A little more meat to the story...

The great lens adventure started right after I took my shower Sunday night, right after Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck completed their first drives.  I sat down at the computer and wiped my lenses on my shirt- which is when it must have popped out.  The entire rest of the night, I was back and forth between the couch and the computer- a three-step walk.  It must have been out then, because I noted somewhat sleepily that when I would go to mark up one of Luck's many scores, I wasn't focusing quite right.  Eyestrain does some of that too, so I just put in eye drops and kept the glasses off except to mark up scores.  I went to bed shortly after the half, because I am an old man and need my sleep.

I woke up to the usual Monday morning blurry-eye fest, and staggered down to see how bad Denver got mauled.  Now it seemed ridiculous, and I told myself my daily "I really need to get new glasses" lecture.  I sat down, put my shoes on, and went to clean the lenses...wait, make that LENS, singular!  Mind you NONE of the other things I did that night did I do with glasses on.  It had to be somewhere between the computer and the couch.


For those of you who don't peruse the comments, let me paste up an answer I gave about the extent of the search:

...the couch has been checked in every possible way several times . In addition to all the likely places, my laundry hamper, the trash in the kitchen and bathroom, under the printer, under the dog cage, under every throw rug, my clothes drawers, under the refrigerator and stove, the living room closet, Laurie's room, the stairs, inside books, in chairs I never sat in all day, the pants I wasn't wearing at the time, kitchen cabinets....


And none of that is an exaggeration.  You should hope to never have a proctology exam as thorough as what that sofa has had about eight times.  But the lens is still gone.  I am beyond clueless as to where it could be, but am on the watch for suspiciously shaped dog turds (even though Scrappy would never eat a non-food item unless it was caked with baked on cheese or soaked in grease).

So I left work at noon (never mind I was a half-hour late) to check the room one last time, get out my insurance, and see if it covered the Wal Mart Vision center (it did.)  We got there at 12:45 and were told the doctor's next opening (which this was the first time I had failed to get right in) was at 3. Great.  So we got something to eat down the street, which took us to about 1:35.  I sent Laurie home to get some sleep, and basically wandered around until 2:55 (when they let me fill out paperwork).  Laurie arrived at 3:20, at which point I was still waiting to get in.  Finally got examined, got out with dilation drops in my eyes, and looked for frames until the assistant called me over to do the insurance thing.

I have good insurance, not ObamaCrap, so it paid for all but a $10 deductible- with one slight hitch.  Wal-Mart accepts my insurance- but not the optometrist, so I had to eat the exam fee.  Still that ain't bad, but the part that convinced me this was God's way of saying, "I have been telling you to get new glasses..."  was what I found among the frame choices...

...that's right, they make Duck Commander frames!  Is that not cool?  "Hey, KC, I'm getting Duck Dynasty glasses!"

So now, I'm fighting gamely through working with my readers, taking it easier on my reading, and.. Oh!  Two other things I wanna mention.  Don't forget to stop by the NHFFL fantasy football page.  Are the State Ducks still undefeated?  Will a power rise from the Purple Division and take control?  You won't know unless you look.  Second, I got Sunday picture news for you all...

Look! they way to Shoaff Park is now OPEN!

Scrappy was beyond excited to add new places to his route!

This new part takes you down from bridge level and across the little inlet and onto an actual neighborhood street.

These folks have a lot of neat little pathways down to the river- which, being private property, we stayed out of.

The street ends at those yellow posts becoming bike-and-foot-traffic only.

Then, up another boardwalk...

This is really scenic and neat- for Indiana, leastwise.

Suddlenly, sunlight breaks around the bend.  What could it be?

A soccer field!  Right at the edge of the park.

Here's the choice- up the paved road, or down the trail into the woods? What do you think?

Now we've been here before- a ravine that forms the southern border.

Oh, those whacky squirrels!

Once around the pond, and it's time to head back.

Here's a big noisy kingfisher that... Crap!  Missed it!

Here's Scrappy wading into the... Crap!  Missed that, too!

Heron fishing on the way home...

I thought I missed him taking off, too! 



Could be a little quiet here...

This morning I learned that sometime last night during Sunday night football, a lens popped out of my glasses.  I can trace it back to a time in which I spent the entire time in a ten-square-foot area of our main room- but it is nowhere to be found.  I have to work and surf with my readers, which are okay for stuff right in front of my nose, but bar the door if I have to look more than four feet away- say, to the other end of the Gerber cutter I use at work.

Needless to say, I have new glasses already in the works, but..."  You'll see on the receipt they are supposed to come in on the 28th..."  AKA NEXT Monday.  AKA Chris will be coming home with headaches the next four days.

So depending, some things I might normally post about will have to wait... And Time Machine could be late.  And I probably won't be getting to that "Who my hockey teams' leading scorers are" post for a while.  I can tell you the former Aussie league leading scorer Michael Forney got his first couple of goals in Austria yesterday.  Buck up, I know you're disappointed, but we'll all be okay.  It's only seven days.

Grumble mutter grouse...

Sunday Message

There are a lot of little threads converging on this post for me, that all began with my realization that God wants me to move forward and not just say, "Don't worry about it, He'll forgive it."  He'll work with me if I work for it.  Those threads will end in a little boat on the Sea of Galilee, but they started on the football field in Buffalo way back in November 2010.

Yesterday this was brought up by my son, who has apparently downloaded a "stupid tweets" app onto his phone.  He found this one that was tweeted three years ago after Bills WR Stevie Johnson did what he does best- he dropped a pass:

"I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!!AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO..."
I told KC about a SM from just a few weeks ago when I spoke on rants like this.  Remember this?

Here is where the cork popped.  I had a long one sided talk with God that involved a lot of whining and complaining, and saying Job was right all along.  What is the point of being faithful if it only gets more crap piled on top of you?

And I knew certain facts about such an eruption.  First, it was petty, pointless, and stupid.  Second, it was an argument I was never gonna win.  Third, the tension release would give me a short-term release, followed by feeling guilty and stupid, because I'd just done what Satan wanted.  And finally, because I'd done what Satan wanted, something would shortly happen to make me feel two inches tall.
On queue, my top boss came out and said, "well, (the lady who does canopies) has five or six back there.  I think Debbie will be in Saturday, so she can cut some if she needs more.  If you can get six or seven covers (I was cutting the fifth one at the time), we should be okay."


GRRRRRRRRRR.

Well, now Stevie and I have something in common.  And while I can't speak for Stevie, I knew better.  Because Jesus is sleeping in the boat.

HUH?  Bear with.

As I read this morning before the sermon, I hit Daniel 6, where Belshazzar has just seen the handwriting on the wall, but doesn't know what it means.  Or does he?  Because Daniel points out that Belshazzar knew what had happened to his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar for not humbling himself before God- and because he had this example, and still turned to his sinful ways, it was going to be much worse for him.

Then I rumbled into Hosea, and got hit by two related verses- well, not related to Belshazzar, but to myself.  The second one was in 6:4 where God through Hosea admonishes, "For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud; and like the early dew it goes away."  The first one though, hit me the more for the way it was written.  Because of all the translations I have access to, none of them puts it quite the way it is in the battered old Bible the UAW gave us when Mom died.  The translation is called "the New American Bible (not New American Standard, mind you), an American Catholic translation.  In it, Hosea 5:11 reads like this:

"Is Ephraim mistreated, his rights violated? No, he has willingly gone after filth!"

I like this, because it puts it in the form of a yes-or-no question.  Is God unfair?  Or is it me?  If I sin, if I fall into hard times, where does the blame lie?

I have been debating lately on the paradox of how things seem to go easier when you are being a lazy Christian, but should you tighten up your obedience, you end up like me and Stevie- hitting the storms and blaming God for them.  And this is where we get to this morning's sermon.

The story is when Jesus and the Apostles, exhausted from non-stop preaching to a crowd that had literally pushed them offshore, decided to cross the sea to get some down time.  While Jesus crashed, a storm came up.  Peter and co. were passing out the buckets, bailing as fast as they could, as the wind and waves rocked the boat and threatened to swamp it.  Meanwhile, Jesus was STILL SLEEPING.  And this kinda teed them off, and they woke Him up, shouting, "Don't you care we're gonna die???"

So here's the important question- WHY was Jesus sleeping?  BE-cause, He had equipped them with everything they needed to handle the situation THEMSELVES.  But they booted the ball.  All they needed was faith, and He had shown them that time and again.  And, since they were perfectly capable of handling the storm, Jesus slept while the storm went on.

Do you hear my voice, or Stevie's, in the Apostle's cry?  Do you hear yours?  One thing to take into account here is that when the journey started, the goal was to cross the sea and get some rest.  But when the storm hit, the Apostles' goal contracted down to surviving the storm.  But Jesus' goal was still the same- getting to the other side to rest.  When the storm hits, we contract the goal down to surviving the storm- whether it be a major financial blow, a rocky spot in marriage, illness, what have you.  Or, dropping a football.  But if Jesus is in our boats, we have what we need to get across, through it, if we're not too busy panicking, screaming for help, blaming God for the whole mess.

So what does this have to do with moving forward?  Well, it occurs to me that their are two ways we can deal with the battle between our sinful nature and moving forward- the extreme or the non-extreme.  For example of the first, you can demand of yourself to never commit the sin again, focusing all your efforts, all your prayers, all your "faith", on the problem.  And when you slip up, as you will inevitably do, the whole structure of your "faith" collapses, and the boat sinks.  Another example is like I said at the top of the thing, "Forget it, it's forgiven,"- and you follow a wrong perception of Jesus example, and sleep it away.  And the boat sinks.

The non-extreme is a different bird.  The lessons from the storm on the sea here are-

- The goal lies BEYOND the storm.
- You have the equipment to deal with it.  What Jesus did by faith, you can do, too- if not so successfully.
- Jesus is in the boat.  You WILL make it to the other side.  Just gotta put some faith and some work into it.
--The Apostles survived, but I'll bet they were soaked when it was over- and maybe in need of a change of underwear.  It's okay to get a little wet, you'll dry. (meaning don't let your whole faith collapse if you fall.)

Hey, I got more pictures!

But first, I was just over at another blog where the discussion veered from the topic of "blogger respect" onto the concept of comment-to-pageview ratio.  I thought, hmm, I wonder where I fit in here.  So I looked at my top ten all time posts- and through all that time, I didn't try and fish my comments and undeleted spam comments from before I started moderation.  How did it come out?  Well the first big post I ever did- the legendary fight that began with whether the government is there to promote the most good for the most people or protect the rights of the "lone voice" and ended with a three-way battle on atheism, What Government Is For- racked up 55 comments (the record on TAW) over 290 pageviews for a whopping 5.22 PPC (Pageview per comment).  The rest of the all time top ten?  A grand total of 41.7 PPC.  Time has gotten kinder, even with comment moderation.  With my own comments removed, the top ten over the last month was a grand total of 3.6 PPC.  So what does all that mean?  I shoulda developed comment moderation YEARS ago!  Then it might have meant something!

Anyway, today's walk featured some slight detours into areas we don't usually travel, where we found...

 

 

 A fallen tree doubling as a forest homeless shelter...

 

A squirrel urinal... 

 

"Help me, help me!  I gots too many vines..."

 

 

 

 

This tree fascinated me- so many branches apparently sawn off.  Had this been a yard at some point?

 

 



 

Stick found an old coke bottle.  Sure wish it hadn't been broken...

 

Another one of those things that fascinates me.  The isolated patch of grass in the middle of the woods.

 

 

 

About as rotten as you can get? Check!

 

A trail inside the woods paralleling the back trail outside.

 

Squirrel habaneros?  I crushed one, didn't smell like anything.  Green inside with a black seed.  Taste?  Don't ask me!

 

True story, as I took a rest.

Dad: "I suppose you're ready to go?"

Scrappy: "Hmmpf."

 

The beach is just down from the bend in the creek.

 

 



 

Once pretty uniform, it got deeper in this pool after this spring's flooding.

 

Scrappy spotted him from fifty feet away- but can't see a toy across the room.  Go figure.

 

 

 

Chipmunk shelving!  Convenient, and comes in white...

 

....and brown!

 

Now that the horse chestnuts are slowing down, the hickory nuts are dropping.

 

Scrappy smells him, but I see him.

 

 

 

 

Drat!  Foiled again!

 

Closed signs on the south bridge again?  No, Just patching up the road near it.

 

Our big puffball blew up, leaving but a lonely earthworm to mourn its demise.

 

 

Wooly Worm says mild winter- plenty of brown.  Scrappy tried to taste him...

 

...immediately thereafter eating grass to remove the taste.

 And a bright red chopper finishes the trip.