Skip to main content

if life gives you fire hydrants...

I am eating lunch. After that, I will go outside and make a 7 by 10 foot lawn around the oh-so- inconveniently-placed fire hydrant in my driveway. What can one do? When the fire hydrant cuts into the middle of your double driveway...you make a lovely patch of grass around it as if highlighting a priceless statue you imported from Italy especially for that prominent spot in your front yard.

I just hauled 525 litres of dirt home in my little Echo (that's 756 pounds) and I don't think the car was quite built for that kind of weight. The nice guy who loaded the bags of topsoil into my car expressed some concern as the wheel wells sagged down on top of my tires each time he tossed another bag in. I agreed that it was not optimum, but told him I would be careful on the way home and it should be okay. Well, not only did I drive circumspectly for the 7 or so kilometers to my house, I decided not to stop at the Dairy Queen on the way home to buy the box of buster bars I wanted as I figured those few pounds might just have proved to be the last straw for little Echo-car.

Well, this writing is turning into procrastination, so I raise my Perrier to getting a fine piece of lawn seeded this afternoon. I will post a picture when I am done.

NOTE: I am done and it looks great -yes, I know it's just black dirt, but there are seeds in there, believe me! Here is a picture of the newly framed hydrant, my trusty Echo, and if you look closely, you can see a little red bird on the ground between the car and the house. Oh, and after I finished I went and got those buster bars from Dairy Queen - YAY!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim...

what's on your breastplate?

Who wants to be a priest? I asked this question in my faith community this past Sunday and a few eager hands went up. But there were also looks of puzzlement. Perhaps some people were thinking, "Maybe, but what exactly does a priest do?" I am so glad you asked. The first mention of a priest in the Scriptures is Melchizedek in Genesis 14. Abram has just rescued Lot and his household from capture (they got caught in a war between rivalling kings), and when he returns, he is greeted by the grateful king of Sodom and a priest. “And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. He blessed him and said, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!’” (Genesis 14:18-20, NRSV) So what does this tell us about what it means to be a priest? First, this priest was also a king. Subsequent priests were not kings, so this double role was unique to...

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...