"I've never been in an accident" said Tom, recklessly.

Today the President delayed - again - a decision on the Keystone Pipeline. I don't know enough to comment on the merits of the project but it's hard not to see his failure to accept or reject it as a blatantly political move. I'm betting he'll announce his decision shortly after the November elections. Anybody want some of that action?

This afternoon I got Pam a Samsung Chromebook to replace her balky netbook running Windows Old. She's been asking about a new unit for awhile now, and she'll come home from work to see it sitting in her chair. It will be interesting to see how steep her learning curve is, what with cloud storage and Google Docs. But 99% of what she does on a computer is internet so I think the bigger keypad, larger screen and vastly improved speed will make her very happy.

What happens to spiders and little bugs that get sucked up in the vacuum? Death by suffocation, or is it like heaven for arachnids?

Stream of Consciousness (that probably doesn't hold up under close scrutiny but seems legit at the moment):

Last night while driving home from our weekly dinner out we passed a house down the street and around the corner from ours. (I was driving the Falcon.) Standing outside the house were three couples, and if I had to guess I'd say two of them had been dinner guests. With my window down I could hear one of the men (the host?) say to the others, "See that guy there...." That's all I heard before I was out of earshot.

I'm the only guy in our neighborhood driving a '65 Falcon, and because it's parked in the driveway while the garage is filled with a '59 Chevy truck in various pieces it's pretty easy to identify where I live and what I enjoy doing in my spare time. A 49-year old wagon, a 52-year old VW that's been through a body-off, and a 55-year old pickup truck completely disassembled make that pretty clear. So I figured the guy was telling his guests...what? "The guy's place looks like a car recycling business." Or, "He's got some cool cars that he's brought back from near ruin."

Either way, I liked overhearing the first part of his comment. I like old cars, I like restoring them, and when I'm out and about I almost always get compliments on what I'm driving. I feel a certain degree of "cool" from my car hobby. Today it was a honk and thumbs-up on the freeway. The guy at the Quick Change where I take my used oil can't stop telling me how great he thinks the Falcom is. OK, an old station wagon isn't a chick magnet (though the VW rates high on the "that's cute" scale) but I have a hobby that I thoroughly enjoy and gets me some props.
And I'm 63.

When I was 16 I weighed 147 pounds and played the cello. I was afraid of my own shadow, avoided eye contact, and hated school because of the social inadequacy I felt. There's a too-often-ignored flip side to that: self-absorption. Someone who has no self esteem sees their world as a them-versus-me environment that precludes serving others. In a paradoxical way it's a very selfish place to be; you're always thinking about yourself.

All of that to say that last night, and today as I thought back to overhearing someone talk about me (whatever it was they ended up saying) I wish I could take some of the "comfortable in his own skin" that I feel now and drag it back to my youth. I'd have been a much better person, both to myself and others. And I would have had some fun with life.

Yeah, God is sovereign and good, and I wouldn't/couldn't be who I am now if I hadn't been who I was then. But sometimes it does seem like a waste of a couple of decades of living.

BTW, I can think of three specific factors during my 20's that turned things around for me, none more powerful than Pam's presence in my life.