"The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy." - Helen Hayes

This is genius. Dig the hole, set the seat in place, and it's all good. 

I'm not sure what the pitcher is for.

It should be the law that anytime Nessun Dorma is played everyone has to stop what they're doing and just listen. If it's Pavarotti singing, people should be required to close their eyes for the duration.

I haven't done burpees in so long I can't remember the last time. After today's gym workout I do, however, remember the pain.
My mistake was doing them at the beginning of my workout. Not much happened after that.

It's Tuesday morning. My brain stopped working shortly after the burpees and I never finished the above portion of the post. It's now Tuesday morning and I'll leave for work in a few minutes, but first....

With Pam gone I have certain freedoms. I get to make all my own meals, do all the dishes, and take on all the other tasks that keep the place humming. (Booo.)
I also get to arise at my usual early hour AND turn on the music as loudly as I want. That means either the DishTV classical music channel (9976) or the Opera channel right below it. This morning - opera. I listened to a running series of famous arias and duets, including the very famous duet from Bizet's "The Pearl Fishermen." Two friends, in love with the same woman, pledge their loyalty to each other in preference to their love for the beautiful young lady.
Go listen. Now!
And understand how wonderful these two tenors are. Bocelli, on the right, has been blind since early childhood, which may help you understand some of what's going on between the two of them.

As I roamed a series of internet rabbit trails I read about that opera, about that duet, including a translation of the French lyrics, and about the libretto. I knew the word libretto but not its exact definition.
The internet is a wonderful thing.

Speaking of librettos, I've often thought I wish I could write fiction, but my mind could never think of a story line.
I have one now. Which doesn't mean I've got the skills to turn it into a story. I wish I did.

I read that Dean Foods has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Didn't mean anything to me until I read that they are the largest producer of milk in the U.S. Americans are cutting WAY back on the amount of milk they drink, and as a result the stock of Dean Foods has dropped 80% this year. Yikes!
That's a lot of cows suddenly out of work.
Meanwhile, the sales of oat milk, the leading alternative, are up 636%.
How do you milk an oat??

It's now nearly noon and I'll be leaving the office in a minute, headed to the vet to get some meds for poor Buddy.
From here to the gym where I will not do burpees.

I realized that I've got TWO links in this post to arias. But they are both worth the listen, so,
listen!

Home from the gym, some crash time, and then chores. It's now dinner time. Frozen *pizza going into the oven as soon as it's up to temp. Then I'll do some more lesson prep, maybe some vacuuming, and call it a day. The first dose of meds have been administered and I'm hoping that 48 hours from now Buddy is much better, poor guy.

* What is a "self rising crust?" If it can't rise on its own, does somebody else do it? 'cause I have no idea how to raise a pizza crust.

"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears." - Marcus Aurelius

Seriously? You think this is a good idea??

This morning the DishTV classical music channel played Haydn's "Missa in Tempore Belli" (Mass in Time of War). I had never heard of it or listened to any part of it. Excellent!! Great stuff cranked up very early on a Sunday morning.

At 4 a.m. I made the frosting and spread it on the pan of cinnamon rolls. They look good enough to eat. But I'm waiting until later today when my fried brain won't care about calories, sugar, or anything else except something that tastes too good.

The Portuguese word for young is jovem, and the word for yesterday is ontem. Those are so close that I get them confused. There's also something poetic about those two words sounding so much alike.
Eu era jovem ontem. 
Hoje eu sou velho. (Today I am old.)

Thinking about those two words - joven and ontem - got me thinking about being old. Maybe 4 a.m. isn't a great time for constructive thinking, but it happened and got me fairly worked up. So here I am at almost 7 a.m. with breakfast in me, and just now an English muffin and third cup of coffee, thinking I should put those thoughts on paper blog.

People say old folks should go ahead and do it. Want seconds of dessert? Go for it! Always wanted to smoke cigars? Why not? Dreamed of a trip to Algiers? Go!
The reasoning is something like, "What's the worst that can happen?" If it messes up the rest of your life, or even kills you, well, you weren't that far away from being dead anyway. At least you're going out with a sense of freedom, abandon, and joy.
You can stick to that strict diet, drive a Volvo sedan, and act like a responsible adult at every turn, but to what end? You might live another three years, but they won't be any fun and you'll lay there on your deathbed thinking of all the things you wished you'd done.
When does one get old enough that this freedom from constraints is allowable? That's tough, because we never know how long we're going to live. The adage, "If I'd known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself" may apply to the 70-year old who ends up living to 95. Then again, how many 95 year olds can cut loose beyond a second helping of ice cream? Even the donut is hard to chew at that age, and someone else has to cut it into bite size pieces.

Men are supposed to get annual prostate checks from ages 40 to 70. Why does it stop at 70? Because prostate cancer is almost always of the slow growing kind and you're more likely to die from another age-related issue than late onset prostate cancer, making the treatment worse than the disease. So is 70 some kind of benchmark for the aforementioned freedom from constraints?
This matters to me because my next birthday is #70.
And besides never again hearing the words, "drop 'em and bend over" I'd like more ice cream.
OK, I'm not a huge fan of ice cream, but BACON....!

But if 70 is the threshold, is it really to early to get a start on it?
It occurs to me that this is closely related to the bucket list line of thinking. Which causes me to think, "What's on my bucket list? What would you do if you didn't have the constraints of acting like a mature, responsible adult?"

Let's start by eliminating from the list anything that is illegal, immoral, or inappropriate for a child of God. But that's a reasonable limitation, and it leaves lots of room for fun stuff.
OK, married people must also take into account the desires of their mates. I'm not just me, I'm us. And I need to think about us when making decisions.

There's still lots of appealing things, at least appealing to me. You might find them the equivalent of Brussel sprouts, but the good news: I don't have to approve your list either. Setting and achieving fitness goals that, on paper, makes no sense for someone my age is fun. Learning Portuguese when I don't really need it, raising goats....

Pam should live for a very long time, because if I was totally on my own setting a PR goal for dips might be considered mild. How simply could I live? And what could I do with the money I'd save?

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end." - Igor Stravinski

I need to increase my caloric intake, and I'm still hungry after I eat breakfast. So Pam got me some English muffins.
They come out of the bag sliced...about 1/3 of the way through. Why? What's the point of that?
You can't tear them the rest of the way without ending up with a wadded mess of muffin. The only thing to do is get the bread knife and cut them the rest of the way. Which makes me wonder why they even bothered with that partial slice. Just to mess with my head??

I found some blue jeans that fit today. I had to go to Walmart to find them, but it's OK. I showered as soon as I got home.

I put fresh Gorilla Tape on the Blazer's mirror. The old stuff had stretched enough that the mirror wobbled in the wind. The crack in the plastic is now once again held tightly and we don't need to worry about the mirror coming off on a rough road. Tomorrow I might see if I can fix the rear seat that won't fold down. The cable from the lever to the latch is either broken or has come loose.

My Life Is Good shirt arrived today. This is my second and probably not my last. They're a really soft fabric and I like the "messages" on some of their shirts. Including this one.

Doelings should be bred the first time so they're two years old when they kid, which means Frenchie will lose her virginity in February. Alas, she's in heat now, and the whole neighborhood knows it. She has been bleating loudly since before sunrise and her tail is wagging nonstop. I can't decide if her eagerness for a buck is funny or annoying.
There's a country western song in here someplace.

Poor Buddy. After getting a lot better his lung congestion is suddenly much worse. He goes into horrible coughing spasms and brings up a clear phlegm. It's the worst when he's been still, like at night. Every hour or so he wakes up with so much lung congestion he has trouble breathing. It's horrible to listen to - especially when it wakes you up at 3 a.m. - but mostly it's pathetic for him.
Which is why I didn't have the heart to kick him out of my chair this morning.

When Pam's gone I do the kind of cleaning best done in an empty house. This morning that meant hands-and-knees scrubbing of the kitchen floor linoleum. It should be replaced, but there's no point doing that when we hope to gut and redo the whole kitchen at some point. The room will go down to studs and the subfloor torn up and replaced, so new flooring would be wasted time, effort and money at this point.
Next up, the bathroom floor. I've already scrubbed the tub & enclosure. That's another room that will go down to studs.

We're officially into the afternoon. I could sit here and watch the LSU/'Bama game or get out of my chair and...
the gym,
the feed store for a bale of straw,
an hour or so of Portuguese,
the bathroom floor,
maybe cleaning the barn.

I've got dough rising that will become cinnamon rolls tonight. Iced in the morning before church.

Let's do this!!

"All the people like us are we, and everyone else is They." Rudyard Kipling

Who names their kid Rudyard? OK, Mr. & Mrs. Kipling, though they seem to have been unusual in that regard. Turns out they named their kid after Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire.
He's lucky his parents didn't live near Lake Gitchigumi.

We never really slay our demons. The best we can do is drive them back into the woods where they lurk as beasts do, waiting for another opportunity to attack.
Once we are busy digging our furrows or tending our rows with back to the forest, they will spring out and set upon us with all their ferocity, seeking to consume us as before. Then there is nothing to do but face them full on and, with sword in hand, beat them back. The field work must wait. Any attempt to do both will mean failure at both.

I realized this morning the problem: my feet are too far away. I have music in my head almost constantly, I have music in my gut, and I have, and have had, some skills that put music in my hands and voice. But my feet are simply too far away. The music can't get way down there.
Hence, I cannot dance. To save my life I cannot dance.

I realized driving Sally into work yesterday that we currently have three mechanically reliable vehicles. Amazing.
Yes, the Blazer's right side mirror is held on with Gorilla Tape, a piece of cardboard prevents the "you left your key in the ignition" buzzer from blasting all the time, the left side rear seat won't fold down, there's a CD stuck in the player.... You get the point.
But Pam can get in and drive it pretty much anywhere without worrying about getting there or back home.
Sally is fun to drive and the Chevy truck is as reliable as tomorrow morning's sunrise.
I don't know how long this glimpse of heaven will last, and just writing about it here temps the spirits of engines, transmissions, and other mechanical and expensive automotive elements. But it's a rare treat to know I can get into any one of three vehicles with relative confidence.

Of all the cars in the world I think Pam would say a bullet bird is her favorite.
Like this one. 
Hmmm.

"Truth is a tendency." - R. Buckminster Fuller

I finished up the trim on the living room window, went through the fourth Portugues lesson for the fourth time, and - with Pam's help - got more wood cut down to size for this smaller stove.
Re. the Portuguese curriculum, they don't want you moving to the next lesson until you've mastered about 90% of the content in the current lesson. For whatever reason this one challenged me more than the first three.

One of the things I learned is a new way to say goodbye. In addition to the informal "tschau" I can now use "até logo" which is a bit more formal.

The guy on the CDs I'm using to learn Portuguese (after teaching me some vocab and sentence structure):
"Now imagine you're at a party sitting next to a woman and want to introduce yourself to her. What would you say?"
But they haven't taught me those Portuguese words yet.

I listed Goulash for sale on Craig's List but haven't received any responses yet. This could be another truck experience. The good thing: if Goulash doesn't sell she'll end up on the table, something that couldn't be said about a 20-year old Dodge truck.

We have to move ahead one hour in the spring, back to Daylight Savings Time, but that should be the last shift. Oregon voted to stay on DST but if I understand correctly that has to be approved by Congress. If we'd voted to stay on Standard Time that would not require the feds' approval. Go figure.

Tomorrow morning's class includes a presentation of the Tabernacle, it's design and construction from the second half of Exodus. That's a topic that should get weeks, not minutes. Its complexity and its importance both warrant close attention. That's just one of the problems with a "read through the Bible in a year" program.
Oh well.

"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.

"Another belief of mine: everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise." - Margret Atwood

The problem with having breakfast at 4 a.m. is knowing I will be ready for my next meal long before lunchtime.

This morning (currently 26F) is the last of the really cold mornings for the foreseeable future. Tomorrow's low is only 33.
I am reminded of how much I disliked Michigan winters, and this is mild by those standards. And we don't have snow.

The Portuguese word(s) for "to run" is para correr, and to walk is andar. But you also andar a bus (onibus). You montar a horse but andar a bus. Hmmm.

The next unit of the Thursday night class I teach is titled "Decision Making and the Will of God," a title I lifted straight from the very good book by Garry Friesen. I think it's still in print but it was originally published in 1980. Which is why in the first section of the book that describes a fictional seminar he talks about overhead projectors and transparencies. I mentioned that presentation method to the other people on staff at UFC and most of them had NO idea what I was talking about. They'd never seen one.

It's now 7 p.m.
When I went to the barn to feed this morning I let the kids out of the kidding stall and they went straight to mama's udder. What???
They spent a month up in the weaning pen, so this is NOT supposed to happen. Dolly's udder is back to normal "no milk" size, but she didn't kick them off like she should have. So this evening I wrestled the kids back up to the weaning pen and shut them in that shed.
Dolly screamed until it got dark and the kids did a lot of complaining. That will probably continue for 36-48 hours. Fun times for everyone.
Another month in the penalty box.