Saturday, June 26, 2010

Go Away, Alex!

For many reasons, I'm hoping that Tropical Storm Alex disintegrates as it goes over the Yucatan Penninsula. Of course, I wish no harm to those who live on the penninsula. I just want that puppy to fade away into nothingness before it hits anyone.

Doesn't look like that's going to happen, though.

Besides my real concern over the current oil spill recovery operations and what effect a tropical storm or hurricane will have on the environment, hurricane season is a weird time for me. At some level, there's a bit of excitement. Hurricanes are somewhat unpredictable beasties and I like trying to outguess where they're headed and what they are going to be like. Don't want to be anywhere near anything stronger than a mid-range Category 2, but do find myself drawn to watching them.

They also scare me. I find myself being hypersensitive to everything about what might happen, especially since Hurricane Rita sent a tree through my den and kept me out of the house for about 2 years. I'm not panicked. I'm certainly not really ready for staying in the house if a hurricane hits, although I do have some things to help me through. And it won't take too long to toss together an evacuation box and some clothes and things for the dog to head out of town, if needed. Nice thing about hurricanes is that you can see them coming and have time to prepare.

What's making this a more anxious time for me is that I'm supposed to head out of town while my mom watches The Penster. Last time that happened while a tropical storm was barely forming many miles away, it turned into Her Horribleness and I was stuck 1500 miles away from home, while Mom and the dog were caught up in evacuate or stay or what mode.

As one might expect, the dog really doesn't like major storms, which upsets Mom. Before I left the last time, Mom said, "You aren't really going to leave, are you? There's a hurricane coming." It was an itty, bitty tropical storm, just barely named at that point, so I left. Mom was right.

Don't know what Mom will say about this one, and I really, really need to be at the meeting I'm headed to.

So ...



GO AWAY, ALEX!

Sunday, June 20, 2010

In Remebrance of Dad

Today is Father's Day in the United States. It's always a bit of a bittersweet day for me. My dad died about 11 years ago, and he always was a bit of an enigma.

I don't really remember this myself, but the family stories tended to be along the lines of me following my dad around like a puppy when I was young. He was a scientist, and an inventor. I do kind of remember "helping" him with his experiment to pull clean water from the air. I'm not sure he ever got it to do exactly what he wanted it to, but that's the kind of stuff he worked on.

Dad was a mathematical physicist and worked most of his employment life with NASA on the Apollo and Skylab programs. He retired about the time the shuttle program got going, partly because NASA was giving incentives for employees to retire early and partly because he disagreed with the direction NASA was taking. I never knew it at the time, but Dad had several patents to his name, government stuff but still in his name.

Dad was a nuts and bolts kind of guy. If he couldn't see it, feel it, hear it, taste it, smell it, then it probably didn't exist. Feelings were never an option around Dad. I recall being quite mortified the day Dad marched out onto the field to claim me from drill team rehearsal because we had gone over the alloted time. He even went up the food chain to the school board, so the teacher saw him coming and called me off the field. Devasting when you're a bit of a dorky teenager, just barely at the fringes of being part of the cool crowd. Didn't matter. It was time to go, so we went.

Yet there came the day when my marriage collapsed into a puddle, and I called home, and the first words out of Dad's mouth were, "We're on our way. What do you need us to do?"

Dad didn't really go in for saying "I love you", or much of anything along those lines. It took me years to realize that he did "I love you", rather than saying it. If there was something that needed fixing, and Dad was around, it got fixed. And there was no escaping the regular weekly call to find out how the week had gone.

The man could be absolutely infuriating about some things, had a dry sense of humor that you had to watch out for, and was far from perfect even though he did the best he could, but I miss him.

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Maunderings on a Saturday Morning

It's been a while since I've posted anything, so I thought I'd just ramble a bit. Just so the poor dear hasn't thought I've forgotten it, you know.

Today's going to be a scorcher. When I let The Penster out at 9:30 this morning, the heat and humidity was almost a solid wall hitting me in the face. Even the dog wasn't her usual energetic self when returning to the coolness of the house after the heat got hold of her. I have a feeling that our evening ramble is going to be closer to midnight than we ordinarily venture out. It's a good neighborhood, though, so it should be okay.

The house is beginning to look barren and no longer mine. It's not sold yet, but I'm continuing the process of emptying the place. Last weekend, it was suggested that I paint the entrance foyer something other than its exuberant yellow. I've known for some time that I'll probably have to paint the walls some blah color, but was hoping to not actually be living in the house when that happened. My son's coming home next week to provide the labor, and I already have the paint, so that's not a problem. I could do it, but can't bring myself to color over the walls I so carefully painted after Her Horribleness roared through and made a mess of my house.

But the painting's why the house is beginning to actually look barren. So far, much of what I've removed to storage has been hidden in cabinets. Now the rogues gallery has come down off the walls and many of my pictures are in boxes waiting to be hauled off to a drab and barren little room filled with other boxes. I haven't pulled them all down. Don't have enough boxes of the right size for that. But it is still a bit of a jolt to look at the places where the pictures have been and see only blank wall.

And then, what if there's a hurricane before I get everything to wherever my new place ends up being? ACK! I have no way of burrowing through the boxes to find my boxed up picture albums and framed pictures. All I can do is hope that they survive in storage. Now, of course, this may be a ridiculous fear. After all, I wasn't able to do anything before Her Horribleness came through town in 2005 and nothing happened. Loss of life is obviously much more devastating than losing some pictures, yet there is a sense of continuity which goes with having them around to look at from time to time. When I move from one place to another, it's nice to have my rogues gallery and other art (pictures my son made in elementary school, of course) to make the new place "home".

I'll live. But I'm not happy about it at the moment!

Manana, I have an early morning drive up to Lufkin to preach. It's about a 2 hour drive and is through reasonably nice territory, that is, there are trees and hills, not flatland and scruffy stuff. It's a neat congregation. I'm doing something with the kids for Father's Day. Just love it when a congregation picks up on my hinting and comes through! They've always done something for Mother's Day, but Father's Day just seems to slip off the map when it actually comes to doing something for the fathers. When I asked about doing something, my contact volunteered to help provide the 'something'! How cool is that?

This church isn't the only one I've encountered to honor mothers, but just gloss over fathers. Since I'm not the pastor of a particular congregation at the moment, I just hint broadly (well, actually say, "You know, we celebrate Mother's Day. What are you doing on Father's Day?") and see how it goes. When I've been pastor, I just boldly say, "What are we doing for Father's Day?" and then hang in there until something definite, and roughly equivalent to Mother's Day, is planned. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it! *chuckle*

Ah, well! We're headed dangerously close to afternoon here, and I've a couple of morning things to finish before we get there. Who knows? Someone may decide to look at my house this afternoon ... and I still have last night's dirty dishes to hide, er, deal with and put away!

Friday, June 04, 2010

Inane Plot Devices

One might say that I watch too much tv. One would be right. Part of my tv watching is professional. That is, I watch some shows to keep up with what's happening in the world culturally and, thus, get some insight into the various groups of the congregations I serve. Part of what I watch is just for fun. The internal illogic of many of my viewing choices, though, could be considered convoluted enough to make the venerable Mr. Spock's Vulcan head spin. (One would probably admit that La Femme Nikita isn't Top Ten material for most pastors under any circumstances.)

While I recognize that fictional tv, even based-on-fact tv, operates with an element of unreality and generally has storyline movement that would make any expert in the subject cringe, I'm pretty much able to put such incongruencies aside and enjoy the general flow of the story. Of course, most of McGyver's duct tape and chewing gum problem-solving is unrealistic, but there was just enough element of the plausible to let it slide.

Then there's the truly inane.

There are two shows that I watch right now where the inane just slaps me in the face. For one, I just shrug and keep watching. The other just irritates me to distraction.

Each Tuesday, I turn the channel to Glee and watch the inanity begin. It's built on super-exploded stereotypes and inane plot devices that often lack any continuity, or rhyme or reason. What high school principal would hire a housewife with no degree as the school nurse? LAWSUIT!! (Plus the school board would probably fire him in a snap.)

Yet I come back week after week to watch the next episode. It's not my favorite show, but I enjoy the show choir routines. But, even in the midst of such outrageous inanity, when they get that one personal note, that one teaching moment, that one AHA! head nod, I pump my fist and go, "YES!!"

Then there's Royal Pains.

OK. I willing to overlook the HUGELY inane plot device which got Dr. Hank to the Hamptons. Sort of. The guy comes to the ER on his day off with an emergency patient he began treating on the street, and gets fired, and then blackballed, because he doesn't manage to save the life of a billionaire patient, patron of the hospital, who happens to have some bizarre complication once Hank gets to the hospital? C'mon!

While the reviews describe the show as a dramedy, there's more drama than comedy. But it's a light drama and reminds me of McGyver, so I've hung in there.

But last night was the second season premiere. Out of the clear blue sky, the love-interest hospital administrator gets hit with this incredible animosity from one of the physicians (special-guesty, award-winning star-type person). Completely out of proportion to anything in the scene. All of the sudden, hospital administrator has a phyicians' mutiny on her hands and her job is in jeopardy?

She fired a doctor who was representing the hospital at a charity event while clearly enebriated. Well, d'oh! Her soon-to-be ex-husband waltzes back into the hospital, manipulates himself a job at the hospital, tries all sorts of sabotage to get her to take him back, and, when she doesn't (btw - Good for her! No one should be expected to enter or reenter a relationship under such circumstances), he quits. And it's all her fault? C'mon!

I'm not quite sure why this rubs me the wrong way so strongly, but it does. Don't know if I'll hang in there a whole lot longer, though.

Maybe I should just get a life, instead.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

The Mysterious Thud

I've lived in this lovely house for over six years now. I'm not sure precisely when this started happening, but my best memory of a beginning is sometime after Hurricane Rita.

One calm, sunny day I was peacefully sitting in my home, minding my own business, when there was this loud BOOM! and the house quivered seemingly down to its foundation. Something must have hit the roof. I rushed outside and carefully studied the back of the house, where my trees are. All three of them were right where they belonged, no limbs missing, enjoying the sunshine.

After scratching my head, I headed to the front yard, where there are no trees, on the off chance that something truly weird had caused a limb to plop down on my house. Nothing.

Next stop? Move the car out of the garage so I could get a look at the attic. Nothing extraordinarily weird up there, even though there is weird stuff in the attic.

OK. Must be imagining things. Got my local handyperson to come and give things a look. He scratched his head, too, and decided it was nothing to worry about.

Over the years since then, I've heard this mysterious thud multiple times. No rhyme or reason to its occurence, except that it's always been during the day, generally in the afternoon, and the weather has been of the sort that doesn't lend itself to loud booms. Each time, I've rushed outside, scanned the roof and surrounding yards, scratched my head in befuddlement, and gone back inside.

Then there was today.

KABOOM! The house shuddered. Contrary to my usual approach, I ran out the front door to look at my roof and up and down the street. I wasn't the only one standing in my front yard looking perplexed. The gentleman two houses down said, "Did you hear that?! Do you see any trees down?" We both scanned the nearby houses and horizon. No down trees.

I said, "I'm going to check the back of the house!" He said, "Me too!"

We both ran through our houses and began looking at our homes and at the nearby houses. No down trees. We both shrugged, then went back into our respective houses.

At least I now know it's not my house that has a problem.

But just what is that mysterious thud?