Welcome Home, Welcome Weekend

Picture of the Day:

John and Sally Skerl hosted an open house at their new house in Maineville yesterday, and we really enjoyed the chance to stop by. The house is wonderful--especially the wraparound deck at the back overlooking a rushing creek in front of a wooded hillside.

They provided a buffet full of yummy treats, and we really enjoyed snacking while visiting with some friends from church as well as Rick Ruble, whom we were surprised to discover is Sally's relative. (Sorry, I've already forgotten the connection.)

The best part, though, is realizing their commitment to the Lord and the Christian spirit underlying their invitation to fellowship. It was a nice way to spend a late Saturday afternoon and early evening!

Back home, we spent the last part of the evening watching Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. I had wanted to see it when it was in the theaters, and I'm glad we got the chance to watch it at home. Some of it is difficult to watch, but it is well-acted and, of course, a compelling story. I learned some history I hadn't fully realized.

Today we attended both Sunday-morning services; I did Communion meditation and offering prayer in the 10:30 service. We grabbed lunch at Skyline with Dan and Cindi Cooper; it was the first we had sat and talked with them in weeks, and we had a nice time.  I got ready for my trip tomorrow in the afternoon and then spent a couple of hours outside in the cool air and warm sunshine cleaning out the flower bed in the front of the house and filling a garbage can with leaves and branches and twigs.

Enjoyed the last few minutes of the Michigan/UK NCAA basketball game and then Sixty Minutes and then another movie on TV before bedtime.

Quote of the Day:

"Grief is the silent, knife-like terror and sadness that comes a hundred times a day, when you start to speak to someone who is no longer there. Grief is the emptiness that comes when you eat alone after eating with another for many years.

Grief is teaching yourself to go to bed without saying good night to the one who had died. Grief is the helpless wishing that things were different when you know they are not and never will be again."

—Edgar Jackson, quoted by Trevor DeVage in his sermon today on Naomi and Ruth. Find a longer quote here.

Another Good-Bye

Pictures of the Day:
Taken yesterday at the combination birthday/going-away party for Sandy Wimmer, retiring from Standard Publishing after a couple of decades-plus of service with us.

She worked faithfully, creatively, and in a very organized way for all those years. It's hard to imagine how many products, how many pages she has touched, how many children and teachers have been drawn into teaching plans and student books by art she touched.
Another excellent worker has left us, and everyone wishes her well.



Quote of the Day:
What if listening through the ears of love is the greatest interpreter for what it means to be “Christians only” in a world where there is no doubt we are “not the only Christians”?
—Casey Tygrett in "The Spirituality of Shutting Up" at christianstandard.com.

A Different Sunday, a Good Sunday

Several things about the day were usual:
• Evelyn and I were at church a little after 8:30 to do our fourth-Sunday stint at the Welcome Center.
•  We attended the 9:00 service and heard an excellent sermon based on the era of the Old Testament Judges, based on that chapter in The Story. Trevor DeVage did an excellent job of summarizing 330 years of history and challenging us with the cycle of sin, oppression, repentance, and deliverance that characterized the behavior of the Israelite nation at that time.

But more things about the day were unusual.
• We sat during the second service with our friend Alan Guttman who's been coming to my Thursday men's Bible study for years and  Sunday-morning church for weeks.
• After 2nd service we ran to the VA hospital emergency room on Vine Street after receiving a text from Shirley Wuske saying they didn't come to church because Terry decided to go to the hospital with chest pains. We got there just in time to visit and joke with them before he was discharged. (They decided it was just muscle pain, not a heart problem.)
(We had gone through the drive-in lane at Wendy's and grabbed fish sandwiches on the way to the hospital.)
• Then we left the hospital and drove to Eden Park in plenty of time to see the 2:00 performance of Pride and Prejudice at Playhouse in the Park.
It was excellent! We had bought tickets with the gift certificate Evelyn's colleagues gave her as a going-away gift when she retired from full-time teaching last spring. This play was her choice from the current season, and I was glad to go with what she wanted.
We had good seats and thoroughly enjoyed the production.

This beautiful setting was used in many creative ways to contain the various scenes of the play. These
two butlers lit the candles on this chandelier in the 2 minutes before the play began.

After the play we used a Living Social coupon to grab some dinner at Mount Adams Bar and Grill. I had their bean burrito, and Evelyn enjoyed the chef salad. Then we split a piece of Graeter's fudge cake with ice cream for dessert.
We were home in time to relax in front of 60 Minutes and some other TV, along with catching up on Facebook and then getting ready for the work week just ahead of us.

Weekend Update

Quote of the Day:
I've reached retirement age. And I don't need to see any more depictions of the crucifixion.
—Evelyn Taylor, after we saw Son of God Friday night.

Picture of the Day:
A so-so picture of Dale Reeves preaching a mighty fine sermon this morning at Christ's Church at Mason. Our three preachers were each speaking at different venues this morning, and Dale spoke at the Classic service in the chapel.
We were attending that service so we could sit with Alan Guttman who had promised to come back to church this morning, for the third week in a row. He sits with Lloyd and Shirley Bradshaw, but Lloyd is in the hospital with a serious infection (he's been there since last Sunday and won't go home yet for several more days). I told Alan at our Thursday-morning group that Evelyn and I would sit with him today if he wanted to come back to church.
It was a nice service, and all three of us agreed that Dale did a good job. We ate breakfast/lunch with Alan at Bob Evans (he treated!) after church.
Wendy Wagoner came to visit us Friday. We ate out at El Rancho Grande before catching the 7:40 showing of Son of God. I enjoyed it, even though most of it we'd seen in The Bible miniseries on TV last year. The crucifixion segment was the second-most graphic depiction I've seen (after Passion of the Christ, of course.) Evelyn served us scones for breakfast Saturday; Wendy left to visit her friends the Carters in Springfield about 10 Saturday morning.
Evelyn and I took a walk in the glorious spring-like sunny afternoon. Later  I visited Lloyd in the hospital along with getting the car washed (had to get all that winter salt removed), picking up Despicable Me2 at Redbox, and grabbing a few groceries. We had egg salad sandwiches and tomato bisque soup (from Costco) for supper. I did some reading and planning in The Story and then fell asleep in the middle of the movie before we headed for bed to get a full night's sleep before Time Change Sunday.
Today we were away from home by 2:45 and in New Stanton, PA by 7:10, the first leg in our trip to see our kids with friends for a spring break vacation this week.

Fat Tuesday

Quote of the Day:
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
—James Branch Cabell, novelist, in The Silver Stallion. Quoted by  Simon J.  Dahlman in the upcoming May issue of Christian Standard in his monthly feature, "Seen and Heard."

Pictures of the Day:
I snapped pictures of some proof pages from the April issue of Christian Standard, which we send to
the printer tomorrow. These are some of the best articles in the issue. I'm looking forward to seeing reactions to it. (I'm even more looking forward to seeing reactions to several pieces in the March issue, which is just now in readers' hands.)
Meanwhile, we had our second meeting with our design consultant Scott Ryan to choose art and layout directions for the May issue (thus the quote above). Scott designed the cover on the April issue, pictured here. The photo is by Tom Patrick, taken at the North American Christian Convention in Louisville last summer.
May's issue will be themed, "I Love the Church!" with a lead article by Bob Russell and his picture on the cover.
I decided this year to try going vegetarian during Lent (except maybe when someone has us for dinner--I'm not going to inflict my choice on them; or maybe when we have someone here for dinner--not everyone LIKES bean burritos!). I had to stop on the way to work this morning to pick up a frozen entree for lunch, and since tomorrow is the beginning of my "fast," my little nod to Mardi Gras was to get an entree with turkey in it! Yeah, I know, Fat Tuesday means much more to many others.

Weekend Update

It was a fine weekend.

Friday night we grabbed dinner at the Indian restaurant and then retreated to the family room to watch a couple of TV shows.

Saturday I took my taxes to the preparer. It was not good news, and I went to our HR department today to have my withholding increased. (I should have done this sooner, even though there are a couple of unusual circumstances this year that really socked me.)

Saturday afternoon we went to see Megan Lockhart's basketball game at the Mason Community Center. I had told Matt some time ago that we'd love to see her play, and this was the day. It was great to visit with Kim and Logan, and it was GREAT to see Megan's sixth-grade team, the Lady Shock, soundly beat their opponents. Megan herself had a great game, including making 3 of 4 freethrows, allowing me to grab some good pictures of her.

That evening we ate at Relish Modern Tapas (I had a Groupon) and then went across the street to the Regal Cinema to see The Monuments Men. Paul Friskney had told us, "Every ordinary person I've talked to likes the movie. It's only the critics who didn't like it." Call us ordinary. We liked it!

Sunday we awakened to rain, with the promise of snow and sleet before the day ended. The church decided to combine all worship in the main auditorium ad 9:00 and 10:30 (instead of two or three venues each hour). I would guess our attendance was 50% or less. When we arrived a little before 9:00, the parking lot seemed empty. (The crowd grew in the next 20 minutes, though.)

When we left about 10:30, it was sleeting. "Let's go to the store now, on the way home, so I don't have to go out again," I said, and Evelyn readily agreed. We stopped at Kroger's, and when we were leaving, the sleet had changed to snow, big flakes of snow.

Evelyn made cranberry-orange scones for brunch. We enjoyed them with scrambled eggs and turkey bacon and some strawberries. It was a wonderful meal!

I wrote a draft of an editorial after lunch and went outside about 3:00 to shovel the first round of snow while Evelyn graded papers from her Human Development class. (It snowed again later, hard, till about 9:00, and you couldn't tell I had shoveled.) 

When I came in I began assembling vacation pictures into a Shutterfly book till suppertime. Evelyn made vegetarian flatbread pizzas on purchased Naan, and we watched Dateline while we ate it. Then we saw a few Oscar guests on the red carpet before settling in to watch the whole show, starting at 8:30. (I can't remember when Evelyn and I both have stayed up all the way to its end. I guess it's a retirement thing with her!)