I did some AWESOME sledding this last weekend. The awesomeness was in the fact that I forgot I wasn’t 17 and crashed into the snow. Do you know what is under snow? Solid ground that the snow has landed and accumulated on. My shoulder still aches a bit from the crash, but the good news is that while I’m 15 years past 17, my kids still think I’m awesome for doing stupid stunts :) Maturity indeed.
At breakfast Grandma said, “When we’re done eating we’re all going to work together to clean up the house.” About 45 minutes later the 4 year old asks, “Why is grandpa on his computer instead of cleaning? Is he the manager?” I totally wish I could make this stuff up.
For the record grandpa did help with the cleaning.
One of the things that’s fun about being part of a church body is that for some reason there tends to be a propensity for church plays around Christmas. I don’t blame the Baptists, but I think that somewhere along the line, they got really good at bigger and bigger productions. If Steven Spielberg wasn’t a Jew, he’d be a Baptist pastor of drama or some such thing. I’m not here to talk about Baptists or Jews, but tonight I got to play the brief part of Herod. I was asked to be Herod, the nasty ruler of the Jewish part of Rome who ordered lots of dead infants and children and generally was not a good guy.
It turns out that I’m too jovial and happy. Herod was probably selfish, egotistical, and much more middle-eastern. I’m probably selfish (but less so), egotistical (but less so), and I’m rather white and northern European. Between those similarities and differences I can tell you that I pretty much did NOT embody the persona of Herod. I could not pull off mean and angry. Not a bit. I was too much of a grinner [I was told]. I wasn’t even trying to grin, thinking about grinning, or even aware that I was grinning. But apparently I grinned my face off. Apparently the order to destroy all the males two and under was not convincing despite my best effort.
I’m totally OK with this. I’m glad I failed at being nasty. I will sleep well tonight knowing that I stink at being wicked and evil in an overt way. Of course that means I’m probably just a quieter, more devious sort of bad guy, but we knew that already, too. Ever since elementary school I was good at scheming bad things for others to do. I rarely got in trouble because its hard to get caught when someone else is doing the dirty work. I don’t blame the Baptists for this either. Be stinky at being little Herods, its probably better for you anyway.
I am not lying to you when I say I have bought a new filter for my shop-vac. That’s right, I have a shop-vac with a new filter and I am ready to use it. I am ready to make that filter wish it was never born. It will be like so many washed up Hollywood starlettes wishing that it had stopped sniffing in the powder that I am about to rub off of my walls in an attempt to make them look nice. The walls will be drywalls, but the shop-vac is a wet-dry shop-vac so I could in theory saturate the walls with water and the vacuum would still work! Of course a house with saturated walls is not a house, its a home for Sponge Bob Squarepants. Given the past owner’s penchant for hacks, shortcuts and setting up electrical situations that are sure to start a fire, I think I’ll keep the walls dry.
I’m trying to wrap up the wall work so that when my in-laws come next week for Christmas festivities we all enjoy time together and not working to wrap up the wall work. In some countries this is unheard of, but mostly because they have not knocked the non-existent wall out from between their non-existent two rooms. With that in mind, be like congress and stimulate someone’s economy like Cash for Clunkers, only because there are folks in need of chickens we’ll call it Cash for Cluckers. Take some time to look around the World Vision site and buy a goat, some chickens, sheep, or even help fund a well. I’d much rather have water be able to get into their lives through a well and have the problem of needing a wet-dry vac.
Speaking of which, does Dyson make a sand sucker? Because I’m thinking in some of the places I’ve seen pictures of they need that. Wait, they don’t have electricity… ZAP!!