"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." - Dale Carnegie

Your equipment should not be sweaty. And if it is you should not be in a mountain goat habitat.

Christ taught his disciples to pray, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That suggests something about God's will is not here as it is there.
Yet Eph. 1:11 says God works out all things in accordance to his will. That statement contains no qualifiers as to locale.
Uhm....

To what extent is contemporary evangelical Christianity a system of sin management? That is, it's focused primarily on the exclusion from, or at least the restraining of the bad stuff in my life.
Is the evangelical message insufficiently focused on a fuller realization of what's good, empowering, and enhancing in the life of a disciple? I don't mean the external - the money, health, and status of the prosperity gospel - but the internal qualities of peace, joy, wisdom....

"Less is more" has become one of the central tenets of our married life over the last 10 years or so. We've downsized significantly twice, once when we moved from our 3-story historic home in MI to 1200 square feet in a boring ranch style home AZ, and again when we moved to 800 square feet of a MoHo outside of Elmira, OR. We consciously work at keeping it simple, basic, and unencumbered by the superfluous.
But the "more is better" ethic persists in the arena of service.
Twenty years ago it was, "Yes, I'll teach that course during the fall term" even though it put me WAY over any reasonable limit of classroom hours for a prof, even at a Bible college.
"Yes, I'll go see your friend in the hospital."
"Yes, I'll answer your emailed question about _____." even though putting together that answer will take me at least an hour to compose an adequate response.
Is it selfish, or at least not sacrificial, to not push the limits in service to the kingdom?

All of this musing, and it's not even 8 a.m. yet.

Pam is just about the only person with whom I don't have to think about what I'm about to say. I do NOT mean that I can be careless in my speech. That would just be stupid, especially in what is my most important relationship. (Not that I haven't been accused by more than a few of being an idiot.) But one of the benefits of 47+ years of marriage is that I'm confident she's going to presume the best. And if it comes out all wrong she'll start from the assumption that she must have misunderstood.
Back up.
My kids are in the same category.
Maybe that's a key part of what being family is supposed to be about.

OK, it's 7:45. Time to move on to the mundane and inane, where I belong.

Dolly should kid two weeks from today. She's getting broader across the beam and some mornings she looks bigger than at last night's feeding.
The next obvious change will be what's called "bagging." Her udder will fill up and get almost hard to the touch. (Note: they do NOT like their udder being touched at that point.) That happens 48 hours or so before kidding and signals the imminence of the event. Dolly has already started to develop more of an udder that she's had heretofore, but full-blown bagging will be the next indicator.

PSA: Friday is National Donut Day.
You're welcome.

I sanded Sally's rear panels down to metal this afternoon. Except for the time I spent using an old screwdriver and a hammer to chip away the massive amount of bondo that had been applied to cover up a rear end hit.
It's never a good sign when it's more efficient to chip it away than to sand it off...with a power sander.
Bondo at 1/16" is considered appropriate. I measured and it was 1/4" in several places across the back.
Now what? I don't think I can pound out the panel to anything near flat. I might be able to improve it but once the metal has been stretched by the impact it doesn't want to go back to flat. At least not for an unskilled hack.
I didn't know it was that bad; had no idea. So maybe I swallow hard and put bondo back on. It's not like Sally's going to a show where she'll be judged by experts. I just hope for a thumbs up from other old guys at the fast food joint. And they won't know, either.
Ugh.

Time for my run. I'm committed to getting back into (old man) race shape well before the Scandia Run in August. The distance gets bumped up each Monday. Now that I'm at week two I only add another 1/2 mile to last week's runs, but the longest journey....
If I can keep this up I'll have to seriously consider another 1/2 this fall.