My Day in this Parsonage

I love it that I can fill an empty gas tank in my car for less than $30!

My son is filling out applications for employment in Japan. It would be good for his acquisition of fluency in Japanese. It would be a good career move. And all I can think is that it's hard enough to find a good church in America, so how will he ever find one in Japan?

I wonder if y'all have heard of "Smart Chicken." The organic birds are about double the price of regular chicken. However, the stuff that's not organic free-range chicken costs only about 20% more than the regular chicken at the store. But it's not injected with liquids. The chicken is raised without antibiotics. The chicken is not fed animal by-products. And it comes chilled but not frozen. I simply can't afford the organic ones, but the plain ol' Smart Chicken just seems like a good plan. If mosts of the chickens and turkeys are regularly injected with broth solutions that make up 1/6 or more of the weight, then Smart Chicken actually costs about the same. But the chicken is a lot healthier, for essentially the same price. "Ask for it at your grocery store." :-) I now have twelve leg quarters cooking in the crockpot for a humongo pot of gumbo tomorrow. Ummmmm.

The church voters assembly met on Sunday. They discussed the need for the parsonage to be painted. Last time they painted, they trampled all my flowers around the house. Some recovered the following year. But many were killed good-n-dead. How do you tell volunteers who want to hurry and get a job done that they ought to be careful of your plants? After all, it's their house, not mine. It's their responsibility to paint, not mine. If I want the job done right, I should be willing to do it myself. But I'm not willing. But I know the roses and the hostas and the asparagus and the sedum are doomed.

The trustees also looked into getting a rust filter for the well water. The voters approved using last year's profits from the turkey dinner for a good filter system. That means that our underwear will no longer be orangey-pink. That means that when we clean the rust out of the toilet, the red stripes in the bowl won't be back in less than 24 hours. That means that I can actually wash the altar linens and purificators, and not have them come out grungier than when I took them off the altar. That means that I won't have sulfur odors wafting through the house whenever we open up the faucets after having them off for several hours. Pretty cool!

Although Lutheran Service Book has all sorts of great things in it, I just can't get over the loss of some of the really good hymns. The stanzas they left out of "O Lord, How Shall I Meet Thee" and "Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me." The translation changes in "Lord Jesus Christ, Thou Living Bread" and "Lord Jesus Christ, With Us Abide" and "From God Shall Naught Divide Me." The ones that got left out altogether ("I Will Sing My Maker's Praises" and "To Shepherds as They Watched by Night") are almost better, because we can still get them out of TLH. For some reason, these things just have me immensely sad today.

But, for good news, my dad came home from the hospital on Sunday. Things are going well at home. Test results confirm that the mass removed was malignant, but (yeehaw!) was encapsulated and had not spread at all. They expect that he should not need radiation or chemo.

We went to the last two hours of the live broadcast of "Issues Etc" yesterday. I couldn't believe how the time flew! I thought they were taking a quarter-hour break, and it turned out it was the half-hour break. (That's what I get for not wearing a watch....) For the last half-hour of the broadcast, Nathan's prof was on, and Nathan and his roommate from freshman year were also on the show. They didn't get a chance to say too much, but I thought it was pretty nifty nonetheless.