"Motivation will almost always beat mere talent." - Norman Ralph Augustine

This promises to be a crazy day, so I'm writing this in installments as opportunity arises. If I wait until evening I'm afraid I'll either write nothing, or nonsense.
(I heard that.)

The first stop: coffee maker. I'm back on schedule with eyes popping open about 3:30, but the brain is definitely still feeling the fuzz from 24 hours on the road. Some post-trip observations:

• I have to write alternative lyrics to "It's All About That Bass," which is all over every contemp radio station. It's all about that nose. 
• I don't know how any trucker lives past 30, given the food that's available next to our nation's freeways. Gross and about as unhealthy as possible. It will take me another week to flush that crud out of my system. 
• I listened to Tom Clancy's "Command Authority" on CD as I drove through areas with limited radio stations. Then I got hooked and listened when I had all kinds of broadcast options. He died last October, wrote this book just before that, and either had the gift of prophecy or had access to information the public had no clue about. (I think the latter.) You gotta read or listen to this book. I don't want to spoil, so I'll just say it involves a Russian invasion of Ukraine. 
• If you have to drive through LA, do it at 2 a.m. 
• Death can happen to anyone at any time. I saw two serious accidents, one minutes after it happened. Several people had stopped but first responders had not yet arrived. Be ready, folks.
• If you get a really cheap hotel room turn out the lights before you fold back the covers. Just sayin'

At my six-month check this morning the cardiologist said I'm doing great.

"Are you still exercising like a mad man?"

Yep

From there to Starbucks. In prep for my next sermon series - three from Isaiah 40 before we get to Advent - I read one commentator who talked about the divinely assigned role of the prophet and its contemporary parallel for the preacher (cf v. 1). An interesting question, that. What is the job of the preacher? I think there may occasionally be some confusion on that matter, on both sides of the pulpit.

The false assumption behind assisted suicide (cf. the contemporary case of Brittany Maynard) is that my life belongs to me and I may end it at the time of my choosing for my own reasons. That is another example of the presumption and willfulness that characterizes too much of human actions. 

I now have a palm-sized bandage on my right cheek (the one on my face) covering an open wound where the dermatologist removed flesh to excise the melanoma. It stays like that until Thursday when I go to the plastic surgeon who will remove the bandage to check it out. He'll then replace the dressing until next Tuesday when the dermatologist will have results and know if he has to go back in to take more. (He might hear Friday, and is out of the office on Mondays.) If he got it all I'll go back to the plastic surgeon who will sew it up. The dermatologist said he'd normally do that himself, but because of my prior melanoma he took more than he normally would, so he wants a plastic surgeon to do that part of the work. 

No worries. 

And women find facial scars sexy, right? 

"A knife fight with a crazed mugger." That's my story. 

I had lots of interesting conversations during my trip to Seattle and did some good thinking while driving. Some of that I might put in future posts. But for now I've got more tasks I want to get done before bedtime. And my body is telling me I'm not entirely caught up on sleep. So I'm going to have a cup of coffee, some of the paleo dessert Pam made for me, and then go. to. bed.