Pulling the plug on a workaday world…

It’s that time.

Not for breakfast or coffee or my daily walk.  It’s time to think about pulling the plug on the workaday world.  Events (health, desire to write, et al) have conspired to bring me to this threshold.  But those events make me think about it, not actually do it.  The gold watch ceremony (hey, I work at a bank so that’s a figure of speech) is still a gleam in my eye and the market will need to continue a rebound in order to forestall social security as long as is possible.

But as the financial planners say, at least I’m thinking about it (albeit late) and the idea of riding into the sunset has some appeal, and if I do so, at least it will be on an old man’s Harley.

———————

April 18, 2011

Ellen/Reid: Nothing much earthshaking to report from this past week; heavy rain, work pressures, bad golf, early snoozing on the couch Saturday night.  Pretty much routine.

I’ve been giving some extra thought to retirement.  For some odd reason, the age of 64 has jumped into my thinking.  No particular rhyme or reason, it’s just there.  It is almost unfathomable that there is light at the end of the tunnel on this work thing.  It wouldn’t be so much a train light but more like sunshine.

I’ve been looking at the Social Security Administration updates it mails out every so often and even though I’m far, far, far from a math wizard, I could get by on some of the paltry sum that would come in the mail box.  Your uncle is counseling me to ride things out until 70 and before February that might have been the best path.  But I want to live now while the living is good.  A few more years and the house will be paid off along with the small home equity loan (don’t use your house as a piggy bank) and the Toyota.  Not that I’ll spend my time playing checkers and rocking on the front porch, but I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities around here.  I look at the retired people at church who say they’ve never been busier.  Even the word “retire” makes my blood curdle a little bit but I suppose it would only be in the corporate sense.  Maybe I could be a greeter at Wal-Mart or some other part-time stint.  I’d love to be a senior housing columnist for the Observer as they keep reminding me to turn in columns.  I suppose if I wore the label of ‘retiree’ that would give things a little more credence.  I look at the things that ostensibly would keep me busy and there would appear to be a fair amount; church newsletter, golf (if I haven’t already quit by then and donated the sticks to some good cause or thrown them in the irretrievable bottom of some lake) and riding the bike (if I still have the rig, which I think I will).

One of these days John and I have to have the “talk.”  He keeps telling me things aren’t half bad, it’s just the other half that I worry about.  As your uncle keeps repeating to me, retirement isn’t all about trips to Italy or a month in Bali.  When the job situation was in the balance last year, John had worked on some approach to bonds that would have yielded a passable monthly income but thankfully that was pulled off the table.  It might be time to resurrect that approach, or at least get him thinking about it.  He’s sort of gravitated in that direction already.  I guess he doesn’t think someone in my age category should take unmitigated risks.  Jeez, I don’t feel that old.  One of the factors behind all of this, I suppose, is that I will never achieve the bank’s formula that combines years of service and age that allows you some degree of benefits once you’re out the door (alas, no gold watch either).  That would only kick in if I worked here until I was about 80.  But I thought it might be time to at least fill you in on what’s circulating in my dense noggin.

Got up pretty early yesterday and planted the year’s first, and only, tomato plant in a huge pot just outside on the front entry way.  A Better Boy.  As it grows, it will be anchored in place by some bamboo rods I salvaged from a nearby bamboo grove and some of Felicia’s worn pantyhose.  Last year was okay in terms of harvestable fruit, and this year the larger pot should let the roots roam free without constriction.  Ellen, I paid handsomely for black dirt you take for granted in your backyard.  The lettuce is really producing right now and the arugula is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the lettuce pot.  We’d better eat while the eating is good because it’s going to be brutally hot here soon enough, then the lettuce will go kaput for sure.  But that’s just when the sweet basil charges full steam ahead.  Oh, but for a little patch of red raspberries.

14F in St. Paul…

Henry sits - momentarily - before our first walk on 11/23. He's a good dog.

I’m camped this morning in a funky coffee shop across from Macalester College in St. Paul, Mn.  If you wonder how far my stake is in the ground in Charlotte, look no further than the thermometer this morning.  The low was a frosty 14F.  On top of that I walked a frigid mile to find coffee (a six on the one-to-10 scale). The walk and the low temp both hammered the stake a bit further into the ground.  I am surrounded by winter-hardy Minnesotans who think nothing of venturing out in such weather. 

Since I’m near to a strong outpost of academia, here is a bit of revisionist history: an older letter to Ellen and Reid (FYI…both are still snoozing this morning, but good for them).  Henry insisted on a walk at 6:00 a.m.  Who was I not to oblige?

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Nov. 20, 2006

EB/Reid: You know, lots of odd things have happened to me in life; breaking a collarbone, eating dog food (just once), having two children, etc.  But yesterday was about the weirdest thing that has happened to me in a long time, and certainly the weirdest since I became a Southerner.  Someone took off with my loaded, filled-to-the-rim shopping cart.  The local grocery store here is Harris Teeter, very nice, chic, see-and-be-seen type of Yuppie/Gen Xer place.  So yesterday morning, I take my list to H-T and, starting in the produce section, go aisle by aisle, always looking for the deal.  You know, 2-for-1 cans of soup, that sort of thing.

So now, I am virtually all the way through the store, roughly the same size as Hy-Vee but much higher class.  Sort of a cross between Dahl’s and Hy-Vee, with a little Palmer’s Deli feel.  One of the final items on the list is bagels, so I momentarily park my cart and begin comparison shopping among shelves of wheat, plain and foo-foo options.  When I find the half dozen on sale, I turn to my cart – it can’t be 10 feet away – and voom, it’s gone.  The store is packed, and I know I let out some sort of expletive – “screw this” – or something equally foul because a little old lady squints at me and kind of turns her nose up although I don’t consciously remember saying “screw this” out loud.  Who knows, maybe it came out worse.  But my cart is gone and 45 minutes worth of analyzing a 12 oz. package of pasta on sale vs. the 16 oz package that is roughly the same price but not on sale has gone to waste.  I’m not angry, just miffed, so off I go in search of the stolen cart.  I go next door to the deli section, then wines, then foo-foo organic stuff.  No cart.  I mean, here it is loaded to the gills with stuff no one else could possibly want but me; cereal, apples, chicken, fresh basil, a fresh copy of Martha Stewart (no, wait, a copy of Martha Stewart Living will never touch any of my possessions), etc.  So I head to the check out lines, hoping to bust the culprit when there it is, sitting there alone.  Some poor schmuck had inadvertently taken it, tossed in a head of lettuce and some Miller Lite (I did replace those back on the shelves) and thought “What the hell did I just do.”  So they abandoned it.  I know I was muttering to myself the entire time, and that’s why people gave me a wide berth.  Maybe some people find salty language offensive but not me.  So the check out guy says ‘did you find everything all right?’  Oh yeah, pal, I sure found everything all right.

Baked some of those round Italian loaves yesterday and went for a short ride in the 50F temps to deliver the goods to my boss (he just adopted twin girls from Guatemala) and my best friends Betsy and Bob.  Of course, neither were home at the time so that ruined the effect of hauling in on the Harley.  There aren’t a lot of bikers down here, just a few people who ride Harleys if you catch my drift.  It’s odd not seeing more bikers tooling around.  You can spot the faux Harley guys from a mile away – they all wear lace up boots.  There’s no lace up boots in motorcycling.  Sissies.

Looking forward to T-Day.  The paper said this morning 38 million people will travel this weekend, and 36 million of them will all try to board my particular plane at the same time.  But I am looking forward to the Big Red routing the hapless Buffs.  Big Corn beats Big Buffalo.  Be good.

Being different…

Bryan's "designer" cast. He has limited sympathy for Bob's texting injury.

A friend of mine posted a message a few days ago on my seldom-visited Facebook page about a recent blog post, and I just got around to taking a look at her message today. It was a nice note, and I really appreciate Jane’s concern and support.

My tardiness could mean one of several things; A) I err by expecting others to instantly read my posts yet can’t take the time to read the messages of others, B) I don’t spend much time roaming the Facebook landscape and C) Facebook doesn’t hold a lot of interest for me.  I hope ‘A’ isn’t entirely true, but I think ‘B’ and ‘C’ hold smidgens of truth.

Make no mistake, I am a gnat bite on the globe-sized entity that is Facebook.  Part of my reluctance relates to time; recently, a local mother made news when she banned her teen daughter from Facebook for a week.  The young girl claimed withdrawal symptoms from her four to six hour a day Facebook habit.

Bob sports his real cast. Empathy, let alone sympathy, have been hard to come by.

It’s hard to spend one hour, let alone the young woman’s four to six hours, on anything every single day.  Sure, I like to know what people are up to but there is an intimacy that is missing online.  At least my obsessing with letters can be measured in minutes, not hours.  Perhaps it’s my way of being different.

—————–

Bridger update: Two more inquiries have come in.  The able-bodied Reid looks to be on board, too.  FYI…airfares from Charlotte to Denver appear to be in the $430 range, and $528 round trip to Jackson Hole.  Denver is a sturdy but esthetically pleasing 5-6 hour drive to Pinedale, WY while Jackson Hole is roughly two hours.

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October 11, 2010

Ellen/Reid: Well, it seems I’m in danger of becoming one of “them.”  By them, I mean a Southerner.  Because in the last few weeks, I’ve cooked okra twice (it’s pretty good) and also fixed up a mess of fried green tomatoes (also better than you might think), finally got a North Carolina license plate for the Harley, watched some NASCAR (just a few minutes), and while tooling around on the bike stopped by fields for a first hand look at peanuts and cotton.  On one stretch of road saw some tobacco over yonder but we didn’t stop.  I don’t think anyone down in these parts will ever confuse me for a local but the assimilation is happening as we speak.

I’m starting to learn where towns are like Florence, Laurinburg, Chester and Reidsville.  What I do know after this weekend’s bike ride is that there are no, or hardly any, straight roads in the entire region.  It is as if state road planners dyed a pot of spaghetti and poured it out on a large piece of paper.  Where ever the spaghetti hit the paper was the road scheme.  We rode to Danville, VA on Saturday, and according to Mapquest, the trip was roughly 150 miles.  That’s a shade over two hours at Interstate speed.  But the trip took nearly five hours because, without exaggeration, we took no fewer than 15 different roads to get there.  There weren’t enough bread crumbs to help us follow the path.  I couldn’t replicate it now by memory if I had to.  It was just bizarre.  Felicia and I laid the road maps for North Carolina and Iowa side by side.  It was hilarious.  Iowa was almost totally a grid of north-south, east-west straight lines, while North Carolina was a literal jumble of roads.

I’m going to make my plans for Thanksgiving this week.  Ellen, I will likely get up there on Tuesday because I’m late enough in making plans that all the Wednesday seats are filled.  Part of me would like to drive to get the stink blown off but let me see what the airfares are.  I’m excited to see your refurbished digs and the new furnishings.  Reid and I can handle all the cooking and whatnot.  That will be our role as guests.  Glad to hear you have a touch because mine is where a fair amount of my sleeping is done.

Your uncle did all the work to rid much of your grandparent’s house of stuff this past weekend.  He wasn’t too pleased that I wasn’t there to help him out but as a practical reality it just wasn’t a reality for me to be there.  All of your stuff is in the basement of a friend of mine, Pete Z__________, who was nice enough to hold it until you, or your mom, can get to Omaha to retrieve it.  I e-mailed your mother to see if she could help but she won’t be back in the Midwest until past the middle of December, so we’ll lean on Pete to hold your stuff a little bit longer than we might otherwise want.  Ellen, this includes the china, and Reid, this includes whatever it was you picked after the funeral plus some kitchen stuff Ralph and Gayle thought you might need to stock your new little kitchen.

My cousin Tom was the first to step up and say “yes” to a trip to the Bridger Wilderness at the end of July in 2011.  He’s always been an outdoor guy and the drive isn’t too onerous from his home in Eugene, OR.  It’s closer than Charlotte, that’s for sure.  I’ve got room for 8 to 12 folks so if either of you want to go backpacking…Ellen, you could even bring Henry along for the hike.  He’d love it.

Well, I’m gonna sign off for now as there’s a conference call on tap in about an hour that I have to prep for.  As soon as the T-Day plans are known, you two will be the first to know other than me.

Falling upward…

 

My friend Bob sent this photo of my letter to him, plus the $1 I grudgingly owed him for a lost bet.

 

It has been some time – a few months anyway – since I’ve written a letter to only one of the kids.

Now is the time for another.

Reid has done a better than admirable job at his gigantic ad agency in Chicago.  The advertising game is a harsh what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business.  He has persevered after his primary account was lost to a competitor.  He made himself valuable with his attitude and his intellect.  The account went down but he fell upward.  And that is a great thing.  This week he got a raise and a shift to other big accounts.  Maybe he didn’t get all he was after, but I am very proud of his stick-to-itiveness.  This is a kid who, early in his agency career, got axed along with a slew of line staff at another shop.  At a tender age he became a graduate, with honors, of the school of hard knocks.

I’m not sure when the letter to him will ultimately surface on this page.  I will ask but that will be his call.  Yet that is the prerogative of dads and moms: tell their children when they have done something that is good and, secondarily, pleases their parents.  That is the gist of the note to Reid.

—————-

Bridger Wilderness update: Hey, I’m up to one companion for the July, 2011 trip.  My cousin Tom Andersen from Oregon, is on board.  Bring it on, Tom.  Hey, there’s room for plenty more wanderers.

—————–

But it’s Wednesday, and we’ll reach a bit further into my bag of tricks for an older letter to the twosome.

July 9, 2007

Reid/Ellen: As weekends go on the old 1-10 scale, I’d have to give this one a 3.  This is Murphy’s Law as relates to weekends: whatever could go wrong did go wrong.  And once it goes wrong, it really never gets right.

It started when I took the hog in for its 30,000 service — 30,000 miles, can you believe it? – and since the Harley dealership (i.e. crooks) didn’t have loaner bikes, I rented a Dyna Wide Glide for the day at an alleged steep discount.  Anyway, the bike didn’t have a windshield, so it was nice to feel the wind, and bugs, in my face for a change.  I went home and laid around then thought ‘what the heck, I might as well get out and ride’.  So I went northeast of town to Lowe’s Motor Speedway, an absolutely enormous venue that can sit 200,000 for stockcar (i.e. NASCAR) races.

On the way back, it clouded up, and before I knew what hit me, the rain was coming down sideways.  If you’ve never been on a bike in the rain without a windshield, the best way to explain it is that raindrops feel like needles.  In the space of :30, my face was utterly exfoliated.  It was raining unbelievably hard, and by the time I got to shelter under the first Interstate bridge, I was completely soaked.  But it was very hot, in the mid-90s, although the shower cooled it down a fair amount.  Seems we had a microburst which shoved down trees and powerlines all over the city, and by the time I got back to the Harley dealership (i.e. crooks) I’d navigated through standing water and was mud from head to toe because of all the traffic ahead of my kicking up dirt and debris.  And if it’s not enough to catch raindrops, try some sand and stones at 70 mph.  That gets your attention.  Now I’ve been in rain before and really don’t mind it, but this was incredible.

And that was the high point of entire two days.  Against my better judgment, played golf yesterday, and it was more of the same you’ve heard me whine so often about: bad, bad, bad.  Shank, shank, shank.  It’s sickening.  Reid, I may give you my clubs when you and Rachel are down here.  I stink.

Am supposed — supposed — to go in today for a skin treatment called Levalan.  It’s where the dermatologist slathers your face in some gunk and, as he says, you sit in the lobby for an hour or so to “let the marinade work” (his words), then you sit under some blue light for 90 minutes.  It turns your skin bright red — they say absolutely no post-treatment sunlight for 48-72 hours — and in theory it’s supposed to rid your skin of pre-cancerous cells.  I’ve had what they call squamas cell carcinomas taken off in recent weeks and this is supposed to do the trick.  But when he uses words like marinade and sort of laughs off the treatment, it makes you wonder.  So, I’m getting a second opinion in the very near future.

Did bake some round Italian loaves Friday night and dropped them off to some folks around the office on Saturday morning before the deluge.  I dunno, Reid, these loaves are good but my gosh, it’s a three-riser and takes roughly 5 hours from start to finish and didn’t take things out of the oven until 11:30.  Hardly worth it.  But damn, it makes good toast.

Okay, here’s the skinny on Grandma’s birthday.  Uncle Ralph has made arrangements for photos on Friday at 2:00.  I don’t know why he didn’t get this figured out for Saturday, but that’s the way things are.  Can you guys make that?  If you need plane tickets, go ahead and make ‘em.   FYI…with Joe’s wedding in January, it seems plane tickets may be $1,100 according to Ralphie.  That may change our plans a bit.  Let’s reconsider making that trip.

Be good, be safe, have fun.

A seat at the conversational table…

You don't get to see Reid often...but here's the lad with his old man as we wait for a flight out of Omaha in mid-June. He's a good kid and is the king of digital advertising.

It would be easy to see why most folks perceive I’m overly reliant on weekly letters to Ellen and Reid with a few texts tossed in for good measure (we rarely e-mail each other).  True, letters do a lot of the heavy lifting.  But not all.

One cannot hide behind letters alone.  In a way, the letters are a seat at the conversational table.  Each page gives us an opening on the phone; i.e. ‘I saw this in your letter’ or ‘tell me more about that’ or ’what’s up with this?…’  The letters give us something to talk about once we get past the obligatory ‘what are you up to?’  ‘Oh, not much’ banter.

At the least they have some advance warning about what’s happening on my end of the spectrum.  Perhaps subconsciously they gain time to process information before their custom ring tones alert them that dad’s on the line.  Better pick up the phone, guys.

——————

Since I’ll be on the road this weekend, I sent my mother her typical letter a few days early.  Nothing earthshaking to share this week.

September 16, 2010

Mom: Now it’s clear to me why skin doctors make the big bucks.  There are lots of people in their waiting rooms and the waits are long.  This morning I lounged for about half an hour before they called my name – and my appointment was at 8:15.  He gave me a good going over followed by a stern lecture about the sun.  He snipped off a little thing on my nose and sent it in for a test and the results should be back in a few days.  We’ll see how it goes.  He underlined the urgency by wanting to see me again in two months.  I’ve become an annuity program for him.  I’ve been trying to wear sunscreen and hats as much as I can.  I think this is residue from my lifeguard/pool manager days back in the swimming pool business all those years ago.  If only we’d known then what we know now.

I’m trying to gear up for a car trip out your way in the next month or so if I can swing it.  I can’t wait to stop by your place and check out your new room – and also check out the food.  If it passes my inspection then it’s good.  No doubt we’ll make a break and head out to some restaurant or ice cream joint that I know you’ve been to.  I’ll stay with Ralph and Gayle, and probably make a side trip to Des Moines to see my friend Steve.  I’ll bring my woolies with me since the temperatures out there will probably be far cooler than the heat we’ve been having here.  Yuck.  But it’s good for my tomato plant.

Nebraska seems to be cruising in football.  Their schedule isn’t the toughest and that may hurt them in the rankings.  Of course, none of the Husker games are broadcast down here and we’re stuck watching Southern teams play Southern teams.  It gets a little old.  I’d rather watch the “name” teams play.  The local pro NFL team, the Panthers, got waxed last week by the New York Giants and already people are saying the entire season will stink.  Probably so.  They’re just not very good.  Hey, they could pay me a million and I’d make a few tackles.

Rode by some cotton fields in South Carolina last weekend while out on a cruise on the Harley.  The locals say they don’t’ see as much cotton grown around here because all the cotton business has moved to China and other factories overseas.  This used to be a big area for cotton mills and cloth and clothing but all you see nowadays are plants that are shut down and shuttered.  I’m telling you when you ride the back roads in the Carolinas you wonder what people do for a living.  It’s depressing.

Hey, Ralph says your new medications are nothing short of wonderful.  That is wonderful.  Glad they finally found a combination that works.

No news from either Ellen or Reid.  But I take that as a good sign that they’re not in trouble (that I know of) and they’re keeping their noses clean and going about their business.  Like Andy and Joe, they are living their own lives.  Can’t wait to see you!

One dollar words…

If I don't grab the chance to write Mary and henry now, the chance will slip by.

When I was a U.S. housing columnist for the Associated Press, one of the guiding tenets was to keep the story as simple as possible for the reader.  You don’t need to be a journalist to grasp that concept.  No one dollar words  when a 25 cent word will do.

The same with letters.  Here are two one pagers written early today.  Both share some of the same material but the telling took a slightly different path in each one.

The first is the usual weekly note to my mother.  In her unfortunate state, it’s fine to update the same topics from week to week.   The sentences tend to be short and uncomplicated.  So are the paragraphs.  Sure, I want to be informational but also to let her know she’s still important to me.  If the page occupies a few moments of her time then we’ve both won.

The second letter is to my dear aunt Mary and uncle Henry (aka Hank).  They live in Portland, OR and face their own health and life challenges.  He’s a former minister (and my mother’s brother) and Mary is a proverbial live wire.  I’ve missed them over the years and this past summer was a chance to reconnect with them and their two sons, Tom and Tim.  Henry asks about his sister at every opportunity.  This letter is another such opportunity.  I can be open and candid with these two.   They are part of the family equation these past few months.  If I don’t tell as much of the  story as I can in what is essentially a one-off letter, it will never get done.

——————–

September 10, 2010

Mom: Never in another million years did I ever think to see you sitting on the back of a Harley, but now I’ve seen it all.  Country House was nice enough to send along photos of the bunch of you perched on the Hog as it tooled around the neighborhood on a pretty day.  That really looked fun.  Hopefully his pipes were loud enough to shake things up a bit.  It’s fun that they have lots of activities for you guys.  If and when I ever get my bike out there we’ll take a ride for real.

I hear through your other son that they’ve dialed back some of your medications.  That’s good.  I’m taking one aspirin a day plus a vitamin, and that’s about all I want to take these days.

Just heard from Ellen this morning and she’s giving a thumbs up to her first week of teaching second graders in St. Paul.  The full debriefing should come sometime this weekend.  She’s got mostly immigrant children so their language skills are all over the map, literally.  She is supposed to send photos of her new classroom and when she does that I’ll include one in the weekly letter.

As for Reid, he’s doing okay, too.  He’s liking his new studio apartment but the one down side is he has to haul out his laundry to the local laundry place.  There are worse things however.  He’s really working hard at his job and liking it quite a bit.  He rides his bike around Chicago quite often and it would be a cheap way to see the city, plus he gets some exercise.  I’d like to see him join a gym but am not sure what his monthly budget allows.

Last weekend was not a real big weekend for me.  Rode my Harley a few hundred miles up toward Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  A nice ride through the countryside.  Stopped at the local Harley shop for a few minutes, then on back home.  Spent Sunday re-staining and waterproofing my little front porch but it looks a lot better now.  You wouldn’t believe how many townhomes are for sale in my little development.  By my count the total is 12.  Times are tough for lots of people and the payments are just a little more than lots of folks can muster month in and month out.  My guess is that Grand Island’s economy isn’t nearly as bad as it is in these parts.  Lots of people looking for meaningful work.

Spent part of Labor Day morning at my church helping to paint the rooms on the second floor of our big secondary building.  It’s being converted to a temporary shelter for homeless women.  It had been vacant for quite some time and needed a good sprucing up.  It’s a good use for the space and the congregation is fully behind the project.  It will house around 50 women in a dorm-type of situation.  Well you be good, and don’t ride into the sunset on that guys Harley.  Not a bad idea, though.

——————-

September 10, 2010

Mary and Henry: This note is long, long overdue, and after this summer, it’s high time I brought you up to speed on most things.

Hank, your sister seems to be doing better these days.  She had a rough patch last month, and Ralph took her to another unit in Hastings where she had a thorough evaluation which was probably long overdue, too.  The end result is that the doctors throttled back the hodge-podge of medications she’d been taking.  The disparity of drugs seemed to throw her for a loop.  She’d been shifted from enough places that with every move came another tweak to her medications.  Now it appears that it’s been ironed out (knock on wood).  She’s back in Grand Island now and appears to do pretty well.  I don’t get to talk to her all that often but when I do she sounds chipper and alert.  She’s somewhat restless though, yet she doesn’t talk about Omaha and the other events.  On the whole I’m glad she’s there because Ralph has seen her just about every day.

I may get out there in October.  We’ve got some estate things to do along with a fair amount of packing at the house.  There have been a lot of people troop through it but there’s not been a single offer.  It’s a reflection of the local economy.  People just aren’t in the market for a home, and if they are, they know they are in the catbird seat in a buyer’s market.

I’ve been in touch with Tom now and again.  He’s a good guy and he keeps me posted on you guys.  He follows my blog relatively religiously (not many people do) and it keeps him up to speed on the latest news.  I can’t tell you how much it meant to have he and Tim shepherd the two of you to Omaha during those trying days.

Tom may have told you I’m back in the job market.  My stake is firmly in the ground in Charlotte so this is where I’ll cast my lot.  Since I’ve come back to the Presbyterian church (I edit the church newsletter and will send the next installment to you.  You can see past issues online at Caldwellpresby.org), my pastor has been beyond supportive.  I’ll admit that my feeble power of prayer has not been extended to the job hunt since it’s my belief that God has more important things on his plate (i.e. showing the divine light to the bizarre Koran-burning, publicity-seeking whack job in Florida) than something as mundane as employment.  Honestly, I’ll be content to ride things out with any sort of work that can be shut off at 5:00 without taking any of it home with me.  I’m fine with that.

Well, it’s back to the job hunt.  I suppose you two will hear from me with a little more frequency now that mom has landed in what looks to be a longer term solution for her.  Don’t think for a minute that you guys haven’t landed in the right spot.  It was the right decision when you made it and it will continue to be so.