Thursday, November 24, 2011

Communists have no class.


Pam has come down with a head cold and had a miserable night. She spent the morning sleeping through the Macy's parade and gathered it together enough to go to work for her 1:00-7:00 shift. She has to work a 12-hour shift tomorrow and again Saturday, assuming she's up to it physically.

While she "watched" the parade I worked on my sermon. As I've written here before, preachers quickly figure out a single sermon rarely makes any appreciable difference in someone's life. It's the cumulative effect of a host of sermons that brings spiritual growth. That growth is so incremental that it's often only discernable over a considerable span of time. In December the believer looks back over the year and realizes he/she has a deeper understanding of who God is and what the Father/child relationship should look like.

That said, every once in a while the preacher (naively?) designs to preach a sermon or short series that he hopes will turn on a light or bring a specific behavioral change. This is that. Three weeks tied together thematically and building upon each other. So there was extra focus during this morning's sermon prep.

Once she left for work, get RID of the parade! There's football on. Suh (Detroit Lions) is out of control and either very good at lying through his teeth or seriously delusional. I hope he gets smacked hard by the commissioner.


Until I get the body back from Pat I'm going to spend time working on pieces. Late this afternoon I worked on the speedometer. You can see by the before pictures on the left that it needed attention. Besides being generally dirty and coroded the gels visible at the bottom of the dial had totally disintegrated. VW used thin pieces of colored plastic (gels) in front of light bulbs for the turn signal indicator (an arrow that points both ways and flashes when the turn signals are activated) and the oil pressure and generator warning lights. Those gels had dried out and crumbled. I read on the VW owners' forum that the colored tabs used for file folders make the ideal replacement. So I cut new gels and super-glued them in place. Then I very carefully pulled back the geared shaft that turns the odometer disks and reset the odometer to zero. OK, it actually reads 4, but getting that last digit to zero requires removing a lot of little pieces that I read will almost never go back where they belong. I can live with 4 showing on the odometer.

The light bulbs will all be replaced with 12v bulbs to match the conversion I did on the generator.

The "8 61" stamped on the back indicates this speedometer was manufactured in August of 1961.

The headline on USAToday.com reads, "Study of Marines shows guilt is top cause of PTSD." I disagree. The top cause of PTSD among Marines is war. And it isn't quibbling to point out that the word guilt implies they've done something wrong, when all they've done is follow orders. If it said, "false guilt," or even "feelings of guilt" I'd have less of a problem with the headline.

Pam's home, has been in her chair for about 10 minutes, and is already half asleep. She'll be sleeping "soundly" soon.


2 comments:

MacDaddy said...

Suh (detroit Lions) had the same righteous indignation in the face of guilt as the mother of Jahessye Shockley. I do not understand how they can go beyond defending their actions and attack others for daring to suspect their motives or actions. It makes it hard to believe anyone.

Craig MacDonald said...

Makes me wonder if there's some pathology involved. No excuse, but that behavior is so far from the norm I can't imagine how they pull it off. And Mr. Suh, the "man upstairs" has seen the video and you are BUSTED.