Born in the State of Confusion; Living in Denial.

Ouch!

A-Rod and I have something in common. No, this isn't a come-clean session; I haven't been getting injections from my cousin - though I do have a body that might raise suspicions. But we do both have hip problems. A-Rod has a torn labrum (whatever that is) and will be out either weeks or months, depending on whether they decide he needs rest and rehab or surgery. I've been struggling the last week with what I'm assuming is arthritis pain in both hips, but it came on quickly and has been rather severe. I haven't run since last Saturday, hoping that will eventually make it go away. I've also increased the dosage on my pain meds. If that doesn't work I've got a source for an over-the-counter med from Namibia. Hey, I'm feeling the pressure of being the incredible athlete my mega-contract expects me to be.
So far I haven't read any speculation about a connection between A-Rod's use of performance enhancing drugs and this injury. Will that come up?

Tomorrow I'm going to do a valve adjust on Gerta. The maintenance schedule calls for that procedure every 6,000 miles (every other oil change), and since I have no idea when it was last done I figure I should start from scratch and establish a schedule.
I've read up in the manual and watched some vintage VW mechanic training videos here, so I'm feeling OK about my first time at this procedure.
Vintage VW's don't have hydraulic lifters so valve clearance is critical. In this case, .006" between valve stem and rocker arm in a cold engine. That measurement has to be taken at TDC (Top Dead Center) for each piston, so the engine has to be manually rotated to get it in the correct position for adjusting the valves for each of the four pistons. What's crazy is that all you have to do is grab hold of the alternator pulley and give it a good twist and the whole engine rotates. When I was working on cars back in the day I had to pull all the spark plugs in order to eliminate the compression before I could manually rotate the engine. But standard compression ratios are around 9 to 1 and an old VW is 7 to 1.
These cars are fascinating bits of German engineering.

Rush Limbaugh has challenged Pres. Obama to a debate.
Rowdy Roddy Piper called out Bishop Tutu.

My friend Sherry sent me this. Love it!
The Porpoise Driven Life

I did more sermon work this morning. This passage (1 Cor. 7:1-16) is about divorce and remarriage, and in the process of reading through some of my commentaries I came across the subject of Roman Catholic canon law regarding divorce. Better: Roman Catholic canon law on annulement, since the R.C. church doesn't believe in divorce under any circumstance or for any reason, even that allowed by Christ in Matt. 5 and 19. They see divorce as the breaking of a divinely ratified contract and therefore, strictly speaking, not possible. But if the contract was invalid from the beginning it can be declared void by the Church. That is, the church declares there never was a valid contract, a marriage, in the first place.
Grounds for annulement include consanguity (you can't marry your sister), abduction to force marriage, one party planning from the beginning to be unfaithful, whacking the first spouse to marry the second, and going into the marriage with no intention to have children. You also can't be guilty of clandestinity, which seems to be basically eloping and not taking a priest along.

As I type this we're watching a show on PBS called "The British Beat." It includes archival footage of British rock groups from the 60's but mostly it's performances by British artists who had hits then and have now come back on stage to reprise them. I'm not sure which is more disturbing - watching old men trying to look and act like they did 40 years ago, or seeing an auditorium full of grandparents trying to relive their teen years at rock concerts.
Makes me think of Springsteen, "Glory Days."