Category Archives: holidays

America, holidays, miscellaneous

Lunch on Memorial Day

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Proud to have had a dad who served his country in a war.

I just got home from going to the nearby assisted living facility where my mother-in-law now lives. With the wife out of town, I’d be the only visitor she would have. They had a Memorial Day “picnic”: inside the dining room, but with picnic fare of either hot dogs or hamburger, baked beans, potato salad, past salad, Fritos, and simple desserts. A tasty meal and I felt satisfied when done.

The company at the table was the best part, however. Across from my mother-in-law was Harriet. I didn’t catch her last name. I asked her where she was from, and where she’d lived, and she replied “all over the world.” She and her husband were farmers, but took assignments on the mission field for the Reformed Church of America. He did maintenance work at mission stations. When I mentioned we had a couple in our church who did the same thing in Papua New Guinea, she said they also had been in PNG.

Across from me, and arriving late, was a woman who introduced herself as Rosemary Mondale. A hundred years old, but looking much younger, I asked if she was related to the former vice president. She said her husband was Walter Mondale’s brother. She then told us about the inauguration in 1977, how they were on the platform with the Supreme Court justices. I didn’t ask Rosemary which of Mondale’s three brothers she was married to, but I suspect it was Lester Mondale. I’ll ask her if I see her on my next trip there.

To my right, arriving a little later, was Rich, wearing his Vietnam Veteran hat. After thanking him for his service, we had a good conversation about his time in Vietnam and his life. He said he was glad he went. He was one of the early USA personnel in Vietnam. He said he was in Saigon on a three-day pass when the overthrow of Diem happened. That event was November 1, 1963. Rich and his companions barely made it to the hotel in downtown Saigon being used for military staging. A 50 mm shell came through the wall near where he was. Otherwise, they were safe, and from there made it back to base with no problem.

I told Rich my dad’s story of service in WW2. This was a point of connection between us. When we first introduced and I noted his Vietnam service, he asked me if I was in the military, Vietnam era. I told him how I was just a little too young to have served.

I was back home about two hours after I’d left, adequately fed (but not overfed), and feeling blessed to have eaten with these three interesting people—and with my mother-in-law, of course.

holidays, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

It’s A Holiday

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For years I’ve struggled with establishing a good, sustainable schedule for posts on this blog. I tried five times a week, four times a week, three times a week. Somehow the time to write never materialized. I even backed off to just once a week, and still I found it difficult to blog on schedule. Sometimes I had extra ideas I wanted to blog about; sometimes I couldn’t think of anything on my regular weekly blogging day.

But over the last couple of months I’ve been able to be on a fairly regular schedule. I post on Monday and Friday. For several weeks now I’ve done this and been quite regular at it. In truth, I write my Monday blog post sometime on the weekend and schedule it to publish on Monday morning. Then I have four weekdays in which to write my Friday blog post, and schedule it to be published.

This has been working out fairly well for me. Post ideas have been coming to me with no problem. Time to write has been available. And I’ve found it a enjoyable thing to do, not a drudgery.

So here I am on Monday morning (for real; this wasn’t written earlier), writing a blog post. It’s the Labor Day holiday, and I’m home from work. The household is quite, as neither my wife or mother-in-law are up yet. I have no great topic to write on. My last post on Patriotism vs. Nationalism is still a somewhat incomplete treating of the topic, but I’m not adding to that today. Perhaps on Friday, or even next week. That topic isn’t going away.

So this is just an “hello” to my readers. I’m going to post this, take my coffee back upstairs, leaving The Dungeon empty, go to the sun porch on this cool-ish September morning, and read for an hour or so. My breakfast casserole from Saturday have more than three servings left, and will make a fine breakfast, along with some fruit, around 9:00 a.m. Later, after a few relatively light outside chores, I’ll be back in The Dungeon to work on some writing, most likely my novel Preserve The Revelation.  I’ll do some stock work. I’ll perhaps write a letter—or two.

Yes, this will be a most relaxing holiday, but not without it’s accomplishments. Enjoy it, readers. See you on Friday.

holidays, Writing

Holiday Writing Schedule

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I have much neglected my blogs of late, both this one and An Arrow Through the Air. I’m now working on holiday schedule, and have for most of the last week as we made a major clean-up of the house prior to the arrival yesterday of our daughter and son-in-law with our two grandsons, and my mother-in-law today. We will watch the kids today through Wednesday as their parents are off to Eureka Springs, Arkansas (an hour, more or less, east of us) for some needed R&R provided by their church. We are hoping three aging adults are more than a match for a 3 1/2 year old and an 8 month old who has discovered crawling and pulling up.

So writing efforts will be curtailed. I’ve learned that I need chunks of time measured in hours to effectively write. Fifteen to thirty minutes at a time just doesn’t cut it. But I can effectively read in those shorter times. So I think my main “writing” tasks will primarily  be reading between now and Christmas. I say primarily because I do have a little writing to do. Here’s my plan.

  • Write the two articles for Buildipedia.com that I’m under contract for. These are the two prototypes of a regular column on construction administration. This will be fairly easy, I think, because it’s within my area of professional expertise. They are only 500-600 words each. The first one, due Nov. 28, is about 2/3 written.
  • Be more regular at posting to my blogs. ‘Nuff said.
  • Read In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. This will be for: consistency of plot, typos, adding physical descriptions of characters as I think needed, and better anchoring the action in time. I also have some more coordination of Ronny Thompson’s pitching record relative to a season.
  • Read Doctor Luke’s Assistant in preparation for e-self-publishing it in early 2012. I’ve gone through about a third of it already.
  • Finish reading the writing help book I’m working through at the moment, on creating memorable characters. I’m less than 1/4 of the way through it right now.

I suppose I could squeeze a few other minor things in there. Of course I’ll be attending BNC Writers tonight, and possibly on Dec 5. If time allows, I’m almost done with an article for Decoded Science, a content site I’ve been approved for. I continue to spend 15-20 minutes every weekday morning at work adding to the passage notes of A Harmony of the Gospel, something I can do in small chunks of time. And I intend to continue to monitor several writing blogs.

So I’ll stay busy, but none of these will be hard and fast things I’ve just gotta do. As time allows, I’ll do them. If it doesn’t allow, no loss.

holidays, Writing

‘Tis the season…not to write

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Last night I put up the border wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. As it turned out we didn’t have enough. We had two 15 foot long packages, but with all the twists and turns, boxing out for shower and closet, we lacked about 8-9 feet. Oh well, it’s a stock item at Wal-Mart. Lynda should be able to get some more.

Also last night we finished putting up our second Christmas tree, this one in the walk-out basement family room. This is the old artificial tree we replaced back in 2000 or thereabouts, and tried to sell at umpteen garage sales but it never would sell. Given the size of our house, and the fact that we’ll probably hang out in the family room some while all the kids are all here. Unlike the tree upstairs, this one is not decorated with single color lights and thematic ornaments of two complementary colors. It has multi-colored lights and a hodge-podge of ornaments collected over the years. My kind of tree, bringing back memories of childhood.

To our normal Christmas decorations (which admittedly were a little sparse for our space) we added lights on the balcony, pre-lit garland along the fireplace and stairway upper walls, and the Christmas village on top of the buffet. It’s beginning to look like Christmas at the Todd house.

We are decorating early due to having the family in for Thanksgiving, but not for Christmas. So we’ll have the house decorated and do a low-key gift exchange, mainly for Ephraim. Ezra will also be there, but safely berthed in his mother’s amniotic fluid. His grand entrance will be in March.

So for a few weeks I’m not going to do much writing. I have a proposal to Buildipedia.com for five articles, but only one or two will be due before Christmas. I will try to keep up with this blog, posting twice or three times a week. I have a series of political articles I’m thinking of writing for The Senescent Man blog, though we shall see how the time goes. As far as new creative writing goes, I’m not anticipating any. Oh, if time allows and inspiration rises, I might do a couple of articles for Suite101.com. But otherwise, I’m not going to add writing to the stress of the holidays. It seems we have more parties and functions to go to than normal this year. Writing can mostly wait.

Buildipedia, holidays, reading, Suite 101

Working Hard at Doing Nothing

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I should go back and review the post I wrote on Friday, about looking forward to a holiday that was both productive and restful. I wonder exactly what I put down for the productive part. Whatever it was, I’m sure I didn’t accomplish it.

On Friday afternoon neighbors offered us their spare tickets to the Saturday afternoon Northwest Arkansas Naturals game. They are the AA farm club of the Kansas City Royals. The stadium is only 30 miles from our house, but we haven’t gone to a game in the few years they’ve been in the area. Part of that is busyness; part is hoarding of restricted recreational dollars; part is simply I’ve fallen out of love with baseball. That was the game of my early youth, till I played and became a fan of football. Then baseball progressively fell out of my favor as football’s star rose. The 1993-94 major league strike ended baseball for me, though I was just looking for an excuse. The later NFL strike didn’t impact my love of that game.

Don’t get me wrong; baseball is a great game. It’s just that football is a much better game for me, and so it gets my limited sports watching hours. But we decided that the diversion would be good, so we went. We had four tickets but had trouble finding anyone to go with us. Finally found one person. We both enjoyed the game. Fortunately our seats were just in the shade the whole game and we didn’t have to fight the sun. The Naturals lost to the Tulsa Drillers, mainly because of a stupid handling between the pitcher and first baseman of a foul ball. It would have ended the first inning. Instead the Drillers went on to score three unearned runs, and eventually won the game 5-2.

The rest of the weekend was marred by minor physical ailments. Last week I was fighting a mild summer cold. I thought it was pretty much over Friday night, but it came back Sunday. Spent most of that day and Monday just resting to try to knock it out. Also on Monday my rheumatoid arthritis flared up. Well, some of it may be osteo as well, in my wrists. Monday morning it was all I could do to crawl out of bed to my reading chair in the living room or to the sun porch. The only physical exercise I got was a ten minute walk down and up the hill and around the block Monday evening. However, by the end of the day I felt pretty good. Cold symptoms gone; rheumatoid gone; osteo better; energy level up.

I finished The Adams Chronicles on Monday and wrote my book review about it. Also on Sunday-Monday I wrote my next article on contract administration for buildipedia.com and sent it off. And I did research for and started writing my next stock trading article for suite101.com. I checked my reading pile for what I’m supposed to read next and decided I didn’t want to read that right now. Rather than re-shuffle the pile, and not feeling like tackling the magazines and newsletters that are piling up again, I decided to try reading Athanasius’ The Incarnation of the Word of God—in English of course. I got through a couple of chapters of it and kind of understand it. I’ll have to finish it when my powers of concentration are at their greatest and distractions at their least; and not necessarily in consecutive sittings.

Tonight I hope to finish and post that Suite 101 article, and maybe get through a couple of mags and/or newsletters. And I’ll take another look at my reading pile and see what looks good next.

Buildipedia, holidays, Suite 101, Writing

A Long and Busy Weekend Lies Ahead

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Well, the boss just sent out an e-mail: Anyone not pushing a tight deadline may leave at 3:30 PM. I may just do that, if not quite at 3:30 then at least somewhat early. The pick-up needs an oil change, so I may go and do that.

We have Monday off for Independence Day, so it’s a three day weekend. But I enter it feeling as if I have a to-do list a mile long. Of things to do at the house, that is. At work I’m in the middle of–shall I say bogged down in–the next flood study, with it going much slower than I would like. But at home I have a ton of things to do. Here’s a few of the major tasks.

  • Finish writing and studying for the Life Group lesson I’ll teach on Sunday. The series is called “Sacred Moments”, and we are on lesson five this week. I’ve done the basic research, but each week I prepare a class handout. That’s only half done. Then I have to do some more studying. I should read at least two more chapters in my reference book and have separate teacher’s notes.
  • Write my assigned article for Buildipedia.com. It’s not due until July 14, but I’ll be driving east on that day, and I want to beat editor expectations. It’s to be 500 to 1000 words, though I think I’ll need about 1200-1300 to do the subject justice. The editor said that would be fine. Most of my research is done; it’s a question of pulling the final information together and write it.
  • Pick blackberries. I went last Saturday and picked 3 quarts. I’d like to get that many again today. The patch is huge, and I don’t think too many people know about it. If I can get 3 or 4 quarts between tomorrow and Monday, I’ll consider it a good year.
  • Finish cleaning the interior of the pick-up. I started that two weeks ago, and should be able to finish with another hour of work.
  • Take down a “leaner” from the back of my lot, before it falls where I don’t want it to and it takes two other trees with it. In North Carolina they called these “widow-makers”, so I’ll be careful. It’s cut about 1/2 way through, and I think I should be able to finish it this weekend.
  • Filing and clean-up. Always have this kind of work.
  • Adding an article to Suite101.com would be nice as well.

I think that’s enough. I’m sweating just thinking about it all. I’ll get in some good relaxation too. The weather should be nice, so maybe I’ll get a couple of long walks in as well. And maybe post here.

Health, holidays

Under the Weather

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Well, I had great plans to make several posts to this blog over the last few days, but I have been knocked down with a winter cold. A strange cold. Normally they begin with my sinuses, and I can feel them coming on a day or two before sinus drainage really hits. Then they progress to full sinus drainage then to a chest cold that seems to linger forever. This one, however, began as a chest cold, the same as my usual cold but without the preceding sinus drainage. As I say, strange.

On Saturday, when I probably should have been resting, we drove to Baxter Springs Kansas (68 miles) to meet up with Lynda’s cousins for lunch at a small cafe on the old Route 66. It was a pleasant time, but I could feel myself going downhill during the day. Our route back home took us by the Wal-Mart we normally shop at, so we stopped and shopped for two hours. And the downhill slide continued. By the time we got home around 5:30 PM I knew I wouldn’t be going to church the next day.

So I rested Sunday, doing almost nothing except reading my Bible (several chapters in Numbers, as I’m trying to figure out the wandering Israelites), napping, watching football, and reading in magazines and newsletters. I got caught up on a number of those. I didn’t think, in my diminished capacity, that I could tackle the next book in my reading pile.

Monday I stayed home from work. I hate to do that on a holiday week, because who will believe you are really sick? I had a restful day, doing very little. I exerted myself only in looking for a couple of misplaced items needed to work on our Christmas cards. Those items being found, I developed our send-list and then Lynda and I began addressing. We got about half of those done by the time to turn in. Tonight will be dedicated to the other half, and to finishing and printing the Christmas letter. Maybe we’ll get most of them in the mail tomorrow. Then again, maybe not.

I’m at work, but only for a half day to do some critical items. I’ve got three out of four done already, so should have no problems heading home by 1 PM at the latest. Between resting due to this lingering cold, and the normal busyness that comes with Christmas and the days that immediately surround it, I doubt I’ll be posting again before next Sunday at the earliest. I wish my few regular readers, and those who stumble on this, a blessed Christmas. Ponder Christ’s birth, and be thankful.

holidays

Crunch Time

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I’ve never particularly enjoyed the holidays. At least not in recent years. All the work preparing, and then all the work un-preparing, has caused me considerable angst. Thanksgiving is not too much trouble. There’s not much decoration. It’s just a big meal and making sure the fridge is prepared to hold the leftovers. Christmas is more difficult, with the round of parties, extensive decorating, and the big meal(s) so close on the heals of Thanksgiving. But I muddle through.

I suppose the worst part of it all is cleaning the house for guests. Lynda and I do not tend to keep the house real clean, not that we two are the only inhabitants. Heck, why mince words: the house is a wreck. The kitchen table is generally covered with papers: mail to be read, finances to be filed, coupons to use or discard, magazines and newsletters we don’t feel like reading. Since we rarely have company between holidays, by Thanksgiving it is an insurmountable task to clear the clutter. So, a day or two before the kids arrive (or other guests) for Thanksgiving, we shove it all in a box, put it in the south bedroom, and figure we’ll get to it before Christmas. But, a week after Thanksgiving the table is covered with Christmas card stuff, and other stuff also begins to pile up. When someone comes for Christmas–another box or perhaps the same and the same outcome.

By now the south bedroom is incredibly full of junk. Not all of it is junk. Much of it is boxes and bags of children’s books relatives have given us to give to Ephraim. These are mostly unsorted, and maybe we’ll go through them with Richard and Sara when they arrive. But also in the room are boxes and bags of…what? I couldn’t tell you what all is in them. We need a serious house cleaning, starting with the kitchen table, then the south bedroom, then the storage room in the basement, then maybe the garage.

Actually, except for the south bedroom I would say other parts of the house are, right now, in better shape than they were a year ago. We have done kitchen table cleaning for the last week, slowly working through the piles. We even pulled one box out of the south bedroom and went through it. It was mostly stuff from last year, or maybe two years ago. The good news is if we haven’t had or seen the stuff for that long we don’t need it, and most can be discarded. The bad news is a few things are not easy to decide on.

The garage is relatively straightened up, and the basement storage room is slightly cleaner than last Thanksgiving, in part due to some extra shelves. We may, however, have a little less junk in the room; certainly fewer empty boxes, which tend to add to the clutter.

So what’s to be done? Tonight we must finish decorating the Christmas tree, which stands there with lights but nothing else. I must move a file cabinet out of the basement bedroom, and see that the Dungeon (our computer work area) gets a significant overhaul. Must also find a place to stash the old, over-sized monitor that I changed out last night for a free, surplus one from the company. I’d love to do a little work in the storeroom. I’m not far away from having it look pretty decent.

But, it looks like the stuff on the table will find its way to a box, perhaps the same box not yet emptied from last year. We’re careful not to stuff bills in there, only those things that are junk mail or a step above junk mail, which we’d like to go through but never seem to find the time. Hopefully that box will get cleaned out the week after Thanksgiving. I don’t want to see some of that stuff for a fourth year.