Something in the air? Or maybe the water?

Seems like a lot of people are a little short tempered and unhappy right now, even in my own family. Touchy, quick to give a cutting comeback to some perceived slight, no matter how small or innocent. I'm guilty too. It's given me cause to reflect on why, and I don't really have an answer. I am consciously trying to remain on an even keel, and not get snippy, but I have to admit that there are times that the boat rocks a little. That would be my fault though. I am responsible for my own thoughts and actions.

The saying goes that you always hurt the ones you love, and it's true. The reason is because 1) you wouldn't dream of being insulting to a total stranger, unless circumstances warranted it, like they were yelling at your kid or something, and 2) people that don't love you back don't care enough to be hurt by your dumb a__ness. Rolls off their backs. So, we have the problem of caring about someone but at times lashing out at them and causing them pain. Why would we want to do that? It doesn't make sense.

Satan loves a good fight. Just realize that when you want to say something hurtful. Ask yourself where are those thoughts and words coming from? Not from a prompting of the Spirit, I'm sure. Patience is of the Lord, and we are encouraged to develop it. It's hard not to get angry and say something mean, and sometimes it's harder to keep from saying something meaner back. Still, I hope we all (me especially) learn to be more thoughtful of others, and realize that a soft answer turneth away wrath. We should be building each other up, not tearing each other down. Let go of the grudges, if you have any. Life's too short to waste. Nuff said.

I'm confused...

I just read an article by Charles Krauthammer, one of those guys who make their living pouring their thoughts out of their brains onto paper, lamenting the recent victory of Christine O'Donnell over the RINO Mike Castle in Delaware's republican primary. His point was that now that O'Donnell has won the primary and will be the republican candidate in the general, the democrats will win. His point was that if Mike Castle had won, he would have beaten the democrat because, according to Krauthammer, Mike Castle would have been unbeatable!

Uh, I must be missing something here. If he was so unbeatable, how come he was just beaten?

Another thought -- the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Hang in there, family. The next life will be better!

Autumn balloon

Look what flew right over the top of our house a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to call it the Fall Balloon, but that has a sort of negative connotation, if you know what I mean. Cathy happened to walk outside to help Jennifer put kids in the car, and she called me out to see. Naturally, I grabbed my camera. It was close enough so you could hear the noise when the flames went on to heat the air.

Burning Korans

Here's my take on the big media explosion about the pastor dude in Florida who wanted to burn some Korans to highlight Sept 11, which was yesterday and a great day of college football.

If he owned the books then they were his property and he could do what he wanted to with them. Burn them, flush them, blow them up, give them to poor atheists, whatever. Who are we to dictate what a person can do with private property, as long as he (or maybe she) isn't breaking the law. We get too caught up in what the symbolism might be and what we think is politically correct. If it were Bibles or Books of Mormon I would feel the same way. The Lord might be a little miffed if someone burned the scriptures, but if they were his private property, he could do it if he wanted to. Or maybe she could. None of our business.

Fly fishing

We got fishing poles for the grandkids about a month ago, the same time I went to Sportsman's Warehouse and got myself a fly rod for Father's Day, but we hadn't had a chance to take them fishing until this morning. For the 4th of July Cathy and I went camping at Fruita State Park, which is about a mile from the house, Sunday afternoon and Monday. They told us at the park that we couldn't use the generator to power our cpap machines -- too noisy, the neighbors in the next campsite might complain, so we upgraded to a couple of pads for 5th wheelers that were equipped with power and water. Except that the power didn't work at our site, and we didn't discover that until we had our tents all set up and our stuff moved into them, and it was bed time. We had to move into Jennifer & Erik's tent and they had to move into ours. Their site had power.

After that minor inconvenience we got up the next morning and I cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast. Then we had to pack up, because we had to be checked out at noon. We finally went fishing at about 10:00 a.m. After we got to the lake, I had to rig Ethen's pole, and Mia's pole, and Kendall's pole, and Cathy's pole, before I could do mine. Travis was there, so he took care of Loralei's pole, or I would have done that one too.

I finally got to try out my new fly rod, and one of the flies that Bruce sent to me. You guys probably already know, but Bruce is a fly tier. It's a hobby of his that he did in his younger days, and has taken up again. He sent me about 48 - 50 flies to use. So, I set aside the cheap Wal Mart flies I had, and used one of Bruce's.

Well, Loralei and I caught the biggest (and onliest) fish of the day. I hooked one that was 3 to 4 inches long, that got thrown back, and she caught one about the same size, that also got thrown back. The other anglers got nibbles, but nobody else hooked anything. We quit at about 1120 and went to the packed up vehicles, then went home. At least I know my pole works and Bruce's flies work too. Maybe next time I will find a better fishing hole.

New floors!

We gots new floors, in the living room and hallways, anyways. The installer came yesterday and got started, and came back and finished up today, except for the transition pieces around the entryway tile, which never got ordered for some reason. They will come back and install those when they come in. As soon as Pat wakes up from his nap hopefully we will get the furniture moved out of the garage and back into the living room.

Our new flooring is called handscraped Maple, and is an engineered hardwood that locks together. No glue or nails. We learned in our flooring search that solid wood requires a wood underlayer, and since we have a concrete slab, no go. We didn't want laminate since we went that route in the Ridges. The solution was the engineered hardwood. It's a hardwood layer (pretty thin, like 3 mm) bonded to a plywood base, in our case a total of 1/2 inch thick. Mosts engineered hardwoods are 2mm layered for 3/8 total thickness, so we got a little better product, I think. Looks good too. It was made in the PRC though, so it's probably laced with lead or sewage or something I don't want to know about. We got it at Lowes, and they contracted out an installer.

Happy upcoming 4th of July!!

It has been a long time since I have posted. Shame on me. I hang my head with regret. Ok, I'm over that now. Last Friday and Saturday Cathy and I went camping with Lou and Dorothy. They had a camper, we had an old tent. We set up camp amongst the mosquitoes out past Vega reservoir Friday evening, and looked forward to Saturday when we were going to go ATVing. Lou and Dorothy brought some 10 year old kid that was a talker, and that stayed up until about 4:30 in the morning while everyone was trying to sleep. We had trouble sleeping because our air mattress kept leaking and we would wake up. The kid woke us up, the air mattress woke us up, the generator noise woke us up, and there wasn't room in the tent to move. We were glad when Saturday arrived. We spent 7 hours on the ATVs, riding around and having a great time. We got rained on, the trails got muddy so we were slinging mud all over the place. It was a blast. The picture above is to show the height of some kind of milkweed plant (I guess) I saw.
We got to drive through this stream. It was fun too. The country was really beautiful. We saw a couple of deer (except for Cathy who didn't see either one of them) and billions of mosquitoes.
This picture was taken moments before Cathy decided to drive and immediately rolled the ATV OVER! She had to make a hard left turn, and when she did, the right front tire climbed a bush while the left front tire went into a rut, and over we went. She had been driving for like 5 seconds. Luckily, we weren't hurt (Cathy found a minor bruise today) and the ATV wasn't even scratched. Everyone had gone ahead so we had to wait for them to miss us and come back because we couldn't right the machine by ourselves. We had to use a winch from another ATV to pull us over. Cathy wouldn't drive after that until we got off the trails and back on the dirt road.
These are the people we went with. Lou is the guy, Dorothy is the gal, and the annoying kid is the annoying kid. Actually he wasn't that bad. Anyway, after Friday night's crummy sleep we took the air mattress back and got a couple of cots, and a new tent that holds the whole ward if we want it to. It's 8 ft x 16 ft floor space. Love you all.