Happy Halloween, albiet a bit late in the day. I’ve had a busy day and now it is 1530 hours. I should be Taking my daily nap but that isn’t happening because my shoulder is giving me fits. I just can’t get comfortable no how I move or sit in my chair. I’ll be glad when I get the MRI done on Friday morning and maybe they can tell me what the problem is.

I had about 60 or so trick or treaters last night. I didn’t mask up like I usually do; just didn’t feel like it. Maybe it was because it wasn’t “really” Halloween. I even had kids ask where the monkey was this year. It has rained on and off all day so I doubt there wil be any kids out tonight.

I went to work this morning and then I went for a hospital visitation with a parishioner. She will be going home on Friday. Pastor Art went to the other hospital and sat with a family while the dad was having a knee replacement done. His surgery went well too. He wil be going home this evening. I find that incredible. When Ms. Kate had her knee replaced, she was in the hospital for four days and then they sent her home with a achne that would make her leg move and bend. I’m told they don’t even use that machine anymore. It is amazing how medicine has changed. This is the second knee this fellow has had replaced this year.

The air literally looks orange out of my sunporch. The leaves have turned so much and the damp cloudy atmosphere puts off almost an orange glow. It is beautiful in a gloomy way.

I think I am going to go change out of my “church clothes” and get comfortable for the evening. Then I’ll scour the streets and see if I spot any little candy begger’s. Have a great Halloween night. Don’t go hiding the favorite candy away from the kids. Ya’ gotta share. Peace.

Another warm morning and unfortunately the weatherman said last night; “Enjoy it while you can”. I guess we are still looking at 2-4 inches of rain coming our way over Wednesday - Friday. Halloween Trick or Treating has been moved up to this evening here in Evansville because of the probability of downpour on Wednesday.

My contractors came yesterday and worked on my roof again. They think they finally found where it was leaking. I guess we will know after the rain starts tomorrow. If it isn’t dripping in my shower stall anymore, I guess they will have gotten it fixed. I know it has been a pain in the rump for them. But they did find a piece of board that had a hole big enough in it to put a finger through and it was wet all the way around it. Cross your fingers.

I have several things I want to do today and it is already 1100 hours. Where did my morning go? I have bird feeders to fill, I need to walk the roofline with my leaf blower and blow out my gutters, I need to go to Harbor Freight and pick up a tool that I want that is on sale, I need to go to Wild Birds and Things to get some items, and today is BOGO Calzone Tuesday at Old Chicago. And then, I guess I need to be home to pass out candy to the little goblins this evening.

Julie et al came over yesterday a had lunch with us. Ms. Kate fixed a fabulous lunch for us and we had a great visit. They left yesterday evening and today they are all going to the Louisville Zoo. I think Karen has to go home to New Hampshire on Friday. She and Jules have the best time when they are together and I’m glad Jules has a BFF. Heather has Stephanie as a BFF, but Lisa doesn’t have anybody that I know of but Lisa always was more of a loner than the other two girls, but she was also the one that was more likely to befriend kids that other ignored. We used to say that she was always bringing home story pups.

Time to quit and get busy. Enjoy your week. Tell somebody that you love them. Peace.

A sunny and relatively warm Monday morning greets me today. I was up early enough to maybe do some blogging but instead I sat in my chair with my cup of coffee and just kind of zombied out for a good half an hour. By the time I needed to get ready for work though I was a little more rested and ready to face the day.

Ms. Kate is a busy camper this morning, Julie, Jim and Julie's best friend, Karen, are coming over from New Albany for lunch and a visit. Karen is here from New Hampshire for her annual Halloween week visit. She is generous enough to bring her over here so we can say "hi" and visit for an afternoon. Karen is good people and a great BFF for Jules. Ms. Kate is fixing a ham and sweet-potatoes, and some roasted veggies for lunch. I know it is going to be delicious. And --- I see a few ham sandwiches in my immediate future after they leave today.

We had a good weekend and yesterday we had "Trunk or Treat" after church service out in the parking lot. It makes for a safe venue for the kids to go around in their costumes and get a little candy from the church members. It appears that Halloween itself is going to be a washout because of heavy rain. I hate that for the kids because they all look forward to the fun of trick or treating.

I have a roofer on top of my house again today. They are still trying to track down that leak that is putting water dripping out of my bathroom shower light fixture. They thought they had it fixed once before but the first rain that came along showed that they still have not found it. As I always say, water will win every time, and where it is dripping rarely has anything to do with where the leak is. As I left the house this morning, they were pulling up shingles again. Since we are supposed to get up to four inches of rain this week, it will be a good test of their new fix.

I need to be working on my sermon for mid November this week. We leave ob vacation mid next week and will gone for a week. So, I need to have everything ready to go for the Sunday after we return. This will be our last vacation until probably June of next year. Then I think we are going to be gone for much of the month of June. Of course, it could happen that I won't be employed by next June and that would be alright too. As much as I love being the co-pastor here, the church really needs to have a settled pastor leading them. I think that we are going on five years without a settled pastor and that is too long. It makes it difficult for pastor Art and me to know exactly what to plan for the future of the church.

Time to put away my lap top and do some other stuff around here. I pray you will have a good week. I hope everyone you meet will be kind to you and sunshine will reign in your life. Peace my friends. Rest in God's love.

It’s a gloomy, rainy, fifty-three degree kind of morning. It would be a great day to just sit by the fireplace and read a book or maybe sit out here in the sunporch with a book. But, we hve other plans for today. It’s a schrooms and beer day with Bob and Brenda. We’ll go have lunch and a conversation with them and then I think we’ll go to have our toenails trimmed up. From there we need to go get some Halloween candy somewhere. Ms. Kate says that CVS has a pretty good deal on the stuff. And of course we’ll end up at Sam’s club.

I got out in the yard yesterday afternoon and did a little yard work. I finally got the twigs and branches picked up and broken up from the back yard. I also did some raking and cleaning up of the area where again had the okra planted and then went around to the front of the house and pulled up and trimmed off the Four-O’clocks that are at the front porch. At least you can see my front door now. I didn’t get all of the Four-O-Clocks pulled up because my trash can was mostly full by then and I have a whole week before it gets emptied again. I need to save some room for trash.

We had a theft in our neghborhood last night. A couple of guys stole an Amazon package off of someone’s porch yesterday evening on our short little street. They have them on camera dong it so I hope someone identifies them. What is it with people that think they have the right to walk on someone’s property and just steal stuff. There are people that just routinely do that. They kind of follow the UPS and FED EX trucks around as as packages get delivered, they just walk up and take the package and don’t even know what is is it. I don’t begin to understand that mentality. Facebook is constantly showing videos from home security cameras of people blantantly doing that in broad daylight. Obviously the two guys involved with this theft had gotten out of their car and were just walking the neighborhood looking for an opportunity to steal something. It takes cajones todo something like that. At least theydidn’t hurt anyone. I hope there was a rattlesnake in the box! Thank goodness we don’t have a lot of that in our area. I had  someone steal a “sleeve” of CD’s from my truck one time because I left my truck unlocked and on the street. They probably tossed it away though since it was mostly gospel music CD’s. LOL

Time to get ready for our lunch appointment. Have a great Friday and enjoy your weekend. Peace.

A lovely Thursday morning to you. ot that it is particularly lovely morning outside. It is cloudy and about forty-five degrees and Accuweather tells me it is going to start raining in thirty minutes or less. I guess we will see what happens. It doesn’t make me much difference either way. We have no big agenda items on the slate today; although, if I told Ms. Kate that I had an offer from PF Chang for free Honey Crisp Chicken, I’ll bet we’d be making a trip to Louisville for lunch.

What to do about Halloween is the question of the day for me. First of all, this Sunday we will have “Trunk or Treat” at the church after the service is over. We’ve never participated in this but I’m told that you kind of decorate up your trunk and sit there and wait for the kids to walk around and trick or treat you at the car. I’m still on the fence about participating in that. Although, I know Pastor Art will and I guess I should so that the kids get to know me a little better. Besides, we don’t have that many kids in the first place. Secondly, Halloween is one week from yesterday and I still haven’t really considered what I am gong to do. I have a monkey costume that I have used for years and by now all of th kids have seen it. I usually sit at the bottom of the drive way on my riding mower in my costume and pass out my candy. That works out pretty well because I sit very still until the kids get right up next to me trying to figure out if I’m alive or if I’ve put a dummy out there this time. Then when I move, I get lots of screams. It’s good fun and I even had a young man ask me the other day if “the monkey was going to be back this Halloween.” I am big on Halloween and have been for years. I live in a neighborhood now where several of the neighbors have a yard full of those blow-up plastic things. They use spend hundreds of dollars on them. I always made my own “grave-yards” and tombstones, and coffins and stuff. My kids really enjoyed being here to take part in the festivities and scarring  people. My oldest, Julie, has volunteered at the Baxter Avenue Morgue Haunted House for probably ten years now. Yep, she gets it from me, and she has passed it all on to her son too. We are three generations of Halloween lovers. So —— it sounds like I better get out to Sam’s Club and buy some treats.

I’ve been in and out of this blog now for almost forty-five minutes and it still hasn’t started raining but it continues to look like it will and Accuweather says it is going to rain for at least 120 minutes as if it were already raining. So, somewhere round here it might be raining. I don’t care, the sun is shining in my heart and mind as I reflect on my day full of blessings. I pray the same goes for you. Have a most blessed Thursday. Peace.

I’m going to try to get a blog in before I head out to work this morning, so this may be a bit short. My morning has started off on a “heavenly high”. I poured my coffee, came out to the sun porch and there was a Blue bird siting on the feeder. What a welcome sight. And them as I looked around the yard I saw at least a half dozen rose blooms on my knockout roses glistening in the sun as it crested the roof line and lit up the back yard. I have no choice but to sit here and give praise and glory to my creator for a morning that started off with a bucket load of blessings.

My blue bird didn’t stay long but I know it will return with friends. It is migration season and thy will be here for a week or maybe two before they move on, espeecially if I keep the bark-butter feeders filled. That seems to be a favorite food for them from my buffet. I have probably a half dozen cardinals out here this morning and a couple of woodpeckers too. The woodpeckers also like the bark-butter bits as well as the bark butter paste that I put in their special feeders. I know I used real peanut butter when my Wildbirds store was closed and it worked, but it doesn’t have the fat content for energy that they need. My cardinals also are particular to the safflower seed that I put out for them. The great thing about safflower seed is that so many of the birds like blackbirds and starlings won’t eat it for some reason. That make it last a lot longer and the squirrels leave that feeder alone because it is extremely hard for the to get to. I have the feeder sitting on top of a 4X4 post and away from a place that they can safely jump to. I have the top two feet of the pole wrapped in aluminum and they tend to slice their feet trying to climb it.

This morning I need to go to the office for my weekly staff meeting with Art and our temporary secretary. Karen is on vacation and should be back this weekend. But — while they were all on the cruise, her mom had a stroke in Maui and still is there. So, I don’t know what the plans will be for Karen ad her family. It has now been six days and her mom hasn’t woken up yet from the stroke which does not bode well. So, I’m asking you to lift their family up in prayer.

After I do my office stuff, I’m going to do a couple of visitations and then head home. Yesterday I got my okra plants all dug up and cut up and put in my trash can. But, I didn’t get out in the yard and pick up the limbs etc. So, — I need to do that today because the trash man comes tomorrow.

Okay, I made it through my blog and now I need to get ready for work. I hope you have a lovely day full of sunshine and God’s blessings. Peace.  

It is a sunny afternoon on this Tuesday. I’m a little late getting around to putting anything down. Our morning was busy. Ms. Kate had a quarterly doctor’s appointment and I went along because I needed to make a doctor’s appointment too. I’ve been having problems with my right arm muscles. I’ve had a problem that I have pain from my shoulder blade down to my wrist on the right side every time I put any pressure on the arm such as laying it on my desk or the table when I eat, or even lay my arm on the arm of a chair. So I went with Ms. Kate when she went in the exam room and when he finished with her I explained my problem. As I expected he would do, he had the nurse give me a steroid shot, I suspect it is a pinched nerve because I get those frequently. And, —- we got our annual flu shots while we were at it.

After that we went to breakfast at Denny’s and came home. I decided that since it was such a lovely day I would go ahead and dig out the okra plants. I find it hard to believe that I need to take a tile spade to dig the okra plants up. Those stalks wer at least an inch and a half at the diameter and the roots go deep. It is no wonder that they grow so tall.. I filled up most of my trash can with the plants. I have a bunch of limbs down in the yard that blew down during the last wind storm we had the other day. I need to get out there and clean those up too.

The rbins have migrated back to the area. I saw several this morning early as I was having my coffee. Some will continue on but many will now stay through the winter. I also have a lot of cardinals here again today and the danged starlings are back out of the fields. That will hasten the bird feeder filling again.

Last night we had the Music and Worship Committee meeting. It was a successful meeting and we have mapped out the worship program through Easter of 2019. Again, I’m really not used to having anything like that. I’ve basically had all of that to do on my own during my twelve Nd a half years at my last parish. This works pretty well.

OK, I have stuff to do besides sit here. I hope the remainder oof your day is filled with joy and love. Peace.

Brrrr! Do you have your "long-johns" on this morning. Temperatures have dipped down to just below the freezing mark the past couple of nights. But, by now we are up to around forty-five degrees. It's amazing what a little sunshine can do for the atmosphere. We might even get close to sixty degrees before the day is over.

I'm at the office and have been catching up on my calendar, and making a few notes for a meeting of the Music and Worship committee tonight. I have this idea that I'd like our church to do a revival some time in the spring down in our Woodland Chapel. The first problem is that we are not a "revival" kind of church. We are a bit too traditional for that so I don't know that we really have a good idea how to conduct one. I'm hoping to reach an audience of young college kids from the university that sits about nine miles from here. I know I'm not the guy to do it but rather we need someone young and full of energy to bring God's word. So, I'm asking around for ideas. Perhaps we should contact the local Baptist University up in Oakland City of they have any ideas.

We had a good turnout for church yesterday again. The choir sang a "zippy" little number and the service was lighthearted and full of joy. We needed a day like that for the congregation.We had a couple of our people have some serious health issues this week and I'll ask you to keep them in your prayers. One lady was with her family in Maui on a cruise with her family and had a major stroke. The daughters will be taking turns staying with her there u until she can fly and return home. Another lady from the church was at a local high-school football game this past Friday and somehow a spectator walking behind her tripped and fell on her as she was seated in her bleacher seat. She ended up with a broken back. So those are of major concern and I would ask that you pray for their comfort and healing. I can't imagine what it will take to get the first lady released to fly back home. But, maybe it will be easier than I imagine. We are told that she is paralyzed on her left side; but it is early yet. She still hasn't woke up from the incident. I think that maybe that is a good thing and that her body is still in a defensive mode. Not waking up is giving her brain and body to begin the healing process without interference. God builds in the most a amazing things in our body, so at this point it is all her and God. But, it had to have been terribly hard for the rest of the family to literally "sail off on the rest of their vacation", while mom was still laying there in a hospital bed in Maui.

I started working on my yard bench this weekend. I bought this thing years ago from  Rural King for $125.00. Over the years it has simply rotted and fallen apart. A year ago I bought the wood to replace all of the boards on it and rebuild it. I just never got around to actually doing it. Well, neighbor Dan came over on Saturday with a piece of wood that he wanted to trim down using my table saw. That gave me the opportunity to unload all the stuff I had on the saw and actually make the cuts I needed to make on my boards too. But, life is not simple. I still need to get my router out and trim all of the edges on the boards. Them I need to get my belt sander out and clean up the wood. Then buy some stain. And I also have to figure out how I'm going to get all of the old rusted bolts holding the current rotted wood to the frame. Yeh, I can make this a whole winter project!! LOL. But, come spring, I'll have a brand new wooden bench to sit out in my yard and never use. I have a place in mind to put it in my yard when it is done, and I'll never have to mow around it. It will make a great looking yard decoration.

That's about it for today. I hope your brand new week has started out full of hope and joy. Be kind to your neighbor and tell people you love them. Life is often much shorter than we expect it to be. Peace.

Windy, bright and beautiful are the watch words for the morning. It is fifty degrees this morning and it may climb another ten degrees yet today but that will be about it. The big story is that this afternoon a cold front is to blow in with steady thirty mile an hour winds gusting to forty. That isn’t a good time to be riding a motorcycle, or be in a bass boat out in the middle of a lake. I’ve been there, done that and it wasn’t fun. Ms. Kate and I went on a canoeing adventure on the Colorado River right below the Hoover Dam one time. We were told that the river at that point was usually as “smooth as glass”. We went with a bunch of other folks from Nellis Air Force Base. We got out in our canoes and the wind picked up to the point that we were barely able to paddle across the river. We would stroke like crazy, and if we stopped, we would eat blown right back to where we started. All of the other folks ended up turning over but we made it safely across because we knew how to stay low during the gusts. We finally made it across safely but then they sent a recuse boat for all of us and we had to get in the river anyway to swim out to the rescue boat. What a mess.

We also had our experience with the wind and our motorcycle. We were living on March Air Force Base in Riverside, CA and we’re going to ride our motorcycle across the desert to Las Vegas. The wind was so strong that we didn’t go more than about twenty-five miles and we turned around and went back home. Had we gone further, we would have run in to wind that was already blowing over semi-trucks. That was one of the last trips that we took. I admit that I let that experience “psych me out” and I never really enjoyed riding my motorcycle again. What a shame.

Lots of cardinals at the feeders in the Back Yard Buffet this morning. I also have my usual woodpeckers and finches and wrens. So far, the fuzzy-tailed rats haven’t come in for breakfast, — in fact I didn’t see but one around here yesterday at all. They are fun to watch sometimes but they really empty a feeder in a hurry. So, — they can go elsewhere to eat and it won’t bother me at all.

It rained most of the fternoon yesterday and we never did get out to the grocery store; nor did I get much of anything done. I reckon today I need to be a bit more industrious, but frilly sitting here having my coffee and watching the cardinals and other guests at the buffet is as energetic as I want to be right now.

Last night the drawing for the “Mega-millions” lottery was held and no one won it again. It has now reached one billion dollars and by the next drawing it should be a billion and a half. That is insane. I would have zero idea where to even start if I won something like that. For sure every person that ever heard your name would suddenly become your best friend and every charity organization in the world would be hounding you for donations. I think it would be an absolute nightmare. Of course the first thing that would happen is that the government would take half of it for taxes. So, you billion and a half suddenly becomes $750 million before you touch the check. But — with good investment people and lawyers, a person could do an awful lot of good in this world with money like that. I’ve heard people say that if they won that kind of money it wouldn’t change them a bit. But it would. I may buy a ticket just for the fun of it, but with the odds of winning at 1in 250 million I won’t be holding my breath. But who knows. It only takes one ticket. LOL

That’s enough for this morning. Have a most enjoyable weekend. Go to your house of worship this weekend and give praise to God who gave you life and then covered you in blessings. Peace.

Happy Friday morning to you. It’s hard to believe I’m actually writing during my “normal” writing time. Vacations are great but they sure mess with my time schedule. I get busy doing other things and then I don’t sit down and write. Then when I first get home, —- catch-up time takes over. So, it’s nice to be able to just sit and watch my Backyard Buffet guests and have my coffee; do a litlle devotional and have a talk with my boss upstairs.

The sky is blue as it can be and the temperature is 45 degrees this morning. BUt, my Accuweather app says that clouds and rain will be moving in shortly after lunch time. I don’t think it is supposed to amount to much. Just a fall kind of day and that s alright with me. But, I think Ms.Kate and I need to go do a little bit of running around. I know I need to get her some more half & half, and I could go by Wild Birds and pick up some more Bark Butter bits since I used up the last of what I have a couple of days ago.

I also need to do a roof-line walk with my leaf-blower. My gutter are covered over with leaves already and the leaf falling season hasn’t even started. If I don’t blow them off then the water will just roll over the edge and I might s well not have gutters.  There is always something to do out there. I looked at my okra plants yesterday and I think they are done. I might as well cut them down and clean up that area. I pulled up all of the tomato plants before we went on vacation. I’m seriously considering not planting a garden next year at all. This year our asparagus really didn’t produce an our tomatoes were only so-so. The beets I planted didn’t do anything at all. They came up but were mostly just tops. The actual beets didn’t ever get big. I need to pull up all of the wooden forms that I put down a decade ago to create “areas” for different things. By now they have rotted or pulled apart. They were pressure treated 4x4’s and I have gotten my use out of them. It really is time to downsize what we do outside; and yet, Ms. Kate has a box of bulbs sitting here in the sunporch that she wants me to plant. I don’t know even what she bought; I just know that I have more stuff to find a place to plant something. I have talked for a couple of years about just Turing the garden into more flower garden. Maybe that is what I will do with the se bulbs.

OK, enough grousing! I need to put my rear end in gear and get something done. Have a most wonderful weekend. If you have a chance, get out and enjoy the world God has created for you, and then take time to give God praise for your blessings. Peace.

Thursday morning, October 18th, and we are home and settling back in to our routine. As always, it is great to be back home. Traveling is good and we had a great time at the reunion. Our hotel stay was great, afterall how can a 790 sq. Ft. Hotel room be that bad?? That’s why we alwys stay at the Palazzo when we are in Vegas if we can. We alreaaady have reservations theere next month.

We got home around 2230 hours on Tuesday. We carried in the luggage, did minor unpacking, and then went to bed. Yesterday morning I headed off to work and Ms, Kate started on doing some laundry and other stuff. I got home around 1300 hrs and brought in the mail that had been held. It I amazing how much junk mail a person gets. We each took a short nap and then I started filling bird feeders. It took me a half an hour to get everything going again. But, the “bird-word” went out quickly and I had a lot of visitors at the backyard buffet almost immediately. Then last evening I had choir practice, and on the way home I picked up a couple of DQ Blizzards for our supper. (You can do that when you get to be my age.)

This morning we had our furnace people out to replace a part of the furnace. It was a water collector part that had over the years warped and cracked and was leaking. Left unfixed, it would have rusted the furnace. Next we cleared the sunroom of ll of Ms. Kate’s card making stuff and gathered up the potted plants from outside, trimmed them up, and brought them in for the winter. We had a frost warning last night, and while it didn’t hurt anything here, those wil increase and one of these mornings we’ll wake up to a frosty morning. So, it was time to do the fall routine. These plants will do well in here. Some of them we have been moving back and forth for a decade and they still look great.

Beyond all of that, I went down to my office and put the finishing touches on my sermon for this Sunday and made some nots to myself on sermon ideas in the future. If I don’t write the down, they will be lost forever. Even then, I still will sometimes look at my notes and have to scratch my head and have to wonder where I thought that particular thought would lead me. Getting old is not for sissies!

That’s about it for today. I’m glad to be back in my recliner, watching the Backyarrd Buffet guests arrive and enjoy. Mas Kat has joined meout here in the sunporch and I think it will be time for a nap very soon. I hope you have a truly blessed day. Peace.

From the 26th floor of the Palazzo Resort, overlooking much of the Las Vegas valley, good morning!!

We just finished breakfast and ate hanging round the hotel until time for us to get our boarding passes assigned for tomorrow. Our flight home is at 1315 hrs and we can get boarding passes twenty four hours ahead of time. After that I think we are going to head a little southeast to Henderson ,NV and the Green Valley Resort for the afternoon. While I’m up here blogging, Ms. Kate is downstairs trying to “earn herself” a new Coach purse. Her rule is that she doeesn’t get to buy a new one unless she wins at the slots. Works for me; I think she has at least twenty, maybe more. The biggest holdup we have when trying to leave the house is waiting for her to “change purses”. LOL

It has been a great reunion with the guys. They all left to go back to their homes today. Our next planned reunion will be in 2020 and is currently planned to be in Michigan at Mackinaw City. Saturday night we had a dinner at Margaritaville here in Vegas. Yesterday morning, fifteen of us met in  one of the guys hotel room where we had a worship service with Holy Communion. I was also honored to do marriage vows renewal ceremony for one of the guys and his wife. It was a big surprise to her. They have been married for 47 years, but my buddy said; “but we weren’t married by you!” I had done that for one of the other guys a couple of reunions  ago. 

Tomorrow we’ll head back home and back to “the real world”. It is cold and rainy back there unlike the eighty degrees and sunshine that we have today here in Las Vegas. Poor Ms. Kate is going to freeze. She is always cold, even in the summer because of the blood thinner medicine that she takes. I think she would wear a sweater at the equator. I imagine that the yard is covered with leaves by now and I know that they will be laying low because of the rain. I’ll also most likely have to get up on my roof and walk the roof line, blowing out the gutters. It’s just all “fall stuff” to do. 

That’s it for today. I’ll maybe get back to you in the morning but it may be Wednesday. Wee’ll see. In the mean time —- stay in touch with God. It will bring peace to your life. Shalomn

Good morning from the twentieth floor of the Treasure Island Hotel, over looking the Las Vegas strip. The sun is coming up and is highlighting Red Rock Canyon and the Spring Mountains to the northwest. It is beautiful. We'll be here in the TI for tonight again and then tomorrow we will move across the street to the Palazzo Resort. The TI is a nice place but by now is getting to be a bit old. The rooms here are standard sized rooms and well appointed. But, they don't compare to what we will have at The Palazzo. It is just luxury; big rooms, lots of marble, clean as can be; and without being "snooty", they have a slightly different clientele. TI has changed so much of the things they had years ago. They used to have one of the best buffets and changed that to almost entirely Asian. Now they have changed it again and what used to be a $10.00 breakfast buffet is now a $25.00 breakfast buffet. The day of a cheap Las Vegas buffet are long gone. Heck the casinos are now charging you to park while you come in and lose your money to them. Sigh!!

As I told you, Ms. Kate and I are here for a reunion with guys that I was stationed with back in  1967-1969. That has been fifty years. Only a few of us made the military a career. One eventually became a doctor and retired as a Colonel too, or so I'm told. I've not met him and he caan't make it to this reunion. He came into the unit after I had already left. Another fellow got his commission and I think retired as a Major. And a couple of the guys remained enlisted; one retiring as a CMSgt and the other as a SMSgt. So, that means that a little over 10% of us are retired military with distinguished careers. Other members went on to work in the civil service industry with the Air Force so we are a dedicated bunch of folk and I think each of us can trace some of the characteristics that made us a success back to the job we were doing all the way back then. We certainly weren't heroes, but I like to think we made a difference in the way things were at that particular time and place.

This morning folks from church posted pictures of the work that has been done on our out-door chapel. The new concrete has all been poured and it looks beautiful. Too bad that we won't get to use it until next spring because fall has finally arrived. But I am proud of how hard the folks have worked to bring it up to a quality level.

Time to get ready for the day. We need to do something besides sit around here. I hope your day is going well. I also encourage you to lift up prayers for the victims of Hurricane Michael. The path of destruction and loss of life is horrible.

Have a blessed day. Shalomn. 

Blue beautiful skies greet me tis morning as I have my coffee next to the Backyard Buffet. This will be my last morning out here for a week. Tomorrow at this time I’ll be half way to Nashville where Ms. Kate and I will catch our flight to Las Vegas. It will be nice to see some of the old guys again. I’m a bit amused though. Our first reunion was about three and a half days log and we had all kinds of activities planned. The next one I planned and it was in Vegas because I had been stationed there. I contacted the commander of the unit that I used to command and arranged a base tour and extra events with the unit. Then the next reunion they went on a cruise. However, so far, the only event I have heard about for this reunion is a dinner from 7-9 pm at Margaritaville. I hate to think that we are flying all the way to Vegas, spending all of that money, for a two-hour meal. We must be getting old. But, it’s all good. Ms. Kate loves Vegas and we’ll have a good time. The silly thing is that we are doing basically the same thing next month with another unit. I guess I could say “re-uniting with old friends — Priceless!” It I’m not so sure that applies.

The church council approved the money for the new keyboard last night. I’m really glad that they did because if they didn’t I was determined that I was going to go pay for it myself and donate it to the church. That’s how strongly I felt about them needing it. But, they were all in favor of it; they had only held off because they felt they needed a little more information about it. But, one of our folks came and gave an excellent presentation about purchasing it and answered their questions. Our choir director is going to go pick it up today. I’m excited to hear it in use.

Neighbor Dan and all of their famiy are streaking back from Florida today. They were down theere for vacation but there is a major hurricane headed to where they were, so they left at 0500 this morning and should be home by this afternoon. pastor Art and his wife are in their condo down in Gulf Shores and that isn’t all that far from where the hurricane is to are land fall. I hope they stay safe. At least they are on the “backside” of the hurricane so it should not be quite as bad for them. But I’m still keeping them in my prayers. This thing has already caused a lot of damage in Cuba and Honduras. It has been a bad hurricane season this year.

Time to refill the coffee cup and maybe have a piece of apple pie for breakfast. I don’t have a lot of things on my plate today to do but I do need to pack a suitcase, go to the bank and a few things like that. I don’t know what my schedule for writing willl be for the next week. It, I pray you will have a great week. Peace.

A new week has begun; it is bright, it is beautiful, it is a bit warm but comfortable so far. I'm alive and God has granted me another day on earth to accomplish something. It is going to be a short week though. Wednesday we take off on vacation to Las Vegas for a reunion with a bunch of my military friends from the late 1960's. I still have no idea what anyone has planned for the reunion as in is there a meeting /gathering place. Are we having a meal together, meeting for chit-chat or what. If someone doesn't come up with a plan soon, as in tomorrow or Wednesday, I guess Ms. Kate and I will just have a nice vacation in Vegas by ourselves.

Our Homecoming Sunday at the church went extremely well. We had thirty eight in Sunday school and we had seventy-six for the worship service. The bell choir and the chancel choir both did an excellent job. Our guest pastor gave an excellent sermon on the prodigal son which was an excellent choice for a homecoming. The picnic afterwards was well attended and as always, the food was wonderful. I do love church carry-in meals. Ms. Kate fixed a crock pot of green beans with bacon and she made two apple pies. They went quickly! Thank goodness she made a third one for us. I had two pieces of it last night and it was her normal super job. She has enough mixed up to make one more small pie yet. I'm not sure what she will do with that since we are running out of time. I'd hate to see it sit in the refrigerator for a week and go bad.

I watched a television show last night in Discovery channel that I really liked. It was a show that I normally watch called Expedition Unknown and stars Josh Gates, an anthropologist. Normally he takes his audiences out of some wild exploring adventure to historical ruins and stuff. But, he is now doing a four-part series on exploring life after death. Part of the show last night dealt with interviewing people who had had what is called "near-death experiences"; people who had actually died but were brought back. It was fascinating listening to them tell what they experienced while dead. Each one of them described a total sense of peace, of not being alone, and of a sensation of complete and total love. It sounds wonderful, but, as a pastor I think it raises more questions for me than it answers. None of these people indicated whether they were people of faith or not. As a Christian, we preach and we believe that one must live by the tenants of God and accept Jesus Christ as the way to get into heaven. If these people who had these experiences were not Christians, --- where does that leave us with our belief? If everyone who dies experiences the same thing --- what does that mean?? I have the series set to DVR while I'm gone because I want to see where this leads. If you get Discovery Channel on your television, I recommend the show to you for next Sunday evening.

That's about it for today. I hope you have a wonderful and a a great week. Take some time out of your schedule to purposely do something for someone else. Peace.

A Blessed Saturday morning to you. What a beautiful day we have going for us this morning. It;s bright, sunny, eighty-one degrees and a south wind at ten miles an hour. For all of those folks who are streaming down to the west side of town for the last day of the Fall Festival, it is perfect. This morning wil be the annual “pet parade” and then at 1600 they will have the big parade. We haven’t been to the big parade in years, decades actually, but at one time they used to have different stars come in for the parade. My biggest memory is of a western movie star allied Hoppalong Cassidy riding his beautiful white horse, “Topper”. I was probably ten years old at the time. The horse was boarded on the farm of a member of our church somy folks took us to see it. I remember that I picked up a bunch of the hair from it’s tail from when it had been curried and that white horse hair was a prized possession for a long time and a source of something for me to brag about to my friends.

Ms. Kate and I are having a very lazy morning. Basically we are just sitting in the sun porch, playing on our IPads, having coffee and a Nutty Buddy cookie for breakfast and relaxing. We still plan to are an apple pie today and at some point Ms. Kate will put a gallon of cut green beans in the slow cooker with a little bacon or ham and let them cook over night to take to church in the morning for the annual church picnic. I think I told you that tomorrow is our annual Homecoming Sunday. We’ll have a grand church service with songs by the chancel choir and the bell choir, Holy Communuon, a guest pastor who was a former pastor of the church will deliver the Word and we’re admitting a new member to the church tomorow. The weather is supposed to be perfect so I hope a lot of folks come out for the event. We have had a very successful year at the church this year so I think we need to celebrate that.

I need to go over the service for tomorrow and I also need to write my Pastoral Prayer for tomorrow. I know many pastors probably do their prayer without a script but I like to write them out so I cover everything I think I should. I also need to read through our Sunday school lesson for tomorrow. I don’t teach the class and it is nice to just attend. Our teacher has been teaching that class for a lot of years and works hard to prepare her lesson. There is only seven of us in the class and we are all senior citizens, Ms. Kate at seventy is the youngest member. But we have some good discussion sometimes.

The squirrels are back and looking for food. It looks like the sunflower seed feeders must be empty. I’ll need to go fill those. I wouldn’t’t want an unhappy guest at the buffet.

Have a most pleasant weekend. Enjoy what God has provided and then give thanks for it. Peace.

It is Friday afternoon and a hot one. It is currently 87 degrees with aa feels like of ninety one. Ms. Kate just fixed us some lunch after I showered and got all of the sweat and grunge off of me. I had my young neighbor kid come over this morning and wwe worked out in the flowerbeds until I just got too hot. But Nick is a good kid and a hard worker. So I had him over here for a couple of hours. I pay him $10 an hour and since he is going to the West Side Fall Festival tomorrow he was glad to make a little pocket jingle. I know that when I was a kid about his age, if I wanted to go to the Fall Festival, I had to make my own money.

Ms. Kate has been busy making cards again today. She’s doing birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I think she is trying to get as many done as she can before we take off on vacation. I was sitting here writing my first paragraph and the next thing I knew, she was lifting myIPad off of my lap because I had dozed off. Now the tables are turned. I napped for about fifteen minutes and and now I’m awake but she is gently snoring over there in hr recliner. Such is the life of old people I guess. We work, we  sit down to relax and we doze off.

My accuweather app says we are going to have light showere and indeed it did rain for about ten minutes. I would love for it to ran enough to break the heat. It isn’t supposed to be this hot in October.  The finches and the sparrows are all taking turned out in the bird bath. I scrubbed it out yesterday and they have really flocked to it now that it is clean and the water in clean. I don’t blame them, who wants to swim in a scuzzy pool, let alone drink from it. Yeh, I know, they also take “dust-baths” and drink out of heaven knows what; but I like to keep them spoiled.

I out of thoughts so I thik I will just sign off. maybe I’ll drift off back to  another nap as I enjoy my guests here in the Backyard Buffet. I hope you have a great weekend full of time with family or other fun activities. I know that Ms. Kate and I are going to make an apple pie yet this weekend so that means my weekend promises to be a good one. Take time to stop and count your blessings and to give praise to God who provided them to you. Peace.

Well, yes it is Thursday again and it is seventy-nine degrees which is warm for an October morning. It is “partly cloudy” as the weather folks say and there is a chance that we will have some rain today and tomorrow. It would be nice if itdidn’t rain just yet. Our city is in the middle of Fall Festival out on the west side of town. It is a huge street festival that is I think six blocks long and draws hundreds of thousands of people in every year. This is the ninety-first year the have held it. Both sides of the street are lined with one food booth after another for the full six blocks. Each booth is run by a church or some other organization and it is the main charity money asking event of the year for many organizations. All of the profits made go right back into the community. It is well organized and well controlled. There is very seldom any kind of violence that happens beyond maybe a teenage hormone fist fight and those are stopped almost instantly. There are rides and carnival booths and a parade or two and beauty contests and talent contests and bands playing. The festival is recognized as the largest street fair in the nation, second only to Mardi-Gras. So, — we definitely do nor need any rain on our parade until Sunday.

I had a long day yesterday, hence no writing. I startedthe day off with a morning Bible study, followed of office hours. Then I did visitation and home communion with a couple. Then, home for lunch and visit with my sister in law for a bit, then back out for another home visit and communion. I got home from that and took Ms. Kate out for dinner, and then went back to the church for choir practice. It was about a fourteen hour work day.

On the agenda today is filling my bird feeders again and scrubbing out the bird baths again. They are filthy. Maybe the birds don’t mind drinking from that nasty looking stuff but it sure don’t look good. There are a lot of fallen leaves in  the water and that turned the water a brown color. They may drink from it but I haven’t seen any of them actually bathe in it. It is time to cut the peonies back ow too so maybe I’ll get around to doing that. Yesterday I pulled up all of my tomatoes because they were done producing. It is that time of the year for some fall clean up. So, we’ll see what we get done before it starts raining.

That is about it for this Thursday. There is nothing exciting gong on except living the life that God has provided me. I give Hm praise and thanks for yet another day in the world. I hope you do too. Peace.

A blessed new morning to you. I’m sitting here having my coffee as the cardinals come to the Backyard Buffet for breakfast. It is a clear morning and the sun is shining bright. I have Andre Reiu playing in the background  and the hummingbirds seem to almost be dancing to the music as they buzz around and then hover. It is a peasant morning. But, I also hear a squirrel fussing about something which means the cardinals better get on the feeders instead of ground feeding this morning. There may be a cat lurking about.

I just realized that we will be leaving on vacation a week from tomorrow. We are going to Las Vegas for a reunion of guys that I was stationed in the Philippines with back in the late 1960’s. I’m not really big on reunions and here we are going to two of them this fall. I have another one to attend in November. My impression is that so many people tend to want to relive the events of a specific period of time in their lives and they never move on. It might sound strange for me to say but even though I spent thirty two years in the Air Force and had a career that was successful beyond my imagination, that was another life ago. It has been seventeen years since I retired from the USAF. We didn’t retiree around a military base and I rely on a base for nothing. But, I sometimes listen to guys talk about their time in the military and one would think it was the most important time in their life. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I don’t know which, I was able to walk out the gate and not look back. That part of my life was over.

Ms. Kate has a hair appointment this morning for a permanent. I’m not sure what I will do. I guess I’ll go down stairs and work on my sermon for the Sunday that I get back from vacation. I need to get that wrapped up. I generally write a four page sermon and stretch it out. I try to hold my sermons to fifteen minutes and Pastor Art does too. I’m in he middle of page three right now but I also know I will go back and rewrite some of what I have written. That’s just what I do. So, in actuality I’m maybe only half done. I don’t want to come home and have to rush putting something together. I know of guys that will say they never know what they are going to give a sermon on until they actually walk up to the pulpit. They say they are “letting the Lord speak to them and tell them what to say.” I say they get there and get redundant really quickly. I put a lot of thought and prayer into my sermons and also research. Maybe they are smarter than I am. At any rate, I got to finish up the sermon.

having said that, gotta’ go. You have a most pleasant day. Shalomn.

Sunny Monday; (thank you very much Lord God). It is supposed to be a beautiful day all day. I love getting up in the morning and being showered with a day full of blessings.

Saturday was our annual car show at church and it was a perfect day to have one. The weather was perfect and we had a large crowd. There were ninety-two cars that showed up and they were beautiful. We gave away forty-four trophies and ninety-two door prizes. Besides that we had a "Chinese-auction" with probably 50 or so items for people to bid on. The food was great and we sold a lot of stuff. So, all-in-all we had a successful day and the three charities that we selected will get $1,000.00 each. I call that a good work-day for God.

Yesterday we had a fairly good day at church. There were forty -five in Sunday school, (which is a great number) and then we had sixty nine in worship, which is also a great number but has been better in the past few weeks. Next week we are having our annual Homecoming Sunday and have invited one of our former pastors to come and give the sermon for the service. I'm concerned that we will have a lot of people out because it is also a "vacation" period for the local school system and I know we have parishioner families that are planning to be in Disney World. I really hope that we have a good attendance. It would be embarrassing to invite a guest speaker and no-one show up. But, the Bell Choir is going to play, and the Choir is going to sing "Majesty", which is a song that I love to both hear and sing. And it is also a Sunday where we are bringing in a new member and we are doing Holy Communion. So, there is every reason to come to church on Sunday and no reason that I can think of not to.

I filled up my sunflower seed feeders yesterday so I imagine that the squirrels will be happy with me if they have indeed found them full. The cardinals certainly found them quickly last evening. I need to put some suet paste in the other feeders so the woodpeckers will be happy. I noticed this morning that those particular feeders appeared to be empty and there were downy woodpeckers checking them out. I need to get some "no-melt" suet cakes too. All of my suet cake feeders are empty. It's hard to keep up with all of it.

I'm at work in the church office so I probably need to quit doing my personal stuff and do something "churchy" don't you think? I'm filling in for the Bible study for Pastor Art this week and we are starting with 2nd Peter 2:1. I need to read that and digest it and plan what I can say about it.

As OI look out the window of the Pastor's study, the sun is still shining and the leaves are starting to turn a little bit. It is a beautiful setting. It is a great day to bask in the glory of God Almighty. Have a blessed day.