Necessary Roughness

My parents drove in from Missouri, joining us for Thanksgiving and bringing gifts from my family over there. By the time this posts they should be back within the Kansas City city limits.

Coming soon to our house...

Grandma baked cookies with the twins Saturday, and right now only one is left. The oatmeal-chocolate chips were the first to go.

I found out that I will be getting a Treasury of Daily Prayer. My parents ordered a copy for me through their congregation, so they’ll get the congregational discount.  Good for them, and good for our family. All those ribbons in the book scare me, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

The tree is up, but no decorations are on it yet. There has been some discussion in the blogosphere as to how much Christmas decoration should be done during Advent. For our family setting up our tree is penance rather than celebration. Definitely an Advent activity.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.” — Agent K, Men in Black.

From the NY Daily News:

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

I was hoping starting the Christmas shopping season three weeks ago would have prevented some of this.

Image via Wikipedia

Take it easy out there, people. Don’t give the Feds cause to regulate further your business.

Note to Wal-Mart and other businesses: if 200 people show up at your front door ready to rush, call the police, and don’t unchain the doors.

Wal-Mart probably has a couple of wrongful death suits coming. I’m not saying it would bring the child and the employee back, but I hope the damages are sufficient to make businesses think about hyping up Black Friday.

Doesn’t anyone shop online any more?

I’m thankful that I’m not a turkey or ham.  The edible kind, anyway.

I’m also thankful that (in no particular order):

• we’re still not deciding a presidential election.
• our roof is getting fixed.
• my parents are coming for Thanksgiving.
• we got the treadmill out of the basement today, with a minimum amount of fuss.
• my wife who has handled the Christmas gift duties with aplomb.

Please, Mr. President, don't pardon the turkey. He'll just starve.

Irish goat, image via Wikipedia

For our congregation, which follows the three-year lectionary, the Gospel was Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and the goats.

The pastor’s sermon was full of sufficient Gospel to choke a horse: you are the blessed, you are the sheep, you are the ones who inherit the kingdom, you are the ones who in Christ perform the deeds God has laid out for you. But there was one splinter of Law that stuck.

Pastor Gau had noted that the goats try to get into heaven with their works. They count everything in order to justify themselves. They are ready with their lists, their cases to go before the Judge of the Universe.

We hope to be sheep. Yet I find myself counting like a goat, not to be justified or to gain entrance into heaven, but counting things in some self-serving sense of “fairness.” It kicks me whenever I have to scrub a bathtub I never use, clean up a mess I didn’t make, or trust that someone is going to help, and then they don’t. I may be a sheep and do all sorts of wonderful good deeds in Christ, but I bleat like a condemned¹ goat.

May the wife and kids forgive me.

¹Or use the appropriate single-syllable word.

The last class of the Continuing Professional Development put on by the Engineers Foundation of Ohio came in the form of two breakout sessions. I attended, “Marketing Your Professional Engineering Services.” Dr. Lynn Daily, professor of marketing at Capital University, gave the class. All in all, these are decent tips for any company.

The notes I took from this are as follows:

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