59 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-6-19”

  2. As Peter said last night, it’s all about the timing. 🙂

    And speaking of timing…..

    2 comments before Peter’s comment, Janice posted our 197,000th comment. 🙂

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  3. Pretty flower.
    That’s a close-up?
    Good morning everyone but Jo.
    Good night Jo.
    I think I’ve mentioned this before. But somebody on Fox & Friends has to be uncomfortable.
    The women are wearing sleeveless blouses and the men are wearing heavy coats and ties.
    But the women look better than the men.

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  6. Morning! I slept in and husband tells me I missed a glorious sunrise…I’ll try to catch it tomorrow.
    Last night was Bible study and I could not stop yawning. I had been up since 3:33am and didn’t feel tired until I sat down in that chair in our leader’s home…hoping they didn’t notice. 😴
    We should see some snow melt today…a high of 46 which will be a welcome change from the below 0 windchills we’ve been experiencing.
    And I love seeing the blossoms on the Birthday Tree!! There is hope for Spring!!

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  9. Good morning!
    197,000th comment? Now that is special. I think I was the very first person to comment on the blog, too, after AJ got it going.
    That photo is of the Birthday Tree before the cold hit. I have not been out to see how it looks today. I took the photo from the driveway and zoomed in a bit to get a closer shot. The blossoms which receive the most sunlight were blooming, but the buds in more shaded parts were not yet blooming. I hope some of those will open for Art’s birthday on Tues. Our son is suppose to be home for Spring break then.

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  11. Janice I had a cup of coffee right before we headed into town. A half hour drive into the Springs feeling fine. Then I sat down and as we were reading through the word I was fine. Then our leader started talking which is more like sitting through a lecture….my mind just could not handle it. I had a cup of water and kept trying to sip it to keep me awake…it worked but oh that yawing sensation was excruciating 😖

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  13. If this were Rants & Raves…

    🙂 I’ve been enjoying the Jeopardy! All-Stars team tournament the past two weeks.

    🙂 I’ve been surprised (and a bit smug, I’m afraid) at knowing the right answer in Final Jeopardy when none of the outstanding players on the show didn’t know it. That happened more than once.

    😦 😦 😦 I turned it on last night to watch the final game for the championship and discovered that our local station pre-empted it to show the Detroit mayor’s State of the City address. How dare they! (Do other big city mayors have an annual State of the City address?)

    🙂 The station announced that they would show last night’s final tournament game tonight.

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  16. 😦 Pre-empting a show you want to watch. Ugh!!!!

    🙂 We finally got a guy into to check out the bathroom that is going to be redone after 40 years!!!! We first contacted this business in August and again in September. We were told by another plumber it would be Feb. or March before he could possibly do it. Young people who like physical labor–go into plumbing! Ironically, our grandson did some of this work, but the Marines have him now.

    Proceed as usual on the Daily Thread after this short stop at Rants and Raves.

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  17. Chas,

    Here are some numbers.

    As of this comment……

    Total page views in our time here- 1,894,314

    Total comments- 97,0025

    SPAM comments- 42,816- mostly inappropriate and all deleted. 🙂

    Total visitors- 33,009 from 116 different countries (some are just spammers)

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  18. NancyJill – It’s too bad your Bible study leader lectures. When I led a ladies’ Bible study years ago, our church’s view was that the leader should be more of a facilitator, drawing out discussion from the others.

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  19. AJ – I would imagine that a lot of those views could be from people googling a subject and something on the blog coming up in the search.

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  20. We had an electrical storm last evening with thunder — most of it was just north of me (Carol was in the middle of it) but we heard some cracks of thunder. Rainy day for us today, boot weather. Loving it 🙂 Honestly, I’d probably be happy as a clam on the beach in Seattle. Unlike Kim, I’m dreading the inevitable heat of summer.

    The recall work was done on the Jeep yesterday so it’s all up to date. They also did some kind of “17-point” service check and everything got a green check mark. 🙂 And my desk at work is almost completely clear. Friday’s our last day there.

    Dilemma: Carol wants me to take her out later this month when she gets paid to a “couple” stores and I’m trying to figure out a way to tell her I’m afraid those days of jaunting around town may be over. I did tell her I thought the outing would be very difficult, and perhaps she could order what she needs online again, but that we’d talk about it later. She’s had major mobility issues for about a year now in just getting in and out of my car, it’s become quite the ordeal, and the last time we tried it, in January, she wasn’t able to get in at all, she couldn’t lift her leg even the couple inches that was needed to swing it in. I think the same thing would happen again.

    Then there’s the uncontrolled (and now very frequent — she also has to be on heavy-duty diuretics) incontinence, something that’s become especially acute since her back-to-back hospital stays in the fall. Her body just seems to have lost the ability to control any of those functions now. She wears protection but that often doesn’t prevent more visible & outward accidents, she said. She said she’ll bring a blanket to put on my car seat but I told her I wasn’t real comfortable with that as a ‘solution.’ It’s all very frustrating for her, I know, and she just seems not to realize how her condition as so rapidly changed in about 6 months. And I need to find a way to deal with this and address it with her. She honestly doesn’t seem to realize the social impact of much of it and how it might prevent her from going to restaurants, even church for anything like a regular service time.

    Meanwhile, I really must call my tax guy, March is marching along at a pretty good clip here.

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  21. Oh, a new bathroom? 🙂 I still love mine. And just one more corner of the office/den space at home to address and we’re home free there, too. I am still trying to figure our things to hang and what to do with some built-in shelf space (one shelf is too high to be very useful, unfortunately — I used it mostly for office type storage before, boxes of file folders, printer paper, etc.)

    I’m using a primitive/wood, standing hat/coat rack — purchased for I think $5 at the Christian bookstore’s close-out sale some years ago — to hold my work bags which works out great, actually; it’s tucked away in the wedge space near the angled file cabinet so is out of the way but still easy to reach.

    The rack wound up outside in my patio and even the backyard during some of the house chaos but seems to have survived ok as it’s nothing fancy or delicate. It was used for display items (bags? can’t remember) in the store. And for me now, it’s functional and kind of a sweet memory of the store where I bought so many of my Christian books and supplies in the early days. Amazon was the store’s eventual demise and I was one of the guilty parties — I’d go to the store mostly just to browse or kill time on a boring Saturday afternoon or night. But if I saw a book I might actually be interested in purchasing (mostly I just looked), I’d go to Amazon to order it as I knew it would be cheaper. 😦

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  22. Kevin- I enjoyed it too. And that double negative? Well…, don’t never not do that again.

    Did you do the Fantasy sweepstakes they had? Two of my players were Matt and Larissa. That means I have 90+ entries in their drawing for a trip to some exotic location I’d never be able to go to.

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  23. Thanks Aj. I know that is a lot of work for you.
    all of that stuff has to be managed.
    A lot of the viewers are people like me, just checking in.
    And some of them are regular lurkers. Just looking.
    e.g. I told Sawgunner about the site, but I’ve never seen him here.
    I have told several people about the site, but never seen them here.
    But you don’t realize that we may have witnessed to someone who needs it.

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  25. I had good timing last night, got the dogs walked just before the storm let loose.

    I love all this natural watering of my plants, I take the hanging plants down from the porch to set them on the front steps so they can drink it up. Looks like rain off and on for us again for the week to come. 🙂 🙂 🙂

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  26. We are sunny again today. Cold and sunny.

    I may get to put the address labels on the load of postcards we send out to remind people that the tax deadline is fast approaching. I can do that from home easily enough. And it does not require excellent eyesight or a magnifying glass along with readers.

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  27. Speaking of boots, which DJ was, I noticed this morning that twelve year old has taken most of the grommets out of one of his snow boots. I wondered why he liked walking around with snow completely filling his boots. I still wonder. He said it took some work to do. He used the fencing in the dog run to get them out. I have suggested to husband that he not buy the boy boots, other than rain boots Hard on the arches but nothing to take apart and they don’t fill up with snow as much. Or sandals. Or flip flops.

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  28. NJ, I am glad the team for which you pulling won. (Note that I’m being very careful about my grammar here.) I don’t really have a favorite among the final three teams. All of them have players I like. My favorite team was probably Austin’s, mostly because of Austin, and they were eliminated last week.

    Peter, I did create a fantasy team, but I don’t remember who’s on it, and I can’t go look it up today or I’ll probably find out prematurely who won last night. When I checked last week I found one of the players had been on Julia’s team, which was eliminated in the first round, so I don’t expect I’ll have a lot of entries.

    Who here knows (without looking it up) the correct response to this Final Jeopardy clue? Before 2016, the last year in which the person elected president had never before held public office.

    I was surprised none of the contestants got that one.

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  38. I have been listening to Mandissa and washing dishes. Upbeat music helps me to wash at a fast pace.

    Earlier I heard from my friend, Karen, who was not feeling well. I ended up praying with her, and this time I was praying for other things in addition to her needs. I thought maybe I had prayed her to sleep. No. She was just happy to listen. I told her how my long prayers just about put Wesley to sleep. Thinking of that, Kizzie, is it possible for The Boy to overhear your praying?

    Another long time friend has asked me to do a Bible study leading up to Easter that uses one of Max Lucado’s books. I got a download of two sample chapters. I use to read his books and liked them, but since I have been doing the online Bible study which uses only the Bible, it’s like that is all I want to use now. But I feel badly not doing the short study with this friend. Thoughts, anyone?

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  43. I did get out during “woodpecker hour” this morning–and saw five species (all of the ones I’ve seen on those trails, every Indiana species but red-header woodpeckers and yellow-bellied sapsuckers).

    And we have our new dishwasher in! The electrical work hasn’t been done yet, but we got a good price quote and he should be able to start next week.

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  45. It is downright Springlike here today! Lots of melting snow and I got in two walks today. First one with Lulah down to the park…not one person had trudge around that trail so we packed it down a bit for others. The second one I took with my neighbor…so lovely to be out and about in the fresh air.
    That is a beautiful blossom up there….
    I just saw a video posted of Alex Trebeck telling of his diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. So very sad…he says he is going to fight it….because he has a 3 year contract with Jeopardy…it’s good to keep one’s sense of humor…

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  47. Young friend found out she is only stage 3 with Hodgkins. She went in for first chemo today. How sad life can be. And yet, how joyous. Young eleven year old daughter, the milk maid, safely midwifed two new kids a few minutes ago.

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  48. The correct answer was 1952. Before Trump, Eisenhower was the last president elected who had never served in elected office. One of the contestants said 1956, which was the right president but the wrong election. In 1956 he had already served as president for four years.

    Every president elected between Eisenhower and Trump had been in an elected office before, four senators, four governors, and one representative.

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  52. Kevin – I guessed Eisenhower, but I forgot to guess the year.

    Janice – I don’t know if he has heard me praying, but he often sees me reading my Bible in the morning.

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  53. Long day, on the way home from work I stopped off at little gathering to bid farewell to a dog park couple who are going to live in Italy. He’s a diplomat who works there frequently (they’re both devout / conservative Roman Catholics as well). They also have Irish citizenship as well as U.S. They showed us pics of the rustic house they’ll be living in, so beautiful. Their dog, Angel, an Irish setter, will go as well, of course.

    It made for a long day but I’m glad I went.

    It’s kind of surreal to realize we’ll be in our office for only 2 more days. Most everything is packed, my car has several bags of personal things (clips, old datebooks, mementos, coffee mugs & dishes for lunches brought from home, random things like aspirin 🙂 and other items I kept in drawers) that I need to get into the garage in the morning. Just one more bag to haul out of the office tomorrow and I’m done. Since we have so little space, they stressed that only the bare necessities can go in the “official” moving box so mine is very sparely packed per instructions.

    While the one new office will be ready on Monday, the office I’m going to won’t be ready until a week from Monday so I’ll have a week in limbo, will probably work most of it from home and go into the transition office maybe as well.

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  54. DJ, so sorry you are going through all that! It sounds a bit surreal. I was talking to my next-older brother last night, and he was talking about having a paper route from the age of 11, and then he took a second when he was 13–the days when boys could do that are long gone, and so are the days when a good percentage of people took the paper. (I’ve never subscribed, except for a few weeks here and there when moving to a new town, because I don’t trust myself to keep up with throwing it out. But I enjoy reading it when I get a chance.)

    It looks like a dog park will be going in near me soon. I don’t have my own dog anymore, so would people think me weird if I went in there sometimes to get my dog fix? I can’t realistically have a dog now, and likely not ever again, but I would like to socialize with them sometimes.

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  56. And thanks for the empathy, a lot of folks in our area used to be paper boys and paper girls for our publications when they were growing up, I run into them all the time. “Oh, I used to deliver the paper” …

    Since realizing that revenue from digital ads won’t match what print used to bring in (thank you, Facebook and Google), which was the industry’s hope for many years, we’ve put up a modest pay wall ($10 a month for complete digital access) but people are complaining about having to “pay” for the content (when they always used to have to pay for the paper, right? How soon everyone forgets and thinks it all should come for free).

    This is my third move so it’s beginning to feel like the new normal, sadly. A former colleague who now writes for the Tennessean also posted this week about their printing operation being “outsourced” and the old headquarters being torn down.

    We already outsource some of our ad department functions to (of course) India.

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  57. another poignant change — local newspapers used to be physically located in their communities and downtowns, the door was always open to interact with the editor(s) and reporters for the most part. My old paper had all kinds of folks coming through — the woman from the historic society once came in wearing her bedroom slippers, obviously feeling very comfortable, a local pentecostal minister would stop in faithfully every week, wearing a suit and tie, to personally use our Xerox machine to copy his sermon topic which he’d then hand to the editor with a big smile. “Tiger,” the beloved announcer for all the high school football games, was a regular who’d wander in to hang out and chat. Police officers, politicians and longshoremen would all wander through to talk with a reporter about something. It was an open door.

    These new office spaces will have (by design) no public access. If people want to see someone or even pick up a back issue they have to make a formal appointment.

    I realize the world has changed and there are safety concerns today that didn’t exist just 10-20 years ago. But I find it sad that local journalists are becoming more and more isolated from the communities and people they cover.

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  58. Except in this town, where the door is still open. People bring in their personal writeups and they get added to the local paper. The more the merrier. The photographer is at all the games.

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  59. Those were the days … Sigh.

    Among things we unearthed yesterday were some old Herald-Examiner front pages, I think a reader once brought them in as he’d found them in his garage and figured we might want them. I posted photos of them on FB and one of our former employees who now lives in Washington State saw them and asked if I could set them aside for her as her dad worked for the Herald (long since closed) for many years. She had a friend pick them up yesterday in our lobby.

    She sent me a PM later saying she’d be in town in June and would “stop in” to see me at our new office. But I immediately thought, will she have to make an appointment? Hmmm. So strange.

    Local newspapers — or media outlets as we’re now called — should ideally be in and part of the community they cover.

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