IS IT WET ENOUGH FOR YA?



I've heard it called a lot of things this Winter. Some I won't repeat.
But no doubt it has been most unusual.



I suppose some are turning to Revelation to see what John says about the end of times. At least I hope they have faith that he knows more through divine revelation than the Mayans of so many years ago.



But the crazy thing to me is that people think they maybe need to be ready to go. To meet their Maker. The operative word in the previous sentence is maybe. Certainly they're going to go. Certainly they better be ready.



Not because of some stars' aligning, not because of some prophecy, some prognostication, or some prophet. I mean even the greatest prophet of all time, Jesus Christ, doesn't know when the trumpet will sound and He will return. Only the Father knows. So why do people think they might be able to figure it out. That's more than arrogant; that's arroganter. Ok, I don't think that's a word, but a synonym in the comparative form escapes me at the present.

Just be ready. If you haven't accepted Jesus as the Lord and Savior of your life, if you haven't confessed your sins and turned from your sinful ways, if you haven't believed that Jesus is God's own Son, then you've made the decision to reject Him. Don't do that. Make your decision today, this hour.

You'll be so glad you did. Not just for today, but for the eternity that begins at salvation.

You may not be able to walk on water as the guy pictured, but you'll be a follower of One who did.

JUST LOOK AND YOU'LL SEE

Now the picture I chose this morning is not quite the right one, but the expression on the little girl's face drew me to it. For the purposes of this entry (you have purposes, you ask?) well maybe one, I had to use it to make a point or share in yet another grandchild tale.

I've found that when I open up and tell a story about one of our grands, as a friend calls them, then another grandparent has one to share about his or hers. And I thought only ours were the most lovable.

It seems that Cameron was in a restaurant with his parents. His age at the time was 7. The restaurant was practically empty save those 3. (How do you like the English save for except there? Me neither) He walked away from the table and went to talk to the manager.

"You know, your kids menu is lousy. There's nothing good on it. I don't know what I'm going to eat here."

But he wasn't done with the lecture.

"That's why there's no one here. No families. All because there's nothing good on the kids menu. Get something good and people will come here to eat."

No word on how the manager responded. But another reminder of the "out of the mouths of babes," and "the little children will lead them".

Sometimes I think the next generation is gonna be just fine.

HOWLING

And so it was.

Saturday night at 12:30 AM, yet another storm hit the valley. I know, there are so many who feel so bad for us this time of year with our weather. But, hey, we're not used to it. Most of us are plenty soft. So a storm that deluges us with nearly an inch of rain is one bad bugger.

Awakened by breaking glass, we wondered what was going on. Stumbling out of bed, more accurately, arising with stiff knees and back I turned on our dim outside lights, made even so because that noise was one made from the bulb encasement that hit a stone walkway. I then proceeded into the living room to put up some automatic screens that shade us from the sun.

The wind continued to blow hard along with rain. Thankfully, the storm left those screens alone. But one just outside our bedroom, a 4'x 7' screen got blown up, out, but not quite away. It did what I'll call for lack of a better word (although it is a fine word in itself) whapperjawed.

Twisted and warped, it looked unrepairable. But with help from an engineer friend of mine in town for another week, we hammered and re-twisted and got it into shape to put back in the sliding tray that held it, secured by screws and flanges and hardware that had failed when the storm unleashed its power.

But we couldn't get it to fit. We were two inches from re-positioning it. Ideas floated about and some were tried, some denied. But after 45 minutes or so, we announced it broken and unfixable by two capable problem solvers. "We'll just have to call Walt," I surmised. He's our handy repair guy who is even more able than I. (tongue securely planted in cheek)

The next day, the engineer and I were off for a golf outing that lasted most of the day. When I returned home, my wife told me of her eventful day. It didn't take me long to tell her about mine, highlighted by a hooked shot into the desert on a par three which hit a tree, a few rocks and other scrub growth before shooting onto the green for an almost tap in birdie for me.

"Are you going to take that," I was asked by some playing partners.

"I guess you missed it when I was yelling, 'Get in the hole'" I answered.

But back to the real world. My bride had seen two javalinas and had taken their pictures, had been to the dentist, had worked in the yard prettying up the place. Oh yeah, she had fixed the screen. It took her about ten minutes she said.

If golf isn't humbling enough.

ONO-OHNO, A NO-NO



So what if Yoko Ono married Apollo Ohno and didn't use discretion. Which resulted in an ONO-OHNO NO-NO? I know, that's bad.



But friends of ours had their three-year old commit a no-no that I wanted to share.

Their three-year old grandson is quite literate. Now, that's not right; he really can't read,but he loves words. At a young age (he's 3 and I'm saying at a young age), well I don't know when, but he didn't just call a bird a bird. He'd identify it as a cardinal or blue jay.

That's just one example.

It seems that on a recent Saturday at a mall, he observed frat boys stocking up on alcohol for the weekend. He heard them talking about loading the vodka in the back of the SUV.

The next morning in his Sunday School class, they are working on a project of some kind where food is being planned and discussed for a mythical family.

"Now what should we have for them to drink? " the teacher asked.

After a moment's silence, he blurts out, "Vodka."

When his parents later heard his response, their embarrassed reaction was, "Were did he get that? We don't drink vodka."

"Sure," the others thought but said nothing.

When it dawned on his mother where he got the idea, it was too late. For excuses or believability. So they wrote it off to an inquisitive, creative, clever son.

But the no-no or ah-no-no lives on in the minds of church goers. Come to think of it, it did no good for Apollo to object either when he was disqualified.

Some no-nos and some Yokos are better just to be left alone.

PANTS ON THE GROUND, PANTS ON THE GROUND

I'm not sure why Pants on the Ground goes with this entry. Before I'm finished I'll try to find an application.

For you see, today's On The QT is about ducks. Two days ago I spied them. A male and female looking at a penguin. Explanation obviously needed.

The penguin sitting on a plastic sheet of snow adds chlorine to our pool. He may be about 9 inches tall. He floats around and goes wherever wind and water take him.

From time to time we've had ducks and their babies light in our pool. A stop on their way to bigger and better water areas and nearby ponds or small lakes. We spent the better part of an hour one Sunday afternoon getting eight baby ducks ( I know, the word for them is duckling, but that word alone conjures up a preceding ugly adjective). They weren't ugly, just bothersome. We'd scoop them out and they'd run back in. Mother duck had split. We finally got them out and since that day, we had been the way I like it--duckless. (I could have said out-of-duck).

Until a few days ago. These ducks were staring at the penguin in the pool. I don't know if they thought him food or family. I laughed and clapped my hands shooing them skyward.

Nothing looks more peaceful than ducks on the pond or in the pool, I guess. Oh, I know that's not right. Babies sleeping, church, make that traditional hymns, a cascading waterfall, wheat stalks in a Kansas farm field, pants on the ground, a multi-colored sunset with rays like fingers... Ok, the pants on the ground couldn't be hidden or worked in anywhere.

SO WHAT HAVE YOU BOUGHT

that was stupid? A shirt, a car, a house, a pontoon boat, a pet, a present? Admit it; you know you have. I couldn't count all the stupid stuff I've purchased.

One that haunts me is when a salesman at a golf store tried to sell me a group of lessons that would technologically analyze and cure any golf glitches that I have incurred out of lack of ability or bad practice habits over the years. It involved hitting balls inside onto an image projected onto a screen.

Nothing that much out of the ordinary, except experts would pronounce me able after I had adjusted my swing. I'm not sure if a certificate would be included into the hefty price. I refused and angered the salesman.

When I wanted to purchase a set of Ping irons, he reprimanded me with a sternness that I don't think I've ever received from a salesman of any kind, "You know, you can't buy a golf game." Ouch!

Well, I bought the clubs anyhow and rejected the lessons. Maybe a bad choice. But I've made worse.

I've admired artists for years. Plus I love wood. And working with wood. Not that I can do it, but I can appreciate it. So when we browsed an art store in California and I saw about thirty pieces I liked, I splurged and paid way too much for a lamp. Not as wild as the one pictured. It was made of three kinds of wood including the Torrey pine. That, like the golf course, was the attraction that doomed me. The exorbitance of the price only made me hesitate.

It now sits by me nearly every night. It doesn't emit much light, not nearly enough to read by even with the green swirled bulb containing mercury that they won't even allow in thermometers anymore, so I don't understand a lot of stuff that's green.

But hey, like the salesman should have said, "You know it may be pretty, but you can't buy light even if it bears e name Torrey pine."

CONCRETE ABSTRACTIONISTS

Education classes in grad school help pay the bills. That is, if you're a teacher, then you have to get an advanced degree or two plus certification to make any money at all. Then you have to work in the Summer as well. And if you're real lucky, then you won't be RIFed after having taught for 22 years as a friend of ours was this week. (Yet there are still those who bemoan tenure for teachers.)

But some classes use charts and diagrams, models and formulas, for how to teach more effectively. Most of these classes have profs who haven't been in a high school or elementary class for years. You see, they advanced in their education to make more money and wound up with a PhD and thus priced themselves out of the mandatory schooling range and proceed on to college (some use university here without the obligatory the preceding, but when I hear someone say they go to university, I think they're European or trying to be) to tell others what works in the classroom as motivational or inspirational, maybe experimental, when they simply don't know.

But when they show the Johari Window or have self-analysis assessments that deal with things such as random or concrete learning and behavioral styles, I guess a guy can find it interesting. One thing I took away was that people are different and for the most part, you're not going to change a habit or way of life.

Take the poor dinosaurs in the photo above taken perhaps 6,000 years ago. Some say longer. Billions of years ago according to carbon dating, but that's not the point. The point is these guys missed the boat--literally. One reason may have been forgetfulness. Or unawareness. Or tardiness. it could even be a combination of 2 of the 3 or all 3. I think I'll devise a chart to be Power Pointed in grad classes. I'll need a name; ok, here goes TQ's Quadrangle Minus Variable A. That sounds pretty educationese to me. We might even be able to milk a whole class out of it, proving that it would be just about as helpful in the long run as most education classes.

I'm going for it. I'll contact Iowa and California, then Texas. It seems those 3 states lead the nation in educational BS.