Crickets!

Hey! I think this is the first day that I've heard crickets! I was thinking a few days ago that it must still be too cold for them to be hatching out. Now they are chirping outside my window. :) I love to listen to them as I go to sleep, but it's still too cool at night to leave my window open. Oh well, all in good time.

I've just begun reading The Lessons of St. Francis by John Michael Talbot. It's been sitting on my coffee table for a long time, but I keep picking up something  else to read. I think I'll stick with it this time. I love bios, and I think this will be interesting.

Quite a day at work. The guys doing road repairs just outside the store said they would have to shut off our water for a few hours. Running a deli without running water is not really possible. We have a guy who comes and inspects the store periodically to let us know where we need to improve as far as cleanliness and meeting Health Dept. standards. He just happened to come today. He said if the health inspector had dropped in today he would have shut us down. If the water is off for more than four hours we're supposed to close the deli down. Well, yeah! There was lots of lecturing about how we could all lose our jobs if we didn't improve in certain areas. Somehow this doesn't scare me. I'm just looking for a sign from God that it's time to move on! ;) But I'll hang on for the present. I wouldn't want to do anything irresponsible. Anyway, I can see light at the end of the tunnel, and that helps!

After work I did a little lawn mowing. Yesterday I began the mowing and I plan to do a little each day until it's all done. I can finish up on the weekend and hopefully won't have to just start all over again immediately.

I think I'll check in on Jordan's Wednesday night church service at Open Door Church online. Talk to you all later!

Shalom!

ATC update and throwback...Monday?

My latest ATC swap is called "State" Your Landmark. The idea is to include art about something you feel symbolizes your state. It doesn't have to be a "landmark" per se. Just something representative of your state.

Here is my town's claim to fame... ;)

Can't get enough of our state bird!

 

A cute vintage map. (I was looking for something quick to do for my fourth card!)

 

 

And now...drum roll...MY LEAST FAVORITE! (Shoulda used a finer tipped pen for one thing.)

 





The Paul Bunyan above is about 30 miles from us in Bemidji. We have a much better one (below) just five miles down the road. He will be starring in my Sketchbook Project book.

 

I also got candid shots of two of my backwoodsy neighbors.

 

! ! ! ! !

 

 

Somewhere I mentioned having sung with a trio many years ago. We called ourselves Grace Trio and we sang mostly at church, but did sing a few other places such as this Bible camp. Is this the '80's or what? (I'm on the right.)

I'm having a relaxing evening leading up to my mid-week day off. I just enjoyed watching "Mr. Holland's Opus". Thanks, Glenn! It was quite a trip down memory lane and a good movie to boot!

 

Our weather has been pretty funky today. A high of 39* and big sloppy snowflakes falling as I drove home from work. I think it will be more spring-like for the rest of the week. And hopefully it will continue that trend!

 

Have an awesome week! Shalom everyone!

 



Peace be with you...

Just a favorite scripture from the Wednesday night service at Open Door Church in Burleson, TX. :)

God is good. If we stay close to Him we can have peace even though the world is in chaos. Trust Him always!

Shalom.

The summer rollercoaster continues...

I was just reading over my last couple of posts. I mentioned two new gals who had started at the deli. Well, they've both quit already! We're down to 11 people to cover 14 hours/day, 7 days/wk. It doesn't work very well. Most of us who are left are the core people who have been there 11+ years. It's been so stressful trying to do the work of 18 or more people, but the good days are the ones where we just relax, do what we can, and say to heck with what we can't get done. If the deli loses money...well, we did our best. Not gonna kill ourselves. We are trying, but we can't do the impossible. You have to just let some things go. It's not our fault. Etc, etc.

I've found a couple of possibilities for future  jobs. Although I've considered quitting my job, I really have a problem with making things harder for my old work-mates. So, I suspect I'll hang in there for the next year and a half or so. But just knowing that there are a couple of jobs I'd be interested in  doing helps me to keep on keeping on. One is the little mom and pop grocery store here in Nevis. I think I would  enjoy learning how to do a little of everything there. They seem to have quite a bit of turn over, so there will probably be openings when I'm ready to do something new. (Fix coffee, stock shelves, fish minnows out of a tank...lots of great stuff!)

Well, enough on that subject! What am I reading? Right now I'm deeply involved in following the life of Annie Dodds in this book...

This lady is a lot more hard core off-grid than I would appreciate, but it's very interesting to see how she survives. Every so often I like to read a book like this. Usually I read about people in the Alaskan bush. This lady is just north of my parents in the Huntsville, TX area. She has a lot of grit!

My break room book is White Goats and Black Bees by Donald Grant. I'm reading this for about the third time. The subtitle tells you what it's about. It's another story of carving out a life in a wild place.

Having no building skills to speak of I like to live vicariously by reading books like these. :)


Tomorrow night I'll be going over to Micah and Adam's place for a Mother's Day pizza party. They were going to take me out to dinner on Sunday but I, being antisocial, asked if they would mind just having a family get together with pizza later in the week. Sorry, but I don't fancy the crowded restaurant scene! Besides, Audrey and Hazel can just eat pizza and run around instead of being harnessed into chairs for a couple of hours. Much more humane. ;)

Well, adios for now. I think I'm going to go visit a few of you and then maybe read a bit before turning in early.

God bless and shalom, friends!

A new lease on life!

Well, I'll get to the "new lease on life" part in a minute. First of all, I'm enjoying a day of reading, watching videos and baking cookies.

Reading: mostly Facebook and articles linked from there.

I've also been doing a little proofreading over at Distributed Proofreaders, which is dedicated to "Preserving history one page at a time." If you love old books you might consider being a volunteer proofreader!

Baking cookies: Peanut butter. Betty Crocker mix. That's complicated enough for a day off. ;)

MK and I have been enjoying this video today. I think this idea is pretty cool! You can find some actual "slow" videos on YouTube.

The swamp willows next door (at our old place) are getting their new foliage and it's a sunny, windy day. My favorite kind!

Earlier I made an appointment for an oil change. That's one item ticked off the list. That will be on Thursday. My car's been telling me I needed one for the last 600 miles! Now maybe it will be quiet! (I checked with my Ford guy earlier and he said it was safe to ignore that warning since my car wasn't due yet.)

Just bought this book for my Kindle. I loved Bill Powers' book New Slow City, and this should be good!

The "new lease on life" moment has to do with finding out about my widow's benefits. (It's weird some of the personal info we share on our blogs, but I think this is encouraging and I don't care who knows!) I've been wondering for quite some time just how widow's benefits work and when I should apply, etc. I had been told to go in 6 weeks before my 60th birthday, which is about 1-1/2 years from now. The nice lady at the SS office took all my info and gave me an estimate of my benefits at age 60 and age 66 (full retirement age). The benefits at 60 are enough that I could semi-retire, find a little job that I enjoy, and that won't exhaust me, and be comfortable. Working at my present job until age 66 isn't an option and there are no other jobs around here that I could do and afford to pay bills. I'm allowed to earn quite a bit on top of the benefits, so I look forward to being able to give more to causes I support. Anyway, it was encouraging to know what's down the road. I'm praising God for His provision!

Now I'm going to spend some time reading MK's book. The suspense is building!

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Against-Dark-M-K-Christiansen-ebook/dp/B007CL9E1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430854700&sr=8-1&keywords=three+against+the+dark

And now I will take my brother Mark's advice. He told me to make the world a better place on my day off. That sounded like a lot of work! But, no. He explained that making the world a better place meant drinking a glass of iced tea on the front porch. Enlightened brother! :)

A good day to all! Shalom, friends and family.

Sketchbook Project #3

I have a long list of things to include in my sketchbook for "The Project". Something that popped into my head this morning was the Jackpine Savage Beard Contest that our local paper sponsors every year. We're proud of our backwoodsy, scruffy beards! So, I immortalized this local custom for my third entry. I had some bleed through from the other side of the page again, so his face is a little smudgy. Oh well!

It was a good day off. It got better after a 2 hour nap! I worked hard yesterday and then stayed up too late (my fault). That combo is never a great thing.

It was beautiful outside today. The birdsong was tumultuous. Redwing blackbirds, pileated woodpeckers, starlings and dozens more. It's good to finally open windows and patio doors and let spring inside.

I'm going to try to be smart and get to bed early. Five o'clock alarm in the morning. We said good-bye to a great co-worker yesterday. She's retiring and she deserves it. She's in her 70's and was working part-time just for something to do. We'll miss her positive attitude and great work ethic. We have two new girls, so hopefully they'll learn quickly and stick around. One girl who had left on a long school trip is back and she's coming back to work. That's exciting! But we still need a couple more to be up to speed. Prayers appreciated. We're a weary bunch!

Goodnight all! And shalom to all of you!

Sketchbook Project #2

Remember my Black Bears and Blueberries page in my Sketchbook Project?

Unfortunately, the black marker I used for the black banner bled through to the next page resulting in this. So, I had to think of a solution...

Hence this second painting. :)

I don't think I'll be using any more black markers!

Anyway, just wanted to update on the sketchbook thing. Time to get dressed and off to work. No work tomorrow, yay!

Shalom to all of you dear readers. :)