Please, No More Hospital Visits

Last night (Sunday) at about 9:40 I boldly announced to Be, "You need to take me to the emergency room!" I had just washed out the cut in my finger and had seen that the gash was long enough and deep enough to need stitches.

You see, I was ripping a board on my radial arm saw to help secure the new top for our "entertainment center" and I accidentally cut my left index finger. But before we could go, I had to set the TV to record the rest of the football game I was watching, and Be had to wait a minute for the cupcakes she was cooking to finish. Then she had to spend a little time finding her purse. I wrapped my finger in an old towel and kept pressure on it until the nurse in the triage area removed it and said that I had done a good job of stopping the flow of blood. Stopping the flow was of some concern since I am on a therapeutic level of coumadin.

We checked in to the ER, then waited for four others before me to get patched up. One was a young girl who had several stab wounds, and whom the police were questioning as she waited and then went into the area where one sees the doctor. We finally made it in and then waited some more. A nurse came and looked at it. Then a PA came and looked at it. Then he apologized and said he had to go sew up someone else first. We waited long enough that we both had to go use the bathroom, and Be finally went out to the Toyota and got a book. I started trying to solve a math problem for the Problem of the Week contest. Finally the PA came and started sewing the gash back together. It took five stitches, and as he was finishing a doctor came in. Can you believe that his name was Dr. Henry Higgins? At about this time I fainted! I thought I was having a good nap but I woke up to find Dr. Higgins in my face and Be fanning me with a very small piece of paper. I was SO embarrassed.

They took an x-ray to see if the bone was damaged (it was not) and gave me a tetanus shot. Then we had to wait for my blood pressure to come back up. We finally got home about 2:30 am. And poor Be had to drive to Goldthwaite and back today. She was taking Gay Barton there to meet her son David Hancock. Fortunately Lenna was able to go with Be to help her stay awake on the way home. When I started writing this, they had just arrived home.

So the Lord took care of us again. I may have to change my sign at the church's building to: "Gracious God, thank you that I am still alive today and that I still have all of my fingers."

Those Dirty Birds

It has happened again. The first time was during the construction of the new Ministry Activity Center at the UCC. I assumed that the bird was so dirty because of all the dust in the air from the construction.


But last week it happened again. Another bird flew into the picture window of our garage and left a dirty smudge. This time there was no construction, so birds must naturally be dirty.

My theory is that this time the bird was a dove trying to keep from being eaten by our neighbor's cat. By the way, most of what you see in the picture is a reflection of things that are outside the window. I took the picture outside at night. In case you have trouble seeing the dove imprint, I highlighted what I could see of the outline in the third picture.

Merry Christmas!!!!!!

You may have heard that, since we last bought a TV in 1972 or 1973, and since the world is going digital, Be and I decided to give ourselves a new TV for Christmas. We watched for a sale, found one, and bought one. Here is a picture of it in our family room. Of course, nothing is easy. Our TV stand needs some work to have room for everything, and I need to install a grounded plug rather than use an adapter. Also, I need help figuring out how to hook up all the peripherals. But in the meantime, I am enjoying FOOTBALL on the new TV. The picture is remarkable, even though you cannot tell it from this photo.

See If You Can Top This

Saturday as I was returning from picking up our NEW TV, I had an opportunity that I could not pass up, even if it made us 8 minutes late to our 42 party. Can any of you beat this price?

Top 10 Reasons I Want to Retire

10. I want to have more time to practice learning Spanish.

9. I want to write my autobiography. I can still remember the people who lived through the Great Depression.

8. I want to practice playing the guitar and the baritone ukulele.

7. I want to do woodworking in my garage.

6. I want to play more golf.

5. I want to fix up our house.

4. I am tired of hearing students say to me that I am a good person and a good teacher, but they cannot learn the way I teach.

3. I want to be involved in more ministries in the church like hospital visitation, the prison ministry, and a "handy man" ministry.

2. I want to spend more time with my wife, and as a part of that, work with her to eliminate the "piles" around the house.

1. I gave an exam last week. Seven out of thirty students passed. There were NO A's.

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I turned in a letter to my department chair today making official my plan to retire at the end of the Spring semester.

Abilene Pretending

You may remember the "Big Country" name. It got replaced by the "Friendly Frontier." Some influential persons thought the label was not good enough for Abilene, so they spent over $100,000 with some "consultants" , who came up with "Abilene Frontiering". Even the spell-checker does not think too highly of this logo.

So I propose "Abilene Pretending." We can pretend that this is a classy city, with lots of good restaurants, and ample entertainment. We can pretend that we have good public transportation that the citizens support. You get the idea.

But the best thing is that we can pretend that there are mountains south and east of Abilene. Some are even snow-capped. We can make a believer of you. Click on the photo below -- and BELIEVE!

It is Handy to be Handy

Be mentioned in her latest letter that I fixed the broken Venetian blind in our dining room. The first picture shows part of the problem with the old blind. One of the pull cords had become so frayed that the blind would not pull up and down without causing a lot of stress. I went to WalMart and bought some string to restring the old blind with.

Then Saturday I found a Venetian blind at a garage sale. I thought that at worst I could take the string off of it and use it on our old blind, because the string from WalMart did not look like true Venetian blind string. But I was not for sure I wanted to tackle that. With all my hesitation, the seller came down from $1 to $.50, so I bought it.


There was some hope that it would be the correct size. But it was not. It was too long and too wide. So in my usual bold fashion, I tackled cutting it down while I watched football on TV. It worked. You see the result. The the new blind is a lot nicer than our old one.

Sometimes it is handy to be handy.

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that the motor was not damaged in Lenna's and Justin's car. The bad news is that the car would not go.

Here is the story. Lenna called us Saturday morning about 10 to say that their car died in the K-Mart parking lot and would not start. They thought the fuel pump went out, because the repairman had told Lenna several months earlier that it could go out at any time. So I drove the van and Be drove the Toyota out to tow the car to Vernon and Fletcher and then loan them the van while the car was being repaired. After a bit of discussion, we decided to tow the car to our house and let Justin check out the fuel filter. He took it off and there was a lot of gunk in it. So they bought a new one at the parts store and he put it in. In the meantime, Be went on by herself to run some errands that we had planned to do together. After changing out the fuel filter, the car still would not start, so Justin said he had done all he knew to do and we should go ahead and tow the car to Vernon and Fletcher. We called Be and told her what we were doing and she was way across town, and it was close to noon, so I aborted on going to garage sales with her. Lenna brought me home and they left with the van.

Monday Lenna called Vernon and Fletcher and asked them to look at the car. That afternoon they said that the timing belt had broken, and sometimes when that happens it bends the valves in the engine and ruins the engine. Clyde Fletcher recommended that we replace the timing belt and see if the engine was okay. I gave the okay, and the good new is that the engine was not damaged. The bad news is that it cost about $490 to replace the timing belt. But Lenna picked it up today (we temporarily (hopefully) paid the bill) and it runs good now. Please pray that the car will keep running until they get financially on their feet.

Justin seems to be appreciated at his place of work. He is back working on a rig now, which means that he will get more pay. Things still seem to be going well with them. Continue to pray. Our God is good and strong.