"Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone." - Gertrude Stein

It never occurred to me to chew my food and then offer to spit it into Pam's mouth.

 I can't believe I missed this!

It's November and I've decided not to wait until January first for a reset. I need one now, so I'm taking advantage of this thoroughly artificial boundary to pull it off. Now I just have to figure out what and how.
I think it may require increasing my consumption of coffee and BACON.

Last night Pam and I were lamenting the lack of good coffee shops here. We've got the standard PNW stack of Starbucks and the one-off over priced alternatives, but we haven't found one of those wonderful shops with couches and overstuffed chairs that invite you to sit with your cup of coffee and relax with a book, earbuds, and your thoughts (and prayers). There may be something like that in downtown Eugene but that's 40 minutes and a parking problem away.

My goals for the day are modest. It's now coming up on 6 a.m. and before the day is done I want to get the new living room window trimmed out, make a dump run with a month's worth of trash, hit the gym hard, and get my lesson for Sunday morning nailed down tightly. I'll also spend time reading that book by Garry Friesen and working on my Portuguese.
I talk to myself in my head, trying to say things to an anonymous listener using my palavra Portuguese (Portuguese words). And practicing the sentences I'm learning from this program.

When you're introduced to someone the appropriate response is, "muito presar," which means "much pleasure."
When you want to begin a conversation with someone you start by saying, "com licença" which is "with license" or "with permission." A kind of "excuse me."

Pam leaves next Wednesday for a week in MI visiting her 96-year old mother. While she's gone I'm going to put Post-It notes all over the house with the Portuguese word for that item written on them. I may also do that in my storage closet-cum-office.

I'm still thinking about the bogus "bigger is better" mantra, especially when it's applied in connection to the local church.
When I was a pastor I adopted a response I read somewhere to answer the question, "How big is your church?"
I'd say, "We're between four and five hundred."
We never came anywhere close to five hundred people in the churches I pastored, but I also don't remember a Sunday when we didn't have more than four people.
I enjoyed the look of surprise I got in response and often detected (or projected) a sense of envy.

Your challenge: name one verse in the NT epistles that mentions the size of the church.

I went down an internet rabbit trail yesterday that took me to a blog post written by the wife of a Mennonite pastor. In it she referred to Pilate's wife and her role in the crucifixion story.
What???
I had to go look it up. How did I never notice this?!
(See Matt. 27:19)
No matter how long I do this gig there's always more to learn. Humbling.

We just finished dinner. It was good but there wasn't a whole lot of it so Pam will make me a PB&J to fill up the rest of the hole.
I'm hungry a lot lately.

I got all my other to-do items completed but I didn't get the window trimmed out. I got about 60% of the way through that task and cut one of the trim pieces too short. Phooey!!
A run into Lowe's got a replacement piece but by the time I got home it was time for evening chores so I'll wrap up that project tomorrow morning.