We are still in Oklahoma City, at our daughter’s and son-in-law’s, and it looks like we will be here through tomorrow at least. I’m anxious to get home, and I think we are suffering from the discomfort of an uncomfortable bed, a crowded house, and the rigors of intense potty training boot camp of a 2 1/2 year old. But all in our travelling party don’t see it that way, so I guess we’ll stay. I don’t want to force the issue.

Of course, since our kids aren’t financially able to have cable TV on the salary of an inner-city pastor, and since only one of the New Year bowl games is on broadcast TV, we will miss all the bowl games today. There’s no place to read in the house that is not subject to the noises of everyone else, so it’s not really possible to read or write. After lunch I may just put on my two jackets and go for a long walk. Of course, it’s about 30 degrees here, so maybe that won’t be possible.

Happy New Year everyone. At least the economy is looking better right now. We were given back some of the salary cuts we lost in 2009, so I’ll start out 2011 at a higher salary. And I made payout at Suite101.com last month, barely, but at least I made it. A little bit of silver lining.

I can’t remember if I’ve written this on this blog before, but for the last 20 or so years I’ve had a somewhat bah-humbug attitude towards Christmas. The main problem is the busyness that comes with the season. First there’s decorating the house indoors and outdoors, a chore of carrying boxes up from the basement, finding the right stuff in them, and getting it the right places. A lot of work. Given that Lynda likes a thematic Christmas tree, and I don’t (I prefer mixed light colors and styles, mixed ornaments), and I’ve given up fighting her on it, I don’t really enjoy the tree, with its one color and style of lights and its coordinated colors and styles of ornaments. Yuck.

Then there’s the round of Christmas parties that start the first weekend of December and seem to go non-stop until a week before Christmas. The office, the department within the office, the church, the Sunday school class within the church, the support group within the church, the ladies’ group within the church, the writers guild, the civic club, etc. The last several years it’s been better. We blow off some of these parties. With the kids grown we don’t have rehearsals for children’s Christmas program. And since we don’t participate in organized choir any more, that’s dropped from the schedule.

Then there’s the Christmas cards and letter. I normally draft the letter from scratch, and Lynda improves it. She sends it to the kids to make sure we get their info correct. Then comes the printing, two sides of a sheet, with misfeeds, smudging, wrong number of copies, folding, stuffing, etc. Signing the cards, labeling the envelops, finding the stamps we made a special trip to buy, getting them to the post office in batches, remembering to hold out those to weigh for overseas postage (not many of those any more). This isn’t hard work, just one more cog in the wheel.

Then there’s preparing for the trip to Meade Kansas. We’ll be there four days, I think, and will swing by OKC on the return trip. Oh, did I mention the usual sudden tasks that crop up at work in the days immediately preceding your vacation days? Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned shopping. Of course, we don’t have much of that any more, and I can usually duck it and let Lynda have charge of something she loves to do. Although, since everything about Christmas seems designed to drain the checkbook and savings account, there’s still stress and worry attached.

Normally by the time Christmas comes I have mellowed out. The main activities are behind me, and I can enjoy the day with whatever family we have around. I have time to reflect on the reason for the season, to read the story as many times as I want, and to recall the work of Jesus in my life.

This year, it hasn’t been so bad. We went to a couple of parties we skipped last year. I served a group of 112 women at church on Monday night. We’re going to the company’s management party tomorrow night. The Christmas letter (my part of it) will be finished tonight, and probably ready for printing this weekend. The cards, at least most of them, will go out before the 25th. Our schedule for the Meade trip is set, even some extra visits I’m planning to make with Lynda’s brother. Yet, with the activities, the stress of the season hasn’t seemed as bad this year. Maybe I have somewhat learned how to deal with this and not let it get me down.

So as we near the day, I’m in a good equilibrium. I’m not worried about producing much writing. If I find the time, I’ll get an article or two done, or maybe a thousand words in a novel, or maybe a couple of passage notes or appendix paragraphs in the Harmony of the Gospels. I might even get to read Dicken’s Cricket on the Hearth this year, which is the next one of his Christmas stories I’m scheduled to read. At least this year I’m not sick with pneumonia. My rheumatoid arthritis isn’t acting up and I’m not on steroids. ‘Tis the season to be jolly. Well, I may not quite be jolly this year, but at least I’m not stressed and depressed.

With all the old stuff I read (18th and 19th century English stuff) you’d think I would run into new words regularly. But that’s not the case. Those older documents tend to use the same words we do now, but with different shades of meaning. I’d have to go back another century to find large numbers of unknown words.

But I ran into four new ones in the last few days for my work, two in floodplain computer program manuals and two in technical magazines. The latter two first:

pollutograph – I didn’t have to look this up. Surely this is someones attempt to say “this graph contains data plots related to pollution. I’m not sure we needed a new word for that, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt anything.

sonication – This was used in the context of biofilms on surfaces, and how, in some study of biofilms as pollutants, after they scraped as much of the biofilm as they could from a concrete surface they removed more by sonication. Now that seemed if must have to do with applying sound waves as a means of dislodging a film from a surface. I did look this one up, and I was right from the context. So, I need to use these two in a sentence.

“The pollutograph was more accurate after they added the data generated from removing the biofilm by sonication.” Not bad. Now, the two from the manuals.

thalweg – This one threw me. Given it was used in the manual of a computer program for analyzing floodplains, it obviously has something to do with water flow. I had to look it up: “1. a line, as drawn on a map, connecting the lowest points of a valley; 2. the middle of the main navigable channel of a waterway that serves as a boundary line between states.” There’s other definitions as well. Basically it’s the low points of a valley/river from source to mouth.

dendritic – This one threw me worse than the last. The sentence I first saw it in was: “The Hydrologic Modeling System is designed to simulate the precipitation-runoff processes of dendritic watershed systems.” The dictionary definitions include: “formed or marked like a dendrite; of a branching form, arborescent; any of the short, branched, threadlike extensions of a nerve cell, which conduct impulses toward the cell body.” Well, what does that have to do with floodplains? It’s used in the manual for the program that calculates runoff rates from precipitation. When you think of a watershed map, with only the boundaries shown and the flow channels all merging to one point, it kind of looks like a nerve cell. So I guess engineering has borrowed that from biology.

Time to use these last two in a sentence: “The dendritic watershed of the Mississippi River results in variable runoff, the forces from which are constantly modifying the thalweg of the river.” Not a great sentence, but I’ll stand by it.

All of which has very little to do with the main purpose this blog, my snail’s-pace attempts to become a writer. I suppose learning new words are part of a writer’s work, but I can’t imagine using any of these words in any of my works now in progress or contemplated. No, not even Ronny Thompson, college education in agricultural engineering, is going to say to his less-educated dad, “Gee, Dad, did you ever notice how our farm resembles a nerve cell, dendritic as it is.” Or “That big spring rain relocated the thalweg of our drainage ditch.” AGH—ain’t gonna happen.

But it’s still fun to learn a few new words, especially work related, in contemporary documents.

I don’t know that they are bees. They sound like bees, although they over in place. We get them this time of year. They come out in the evening, just when it’s cool enough for my evening walk. The hour before it’s dark enough to call it dark, and even later up until it really is dark. They hover about 18 inches above the asphalt pavement on our quiet, country-like roads.

Once you get accustomed to looking for them, you can see them 30 feet ahead. Sometimes you can change course and not disturb them, except they usually seem disturbed and move—sometimes away from you and sometimes right at you, circling up near your head. In the past I used to swat at them; this year, the few times evening temperatures have been cool enough to walk, I’ve ignored them. Until last night.

I went out about 7:30 PM, a little earlier than usual. The temperature was still 90 deg F, but I decided to go earlier to get out and back before the black bees came out for their evening whatever-it-is-they-do-when-they-hover activity. I wasn’t early enough, however. Just as soon as I got on Scalloway Circle I heard one, I think, but wasn’t bothered by it as it moved off somewhere out of sight. On the next street, 600 feet of Scalloway Drive, I encountered no bees. On the next street, Sherlock Drive, I was attached. I heard one buzz near my head before I saw it. It buzzed me four or five times, circling and circling, retreating and advancing, usually staying out of sight. I couldn’t stand that and swatted at it with my…handkerchief and my hands. I kept grabbing my collar in back and shaking my shirt, lest that pest light on my back and sting me. I must have walked out of its range, for it left me. On the return walk I was not accosted by any black bees, though at the same place I saw one leave its hover and fly away.

I say “bees”, but what are they? They have a cigar shaped body, thin and maybe 2 inches long, and a wing span about the same length. They are all black so far as I can tell. They come out after the sun has set, but seem to disappear after dark; at least I never hear them on later walks. They hover 18 inches above the pavement, and seem to prefer lighter color pavement to darker. Scalloway Drive was just oiled a couple of weeks ago, and is very black. The other two streets were not oiled and are lighter asphalt. The “bees” seem to be on the lighter streets. I’ve seen as many as three of them hovering ahead of me on the street. They never fly off into the woods. The one tonight flew into a back yard, not the woods. They buzz like a bee; hover close to motionless like a hummingbird, and fly in a fairly straight path.

What are these things? I’d like to know. Possibly they don’t sting at all and are just a nuisance I can blissfully ignore. Why do they just appear in late July and August? Are they out in the morning as well, in the lightening hours, or just the evenings? I never see them in the morning. I’m tired of them ruining a month of evening walks.

As I mentioned in other posts, we had water damage to our walk-out basement due to a leaking hot water heater. Insurance covers all but the hot water heater itself and, of course, a deductible. We decided to also have the insurance company look at some water damage to the downstairs ceiling, over the computer area in our large family room. Over a year ago the garbage disposal went out, pouring large amounts of water into the cabinet under the sink, all right about above the computer room.

The insurance company adjuster (or whatever his title is) did not think the water damage on the ceiling below came from the garbage disposal above, however. He found a number of other places in the ceiling where there were smaller water stains, ones that we hadn’t seen. They continued beyond the computer room into the downstairs bedroom. He thinks it’s something to do with the air conditioning, since they seem to follow ductwork in the ceiling. So I guess I’ll be calling our AC guy today to look at that. The insurance company says they cover everything, with another deductible, except for whatever repairs are needed to the ductwork.

With all this stuff going on, with bookshelves emptied and moved out of the family room, with end tables moved, with the general upheaval, Lynda thought it would be a good time to paint the family room, and the stairway walls from upstairs to down. I have to agree with her that this is a good time to do that. So last night when I got home from school we make a Wal-Mart run, bought the paint and a few newer painting tools than we had, and got to work. Still had to empty and move three bookcases along my target wall, cased that were past where the water damage was. By 11:30 PM that target wall was done, about 1/5 of the total room, I estimate.

I was sweaty and exhausted. Cleaned up tools and hands, then sat at the computer for 15 minutes playing a few mindless games to wind down. At that point I remembered I hadn’t had any supper, but I really wasn’t hungry, and went to bed without any. This morning my hands and fingers hurt, my legs are dead, my mind is tired, and I’m sure my lungs are full of fumes. And I’m only 1/5 of the way done, maybe a little less.

Obviously I’m not going to be getting much writing done for a while. Today I’m going to sign a contract with Buildipedia for a new article, due on the 23rd of August, and turn in my article series idea for next month. Beyond that, I don’t seem much for a couple of weeks. Well, I also have Sunday school lessons to write; guess I’ll keep up on that. And I don’t see myself being able to do much reading during that time. Just finished a small biography of a long time Meade County Kansas resident, and it’s time to see what’s next on the reading pile, but that will have to wait.