Discovering Joy

Pictures of the Day:
They let us leave work at 4:00 today because of the steady snow that had started much earlier, probably by noon. That was good, because I needed to get home, pick up Evelyn, and then get back to pick up Dave and Mary Lautzenheiser, our traditional Valentine's Day dinner partners. (Is this the third or fourth time we've celebrated Valentine's Day with them?) The snow was coming down steadily, but most of the roads were still clear as I made my way home late this afternoon. The trees, bearing a coating from the heavy, wet snow, were more beautiful than I could capture with my iPhone.

The snow continued throughout our trip to pick up Dave and Mary and throughout our dinner at

Mimi's. Service was slow, and our conversations were rich, and we lingered at our table for almost two hours. The trip home was a bit more challenging. Some of the roads were covered, as if they had never been touched. But we got home without incident, in time to put our things together for our trip to Indy tomorrow, with time left over to watch some Olympics before going to bed.

Quotes of the Day:
The American church often shares the surrounding culture's obsession with glory and power. One of the reasons our ministries are so ineffective is because we don't make room for God's power, since we are so enamored with our own. We don't make room for weakness—everything in our churches has to be dynamic and excellent. So we schedule things by the minute, rehearse our transitions and prayers, seek out the next killer series or curriculum or program. And all the while Jesus has moved on to people who have nothing other than him.

The American Dream is to live in our strength; God's dream is that we live in our weakness. 
—Mike Erre, "The Way of Weakness" at leadershipjournal.net


Along with hearts and flowers this Valentine’s Day, successful Christian marriages will celebrate the self-sacrifice and kind deeds that may express love better than any greeting card. And so they can realize what my preacher encouraged and our Lord taught: The way to discover joy for yourself is to provide it for someone else.
—"Real Love, Real Joy," the column I wrote a year ago for christianstandard.com

What else? The snow!

Picture of the Day:
No, I didn't take this one. I found it at the WCPO-TV website. I chose it because it shows the shimmering layer of frozen rain on top of the snow that threatened to bury this fire hydrant. We didn't have that much snow overnight, but there was definitely a layer of frozen snow and ice atop the 4-6 inches we found on our driveway this morning.
Evelyn (bless her!) helped me shovel. With the ice, the snow was heavy enough and difficult enough to shovel that we concentrated on clearing only a path wide enough for the cars to travel. We didn't worry about getting edge to edge. We were done by 7:30, and I came in to take my shower.
I called work to discover we were on a "delay" (see the quote below), so I answered some e-mails and wrote my part of Christian Standard's weekly e-newsletter before braving the roads to head into work.
The worst part of the trip was the parking lot at work! They were still plowing it, and many of the parking spots were not cleared, because cars had started the rows of spaces before the plows got there. I had to park quite away from the building in a remaining spot that wasn't snow covered.
Management took pity on us and ordered LaRosa's pizzas for the whole office for lunch. That was nice!

Quote of the Day: "CFM corporate offices will be on a two-hour delay. The office will be open at 9 a.m."
—Message on the company's "weather closing" voice mail this morning. 
For those of us who usually get there at 8:00 or 8:15, it was a little difficult to interpret exactly what that announcement was saying.

What Else? The Weather!

Pictures of the Day: As I'm posting these pictures, Evelyn is reading me the weather report for Philadelphia (close to where Jennifer and Matt live) and Long Island City, NY (where Geoff and Lisa live). Each has has 11+ inches of snow in the last 24 hours with 2 or 3 more inches predicted overnight. That makes my little snow report seem inconsequential. But, nevertheless, Evelyn and I did wake up to driveway covered with at least 4 inches. We shoveled from 6:30 till 7:15, and by the time we were through, the wind had blown drifts back over a large part of it. Before leaving for work, I brushed snow off the back window of my car that was parked INSIDE the garage, because the blowing snow had blasted a covering over it while we were outside shoveling.
Evelyn awoke to a text saying classes at CCU were delayed till 10:00. Then another text came saying chapel at 10:00 was cancelled. Then another text: Classes delayed till noon. And before I finally left for work before 10:00, CCU had given up for the day: all classes cancelled. This was the first day of the new semester, in which Evelyn is teaching two classes, going in on Tuesday and Thursday.
I decided to go to work late and cleared out old e-mails (left over from my time out of the office) from here.
My trip to work was relatively uneventful; roads weren't clear, but they had been treated, and traffic was light.
Evelyn, bless her, decided to reshovel the driveway late in the afternoon. It had drifted to at least 6 inches in some spots, and the temperatures were in the teens.
The fruit of her work:

We watched the weather on TV just before supper, and Tim Hedrick says we'll have lows in the single digits and highs in the teens for the rest of the week till Saturday and Sunday—and then there's a chance for "significant snow." The high temperatures next week will be back in the teens.

Quote of the Day: From a radio newscaster reporting on the icy punch the northeast is getting tonight: "Well, the good news is we have only two more months of winter."

TWO MORE MONTHS! That's at least 6 weeks too much!
(Actually, I think it's bad form to complain about the weather. But it's my diary, and next year I want to remember this.)

Consumerism, Snow, and Marriage

Highlight of the Day: Interviewing Ryan Connor, Jay Link, and Janet McMahon for this month's Beyond the Standard program. The title of the program centered around consumerism, the subject of the February Christian Standard, in which each of these three wrote. But we quickly moved to something beyond and before overspending and over acquiring to the basic issue of why we live and how we glorify God with all of life—including all our possessions and our money but certainly not stopping there.
I want to listen to the whole program again (you can hear it too, here)—I'm thinking there's probably at least one editorial in their comments, and besides that, I need to consider again all the challenges and perspectives of these three fine people.


Surprise of the Day: Snow! Did they say we would have more snow? I don't think so. Evelyn and I grabbed supper at Abuelo's, and when we walked back to the cars (we met there) about 6:30, snow flakes were floating down from the sky like a scene from a Hallmark movie. I stepped outside after 8:30 to find the driveway covered and a pretty sifting of snow on the bushes. It had stopped snowing by then, though; the temperature was above freezing; and I don't think we're going to have any real problems with the white stuff.

Quote of the Day: "With marriage, our generation thinks that we should all be incredibly happy all the time. The moment we are not incredibly happy, something's wrong with the marriage. Well, nothing's wrong with the marriage! You've signed up to live with someone for a half a century, and as long as you still have stuff in common and are still close it's fine. But you see people getting divorced and you think "What do you think is waiting out there?" I kind of like that [the generation that grew up in the interwar period] would have laughed at this idea."

—Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, in the Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2014

Snow Business

The story today is the snow. They said 2 to 4 inches, starting at 5 or 7 a.m. By the time I left at 7:15 the yard was covered, and Van Gordon was anything but clear. It was wet and heavy, and the trees were beautiful, more beautiful than my pictures show. The snow continued through the day. Evelyn called me after lunch and said she had measured 5-1/2 inches and it was still snowing. She hired a young man in the neighborhood to plow the driveway and shovel the walks, but by the time I got home, the wind had blown a drift to cover half the driveway. I tried to plow through, but after two attempts, gave up and parked the car sow I could shovel. Evelyn came and helped, and we cleared the driveway in about 5 minutes.
They're predicting temperatures in the single digits overnight, with worries about roads refreezing. Evelyn's assertion that we're moving south when I retire is sounding more sensible.

I snapped this picture and the one below through my car window about 8 a.m.

This was the view from our lunchroom, looking down at the courtyard
 between our building and the one next to us.

Here and below are scenes outside our building at lunchtime. 

Snow White

We awoke this morning to find a thick insulation of heavy, wet snow over everything. Before I left for work after 9:00, Evelyn measured 7 inches on the front lawn.

I decided to shovel the driveway and clean off Jennifer's car since she had to drive to Louisville today, and since her car was almost hidden by the snow. Evelyn helped. The snow was heavy and wet. 

We were making slow progress when our neighbor, Bob Leshnak, came down, driving his ATV with a plow attached. We had seen him clearing his driveway, and now he was finished. He offered to finish plowing ours; we still had at least a third of it to do, plus clearing Jennifer's car, and we were really grateful.

The snow outside was beautiful. Every tree was covered with snow, as if it was painted with fluffy, white icing. Every grove, every yard, at every turn there was a scene that looked like a landscape from a painting or a Christmas card. 

I drove to work about 9:15 and enjoyed the beautiful scenery (my picture certainly doesn't do it justice) all the way there.

Back to the Blog

This week is more evidence of a syndrome I've observed before. When there's not much to write about, there's usually time to write. When the day is full of stuff to report, it may be too full for diary-writing time. Jen has been here the last few days, and I've been too busy talking and eating and TV-viewing with her to write about it.
Actually, I've decided to be a little less driven about this whole diary-keeping thing. That is, I'm not going to feel guilty if I don't post some day. So I won't feel guilty about not posting yesterday, and I'll get on with a short entry for today.
Jennifer said before she came to visit that she was craving one of her guilty pleasures, a trip to Frisch's. So she and Evelyn met me there for lunch yesterday before they visited Mildred Holmes at Mason Christian Village. She also said she was missing good Indian food, so our outing today was to go to Raja India on Tylersville for dinner and enjoy the delicacies they offer there.

Jennifer decided while she was here she'd teach Evelyn how to use Pinterest, so that was the activity for this evening. We've had lots of laughs over the whole experience thinking of names for boards we could create, for example, and comparing Evelyn's beginning boards with the little bit I've pinned. ("Who would guess you'd both have pins from mamalovesfood.com?"
I spent most of the day at work today slogging through some challenging editing, in between e-mail correspondence and getting answers I didn't like at a brief meeting I had this afternoon.
They're predicting several inches of snow overnight, and before 9:00, the pouring rain we had at suppertime turned into heavy snowfall. The sidewalks and lawn were covered in no time.
I e-mailed myself some editing I can do early in the morning if I decide to go in a little late. The snow is supposed to turn into flurries by about 9:00 in the morning.

Midday Snow

The weatherman said something about snow mixed with rain as he gave his report while I was driving to work this morning. By the middle of the morning, we had what looked like a whiteout, and at lunchtime there was a beautiful frosting of snow on all the trees and bushes.
Evelyn said on Facebook this was the kind of snow she likes: a beautiful display everywhere except on the roads. And by the time I left work, it had melted off my car and windshield.

Just a Taste of Winter

We awoke this morning to news of black ice, overturned semi-trailers, and closed highways. Yesterday had been decorated with snow flurries, but we weren't expecting this! Evidently the highway departments weren't, either, because the early morning rush hour wasn't rushing. Evelyn looked at the pictures from the Artemis cameras online, and the highways looked pretty clear. So she decided to rethink her first decision to go in late. She got there fine, after sliding at one intersection close to home. I left after her (I always do), and followed a salt truck all the way down Hamilton-Mason Road and had no issues.
They're predicting 57 degrees tomorrow. Spring IS on the way!

The birds were hunting for seeds under our feeder
before I went to work.

We had arranged for a man to pick up our
mower for servicing, so I left it in the driveway,
as promised. It's almost time to cut
that grass buried in this morning's snow!

For the record, here's what I paid
for gas this morning, with a 10-cents
discount using my Kroger's card!

Snow Business

It's snowing. The weathermen all said it would start after 3:00, but it was spitting snow when we left for lunch before noon. By 1:00 the wet snow was still melting on the sidewalks and streets, but it was clinging to the grass and starting to paint the tree branches white.

Evelyn and I had our typical big Friday night out. This week it was Indian food, then a trip to Kohl's to use our Kohl's cash. We bought some new 12 oz juice glasses that we're going to use for dessert at our Valentine's Day dinner tomorrow night. (Watch for pictures Sunday!) We had $20 to spend and we got the glasses for free with a 2-cent credit left on our Kohl's cash coupon. We decided we didn't need to spend that.

 Instead, we drove over to Kroger's and got the meat for tomorrow's dinner, in case Evelyn needs to start it (in the Crock Pot) in the morning before I venture back out to the grocery for the weekly run. It's supposed to get down to 19 degrees overnight with slick spots. But it should be clear by noon.

The snow had started to stick in the courtyard outside
our office at 1:00 this afternoon.