Stuff and gobble it up before he noticed the tuna aftertaste 🙂

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  31. Yesterday my husband and I ran a bunch of errands (mainly to replace a tea kettle, but we got a few groceries while we were out) and we went to the food court for lunch.

    I went to an Asian restaurant (not sure the name of it) and had noodles, mango chicken (which isn’t as good as homemade, but that’s OK), and bourbon chicken. And the bourbon chicken was just about the best thing I’ve ever eaten–extremely flavorable, like chicken marinated for a long time and then grilled. It really didn’t even taste (or look) like chicken anymore, it was so dark and smoky. I found this recipe online that is said to “taste like bourbon chicken in the food court,” so I guess someone else must have found the same wonderful taste and wanted to copy it. I gave my husband a bite at lunchtime. Not liking Asian food, he looked for the smallest piece, but then really liked it. (His first comment, after verifying it was chicken though it didn’t look like it, and tasting it, was how long it must have been marinated. Later he said it was really good, and nothing at all like Asian food.) I may well make this one, if I can get all the ingredients . . .

    http://www.spendwithpennies.com/crock-pot-bourbon-chicken/

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  36. Husband: I had to look up the ranking of refrigerators for my sister.
    Me: Please look up washers, Donna needs a new one. Michelle had a Maytag for nigh on thirty years but has been through three computer boards and two washers since.
    Husband: LG mw…….

    He knows all of you. LG is Korean made. It is what we have. We like it, though the model is not the top rated model.

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  38. Janice- How does your church work in regards to having interaction between seniors and juniors?

    Our current group only has 8 people, aged 3 – 74, so there is always a mixture of young and old. Other churches we’ve attended either had no Sunday school, or, in the case of the only one that did, had 7th graders move up to the adult class.

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  39. Michelle- You mentioned carrots in Spanish rice. I know of one person who uses grated carrots to give the rice its orange color, since saffron is so expensive.

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  40. Good point, Peter.

    My church mingles freely between ages probably because most members have been here so long, they’ve grown up together. A lot of folks my age bring their grandchildren and because their kids grew up in the church, when they visit, everyone knows them. We have our different Sunday school classes, but perhaps because so many folks are involved in VBS every year, everyone feels like they know everyone else.

    The church regularly worships 250 or so on Sundays, so we’re not really large. We actually prefer a church this size rather than more than 500. I, at least, know pretty much everyone’s name and after 15 years in the church, most of their backstories.

    My current Sunday school class has about a dozen people ranging in age from 30-75. Is that broad enough?

    Gentle rain all day today here. I’d love to totally cocoon and stay in all night, but we got free tickets to the symphony tonight, so we’ll have to go out. Busy reworking the biography. It’s been a good day; I’m fiddling with the 6 page introduction, now, which sets up the revamped book.

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  41. Michelle, I’m not positive we have bourbon; we have Jack Daniels, I think (is that bourbon?) because it’s used in some torte recipe my husband likes, and he got a bottle of something else he has never tried for Christmas. If neither of those is bourbon, then we don’t have any either, and I won”t buy it just to try it in a recipe. But if we have it, then I need to try the recipe.

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  42. Our church of about thirty five, keeps trying to come up with a plan for my children. Sunday School, Christmas play, etc. But, since we don’t send our children away from us, it has not been very successful. Early on, one of the men took my littlest one while I was involved with her brother, and set her down in Sunday School with some other children. I let her stay but spoke with him later that that was not a good idea, gave him a brief explanation, and he never tried it again. I was more vigilant, and so was he. They say the children are wonderful and not disruptive, they are delighted with how much they know, and yet they continue to try to isolate them. Why? Probably because they all are either teachers or former teachers or otherwise involved in public school and think it is best for children to learn separately. I disagree. On the other hand, the older folks love having the younger ones there.

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  43. Donna @12:56, there were always changes being made there. Sometimes they were changed back, sometimes before one even noticed the change was made. Rural villages don’t fluctuate so quickly as urban centres. It could make for an interesting life at times, but one got used to it.

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  44. Janice, there are practically only adults in the family church. Two children and one teen. The teen is treated like an adult, as we were at the same age, and the two children are given a lot of attention. Little Niece dislikes attention from unknown or lesser known adults and retreats to the safety of one of her relatives; Baby Niece, thus far, grins and crows at anyone who smiles at her. I’m teaching Little Niece now – she so obviously wanted to learn more than she was able to understand of the adult Sunday School lesson (which she was sitting through, in addition to the service). It is very simple, as she is just two. I’m using a lesson plan I learned from the mission agency to go through the Bible from start to finish showing how everything fits into the Gospel. She is able to listen to books that would be placed several years above her age level, so she is ready for it.

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  45. By the way, I just realized that daughter has never asked to go to Sunday School with children, or any of the other child related events, since that time.

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  46. LG, got it.

    Isn’t Jack Daniels whiskey? Or is that kind of the same thing?

    I’m joining Janice on the grand hospital tour, just saw Carol at yet another facility — this one right in the heart of Chinatown in downtown LA. Interesting place, they have “quiet time” from 2-4 p.m. (I got there just before 2 so couldn’t stay long as it’s technically a no-visitor period).

    “Boy, it sure is dark in here,” I said to one of the nurses leading me down the hallway to Carol’s room.

    When I left, I saw a sign that said they dim all the lights for quiet time. So I suppose I sounded like a true, brash Westerner. 🙂

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  48. I was inspired, I bought the fixings for cranberry tuna.

    Was going to get the dogs to the park but it started raining, so they just got a car ride to the store instead.

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  49. Oh, wow. Imagine if those dogs got wet in the rain. How soft their fur would be! One might even be tempted to let them in the house! That could almost be construed as a complaint about the rain, you know. I could not walk the dogs because it was raining. Hmmm.

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  52. They like car rides to the store.

    I usually come back to find Tess sitting up front where she doesn’t belong, in the passenger’s seat.

    Cowboy is good and stays in the cargo area.

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  56. Here, the dogs are on the back of the flatbed or in the back of the truck so they get plenty of fresh air and sunshine and rain and snow….Actually, I don’t see them there except in the summer and Fall. I don’t consider it safe so I don’t do it at all.

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  59. Mumsee @ 4:40- Good for you. Children need to learn to sit under the teaching of the pastor, so they might as well start young. I have never liked it when we would visit a church and all the children leave before the sermon for “Children’s Church” or whatever it is called.

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  65. The other night, Emily wanted Forrest to finish his beans at dinner, because he needs the protein, & he had liked them another time.

    A fit of inspiration came over me, & I said, very enthusiastically, “Forrest! Beans make you fart!”

    That excited him enough to eat some more beans. 🙂

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  67. I just had mac and cheese, collard greens, and carrot and raisin salad on a veggie plate and Art and I split a fried chicken breast from his plate. We have three corn bread muffins left to share. Good meal out after church. 🙂

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  79. I also forgot to say that I really don’t like the word “fart”. When he was younger, like around 2, those were called “toots”. But he learned the word “fart” eventually.

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