Friday At Last

Thank goodness it's Friday! I always look forward to it. I picked up Bob this morning and we went to breakfast in Independence and then I went to my hair appointment. Now I'm all packed and ready for the weekend. Leslie will be by to pick me up at 1:00 or thereabouts.

I will be back later Saturday evening.

I got my meatloaf put together before I left this morning. All I have to do now is put it into the microwave. I will microwave two potatoes too. I'll add a veggie and put some pineapple in my cottage cheese and we'll be ready for dinner at 11:00 - 11:30.

More later....

Thank Goodness It's Thursday

It's been a wild week. I had plenty to do at work yesterday. Afterward I attended the PINCH meeting at the Church of God in Christ. I am to be their candidate for chairperson for 2013. We'll see how that goes.

I came home and had a smoothie for supper. I tried to watch TV but kept falling asleep. I finally took my bath and went to bed. I slept through the night and woke up at 4:30 this morning.

Bob brought over some ham for our casserole dish this noon. I will make scalloped potatoes and ham and we will have some salad and veggies. I also have some chocolate pudding that I made yesterday. We'll have that too. I sent home some of yesterday's cookies for him to snack on and some of the leftover roast beef and rice we had yesterday noon. I have plenty.

More later...

Another Dry Wednesday and Politics

There isn't any sign of rain before the weekend even with a developing hurricane in the gulf. We desperately need rain. It has cooled down to the 90's but with no moisture in sight it's still almost unbearable.

I started a mailing of jury questionnaires at work yesterday and will continue it this afternoon. I will also have filing and scanning.

I am planning to have the remaining roast and gravy over rice for dinner this noon. We will have salad and the leftover veggies. I will have to think about a light dessert. And I need to make cookies. I need oatmeal and raisins to do that.

This evening I have PINCH meeting at 5:30. I hope I don't forget it.

On the political front with the abortion discussion there is this:

This crowd can't handle the basic science, but some of the best estimates are that two thirds of "conceptions" (where a sperm fertilizes an egg) either never naturally implant or spontaneously abort in very early stages, mostly due to genetic abnormalities. Of the eggs that do implant, somewhere around 30% spontaneously abort.

So if you are a believer that "life begins at conception," you need to come up with a theological explanation for this statistic.

Then there are identical twins, where the egg splits after fertilization. Where did the second "soul" come from, and when are there "two souls"? Twinning may also be much more frequent that once thought, with one of most twin pairs dying early, and sometimes the one twin is absorbed back into the other, creating a "chimera" who has the DNA of two different people intermixed. How many souls here?

And on the other end of life, we know that tumors, strokes, injury, and Alzheimers can cause significant parts of the "person" to disappear before physical death.

To this crowd, many forms of basic birth control, which interfere with implantation, not conception, become criminal acts.

Scary stuff. Ignorance reigns.

Cakes On Tuesday

This is one of those Tuesdays that we take thirteen cakes to Independence to the First Christian Church there for their dinner tonight. I baked mine after I got home from work last night and iced them before going to bed. They are loaded in the trunk of my car now. I will leave about 7:45 or so. I also have a hair appointment in Independence and want to go to the market while I'm up there and buy some groceries.

I have a roast in the slow cooker right now. I will put onion, potatoes and carrots in with it when I get back from Independence.

I had a lot of work yesterday at work. That's good. I like to stay busy. Today they have several projects for me so I expect to be busy today too.

More later...

After my appointment and delivering the cakes, I went to Wal Mart in Independence and then on to my daughter's house. She gave me meat for our dinners. And it's great meat too.

While I was on my way there, I was ready to make a left hand turn toward my daughter's home from the left hand turn lane, when a white haired man in the right hand lane, crossed over in front of me without a signal or any warning to make the same left hand turn, and missed me by inches.

I told Leslie about it and she showed me where someone clipped her new Toyota SUV yesterday and took off some of the trim on the rear driver's side. It's an $800 repair and there wasn't even a dent. Luckily the woman had insurance.

Another Dry Monday

Once again all rain avoided us last week. The lawn is dead and I have not watered even on the odd days that I am allowed to water. They raised the water rate 25% and now I cannot afford to water even if I was inclined to. Past city commissions kicked that can down the road and now we must have them raised since next year we have federal unfunded regulations kicking in.

I will fix left overs for lunch today. We still have some of the tuna noodle casserole left from Friday and I made coleslaw last evening. Then we will have veggies and some fruit cocktail for dessert.

I will work this afternoon and then after work I will bake my two cakes for the dinner in Independence at the First Christian Church. I have an 8:15 appointment tomorrow morning so I will deliver them afterward. Wednesday at 5:30, after work, I have a PINCH meeting....if I don't forget it.

Leslie and I will leave Friday afternoon at 1:00 for our Health and Spirituality Workshop. We will come back Saturday evening since she speaks at church on Sunday morning.

In a huge gaffe, Missouri congressman Todd Akin, a conservative Republican candidate for US Senate said in an interview Sunday, Aug. 19, 2012 with St. Louis television station KTVI that pregnancy from rape is "really rare." Akin, who has said he opposes all abortions, said in the interview if a woman is raped, her body "has ways to shut that whole thing down."

He earned a rebuke from Mitt Romney's campaign after saying that ignorant remark.

Besides that his remark, "It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," Akin said of a rape victim's chances of becoming pregnant." is not upheld by the medical community at all. Where he got such ignorant information is strictly from his own imagination.

This guy has just cooked his chances for election and he deserves it. He really put his foot in his mouth.

I'm not an advocate of abortion but that's a woman's choice...not some guy's.

Busy Sunday

This is a busy Sunday but next weekend will be even busier. Leslie and I will be going to the Health and Spirituality Weekend in Independence, Missouri, our church headquarters. We will leave about 1:00 on Friday. One of the classes is on poverty called "A Framework for Understanding Poverty". It was written as a PHD dissertation by Ruby K. Payne and is a classic. Many schools require their teachers to take a course with it. I have had the course myself when I administered the FAST program in Independence, Kansas. My son-in-law took it when it was offered by his school system while he was still teaching. Everyone would benefit from this class. One of the things it explains is that teachers approach teaching aimed toward a middle class mindset and those reared in poverty have an entirely different mindset. It is very valuable to have this information. Ruby Payne's husband was reared in poverty. His father died very young and their's was situational poverty but many people living in poverty suffer from generational poverty. There all the different in the world in the mindset of those reared in poverty. Where teachers understand that, and respond correctly, they can have a positive impact on their students and be able to effectively encourage them to stay in school.

I went to church this morning as usual and presided there this particular morning. What was really cute was the granddaughter of our speaker. She wanted to be held but ONLY by grandma. She is two. So her grandmother spoke while holding a two year old. It was very cute but grandma was very tired when she finished. The two year old helped take up the offering. Our deacon took up the regular offering but Brindley took up the change offering. We use our change offering to support one of our missions, a boxing club that a former golden gloves champion holds for "at risk" boys to keep them off the street. He feeds them dinner and then teaches them boxing. He does this free of charge just because he loves kids.

Then after our lunch at El Pueblo, I came back home and did my regular Sunday newsletters.

This evening I will just watch TV. There is no "Living the Questions" group tonight. That's next Sunday evening.