Week in Review


I’ve had a case of blogger’s block this week. I’ll try to catch up with things with this Sunday night blog.

After Tuesday’s a-little-bit-of everything day Wednesday was centered on straightening up the shop and getting the cat feeder working again. It took longer than I expected because I found that I had to not only fix the axle but replace some other pieces that were worn out and about to break. So fixing the feeder carried over into Thursday. The feeder is now back in operation and is sturdier than before being refurbished. The cats will again have a steady food supply when we go out of town.


Friday saw me making a replacement leg for a chair that Christy and Christian (C&C) have. Only 1 front leg was broken but I had planned to make a set of matching front legs out of some of the pieces of ash lumber I had left from the crib. I also made a backup leg out of poplar just in case I messed up. As it turns out I messed up. When I was cutting a dado in one of the legs I wasn’t careful enough with it and the saw blade was able to snatch the wood out of my hand and toss it off the table. I try to be very careful about keeping my fingers well away from the blade so I wasn’t in danger of chopping a finger but the board did whack my fingers nicely leaving them quite sore. Part of the reason the blade was able to catch the wood was because my hand was far from the blade and not keeping it flat on the table. So the replacement leg that C&C are getting is the one made of poplar which I think came out nicely. I was much more careful in making that piece.

old back leg - new ash front leg (R) - new poplar front leg (L)

We also have 2 pieces of furniture that we are bringing to C&C for their new house. One piece is a china cabinet that we picked up in someone’s driveway. It is in good shape but needs a back and all the glasswork. On Friday I dug the cabinet out of the storage area of the shed and moved it to the shop. Tomorrow we are going to see if we can get the glass cut for the cabinet. We also got some plywood for the back of the cabinet. C&C plan to paint it black when they get it.


The other piece of furniture is an armoire that Penny loves but has no where to put right now. So we are going to “store” it at C&C’s for a while. Once again we will be moving furniture with the trailer. It sure comes in handy.


Saturday evening we had a family life banquet to go to. Our financial advisor is a member of an organization that supports the right to life and she sponsored a table at this banquet and invited us to go. The organization operates a home for pregnant girls. It accepts them with no questions or judgment and helps them with their decision to keep the baby or give it up for adoption.


The banquet is a fund raiser and funds are raised with a raffle, a silent auction and a regular auction. It was held at the Sandestin Hilton, which we haven’t been to in years. Where there once was only a hotel is now a huge development with many high-rise condos.


We were very happy with the meal. The plate had beef, chicken, carrots, potatoes, and asparagus – all was prepared well, delivered hot and tasted great. Dessert was a chocolate cake with (unfortunately for Penny) a strawberry on the side and a drizzle of strawberry sauce. The cake was good but Penny had to abstain.


There were 2 speakers at the banquet. The first was a young lady who told her life story. She was born 2 months premature and weighed only 2 ½ lbs. Her mother loved her but could not raise her. She was adopted and has had a very successful life. She had her adopted parents stand and thanked them for her wonderful life. She asked many thought provoking questions about how her life would or would not be if her mother had made other choices and the wonderful people who adopted her weren’t there. Did I mention she was black and her parents are white? It was interesting to hear the testimony of her life. Usually we only see a small part of those lives and are left to wonder how things turned out.


The other speaker was good ol’ Joe Scarborough. He was our congressman for 8 years. He self imposed a term limit on himself. He had a TV show “Scarborough Country “ on MSNBC and now has a morning show called “Morning Joe”.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/

He said he has to get up at 3 AM for that show (sound familiar Karen?) He is a very good speaker. He says he loves Okaloosa County and I believe him. Of course, he talked on the right to life. The basic message was that although the majority of people are pro life the media is - except for a few people on Fox – absolutely biased against it. He challenges his media friends when they confront him on this issue to name one person on any major network that is pro-life. Except for those few on Fox there are none. He believes that if 60 minutes would show a normal abortion as a story – with no commentary or opinions – that the effect on this nation would be profound. Don’t worry it will never happen.


His other basic message was that we lack true leadership in Washington on both sides of the house. Interestingly he said he would like to see politicians tell the truth (If you read my previous blog Dave Barry had the same desire).


This morning at church at Hurlburt we had an army reserve priest whose civilian duties are as 2nd in command for the diocese of Boston. That diosese is the one being rocked by the child abuse scandal. He said the church is viewed as the enemy by many up there. They have closed 60 churches in the diocese for lack of priests and support.


On another note, his previous assignment was supposed to be Hawaii. He was just about to take over as head priest at Hickam AFB there when his bishop called him and told him to go to Boston. He commented that Father Steve Voyt was the lucky man in that decision because he was taken out of his assignment in Korea and given the Hickam assignment. Strange as it is we know Father Voyt and his parents. They are friends of the McClures. We knew he went to Korea but didn’t know he got that terrible assignment to Hawaii.


Finally today was the fantasy football draft. Penny has a team and so do I. We sat side-by-side, she at the desktop, me on the laptop as we drafted our teams. It was fun this year. Penny helped me out and vice-versa. We were both barefoot sitting there, just holding toes as we selected our players.

This whole day was a good “together” day for Penny and me. For lunch we made Emeril’s buttermilk fried chicken. Penny breads the chicken and I do the frying. So with church, lunch and the draft we spent a lot of time doing stuff together. We like being together even when we are not doing stuff but today we enjoyed working together.