respublica

Panic! We forgot Bear

Ferdie has a bear he loves more than anything. He has it near him all the time and bear is often an emotional barometer as to what Ferdie is feeling. Sad or happy or tired or lonely or needing some affection. Bear is everything to Ferd. Well, yesterday we left Bear behind in Collinsville when we went back to the seminary. Actually Ferdie took him into the backyard in the afternoon and we forgot to check there when packing up the car. I called Dale when I realized this and asked if he'd bring him in to keep safe til we could get Bear on Sunday.

And there he was, poor guy.

But last night was tough. At one point Ferdie went upstairs and I could hear him going room to room searching for Bear. He was panting very loudly, so desperate was he to find that bear. Then he came downstairs and went into every room looking to no avail. He ended up laying down in the living room and gave the biggest, saddest sigh I've ever heard from him.

Here is what he looks like on a normal day.

Super Bowl time

I hate to admit it, but this year's Super Bowl doesn't interest me all that much. Normally I have a rooting interest which makes it kind of fun, but not this time. I kind of wonder if this isn't true for many fans outside of Seattle or New England. If the story line for this year's game is mostly centered on deflated balls rather than the game itself, it tells me something. Seattle?  A foreign country to me.

Some are calling this the Disdain Bowl because so few have a rooting interest and and others give winning odds like this: Patriots by 11.5  heh

Also rooting for New England is hard. I still remember Tom Brady's first Super Bowl in 2002. He beat St. Louis' most loved Rams team under the leadership of Kurt Warner who'd won it all in 2000. But consider this-Tom Brady played and won his first Super Bowl back in 2002. It's now 13 years later and he's still playing in the Super Bowl.  This will be his 6th Super Bowl appearance, and his current record is 3 wins and 2 losses.

No other quarterback has been to 6 Super Bowls, John Elway with Denver went to 5. Only one other NFL player at any position has been in 6 Super Bowls. The other guy with 6 appearances is Mike Lodish-defensive tackle-who played in 4 Super Bowls with Buffalo and 2 with Denver.

 

And the temperature is

Our laptop has the current temperature at the top right corner of the desktop and this morning it reads like this:

40°-36°

What does this mean exactly? 40 degrees minus 36 degrees.

This is great

23 adult truths click to enlarge

Today number ten speaks to me. "Bad decisions make good stories."  We came over to Collinsville yesterday and spent the night because Dale is officiating at a funeral for a wonderful man. He realized this morning that he'd left his graveside liturgy book back at the sem. So I volunteered to go over there at 6:30 to get it. When I got to the sem house I found I'd left the house keys back in Collinsville so I went hunting for someone in the security office who could let me use the general master for 5 minutes. When I got into the house I went straight for the book Dale needed but made the mistake of seeing he'd emailed me his Meyer Minute so I could get it sent out. I put the book down on the desk next to the computer, sent the Meyer Minute, got up and saw the newspaper outside so went and tossed that in the car and left. I got all the way back to Collinsville before I noticed I'd left the book back on the desk at the sem. Ugh. 

Local pastors are really great friends to other pastors in need and through the good graces of Pastor Walther at Good Shepherd who agreed to lend his book, Dale is finally all set. 

The world has turned upside down

As we were walking our dogs this morning Sharalyn and I talked about how it seems as though the world has been turned inside out, shook hard and every bad thing in Pandora's Box fell out. Every day another crazy, scary, unexpected thing happens home and abroad.

Oh look, a pile of dolls

I've been spending January going through boxes and bags and closets and shelves looking to eliminate many of the things we've held onto for years but haven't even given them a thought during that time. On Tuesday I came across these:

Cabbage Patch Kids which at one time were played with by our daughters. These go way back, at least it feels that way to me. Neither daughter has much interest in having any of them since they are now living with boys, but interestingly they both remember things about the dolls. Lizzie said she can still remember the smell, Katie loved the red dress. But if they don't want even one as a memory of childhood, the Kids are heading for re-sell-it.

My next effort will be to thin out the scores of t-shirts and polo shirts with writing on them. Writing which tells of vacation spots, sporting events, church anniversaries, colleges and on and on. Most belong to Dale who has them folded and stacked in both houses on tables, in boxes, on floors because there is not enough closet or dresser space to hold even a portion of them. But but but...they have meaning and sentiment! We have to bite the bullet and thin them out.

 

Suits and more suits

A couple of weeks ago Dale knew it was time to get a new suit..or suits..so we went over to the Joseph A Bank store in the Galleria and with guidance from the store manager/salesman he ended up choosing 4 suits. Now this may seem like overdoing things, but he wears suits a lot so it helps the wear and tear. However, at Jos A Bank, this particular week had a deal whereby you buy one suit get 3 free.

HAHAHAHAHa. You've seen the commercials. It is true, this does happen although the first suit is fairly pricey. Dale asked the manager how they managed to stay in business and the man kind of smiled and said quietly, "you'd be surprised at the markup on these things."

Today I'm heading back over there to pick up his suits since they had to be altered. I just hope I'll be able to wrestle 4 suits out to the car. But I'm glad he finally got this done, it was needed.

Sorry newspaper websites

I have to give you up, you've become impossible to read what with all the ads suddenly covering up stories, flashing words, sudden sounds from videos I never clicked on. I realize ads keep newspapers in business but really, someone needs to find a way to ad them to news sites without having them just overrun the story being read.

I just tried the Chicago Tribune site looking to see if they had any Super Bowl food stories. It was an impossible task. The one story I wanted to read was the Great Italian Beef hunt and I never could get it to stay still long enough to read. I won't be back.

The Trib is not alone, most newspapers and local tv news sites are the same. A total mess and not at all user friendly. And, local tv news reporters...Don't tell us to read more about your story at your website unless the story is actually on the website.

We went to the movies and we couldn't believe what we saw

Haha. Just had to use that kind of post title as a nod to all those crazy Facebook posts. But it's true we were taken aback and I guess it's because we just never go to movies. First off we encountered the computer ticket paying machine out front of the theater. This was new to us and although we are very computer competent, navigating through that series of questions was a pain and had us starting over several times. But we made it. Dale asked one of the employees in the lobby if there wasn't a way to just come in and pay cash somewhere. She said yes and pointed vaguely at a counter where nothing was happening. Also surprising-the cost for both of us was 9.32. Much less than we had imagined.

However the most shocking thing to us was our first look at the actual theater portion. We walked in and were looking at a sea of huge red comfortable looking seats with about 4 feet of leg space between each row. I mean, these seats were huge and cushy. The last movie we went to had the traditional seats where you pushed the seat portion down and then sat upright for a couple of hours. These seats we discovered, were actual recliners!

Wowser! Are all movie theaters like this now? This was comfort beyond measure. Innocents abroad in 2015 movie theaters. That was us.

We saw American Sniper and it was a strong film, a war movie to be sure with lots of shooting and things exploding. But the last ten minutes took our breath away and kept everyone in the theater in their seats when the credits began scrolling. No one moved for some time. Very powerful. There are no good words to explain the emotion.

Creating an artificial coral reef system

This is amazing. Old New York subway cars are taken out to sea and dumped overboard. First reactions to this process are almost always along the line of, this is terrible for the environment. But those reactions are wrong.

"Over time, every surface will be covered in life, creating an artificial coral reef system. Every metal pipe, edge, ridge, and corner provides surface area for coral ecosystem. The process of creating artificial reefs has been a great help to restoring areas damaged by human activity."

Here is what one old subway car looks like after ten years on the ocean floor.

Beautful. The entire process from the shipping out to sea to the end result accompanied by photos is at the link. Very easy to read and quite remarkable. Who knew?