Folks, I have temporarily disabled comments while I deal with a spam problem. I had over 200 spam comments posted to the blog today, and I can’t deal with it. This is all very confusing to me on WordPress. On Blogger it was much easier to protect against spam.
Okay, I’ve installed protection, so I’m re-opening comments. Nothing showed up on my screen, but maybe that’s because I’m logged-in as administrator. I’ll try logging out and see what I get.
At every conference I’ve been to—well, at least the national ones—they suggest that attendees send thank yous to faculty and staff with whom they interacted. I think that’s a good idea, and have done so after prior conferences. For the Write-To-Publish Conference, the organizers made this easy by providing a sheet that had all faculty and staff listed, including e-mail addresses.
Now, I admit to in the past never having been a hundred percent faithful in this. I always started the process with good intentions, but then trailed off as life and other conference assimilation activities got in the way. I generally did the most important thank yous first, and never made it to completion.
Not so this time. I suppose my computer woes, and not being able to begin work on the various writing pieces that will be part of conference follow-up, gave me the time and focus to write all the e-mail thank yous. I finished that process Wednesday night. By my count it was twenty-two e-mails. A few of these were to fellow attendees who asked to see some of my works, or who might be interested in a collaboration.
So this is a good feeling. None of these e-mails were submittals of material requested by agents or editors. That comes later—hopefully not too much later.
Why do this? Not to curry favor. It’s a simple matter of kindness and professionalism. I have done that from time to time after engineering conferences. I suspect the organizers of any conference, who have just been through a stressful period or preparation and then the actual carrying out of the conference. They know all the things that went wrong: the faculty member whose plane was late and so they needed a ride from the airport and still missed a class or appointments; the credit card processing machine that broke down at the conference bookstore; the construction in progress at the conference facility that caused a slightly different foot traffic pattern to be needed every day; etc. I suspect a little thank you goes a long way for them.
This weekend I wrote what I wanted to write, not what I thought would lead to publication. As I had time, I worked on the passage notes to A Harmony of the Gospels, and completed several of them. Unfortunately I looked ahead and saw just how many of these are left to be written. It might be fifty pages of writing materials.
It’s pouring outside right now. I’m searching for a witty storm metaphor to insert here, but haven’t one. It poured last night. People may have seen news reports about tornadoes in our area. Some were spotted in our county, but I’m not sure they have been confirmed. Joplin was devastated, as you might have read. That’s just 45 or 50 miles north of us.
I’ve been reading a book I picked up at the thrift store, titled The Templar Revelation, and it’s turning out to be awful. From 1996, I think this is one of the books from which Dan Brown drew material to write The DaVinci Code. It is not well written, it is not documented. I’ve invested several days of my reading life into this, after 50 cents of my budget, hoping it would get better, or would become more substantive as I got past the introductory chapters. Not so.
My next article for Buildipedia is due Thursday. I think this will be an easy one, on erosion and sediment control.
I’m currently fighting with my home owner’s insurance company, Nationwide, over how they jacked up the rates on me because I turned in claims last year, and then billed me 12 percent more after the renewal was complete. Just got off the phone with Kelly of Nationwide, a nice man who bore my wrath with dignity. But I will not stay with his company nor with my agent who made a mistake on the renewal. Goodbye, Nationwide. It was a nice 15 year relationship up until last August.
My quarterly doctor’s appointment is tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll give me three more months. I’m not apprehensive about it at all. Now that I’m checking my blood sugar I know exactly where I’ll be at this appointment. I’m hoping he’ll take me off my blood pressure medication. It was marginal that I should be on it in the first place. About a month ago I checked it at the blood pressure check station at Wal-Mart (I’m sure not the most accurate machine). It was 87/59, so I began breaking my pills in half. Last Saturday it was 81/69. Let’s hope it’s low like that tomorrow.
I’m back to this after a ninety minute hiatus. Had a couple of phone calls, ate lunch at my desk, read some writing blogs. I called Friday’s post “miscellaneous”, but this one is more so. Maybe that reflects my state of mind. I need to latch onto a project and run with it. With the Wesley study aside, I suppose it will either be improvements to Documenting America and expanding it’s published locations or completing A Harmony of the Gospels or getting back on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People and seeing if I can finish that.
Meanwhile it seems the worst of the storm has passed, and no witty metaphor has come to mind. Will post now.
Almost every year I have a summer cold and a winter cold. I thought maybe I would miss the 2010-2011 winter season, but unfortunately it’s here. It started as a tickle in my throat on Sunday. Normally my colds start in my head, not in my throat, so I was hoping it was nothing more than a sore throat. Not so, however. Last night the tickle was worse, and I woke up this morning barely able to speak. During the day it got better any time I didn’t have to speak, worse when I had to speak.
Now, tonight, it’s moved to my head as well. Stuffy nose, pressure behind the eyes, tired feeling. I’m sure it’s not flue; it feels like every one of my previous 50 or so colds, just that it went from throat to head instead of the other way.
So, I’m going to take it easy. I’ll cut back some on my computer time, meaning I’ll post here a little less frequently. But I will post as I get the chance.
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.
I had a very busy weekend, it would seem, yet the amount of accomplishment I had, now that I look back on it, was not all that much. On Friday I learned I would have to teach our adult life group on Sunday, due to a death in the family of my co-teacher, who was scheduled to teach. So some time Friday and Saturday evenings went to that, actually close to three hours.
Saturday was a work day. We cleaned up the mess from our downstairs ceiling demolition, and the downstairs bathroom wall paper stripping and spackling. This turned out to be a good sized task. The plastic sheeting I put down to catch the demolition mess was old, old, old. It shredded in a lot of places, and much material went through to the carpet. Still, it caught a lot of the mess. I carried two of the four demolition trash bags up to the garage for setting out on trash day. We swept and vacuumed the carpet in the computer room and bathroom, and an hour later it all looked good. This carpet is coming out due to water damage in the family room, but we want to keep this undamaged part to make throw rugs or use in a storage room.
Then I tackled the primer trim in the bathroom. This went okay, but took me twice as long as it should have. I have a painful rheumatoid arthritis breakout in my right hand, wrist, and arm. I can grip a paint brush with it, but can’t twist my wrist as needed for brush work. At least, I can’t twist it very much. So I was stuck using my left hand even in places when my right hand would have made more sense. Laying on the floor around the toilet, stretching my left arm to places unseen by human eyes for years, was not my idea of a good time.
The trim is done, except for one place where I found some of the wallpaper not stripped. Tonight I’ll strip that, and maybe finish the trim. Don’t know about the rest of the primer yet. This morning I feel like I was hit by a bus, or how you feel after playing softball the first time in the spring. Muscle aches. Bone aches. General weariness. This kind of body function is ridiculous. I’m only 58. What’s it going to be like when I hit seventy?
Despite that, I managed to complete an article on construction contract administration for Buildipedia.com and submit it. In that series that makes four down, one to go. I did not get the article finished on the Crystal Bridges Museum, but that should be an early one for today. Nor did I work at all on my poetry. T’is the season for submittals, and while I’m not giving poetry much effort these days, I ought to submit a few to literary mags.
It’s very painful to type. I’m still working through my morning stiffness (it’s 8 AM), so maybe it will get better during the day. Blogspot is down right now, so I’m typing this in Word. I just remembered, however, that for some reason Blogspot has not allowed me to paste text in lately, so I’ll probably have to re-type this all, on my noon hour—assuming the site is up by then.
What, you wonder, does all this have to do with the title of my post? I managed to spend about an hour reading Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, my foray into original works by the early Christians. This is supposed to be one of the more accessible early works, but I found it hard going. Perhaps it was tiredness of the body which did not allow my brain to fully engage. I understood the words fine, but the overall message escaped me. I was really slogging, not rising above and conquering the book. We’ll see how it goes, in a time when mind and body are in sync and properly functioning.
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.
