Dreary Brown

December 30, 2006 (12:05pm)
35º F, Dreary, NNE wind 3 mph.

Good afternoon,

It is a dreary day again today. I hear there is some fog in the area and to the west. Fog advisories are up and some travel is restricted. But here in the woods it doesn’t look like it at all. Still can see all of the trees! We have been listening to Radio Scotland and Radio Wales the past couple of days (thanx to the computer) and some of their programing from Sunday, mostly Christmas music. The music and voice are about enjoying the snow and winter (Dreaming of a White Christmas and like that). We are dreaming of one too! I think it is some ironic to look out the window and not see either.

The Welch programing has been especially good. One number I/we really took a fancy to is "Sweet Bells," preformed by the St. Agnes Foundation. I have looked for the music, but without any success. Would like to get the sheet music for the piece and give it to the choir to sing next Christmas. It really tells the Christmas story in a very nice, musical, way. By in large, the two "stations" (for lack of a better term), play more Christian music that our counterparts in this country. They also are not bashful about telling the Christmas story from a Biblical perspective. There is very little cute, secular music or stories on them. We really appreciate that. Today we have been listening to much of Bach’s music in the Christmas setting from the BBC’s online radio. That too is excellent. Would be nice to have a better audio system to listen too, rather than the itty-bitty speakers on this machine, but we still enjoy.

I have been working on the research for the next Bible study, Acts, and made a big mistake. Really it was rectifiable, but a nuisance. Instead of cutting and pasting a small section, I copied and pasted a very large section. The end result, for a while, was the total amount of material doubled! Instead of 23 pages of material I had 45 pages! Not what I wanted to go through. Of course I didn’t notice it until I had saved it to disk, preventing the "Undo" key from working. Got it straight this time. Some of the material I am using, rather than referring to various passages, writes them out in total. That really makes for many more pages than necessary. Lots of deleting going on. I really am learning something, but hope it sticks between my ears for at least a little while.

Margriet had a short conversation on ICQ with Brenda yesterday. We had not chatted with her for a couple of days. Apparently Kalle has been running a 104º F fever during that time. They had seen a doctor, but he had no clue as to what the problem was, other than one of those "kid things." Brenda said both Ma and Pa were very tired from lack of sleep. Kalle was not the best of company either. We worry about that. High fevers are not something to play with. We haven’t heard from them today. Hope they are sleeping at least and Kalle is on the mend.

The last of the roulade is now history. There really wasn’t enough left of the last meal to make another meal, so Margriet combined it with a couple other leftovers of similar kind, made some cornbread, and we put it over the bread. Rather good and all is gone - except some cornbread yet to eat. Like that too, but I have been diligently working on getting rid of the Christmas bread around here. Found that it is just not too bad with honey-butter on it!

At the moment, Margriet has put some pork hocks in the oven to bake after browning them first. The smell is too good to not get my stomach growling, even though I have just had lunch. The hocks are huge! Don’t think there have ever been bigger ones in my lifetime. Suspect they will disappear too. We got them at Otto’s the last time there, along with some fresh kraut. That is the menu for supper - if I can wait that long.

Tomorrow we are having a soup-and-sandwich meal at church before the evening service. I think I will make some potato and Polish sausage soup to take with. Been looking at a couple of recipes and got some hungry from that process too. Trying to figure out how much to make as I don’t know how many others are making soup or how many folks will show up. Probably not that many there. Oh well, it is good as a "leftover" too.

One of the nicest folks and one of the most evil men have died now. I don’t think that President Ford will meet Saddam at anytime. In my lifetime, President Ford was probably one of the best three Presidents we have had. Probably was the one most representative of what our Presidents should be. He and his family are interesting folks. I liked him when he was president and afterward too. Nice guy.

The other guy, Saddam, is good riddance I think. I don’t condone the death penalty in any circumstance, but I am glad he is gone from the possibility of ever being in power again. After seeing the mayhem that occurred while he was in power, I can’t understand why anyone could possibly not be glad to see him out of action or support him in any way.

Dad-gum-it! This keyboard is brand new and it still spells words wrong and uses the wrong ones!

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><