Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

 Back in October, we discovered that someone had stolen several bikes from our apartment complex's bike room. The room is in the underground garage, which is only accessible by remote, and the room itself is only accessible by key fob. And of course the bikes were locked to bike posts. But that didn't stop someone from taking Mark's bike. We reported it to the police, tracked down the receipt for the bike, and filed with insurance. That sentence really does not convey the absolute drudgery of those tasks; believe me, it was painful. Last week, Mark finally selected a new bike, and we went to pick it up on what he calls "New Year's Adam" [the day before New Year's Eve, because that's the order of operations in the Garden of Eden]. We made it into a date, because it was a 40 minute drive [not many shops have XL bikes] and that's what you do when you run errands as a couple. The bike shop dude helped him pick out a new lock that would be much sturdier...

 Lately, the prayers in my church congregation have been quite interesting.  There are a couple opportunities for prayer variations, because we have the opening prayer, prayer over sacrament bread, prayer over sacrament water, and the closing prayer. Normally the middle two are fairly consistent, because each is a written prayer that the priests read aloud. But a couple weeks ago, a new priest had the task of reading the prayer, and he read aloud the label "Blessing On The Water" too. I mean, he's not wrong... but it was unexpected. Then we had the closing prayer that seemed to include a timestamp for God's future reference: "On this morning, Sunday, November __ 2021, Our Father...." My personal favorite is the greeting-style: "Good Morning, Heavenly Father...." And we periodically get a person who begins with "Let us pray." That one is common-enough that it seems like just a different flavor of oration. Today the closing prayer seemed to...

I'm sure a lot of thought goes into the build of a car, but sometimes I really gotta question the logic behind some of the mechanisms. Like, how my husband has to take off the left front wheel in order to access the car battery. I know this wasn't just an oversight, because the engineers added terminals accessible from under the hood, so that you can still jump the battery without having to undo some lugnuts. But there are some things that you don't find out until you are in a specific situation. Like getting to your car after work, realizing the battery is absolutely dead--no lights, no sounds, nothing--and you need to get to your jumper cables in the trunk, but discover that the "pop the trunk open" button does not  work without battery power, and unfortunately the trunk doesn't have a keyhole. And it's a compact car, non-hatchback. Thankfully I was able to reach the cables by accessing the trunk through a small opening in the back seat--a secret hole th...

 As an aside, it is easiest to learn something new every day if you forget what you already knew. I am discovering that as I have to quickly re-learn various medical skills/facts that I haven't used in the past 2 years. [btw, in case you're wondering why it is easier to learn the same thing, it's because I already have all of the sources that I used the first time through.] This past week, I learned which way was north in relation to my apartment. I had thought the sun rose outside our bedroom window, making that direction east, making the left side north if I were facing east. Turns out the sun sets  out our bedroom window, making that direction west. I would have fared better just randomly guessing which direction the window faces, because north/south is closer to west than east is [so 3 out of 4 would be more right than the very wrong answer that I chose]. And another thing: did you know that although shredding mushrooms in a food processer does get the mushrooms in smal...

I should not enjoy puns so much. And I shouldn't use puns when I'm doing serious reflection. And I especially shouldn't use puns if it doesn't apply to a situation...yet here we are. Apologies. This post is not about dolphins at all. It's about seals, or rather, a scene from a nature documentary with a little vignette into a particular momma seal's life. As you'd expect from nature, her life is hard. She is desperately fighting off the advances of a bull seal, because she isn't ready to breed again, as she is still raising her newest pup seal. And suddenly her situation is poetically oxymoronic--she is so busy turning away a would-be suitor that she doesn't notice her baby slowly drown in the tide.  In case you didn't notice the paradox, I'll recap: she's not ready to have another baby, because she still has one on her hands [or flippers...] , but in her vehement denial of a [pushy, testosterone-crazed] potential-boyfriend, her very reaso...

 For the last few months, I've been taking advantage of DC's fabulous indoor pools [putting on sunscreen is too time-consuming] to exercise. It did not take me (or the lifeguards, for that matter) long to figure out that I was often THE slowest swimmer out there, or that I was swimming unconventionally. Those two might actually be related. I don't think I have a single normal stroke to get me across the pool. When I do my version of the backstroke, I keep my arms underwater and pull them from shoulder-height to hip height--basically like flapping my arms to fly. And contrary to what one might think for a fairly-inexperienced swimmer, I do not doggie-paddle--mainly because I dislike the strain it puts on my neck (but also because when I swim on my stomach like that, it feels like pressure from the water is preventing full lung expansion) .  It should be fairly easy to pick me out from all the other swimmers in their respective lanes, because I am the only one without goggles...

 When Mark and I visited my parents, we took a boat trip in the nearby water-- water which was "fine" in the "Frigid as Ice and Nearly as Excruciating" sense. My face in reaction to the temperature of the water To be fair, it only felt "fine" for the first 5 minutes or so. After that, the experience kind-of overwhelmed my senses. Also, I was concentrating on getting up on a wakesurf board. My brother giving me a pep talk before I went in Eventually I succeeded, but in the meantime Mark enjoyed taking pictures of my efforts. Me actually up! Oh well. I returned the favor.