Good morning to you. I know it may be cold where you are but down here in the most Magic Place on Earth, it is 54 degrees this morning and is supposed to go up to 64 degrees. The sun is not shining but is at least trying to break through the clouds. That will help the "feels like". 

I know I have been negligent about writing but I have just been busy relaxing and doing nothing. Yesterday I spent the entire day sitting out on the veranda watching the animals, drinking coffee, and reading my Stephen King novel, "If It Bleeds". I'm just about done with that book. Actually I have finished the main story in the book and am reading the shirt story that is included with the book. I'll finish that up easily this morning. I have had the book sitting by my sun porch recliner for months with only about half of it read. But -- I figured that I would finish it while I was on vacation so, I went on Amazon Prime.com and ordered his next one "Billy Summers", for an overnight delivery. It arrived as promised and is sitting in my suitcase waiting for me to crack the cover on it. 

We have not ventured out from the resort as of yet. But this morning we will head out and find some restaurants off campus. As expected it is really expensive to eat here in the park. So far we have only had one meal and that was last night. It was good but I'm sure we can fine a better variety out side of the park. 

Ms. Kate has been having all kinds of computer problems and it totally frustrates her. On the way down here, for no known reason, her IPhone locked up and she couldn't use it. Wednesday morning we found an Apple Store in a local mall and went in and got it reset. I couldn't believe how packed that store was at 1030 in the morning. We had to get in the que and wait for our appointment 45 minutes later. I will say, the young man that helped us really seemed to know what he was doing and he got her up and running. Then yesterday her Klondike game that she plays has locked her out and for what ever reason Facebook locked her out. We tried everything we knew to do and got nowhere. Her Grump meter pegged out. But, this morning I got up and fiddled around with it and get her back on line. So, she has Facebook, Messenger, and Messages back again. I couldn't help her with Klondike but she is much happier this morning. Technology is great --- when it works but it can be so very frustrating when it doesn't. 

That's it for today. I hope you are staying warm. I talked to my grandson Joshua this morning and they are expecting up to two feet of snow this weekend up in New Hampshire. I feel his pain and am glad I'm not there. 

Peace. 

 Good morning from Disney World’s Animal Kingdom, Kadani Resort. It is 60 degrees this morning and the sky is a bit overcast. If you have looked at my facebook page you will have seen what I woke up to this morning, let’s of animals just off of my balcony grazing. I don’t know the name of a lot of them but there are giraffes, long horned African cattle, zebras, large birds of some kind, gnus, and various kinds of what I call antelope. It is amazing. I have spent the last three hours just sitting there watching them as I drink my coffee and take pictures. I wonder how my million pictures have been taken of them??? That’s just an update. Have a blessed day. 

 This brightly sunlit Saturday morning has started off with 12 degrees! That’s not very friendly if you ask me. But we are rising to about 35 today. Wahooo! We’re going above freezing for the first time in over a week. That will be pleasant and deceptively make me think it is “warm”. LOL

Today is preparation day for our vacation. I have to clean the unneeded stuff out of the car and decide where we are going to put the stuff that we want to take. The objective of course is to take everything we think we want and not to “over pack”. We tend to do that when we drive on our trips. “There’s always room, ya’ know!!!” LOL

Ms. Kate is doing the laundry to make sure we have that out of the way and not waiting on us when we get home. Plus, we have stuff that needs to be washed and put in the suitcases. I still haven’t decided what I want to wear down there. We’re leaving 10 degree weather and going to 60+ degree weather so all manner of clothes are on the table of options. And, if we are going to actually do any of the theme parks, we’ll need extra shoes. But, park hopping still up for later thinking. Right now, I just want to sit, watch animals, read my book and drink my coffee and relax. 

That’s it for today. I know it is short and —- I don’t know how much I will blog next week, So, hang in there and be kind to one another. Peace. 

 It’s 14 degrees outside with a 12 mph “breeze” which equals 10 degree “feels-like”. Not a day for flip-flops; unless you are my neighbor Dan, who wears his flip flops 365. But yes, it is a cold one out there. Fortunately, we did not get any snow, once again so I have no shoveling to do or ice to slip on. 

Ms. Kate and I went to the local Neighborhood Walmart yesterday and I went and grabbed the groceries that we needed. I guess people thought we were in for snowmagedden or something, they way they were filling their carts. The conversations were all about “It’s coming earlier than expected.”  “It’s going to hit us hard, or it’s going south of us”. The line for the checkout went forever. All of the registers are self checkout now. But, it all moved pretty quickly. I had a list of the residual items that we weren’t able to get on Tuesday and picked up my stuff fairly quickly. I’ve gotten to where I don’t really mind the self check-out there. I won’t use it other places but I think I get through quicker by checking myself out. There’s no “chit-chat” to hold me up. 

We came home and put our groceries away and then Kate got busy making a big ol pot of veggie soup. Man is it good. I called neighbor Dan and asked him if he wanted some and here he come, knocking on the door. I sent a half gallon home with him, and we still have a least a gallon and a half left. Heck I had five bowls of it myself all total. I do love Ms. Kate’s soups as I have told you that before. She learned to make Veggie soup from her mom who made the best I had ever had. My mother made terrible soups except for her cream of tomato soup which she always fixed along with grilled cheese sandwiches. Actually, my mother didn’t cook anything particularly well, but she was great with salads. 

Ms. Kate learned to cook by trial and error. When we got married she couldn’t cook at all. But those were the days when it was expected that the wife did the cooking so she learned and she learned very well. And I made it a point that I would always eat what ever she cooked, regardless of taste. She started out with just one electric skillet and a four inch pot because all of our stuff got ruined when we wrecked our car on the way to our first duty station. Now, we have more pots and pans and kitchen utensils than we can count and we have shelves and shelves of cookbooks in our house. But the one that gets used the most is the one that she put together herself that now encompasses three “2 inch three ring binders” of her recipes, and she has given a copy of them to each of the girls and to Joshua. Her legacy will live on. Our daughter are all good cooks too. 

That’s enough about cooking and eating. I’m going to demonstrate all of my cooking knowledge and put a bagel in the toaster. You have yourself a wonderful day. Peace. 

 The snow is still on the ground but not on the sidewalks or streets. The temperature is 28 degrees so there is little wonder that the snow has stuck around. However, today we are supposed to hit 50 degrees so that will take care of the snow until tomorrow afternoon when we are supposed to get snow and rain again. That should mess up the evening commute tomorrow. I’m glad I don’t have to go up to the churches to run the bulletins or anything like that while that is happening. But, we keep getting these little tastes of winter weather. I’ll take a taste instead of a bowl full any day. 

I’m not very “newsy” this morning nor do I have any soap boxes to jump on. It’s just a beautiful day and I intend to keep it that way. My jobs for today are to fill bird feeders, go do some grocery shopping at the Neighborhood Walmart, maybe gas up the car (all two gallon of it), get my suitcase out and start planning what I’m going to take to wear on our vacation, take a good nap, and maybe do a little writing. That should encompass my day pretty well. However, out of all of those things, the run to Walmart and filling bird feeders are the two most important. 

Yes, I know we are way late but I finally took down the living room Christmas tree yesterday. I had taken all of the ornaments off of the trees a couple of weeks ago and unplugged the tree. But, I was in no hurry to take it apart and carry it down stairs. \Yesterday I got the urge and took care of it. One of the advantages of being old is you can do or not do stuff on your own schedule. No body ever comes to your house and sees it still up, so, what’s the hurry? For that matter, why put one up in the first place??? Well the answer to that question is obvious —- cause Ms. Kate said so. 

That’s it. Y’all have a totally blessed day. Peace. 

 Imagine my surprise to wake up and see a dusting of snow on the ground. I had not heard any predictions of that. But, a dusting is just what it is. The temperature is 28 and is only going up to 34 today so it is going to just be a cold cloudy day. That’s fine with me. I have no plans to be outdoors at all. 

How was your weekend, or I guess I should Sunday, since I did talk to you on Saturday. Our Sunday was typical. I did two church services and then we had the St. Paul’s winter meeting. It was quite routine. After the meeting Ms. Kate and I went out for lunch. I was hungry for a nice steak or some Prime Rib. We’ve had good luck at Outback Steakhouse before so we decided to go there. It was not a great experience yesterday at all. We got seated soon enough and sat at a low table in the bar area. We got “waited on” fairly quickly but the two waitresses couldn’t seem to figure out “who’s table” we were sitting at. One of them brought us our little loaf of bread and butter and brought us our drinks fairly quickly. (The coffee was good). Then things just seemed to fall apart. Eventually she came and took our order and asked if we wanted more bread and drinks. We said yes. A bit later she brought us some more bread and brought Ms. Kate some more lemonade, but didn’t bring any more coffee. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. Finally they brought us our salads. We both had ordered the same meal pretty well. I asked for Prime Rib with baked potato and salad; Ms. Kate asked for Prime Rib, sweet potato and salad. We both ordered them “medium” expecting them to be juicy with a nice pink center. Well, —- we waited and we waited and we waited once again and finally they brought us our food. I looked at that “Prime Rib” and it was obviously cooked to “Well”. It was even charred on the outside. I asked the waitress; “Is this supposed to be a prime Rib?. She said yes, they had put it on the grill because we had asked for them to be medium. She asked if we wanted our meat re-done. By now we had already been there an hour so we said no. We ate our potatoes, and took our meat home. I guess we might cut it up and use it for soup meat. They did give us 20% off of our bill, but that didn’t fill the stomach. So, that was our lunch. We will of course go back because that was a single bad experience. I don’t think whoever cooked our meat had ever fixed a prime rib before. It’s really a shame too because it was a nice piece of meat before they ruined it. MIne was worse than Kate’s but her’s had not faired any better by much. 

So that’s my grump of the day. Thanks for listening. Have a wonderful day. Try to stay warm and if you have to go out, drive carefully. Peace. 

 Well Good Morning Saturday!. How did you sneak in here so quick? I see you didn’t bother to pick up a little warm weather as you came through. Although it isn’t too bad this morning at 34 degree. Yesterday was interesting weather wise. It was foggy all day. I haven’t seen a day like that I guess since the last time I was in Germany. I had a funeral to do yesterday morning and had to be at the church by 0930. It was foggy as I left the house and as I went north it got thicker and thicker. We all know I love a foggy morning but this got real tough to drive in by the time I got to the church. And —- it never really let up, We finished up everything we had to do at the churches by about 1330 and it was still foggy but to a lighter degree. By news time last night it was still foggy. Had I not had to drive in it, —- it would have been a perfect day. But, — this morning it is just cloudy and cold. Some areas of the Tri-state are allegedly getting snow but it appears that it will “go around us” again which suits me. 

The COVID variants are running rampant. Lisa and Gary both have it. Grandson Matt and his cousin are both probably coming down with it because they are both showing the symptoms. At least two more families at church have called me and let me know they have it. We had several folks out with it last Sunday too. I have posted on Facebook that I’d like everybody to pick up a mask as they come in the churches and put them on. We have them at all of the doors. It is just important that they do and keep from spreading this stupid thing. I hate wearing the thing but will if it helps. My biggest aggravation is that once again the “scientists” are arguing about what kind of mask is the best and protects us the most. That argument has gone on for two flapping years now. At first we were told that masks are of no value in stopping the spread. Then they said anything over your nose and mask will do. People started making hom made cloth masks and it was hailed as wonderful because there were “no masks available”. But then the commercial companies realized that they were not making a profit and suddenly the scientists decided that cloth masks offer virtually no protection. So people were buying what I guess are called “hospital masks” by the box. I have a box of them in my car and we have boxes at the doors of the churches. But now —- those are no good and don’t protect you. The only ones that are good are the N95 masks which no body seems to have. My theory is that as soon as they can raise the price to an appropriate profit level, N95 masks will suddenly be available everywhere. I fully realize that people are getting sick, some of them are getting really sick and a few people are dying. But this entire pandemic has been so linked to profit and confusing rhetoric that the trust factor in a “scientist” has gone out the window because of pride and politics. We’ve been bullied and shamed into taking three vaccines that were supposed to “keep us safe” and yeet it continues to spread. And just two days ago — Dr. Fauci, who is the alleged leading guru on all of this and the spreader of all the different theories said; “Well of course, everybody is going to get it! You just won’t get it as bad if you have the vaccines and buy the right masks and stay away from everybody”. It is so frustrating. But enough about that!

It’s Saturday and that means it is a weekend. I hope you have time to relax this weekend and get some rest. I hope you attend your house of worship and take time to thank God for your life and loved ones. No matter half bad you may think your week has been, God allowed you to wake up this morning and breathe fresh air. You have another day to do something for someone and make their life a little bit better. Yo know that “call” you’ve ben meaning to make to so and so? — Make it today. I bid you peace. 

 Good morning Thursday, you grey, cold thing. You don’t look very cheery nor do you look like you are going to help anyone else cheer up, I guess your 28 degrees isn’t meant to impress anybody, and it certainly isn’t. 

I had a very busy day yesterday so today I am going to take it relatively easy. Yesterday was visitation and bulletin running day. I got out to make two “home” visitations, (one at home and one in a nursing home). Both parishioners are widowers and in fact they are brothers-in-law. Both are about 90 years of age and both were glad to see me. I like doing my visitations even though I hear the same stories over and over sometimes as the folks reminisce about days gone by. I don’t mind that because sometimes they add a new remembrance that changes the story a bit. 

After my visitations I went to the church and ran bulletins. I use the same service for both churches so the bulletin is the same. And, I make my own bulletins by downloading clip art from the internet. I wish I had a better source than what comes up, I may have to ask Jules where to find to free clip art for my program. She’s the computer guru. Anyway, I got a lot of the bulletins run but still have a bunch to run of the small one. My copier at St. Paul’s will create large print and small print. My copier at St. Lucas, although 15 years newer, will not do large print. So, I have to mix and match and make sure I’m keeping copies even between the two churches. It works out well. I love the copier at St. Lucas because it will print double sided really quickly. They rent that copier and the lease is coming up in the spring. They asked me if we need a new one and I have told them that if they can get one that does double sided and large print for the same price, go for it. If now, we’ll keep doing what we are doing as long as the one at St. Paul’s holds out. But it is 15 years old so no telling what we will have to do there. It was bought and donated by a couple of members of the church shortly after I started there many years ago. It has lasted very well and I hope it continues to do so. 

After I finished my stuff at the church, I came home and got busy on the February 6th sermon that has been crawling around in my head for a week. I finally finished that last night and I think it is going to be a really good one. I have based the sermon on a song that I heard called “You Will Be Found”. It is Avery meaningful song with a beautiful message. I hope I have done it justice. 

That’s it for this morning. I don’t know what I’m going to do today. I do need to go get the car gassed up and I think I’ll probably go to the Neighborhood Walmart to do that. Although, as little gas as my car takes, the difference in price generally doesn’t make me a lot of difference. 

Have a blessed day. Stay in touch with God. Peace. 

 January 11th, look at that, the first month is almost half gone already. Time is just a little army that continues to march on, never to return. It’s cold again this morning, at 26 degrees. It could be worse of course. I can’t complain about a sky full of sunshine and little to no wind. 

We lost another parishioner last evening. The fellow was two years older than me and has had almost a year of cancer. He was really a nice guy; — quiet, unassuming, a farmer. He owned the property that surrounds St. Lucas church. In fact back a hundred years ago, his people donated the ground that St. Lucas was built on in 1921 after they small group of folks broke away from St. Paul’s. The cancer had really taken its toll on him and he was well prepared and ready to pass on. Our prayers for comfort are sent to his family. Ms. Kate and I have enjoyed sitting in the car in the church parking lot, eating lunch and watching he and his son drive back and forth across the fields with the different farm implements as they prepare the soil, planted the seed, and then harvested the crop. We’re going to miss him. Now the farm falls on the son to pick up the whole thing. I’ don’t know how he is going to manage because the son has a full time job outside of farming, and they farm about 400 acres I think. I haven’t heard any funeral plans just yet but suspect we will do either a Thursday or Friday funeral. 

We went and joined Costco yesterday. We thought we might give it a one year try. Frankly —— having walked through the store, I’m not the least bit impressed. The only thing I can really say about it is that it was a very clean store. But then, it should be. The place is only a year old. But for all the rows  of stuff, it didn’t seem to me that they had much. In fact, the thing that we joined for wasn’t in the store at all. I ordered that and paid for it on line last night through their web sight. Sam’s seems to have a lot more stuff but then Sam’s is also more crowded in their layout. I guess it’s a toss up. We got the basic membership so we will see how we feel about it in a year. 

We also did an on-line grocery order from Meijer’s yesterday and picked that up. After we got home and put stuff away Ms. Kate started taking a mental inventory of what we had received and not received. It turns out that we only received about half of our order although we had paid for the whole order. She called them and wen through the list and their excuse was that “they were out of this and that.” But, they had not told us any of that, and charged us for the whole order. Their excuse made no sense at all. For instance, she had ordered three loaves of bread, and they gave us one; but didn’t have two more??? She ordered three bags of chips and they gave us one, and didn’t have any more??? Anyway, we are supposed to be getting a refund of our money for the items we did not receive. They wanted to give us “in-store coupons” for the difference and she said “no”. You can’t use those for on-line shopping and she doesn’t want to go in the store. I’m thinking we won’t be going back to Meijer any time soon. I personally think it was a careless and lazy employee pulling the order. That employee just cost the company money; not that that employee cares one bit. But, it’s a shame. We enjoyed the experience and the ease of shopping that way. 

Ms. Kate is getting ready to do laundry today and I’m heading downstairs to my office to write a funeral message and work on a sermon. I hope you have a blessed day. Peace. 

 Good morning and welcome to a brand new week. It is starting off as cold one of course. It was 20 degrees when I got up this morning. I don’t think it is supposed to go up much more than about maybe 40 today, and that is normal. As long as the sun shines, which it is supposed to do all week, it will at least “seem” warmer. 

How was your weekend? Did you get out and about or stay hunched down. With the amount of colds and COVID/Omicron stuff running rampant, staying is isn’t all that bad of an idea. My St. Paul’s church only had 14 in attendance yesterday. I think we were told that one or two of a certain family was sick and the rest of the family had been around them so they all basically quarantined themselves. Frankly, I appreciate that. But, the pews looked pretty empty. My St. Lucas church had better attendance but some of the older members stayed home and out of the cold wind and weather. I was glad to see that too. We do broadcast te service from St. Lucas so anyone who wasn’t there yesterday could still do “Jammie church”. The ability to do that is the one benefit that has come out of all of this COVID stuff. God always makes a way. My home church was closed totally yesterday due to the virus running rampant. They couldn’t even do a separate taping to broadcast because they had no staff to do it. It concerns me that we are going to get back in the hide in your house mentality in this country. If that happens, the economy is going to just totally sink into the ocean. Businesses can’t find help or workers now because people are scared to get out and they can’t find child care etc. We have sure let this country get in a mess, and —- we tend to forget that it isn’t just this country. This is still very much a Pandemic. 

I think Ms. Kate and I are going to go to Costco today and maybe join. She has something in mind that she is looking for, I have no idea, but she wants to go. We already belong to Sam’s Club, I don’t know what the deal is about joining another place. In my mind, if you have to “join” for a fee every year, then you aren’t really saving anything. BUt, what do I know??? \

So, having said all of that, I’m heading to the shower so we can “go shopping” Yeaaaaaaa! 

LOL, Have a wonderful day. 

 Good Saturday morning to you. At least this I morning the thermometer is showing two digits even if it is only 20., I’ll take it. The sky is overcast today and probably will be most of the day because we are supposed to get rain by this evening and tonight. But the temps will go up and the melting will occur and what doesn’t melt will be washed away in the rain. 

I see the garbage cans still have not moved from where I sat them on Wednesday evening. Actually, I was early putting them out because I forgot about them having aa New Year’s Day holiday. Som instead of pickup on Thursday morning early, they should have picked it up yesterday morning early. But then —- snow and ice on the roads prevented that so I thought maybe they would be here today,. But so far —- nyet!!

Tomorrow is our last day of steroids and antibiotics with this crud we have had. We are both doing well — cold wise, but the meds have really screwed up Ms. Kate’s sleep cycle I think. Come bed time and she is wide awake. This morning she finally came to bed at 0400 and was back up at 0630, only to go to her recliner where she is currently snoozing away. Part of her problem with coming to bed was laying flat and coughing. I had gone to bed at 0100 which is kind of normal for us but she was still working on craft stuff. Hopefully when she is done with the meds, she will be back to normal. 

I had a productive day at the desk yesterday and got some good writing done. I have one more service to put together and sermon to write before we head out on vacation and I have a couple of weeks to get that done. I may decide to do it today and get it done and off of my mind. If I don’t, I will fixate on the delay. 

I ordered a bunch of seed cylinders yesterday and expect them to be delivered today. As I told you I was going to, I did order almost all of them seasoned with hot pepper. That will keep the squirrels off of the feeders although I think the starlings and blackbirds are all of Mexican descent because it doesn’t slow them down one bit. 

That’s about all I have for you today, It’s a slow gossip day in the neighborhood. No one is even pout walking a dog this morning. Have a blessed weekend. Stay in touch with God. Peace. 

 I am not crazy about a morning that starts out with only a single digit on the thermometer. I mean, there is room for more so why not fill in the space. Of course, I don’t want to see three digits up there either so I reckon one could say I’m a bit finicky. But there is so much space to go between 0 and 100 so why not use it? 

It is a beautiful morning out there. We only accumulated a total of 8/10 of an inch. Traffic is going past the house okay, well, maybe a bit faster than safe but who knows. I suspect that the morning commute was a bit treacherous because whaat ever melted yesterday had turned into black ice. But much of the country is so much worse off than what we are here. In fact, much of the Tri-State received such a different and varying amounts of snow. Some of our viewing area got as much as seven inches of them white stuff. So, I consider ourselves very lucky. I don’t plan to go out and clean any of this off. Tomorrow it is going to be 45 degrees, so, God put it there, God will take it away. Ms. Kate and I don’t have anywhere we need to go anyway. 

We are slowly improving from our crud. Still have some coughing going on. That’s expected when ya’ have so much crud in your lungs. It has to come out some how. But it is so good to be feeling better and functional. We have two more days of steroids and antibiotics. 

The birds have cleaned out the feeders. I’ll have a lot to fill when I get out there. I was looking through my supplies and I see that I short on some stuff again. Time to do an on-line order, or maybe wait until the streets clear and make a trip in to the store. I need to look at their sale ad and see what they have going on. I know I need some seed cylinders and I need to get the hot pepper ones because the darn squirrels got on there and ate a bunch of what I had. They don’t like the hot pepper ones and the birds don’t have taste buds. I could use a half dozen of those and it would get me through a couple of months. If I buy too many during the summer, they get mealy and bugs in them. But this time of year id perfect for seed cylinders. I also need to put out some bark butter again. I haven’t put any out for quite awhile and the woodpeckers would love that. 

I got started on some good writing last evening . I was just about to finish up a sermon but my three glasses of Pepsi and my bladder had a conversation and I had to go upstairs to the facility. It was late enough that I didn’t want to go back down the stairs again and start so I left it for today. I’ll finish that one up and make the accompanying slides to go with it today and then start on another. I really wish I had a bathroom down there but it would be hard to put in. I don’t have an egress to the outside from my basement and that means that any toilet has to have an “up flush” capability. That is tough to put in and expensive. So, I just make the run upstairs when nature calls. 

Enough about my potty habits. It’s time to jump off and “do something”.  Stay out of the cold if you can, Have a blessed day. Peace. 

 Well, well, well; just look at that white stuff falling from the sky. It’s 19 degrees, going up to 22 and then falling to 7 tonight. That ought to kill the mosquito larvae and that can’t be a bad thing. It is a very light snow with tiny flakes and won’t probably amount to more than an inch, maybe an inch and a half. This ends by 1500 today and then tomorrow we have 25 degrees and Saturday 45 so, it isn’t a big deal. 

What is a big deal is that Ms. Kate and I are getting better. We went for our doctor’s appointment yesterday afternoon. They ran COVID and Flu A and Flu B and RSV (what ever that is) tests and all came back negative. We suspected as much. Then they ran chest X-rays on us too. As suspected, we have what I call,  “Lungs full of junk”. Mine is worse of course because of my asthma. But Kate has it too. Dr. Macleod put us on identical treatments; Azithromycin and Prednisone  for five days. We took our first doses right away yesterday evening and I have to say, we both feel so much better. I had a great night’s sleep and Kate had the best sleep she has had in several days. There’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel. I had actually started getting worse again because the junk in there was just continue in to build. So thank you very much Jessica Macleod. And —- thank all of you who have been saying a a prayer for us and sending warm wishes. 

I’m having my bagel and creamed cheese as well as my third cup of coffee and a glass of egg nog. I hadn’t planned to have the egg nog but I didn’t want it to expire and go bad. I don’t know, but I suspect that there isn’t any more egg nog on the shelves because it is such a seasonal item. I don’t know why that is. It’s kind of like Spumoni ice cream. You can only get it at Christmas time. I don’t know what one has to do with the other. I guess I could research that a little but —- nah, not worth the trouble. It will just have to remain one of life’s deep dark secrets. I have a lot of things in that category. 

I have a couple of veery happy wrens on the feeder just on the other side of my kitchen window. This feeder is just a bit hidden from all of the others and is in the front of the house. It sits kind of in an azalea bush. The wrens and the cardinals seem to have kept the secret to themselves. In the backyard at the Buffet, of course the starlings and blackbirds are being bullies. All it takes is one snowflake and here they come. Needless to say, the electric birdbath is a popular place. At 19 degrees, there isn’t a lot of fresh water out there unless you want to eat snow. 

Today, I’m going to spend downstairs writing and try to get ahead. I guess Ms. Kate and I could take down the Christmas tree, but I unplugged it, no body goes in there, and frankly, it doesn’t bother me one bit. I’ll just wait until it starts to bother her!!! LOLOL. The one on the sunporch may not get taken down. I’ll just take the ornaments off of it  and let it set there. It lights up the sunporch for a few hours in the evening and she want to put other seasonal ornament on it. Getting old and lazy does have its benefits. 

That’s it for today. Stay warm, if it is snowing at your place, stay inside and let the idiots have the roadways. Peace, my friends. 

 Yes, I know it is late, but Happy New Year. There I was, counting down hours until 2022 but then I just didn’t get motivated to write after that. No reason except that I was still and am still dealing with this dang cold. Ms. Kate has it too and we are probably just passing it back and forth to one another. What I do know is that I may have to go out and buy more Kleenex of this thing doesn’t go away soon. We are both through the worst of it, I think. Not nearly the coughing that we’ve each had although that cokes and goes too. I slept like a log last night; not a single cough or nose blow. But then this morning, —- everything that settled while I was horizontal has decided to make itself known now that I am vertical. So it has been a morning of nose blowing etc. 

How was your New Years and New Years Eve? Did you party ? Did you fall asleep before the clock struck 12:00. We were up but then we are up every night at midnight so there was nothing new about it. 2022 —- aren’t we all supposed to be driving around in little jet cars etc by now. Aren’t we all supposed to have little robot maids and butlers and stuff??? The closest thing we have is our I-Robot vacuum and it gets stuck under the chair or the the bed and I have to go rescue it. BUt, I admit, it does do a good job. 

Church attendance was about what I expected yesterday. I think between the two services, we worshipped about 75 or 80. But, the holiday is over, guests have gone home, those that only come for the holiday will be back on Easter, and a lot of folks have the same cold that I have. I’d just as soon as they stayed home and didn’t share. We’ve had quite a few watch the service on the TV or computer. That’s fine too. We are blessed to be able to offer that. Jacob does a wonderful job putting all of that together. The next two Sundays we will be holding winter congregational meeting at each of the churches. They normally don’t take too long. The \congregations are small and so are the issues. I love rural congregations. 

I guess I better heat up a bagel or two for Ms. Kate and I and then I need to get busy working on services and sermons. I have a vacation coming up and Ned to work around all of that. 

Have a blessed day and a wonderful week. Peace.