"All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy." - Spike Milligan

I heard someone on the radio, NPR of all places, say that a coincidence is God's way of staying anonymous. That's probably an improvement on my, "I believe in coincidences so long as you spell it with an uppercase C."

A screen shot from this afternoon in Sun City:

I went to McDonald's this afternoon to work on my Costa Rica preps and thought their AC wasn't working. Now methinks it just couldn't keep up.




The drive from Elmira, OR to Hollister, CA is either one very long day or two easy days, and because we were nearing the end of our vacation we decided to do the latter. We'd arrive at Bob & Marla's early afternoon fairly fresh after the unpleasant (IMO) drive down the central CA valley. We spent that night in Corning, CA, "The Olive Capital of the World." Underwhelming, but we could get a cheap motel room with free wifi, and Pam's rat dog could stay in the room instead of the hot car for an additional $10.

I always snag the complimentary shampoo bottles because they're handy the next time I'm flying someplace and need to meet the TSA requirement for maximum liquid container size. Yesterday, while cleaning the bathroom, I came across the bottle I picked up in Corning. I'm pretty impressed that using this shampoo will improve my fingernails. (You might have to click the image to see the fine print.)

All the drawers are done save for attaching the fronts, which need to be painted first. And I've got one of the drawer units painted with three coats of semi-gloss white. I'm doing that in the laundry room with a tarp on the floor because, as you can see from the image above, it's way too hot to do it in the garage. But there's only room for one unit at a time, so I'll paint the other one tomorrow.

Why, when a TV commercial shows a small group of people together in a social setting are they all talking at the same time?

Tomorrow morning we'll go to the church we've been to the last two Sundays. We'll walk into their first service a few minutes early, sit near the back, and spend the next 1 1/4 hours as spectators. We'll know about 30% of the songs (each church has its own playlist, something I accept as reality), and the sermon will have at least one thing to think about (Dan is better than most). When it's done we'll walk out to the car, immediately turn on the AC, and leave.
That's not what we want for church.
If we were staying here we would probably make an effort to integrate into their community, but even in the best of outcomes we'd be a very small part of a pretty large church, half of whom we'd never see (assuming the second service is about the same size). The pastor would probably recognize us as regulars but never know our names or anything about us. And if something in life went seriously wrong and we wanted to call our pastor we'd have to explain who we were.
"I'm that old, tall, skinny guy with the wife who is obviously kind and gentle. We come to first service"

People look for different things in a church. This ain't it for us.