Some days are better than others, some worse. Today is one of the worse.

It’s probably not a day to be writing a blog post, but I haven’t found enough to care for to read or do much else.

Life isn’t always kind. In fact, some days it’s mean, rotten, and nasty. This is one of those days.

I don’t know if I should keep the blog going or not. I’ll be thinking hard about it over the next few days, maybe weeks.

Retirement is 1 year, 8 months, and 14 days away, though I’ll probably had to add a year or two to that.

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of London and Paris at the time of the French Revolution and contrasts the societies of England and France during that time. At least, I guess that’s what it does. I have never read it (it’s on the reading list). A tale of two ——— is an oft used meme for contrasts, which you find in books, articles, and in conversation.

So, based on my title for this post, you might think I’m about to write how two weekends were different. You might also think that this will be two recent weekends. After all, a blog can be a sort of diary or journal, and my blog certainly is for many of my posts.

You’d be right about it being two recent weekends, as it’s last weekend and this weekend that we’re in now. However, you’d be wrong about the weekends being substantially different. In this case I’ll tell you about two remarkably similar weekends. Similar, that is, in terms of accomplishment.

Last weekend, February 27-28 (not counting Friday evening), I got so much done I was surprised. Saturday morning, rising around 7 or 7:30, I went straight to The Dungeon and caught up on family budgeting. I was about two to three weeks behind due to the trip we made causing me to miss most of two weekends at my computer. But I got it all done, with everything balancing and matching the bank accounts. That brought me to just before 9:00 a.m.

At that time I went upstairs and cooked breakfast for the ladies. It wasn’t terribly elaborate, but it was nice. I then went to the backyard and continued removing leaves. This is a rock yard, not grass, and for about ten years we decided to just let it go. We weren’t using it, so why go to the effort? Summer of 2015 we decided we’d better restore it to reasonable health and attractiveness. The main remaining work at the new year dawned was clearing ten years of accumulated leaves on the rocks. We’d done some last year, but most of the 1/2 acre remained to be done. Last weekend was my third two work on it during this mild winter, and I achieved major progress, leaving only a sliver of it to be done another time.

Then it was inside to fix and eat lunch, then back to The Dungeon, this time to work on the stock trading business taxes. I had already calculated profit and loss for the year, and I had my spreadsheets from last year copied to this year and partially filled out. I was hoping it would go easy. The annual statement from our broker had come it during the week. The main work was to check that against all my spreadsheet entries and make sure I didn’t miss any. I had missed a $13.97 dividend, which I added. The next main work was to compare the 2015 IRS forms against the 2014 ones and see if my spreadsheet needed any tweaking. The forms are the same, so all I had to do was plug in any  missing numbers and add a few bells and whistles. That all went quickly. Then it was manually transfer amounts from the spreadsheet to the tax forms and save them.

All of this I accomplished in less time than I expected. The business taxes were done in record time, and I had time to spare. So I filed bills and statements, both for the business and for personal finances. By the time to head upstairs for supper, most of the filing was done. I was way ahead of the game.

Sunday was church as normal, with me teaching Life Group. After lunch Lynda and I went for a long-ish walk, including a large uphill grade. It measured out to 2.65 miles. That felt good. Then down to The Dungeon to work on personal taxes. Again I had to check 2014 spreadsheets against 2015 forms. Again I found no difference. I had to add to the spreadsheets the Social Security worksheet, since Lynda began collecting Social Security this year, but that didn’t take too long. Two hours after starting, personal taxes were done with the exception of my writing business Schedule C. That will go easily once I inventory the books I have on hand. Oh, and I wrote and posted to this blog before doing the taxes.

So the weekend ended with considerable accomplishment, and a feeling that, if I could just do as well every weekend, I’d never fall behind in my chores. This weekend we’re in now would be the test. I’m happy to say that I’ve been just as productive as last weekend.

Saturday morning I helped some friends from our Life Group at church get rid of junk in their basement. Actually, I was the organizer of the work party. We hauled it from the basement, up the hill to the cul-de-sac pavement, loaded it in pickups and trailers, and drove it to the weekend disposal facility for our county. Three hours and that was done. On the way home I stopped at Lowe’s for some shelf material and other items needed.

After lunch it was back to the backyard. It took only an hour to clear away the rest of the leaves, and to remove a couple of large deadfall items from the yard. I then sawed some smaller logs into firewood length. This wasn’t a lengthy process, maybe half an hour.

After that it was down to The Dungeon. I still hadn’t done the inventory of books to sell in hand, so I instead updated the family budget and filed a few papers. It was 5 p.m. and I was done with all I wanted to do that day, so was able to go upstairs and relax. I read some for pleasure, some for stock trading, and some to prepare for teaching Life Group.

That brings me to today, which I can summarize as follows: prep for Life Group early; attend church and Life Group; lunch at church, an informational meeting about the upcoming building project; home to relax a bit; then down to The Dungeon. I started on this blog post, but keep switching off between this post and my budgeting spreadsheet. I’m adding a bell and whistle to it. After that, all I have on the to-do list is e-mail my book inventory spreadsheet to my work e-mail so I can take the inventory tomorrow (since most of my books are at work).

Then, I’ll relax. I’ll head upstairs to relax and resume reading. I have a book I’ve just started reading for pleasure. Perhaps I’ll have time to read in that. I have stock trading reading to do, and some of my mother-in-law’s papers to file. I’m actually behind on that. But, for now, I’m off to my budgeting spreadsheet to see if I can finish that bell and whistle in the next half hour. See you all in a week.

On Sunday, February 14, Lynda and I headed out on a road trip to San Antonio. The purpose was for me to attend and speak at the Environmental Connection 16 conference, the annual conference of the International Erosion Control Association. We had begun to make this an annual event in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Then life circumstances got in the way and I attended alone in 2014 and 2015.

We had to accommodate life this year, as Lynda’s mom is living with us. We either had to find a place for her to take her along. We decided on the latter, knowing we would be slowed down, but feeling better about having her along with us instead of bunking in with someone else. For sure she couldn’t stay alone. Lynda also wanted to take our not-quite-3-year-old granddaughter along, but I vetoed that. It would be extra driving to Oklahoma City to get her, extra luggage and gear to carry, REALLY being slowed down. No, while I enjoy the grandkids immensely, this wasn’t going to happen.

Except, that Sunday morning, as we were preparing to leave, we got a text from our daughter in OKC. She had almost fainted in the shower. Clearly something was wrong. Lynda immediately said we should offer to take the granddaughter off her hands for the week. That scheme was approved, and so off to OKC we went. I guess I’m just an old softy.

Due to the extra driving, we didn’t get into Dallas that night until almost 10 p.m. I had planned on us getting in before dark. The next day, when we visited the 6th Floor Museum (the Kennedy Assassination site), we had our hands full between corralling Elise and helping Esther to work the audio tour guide gadget. I saw much less of the museum than I had hoped to. But at least I saw it, and walked the grassy knoll, in fulfillment of a dream I’ve had for some time.

Then it was on to San Antonio, getting in a little later in the evening than I’d hoped for. On Tuesday we saw the Alamo, then went down to the River Walk for lunch, then back to the hotel for an afternoon of rest. All of this was walking, as our hotel was right downtown, not far from the main attractions. That evening I had dinner with my old high school/college friend Alex Larson, who has lived there for 14 or so years and who I hadn’t seen for 42 years. That was good to see each other and rehash old times while Lynda, Esther, and Elise walked to the downtown Denny’s, the restaurant that would become our main eatery.

Wednesday through Friday was the conference, so my days were tied up. But I turned down every invitation for evening activities, and decided just to go back to the hotel and help my wife with the 90 year old and almost-3-year-old. I spoke three times at the conference, giving the same paper twice and teaching a half-day class. This is my sixth straight year to speak at it.

Saturday we decided to go to the zoo. It was a great time, though Esther had trouble getting the hang of the motorized wheelchair. In hindsight we would have been better off getting a manual one and having me push her. We saw lots of great things at the zoo. The temperature was just right, the crowd was large but not oppressively so. We had a good time.

Then Sunday, Feb 21, we headed home. We did the drive to Oklahoma City in less time than expected, had dinner with the kids, dropped Elise off, and headed home, arriving about 11:00 p.m.  I forget what the mileage was on the trip counter, but I think over 2,000 miles. I’m glad it all turned out okay. I got back in the groove without any trouble, and had a somewhat productive week afterward.

A young man I know, Billy McConnell, passed away this week, age 36. The first report was that perhaps two competing medications caused him to vomit in his sleep, not wake up, and choke to death. Today his grandfather told me that wasn’t correct. He had a blood clot go to his lung, and he died from that.

Billy had a difficult life, having significant physical and learning disabilities. He had neurofibromatosis, which runs in his family. His eyesight was quite poor, and he may have been legally blind. He had some speech difficulties, though I never knew how much was physical and how much was development. For sure he was developmentally challenged. Yes, Billy had many physical and developmental problems.

He was pretty much raised by his grandparents, at least all the time I knew him. We attend the same church, and I got to know Billy. In 1992 I started a teen Bible quizzing program at our church, which is one of our denominational programs. This part of the country was, at the time, a hotbed of teen Bible quizzing activity, and the top quizzers and teams in the nation typically came out of our region, either Oklahoma or Arkansas. Billy came out for it the next year, probably in his 9th grade year. He was the same age as my son.

At first I wasn’t so sure about that. The little I knew of him at the time I knew he didn’t have the abilities to compete. However, we had enough teens to have both an “A” team and a “B” team (and sometimes a “C” team), and I didn’t want to turn anyone down. So Billy came out for Bible quizzing. I don’t know how much he studied—if he even could study. He came faithfully to practice, and went on all of our quizzes, most of which were out-of-town over-nighters. He didn’t often “jump” to answer questions, or if he did he didn’t often get the answer right. But he came out; he absorbed the word of God; and he competed.

I recall a quiz in Oklahoma City, I think in Billy’s second year in the program. He was on the B team. Right after lunch, when the event turned from round robin groups to double-elimination tournaments, our B team had their first quiz in the large room, with the big quizzing set-up. The operator of the equipment slid the name “Bentonville” into the marquee. This was in one of the lower tournament brackets, and our B team quizzed against a team of similar abilities. The others on the team were more advanced than Billy, though they were by no means experts or top competitors. The A team, which I was coaching, wouldn’t quiz for half an hour, so I stayed to watch a while.

The first question, one of our quizzers jumped. In this set-up you had to walk ten or twenty feet to a microphone, and say the answer into it so the judges could hear. That meant your answer was audible throughout the large room.  A fairly large audience would hear how you answered. This first boy actually had an easy question, and got it right. Bentonville led 20-0. On the second question, the second boy on the team jumped, walked to the mic, and gave the right answer. Bentonville was up 40-0.

On the third question, Billy felt that he knew the answer, and he jumped before anyone else did. The quizmaster called him to the mic. He walked toward the mic with confidence, and gave the right answer. It was neither a hard or easy question—it was an average question, one that you had to know something about the part of the Bible being studied to get right. Obviously, Billy had either studied or had picked it up along the way. The rules say that when the third person on a team gets an answer correct, the team gets a 10 point bonus. So Billy got 30 points for that answer, and, three questions into a twenty question quiz, the Bentonville B team had a 70-0 lead.

That was a great moment, for the team and for Billy. I got to stay a few more minutes before having to go on and corral my team and get them ready for their quiz. I heard later that the B team won its quiz. Billy had a big part in it.

I need to share one other story about Billy. This was at church, one Wednesday evening. Back then the church had a dinner every Wednesday night, not so much for fundraising but for fellowship. This Wednesday I sat across from Billy. A couple of other adults (not his grandparents) were close, including one who was in authority in the church. Billy said something that was disparaging of someone else. I’m not sure he knew what his words really meant. I gently corrected him and explained what he had done and how he might have handled things differently. The adult in authority who was nearby laughed. Billy shortly had finished eating and left. I asked that adult why he laughed. He said, “Billy’s hopeless. Don’t waste your time trying to help him.”

With all his difficulties, Billy was never going to be a valedictorian. He would never be able to beautifully recite poetry; or drive a car; or partake in so many of the activities others his age did. But to be laughed at, to be abandoned, to be denied the help he could use to do what he could, and excel to the best of his abilities…well, that just wasn’t right.

I don’t know if his time in teen Bible quizzing helped Billy much or not. I’d like to think it did. I certainly think the efforts I made with him helped me; hopefully they helped him as well.

I would see Billy now and then through the years after he became an adult, either when he visited at church, or when we happened to see each other around town. We always had a brief and pleasant conversation. He didn’t seem to change much. I think, at his passing, it had been three years since our last contact. I would have liked to have seen him again, and am saddened that I never will anymore in this life.

Rest in peace, Billy. Condolences to his extended family.