49 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-1-17”

  5. 😆 When I checked my mail this morning I discovered that I had missed an opportunity.
    I hand one last opportunity to contribute to Sen. Ted Cruz in October.
    And I missed it.
    I suspect I will have another opportunity in November.

    It’s All Saints Day and the anniversary of Luther’s attempt to start a discussion.
    What he did was start a reformation.
    You never know where things will go.

    I once taught a lesson on this. I read some of the thesis for discussion. There was lots of repetition, as you might imagine.

    What got Luther started was Tetzel selling indulgences. “When the coin goes into the pot, some soul is released from purgatory” (or some such, I don’t rightly remember now.)

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  6. Re: Kim’s question last night on “Why”.
    It seems that Muslims who are martyrs are assured of an eternity of enjoying pleasures they are denied in this life.
    Not a theory, just an observation on my part.

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  7. Continuing myh 7:08
    The Koran doesn’t promise any such eternal rewards. It promises that Allah has special gifts for martyrs, but doesn’t spell them out.
    Remember our discussion about truth being derived from authority figures in that culture.
    It’s the Mullahs who promise such rewards., not the Koran.

    And the real Koran is written in Arabic, so only a few know what it says.

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  8. Good morning from Atlanta. Anon gets around! Faster than a flying plane 🎃

    Kim, on the 10th the WMU group goes in the a.m. to a program at the Baptist Children’s home. We will be back mid-afternoon. Could we meet for an early dinner at either Mary Mac’s Tea Room or the Varsity? Both are Atlanta landmarks. They are near downtown so traffic could be an issue. Have you been to any places in Atlanta that you would like to revisit? Our other option is to do breakfast maybe at The Old Hickory House. Would any of this suit your schedule? I could skip going to the children’s home, but as the group leader I feel it best to be present.

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  9. The day I have longed for has arrived. A total blank on my calendar. Nothing I have to do. No errands I have to run. No where I need to be.

    I’m actually skipping Zumba so I don’t have to drive anywhere or see anyone. (It was dark when my husband got out of bed). I’m going to take a walk skirting some of the fire areas. I’ll stop at the library to pick up a book I reserved months ago. I’ll cook a real dinner.

    And I’ll try, really hard, not to think, wonder, worry, fret, about the needs standing around me like GIANTS.

    I’ll put away these boxes cluttering my office so I can actually walk in without needing to do a balancing act.

    I’ll sit down and write the four articles I owe people. That, folks, will be joy.

    And when I curl up in the blue chair with my Bible, I’ll read Psalms instead of Micah where I’ve been stuck, and sing some praises.

    I’ll never take a full day at home by myself for granted again.

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  12. Sounds like a good plan for the day, Michelle.

    No workers today, they’re not expected back until Friday which will be when the cement will be purchased, hauled over and poured (or at lest the start of that process is set for Friday-Saturday, I believe). I don’t think it will take long once it starts. The last part will be re-stuccoing the bottom of the house where they had to hack everything off to get to the foundation.

    Meanwhile, I’m going back and forth on the phone and in emails with a health care broker, I’ve decided to make a full switch to Medicare for 2018 as our work plans are going up in cost (again) and the out-of-pocket expenses for me last year were brutal, I don’t want to have to go through paying that again. He assures me those will be gone under a new PPO managed by Medicare. The monthly premium also will go down, so good all the way around. But there’s paperwork and a scramble ahead to get it all in place. I also have to get over to SS to sign up for Part B which I didn’t do last year (when I was first eligible) as I was just staying with the work plans (with all the house things going on a year ago — namely the bathroom demo and rebuild — I just had no time to “study” what the options were so I took the easiest route and stuck with the company plan).

    I really can’t get to the SS office until I have a day off which can’t happen until Nov. 13. (He suggested signing up for Part B in person rather than online to avoid any possible glitches.) I tried to call once for an appt with SS but the wait time on the phone was more than an hour — just make an appt. ??? Sheesh. He said it’s easier to show up 15 minutes before they open and plan on just waiting through the morning there to get called as a walk-in.

    This past year especially I’ve been so aware of how locked in my time is with the 40-hour job. It’s been noticeable I suppose because so many *other* things are simultaneously going on for me with this house and other personal business that need to be taken care of. That plus the shortage of staff which limits our being able to even take time off. I also lost a full week’s vacation a few months ago when the company took the 5th week per year away from some of us who have been there a long time and had earned up to that level. I can deal with 4 weeks vacation a year, it’s ‘enough,’ but I sure do miss that extra week that I could use to divvy up days for personal business.

    One of our younger reporters gave notice this week, she’s going to work for a friend in DC who has started his own PR firm for “niche” clients and she’ll be doing mostly feature writing which she loves. And she’ll be able to telecommute, staying on the west coast and working from home. Good move for her, she’s in her mid-20s, but another hole in the staff that we may or may not fill.

    Everyone’s still battling low morale which seems pervasive throughout the company these days.

    Just got to keep on keepin’ on.

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  16. We were tickled to have a couple of costumed children show up at our door yesterday. Every year I insist on getting something, although it has been years since we have had anyone. Sure enough, a young mother who is actually a relative and whose parents live across from us, showed up with her two children and her husband. It was a treat to see them. We don’t live that far apart, but don’t frequent the same places. I now stand vindicated about getting candy. 😀 Not that my husband would ever complain about that, since we usually get his favorite.

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  22. So, if that bird in the banner is on the kind of car in which I learned to drive, one could say it’s a falcon on a Falcon. But since that kind of car hasn’t been produced since the early 1970s, and that happened to be a Thunderbird, than we could say it’s a bird on a T-bird.

    I can’t think of any cars named for birds currently in production, but I don’t know all the kinds of cars any more. There were far fewer when I was young than now.

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  23. Cute dogs! I like that little white shaggy face.

    Editors plotting tonight’s game coverage, complete with possible mayhem & car fires in downtown LA should Dodgers win, of course. Some things are just that predictable.

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  24. Made my overdue annual eye appt for next Monday.

    Jeep also needs service; and more correspondence w/health care broker and HR this morning. I’m really trying to catch up on some of these things that have been weighing on me to get done.

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  27. DJ, hearing what happened, I don’t think the guy “acted like a jerk” at all. Talking to another player in the dugout (a private conversation), a Cuban who had spent time in Japan as a professional baseball player commented that he had a hard time hitting Japanese pitchers, and as he said it he did the thing with his fingers to his eyes that most of us have seen people do as children. He said he meant no offense, that he respects the Japanese people. In other words, much ado about nothing, and a five-game suspension (with financial ramifications) is way, way, way overkill for a camera happening to have caught someone’s private conversation. I haven’t actually seen footage, but I assume the gesture was shown on TV, which was silly. It’s showing it on TV that made it into an offense; up till that time, it was simply a private conversation. The cameraman may have happened to film it, but the fact that a stupid gesture in a private conversation happened to be filmed doesn’t suddenly make it a moment for a huge penalty and fan booing. If he had made the gesture on the field at the other guy, yes. Not under the circumstances as they are. If he had indicated “the short guy” by holding his hand at a certain height, would that be height-ism? I think we have gotten way too sensitive, that a five-game suspension for that is way overkill, and yes, that the fans are jerks for booing a person who has already been punished way more than fit a trivial offense.

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  28. Jumping in again to share a couple things. . .

    Yesterday, seeing The Boy in his Halloween costume, I could “hear” his Papa enthusiastically telling him how cool he looked in his superhero costume (cleverly made by Nightingale).

    This morning, Nightingale & I both felt sad, & shared some tears, over turning the calendar over to November. Hubby died October 2, so coming into a new month makes it feel like he is further in our past rather than having recently been with us. Does that make sense? I was kind of surprised, but touched, that Nightingale had the same feeling about that as I did.

    Sometimes I would touch the square for that day, & the pink teardrop I’d drawn on it. But we are in November now, “moving forward” whether we feel ready or not.

    The recent episode of This Is Us had a flashback to the birth of the first grandchild. The new grandmother talked about how for the rest of her life, every joyful moment will be tinged with some sadness that her husband is not here to share it. I would have been crying watching that anyway, but having felt that emotion already, I was even more so moved.

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  30. Oh that expression on that guy on the header….”You lookin’ at me”!!!! Ha!!
    It’s a gonna be tense in this house tonight…go Dodgers!! ⚾️
    I don’t believe there is anything private in the dugout…they know they are all on camera…oh the spittin and tuggin going on…he knew what he was doing and is suffering the consequences…hopefully he will learn that what he did was inappropriate at best. How would he feel if someone made fun of his “chicken hair”!! 🐔 😜

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  31. I did see the footage and it was pretty startling.

    That said, baseball game crowds are lively and very emotive, in general, especially in a World Series like this. Cheers, jeers and boos are par for the course. it’s all part of the atmosphere.

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  33. I loved how they panned back and forth between her meeting her own adopted baby for the first time and her grandchild (by that same adopted child) so many years later.

    Such a well-done show. Nice to see that TV can still pull a few excellent, quality programs out of its hat.

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  34. I will say both players responded graciously in the end, with the apology given and accepted without drama.

    But I think the Dodgers, for the m have taken the high road in this series and I’ve seen little evidence of any bad sportsmanship or misbehavior.

    The crowds are always rambunctious, it’s part of the whole experience, always has been. “Throw the bum out!” Nothing new there, it’s all part of the free-flowing, passionate appeal of the sport. At least there aren’t mass-crowd brawls breaking out in the stands like there are so regularly for soccer.

    Just a whole lot of enthusiasm

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  37. I am winding down from a big day at church with the WMU meeting and the wrapping and filling shoe box gifts for Operation Christmas Child. We did 18 and have a few more left to wrap.

    We plan to do gift bags or maybe wrapped shoe box gifts next month for the nursing home at the VA hospital. I am glad we are starting to do project focused meetings now instead of just a sit back and listen to a program. We will try to do a different project each month.

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  38. Kizzie, thanks for continuing to share about how things are affecting you such as the storyline of that program. I do relate to your sadness about The Boy losing his grandfather. My son had lost both grandfather’s by the time he was six months old. I had a permanent sadness about that.

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  39. Comment on Twitter: If I stay up and watch the rest of the game it’ll end 5-0 Astros & I’ll be tired tomorrow. If I go to bed for a good night’s sleep 19-18 Dodgers.

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  43. I didn’t see the whole game, but I think I saw every run, and I saw the bottom of the ninth, the conclusion. Two excellent teams and a good game. I expected tonight to be more of a fight, to be honest, but didn’t want to stay up until 2 a.m., so it’s just as well!

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  46. nancyjill, right? No energy.

    I left the office when it was 2-0 Astros, listened to part of the game in Spanish on the radio on the way home (leaving me mostly in a state of blissful ignorance) and was shocked — shocked — to hear it was 5-0 in the second inning by the time I got home.

    What??!! How the heck did that even happen?

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  47. I was pretty shocked, too, DJ. When the Dodgers were up 4-0 in game 5, I figured the game was likely just about over, but tonight with a 5-0 lead I kept thinking we’d have another high-scoring game, that the Astros would probably stay on top but it would be a close game. But when inning after inning left Dodgers on base, I finally decided well OK, just not LA’s night. My husband (a long-time Dodgers fan who was at a World Series game 3 40 years ago) went to bed with at least an inning and a half to go, figuring he wasn’t going to miss any action, and he really didn’t.

    I’m rooting for a Cubs/Astros match-up next year. I think that would be a great series.

    I wore my Cubs World Series hoodie today, figuring it was the last day they were the reigning champions.

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