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Thank You for Your Service

This afternoon after I finished my work for the day I went out to the woods to see if I could bag a deer. The short story is that I saw lots of activity, had one in range, but was never able to get a clean shot at him,  and was eventually spotted by a doe who ran away snorting for the whole world to know how ticked she was that I was in her woods (I hate that sound, thankfully I haven’t heard it that often). But I don’t want to write about hunting. I want to write about getting to the woods.

I like to take coffee with me to the woods (I know this isn’t good for scent control, but it is part of the tradition of the hunt for me and since I am only trying to kill the deer with less cognitive abilities I feel the smell of coffee helps keep the smart ones away), so as usual I stopped by Kwik Trip on my way to the woods. While I was filling up my thermos I dropped the top of my thermos. I walked over to pick up it up when a woman said “let me grab that for you”. This made sense because the cup/lid had rolled over by her foot. As she was handing me the cup/lid she said “and thank you for your service”.

I couldn’t help but laugh. I was dressed in my hunting camo and apparently all camo is military camo to some. Anyhow I let her know that I was just going hunting, she told me she was embarrassed, and quickly departed Kwik Trip.

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Get a Google Home Mini if You Have a Spotify Family Plan

We swapped to a Spotify family plan for music a couple of years ago when I realized that for a little more than just Pam’s account we could gain access for everyone with a family plan (One of the boys had a plan too so realistically the family ended up paying less – though Pam and I started paying around $1 more per month).

ANYHOW, Tomorrow Spotify is giving away FREE Google Home Mini’s to people who subscribe to the Family Plan. All you have to do is go to THIS LINK tomorrow.

You can read more about this in this Verge article.

The Terrell family has both Amazon Echos and a Google Home Mini. The Mini produces significantly more pleasing sound quality and Google does a much better job of consistently answering our questions. Alexa can be a little dense sometimes.

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I Tried To Buy These

I couldn’t get the lady down to the price I was willing to pay but I was hoping to get these at a price that was low enough to justify a practical joke. If I had been able to buy all nine of these mannequin heads I was then going to randomly mail them to various friends. I thought it would have been a great and creepy prank. Imagine receiving a box in the mail and then opening it up to discover these looking up at you with no explanation. I have some friends who would get a kick out of it.

The pipes bombs being mailed have changed my mind concerning these prank. For some reason I no longer think that receiving an anonymous mannequin head in your mail would be as funny. I’m really thankful that the seller wouldn’t come down to my price. In our current climate my practical joke would not have been as cool.

Seriously, who knew that there were so many mannequin heads for sale?

Of course, my thoughts on this might change in a year and oddly there is a surprising number of mannequin heads for sale on Facebook Marketplace. So who knows, a year or two from now some of y’all might get the great prank of a creepy fake head arriving in your mail.

How much fun would that be?!?!?!?

 

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Almost Freaky Timing

While I have mixed feelings concerning Facebook I love Facebook Messenger. What I love about it is that my family uses it throughout the day to maintain a conversation. Seriously, Pam, Adam, Noah, and my Mom talk about meaningful and basically meaningless things all throughout our day. Yes, we talk on the phone and video conference for family discussions (Thanks Google Hangouts) but this ongoing daily chat keeps me feeling connected to my family throughout the day.

Sometimes the chats lead to humor. Today it led to a kind of freaky series of events.

It began with Pam randomly posting that Noah should consider applying to the University of Northern Iowa for grad school. Since Noah is a graduating Senior this year in Communication Science Disorders graduate school is a common topic of conversation for us. I’ll not post the rest of this conversation but it was basically Noah asking why Pam thought he should apply to UNI and Pam explaining why she believed it would be a good fit.

This conversation took place around noon.

When I arrived at home around 4 pm I checked our mail and discovered a letter addressed to Noah from the University of Northern Iowa. This was pretty odd timing so I posted this photo in the group chat.

Since this was Noah’s letter I wasn’t going to open it but I did think that if he knew of it he would probably want me to open it up for him. I was correct. He asked me to open the letter and tell him what would be in this letter from a university that he had had no contact with but which we were talking about earlier in the day.

I bet you also want to know what the letter was about. Well it was an invitation from UNI for Noah to consider applying to one of their “outstanding graduate programs”.  Seriously.

I know this letter doesn’t really mean anything. It isn’t an acceptance letter. It’s just an invitation to apply. Still the timing was amazing.

I love what happens in our Terrell family ongoing group chat.

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As A Pastor This Photo Makes Me Happy

Twenty minutes after all the equipment from our weekly worship gathering has been put up people are still hanging out talking with each other. I love it when it gets late enough that I actually have to ask people to leave the gym because our rental time runs out. I sometimes feel that a part of the pastoral role of “equipping the saints” is enabling people to do this.

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Potluck Tomorrow

I assume that everyone who reads my blog posts knows that I am a Baptist minister (pastor of a small and wonderful church and chaplain through a great company). As a Baptist minister I am fairly sure that my spiritual love language is the language of potluck. I really do love them.

Not so much because of the food, though I do love that also, but more because I believe there is something God honoring and wonderful about them. At a potluck everyone brings something that they like, like to make, or like to serve. Some people spend hours on it, while others spend minutes. Some people make something, while others buy something. There isn’t really any rhyme or reason, no really plan or agenda, people just bring what they want to bring and something wonderful comes out of it.

For example, I am an OK cook but Pam is the one who really shines at cooking in our home. She is amazingly creative and very skilled. She wasn’t when we first were married (we used to thing that hamburger helper was fine dining) and she didn’t really have any family experience with creative homemade meals. She developed it on her own and has gotten better with the years. Anyhow, she’s the real cook, but there are a few things that I make better than her.

Two of things I make better than her are salsa and chili dogs. So that is what I am bringing tomorrow for Tapestry’s potluck – Chips & Salsa and Chili dogs. Not a normal combination, but when you add it with all the other things that everyone else will bring it will lead to a wonderful meal. We feed each other with our small gifts and great, God honoring things happens.

I’m sure there is analogy in there somewhere but I need to stir my hot dog chili.

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Merriam-Webster on the Word “Asshat”

I have posted before on the humor I find in the word “asshat” and how Pam and I use the word “butt fedora” for the same purpose because neither one of us are big fans of cursing or vulgarities. To Pam sent me this interesting article from the Merriam-Webster “Words at Play” section concerning the history of the word “asshat” and the reason for their inclusion of it in their dictionary.

To quote Merriam-Webster concerning the growth of the use of the word:

It’s traveled pretty far into the language in just a short amount of time.

May you have a “butt fedora” free day.

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A New Motor for Buddy the Mustang in the back of Fred the Minivan

A year ago today Conor H and I finished replacing the automatic transmission in Buddy the Mustang with a manual transmission. Today we bought the main ingredient (I bought it, Conor inspected it) for the next transformation of my 1989 convertible Mustang. We will be replacing her 2.3l 90 horsepower engine with the 2.3l turbo 190 horsepower engine out of a 1987 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. Buddy is about to change from “all show, and no go” a vehicle that has show and go.

I posted the above photos primarily because I wanted to write about my love for my minivan. Every Monday evening I shoot bows with an amazing group of guys. As great as these guys are they raze one of our number because he shows up each week either in a minivan or a Prius (I on the other hand usually show up in Buddy). The jokes basically are about these vehicles emasculating him. It is all just ribbing and happens mainly because they guy driving the minivan/Prius combination is the first one start the jokes about himself. Personally, I am a huge van of minivan because of events like today. Conor and I drove comfortable over to Eau Claire, picked up Noah, bought the engine, and then comfortably (other than a fear of bumble bees because we found a nest of bumble bees in the transmission bell-housing before putting the engine and transmission in the back of the van) went to eat at Taco Januita’s (if you haven’t been here and you are ever in Eau Claire you should go). I did all this while getting good gas mileage. I love my minivan!

“Yeah I’m sorry I can’t hear your funny jokes about how unmanly my 300,000 mile minivan is, I’m too busy hauling the engine out of a Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. What’s in the back of your fancy truck?”

SIDE NOTE – If anyone has an engine lift and/or an engine stand that I could borrow for awhile I would appreciate it. These are the type of things that I can’t do this project without but will probably never use again.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – If you are going to buy an engine from someone my experience is that it is best to buy an engine from a guy who owns his own personal Bobcat. Getting the engine in the back of Fred the minivan was easy. I have no idea how we are going to get it out. 🙂 Anyone want to buy a Bobcat and let me use it?

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Goats Rampage

There is a company that rents out goats (WeRentGoats) to control weeds and such on private property whose “employees” went on a rampage, left their job site, and began eating a local neighborhood. I wish I had a random hundred goats come through our neighborhood. That would be a ton of fun … until you had to clean up after them.

Here’s the Washington Post story on the incident.

 

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If You Are A Financial Planner You Should Know This

Today I talked with an individual who was selling himself as a personal financial planner and as a part of his spiel he regularly referenced the national debt and what it would probably mean for future tax rates. Unfortunately, everytime he referenced the national debt he actually said national deficit. Maybe I’m expecting too much but I feel like you should know the difference between the debt and deficit and use the terms correctly if you are a financial planner and encouraging people to make certain investments based on the future tax rates possiblle due to our increasing debt.

National Deficit – how much we spend each year as a nation over our income (taxes, tariffs, etc). The opposite is a surplus, where we have more income than we spend.

National Debt – the total we have borrowed over all the year’s deficits (less the year’s with surpluses).

Projected 2018 National Deficit – Around 800 billion

Current National Debt – Around 21 trillion.