- Festival Foods I’m pleading with you to come to the Point area (i.e. Stevens Point, Plover, Whiting, Park Ridge, etc.). I have found the perfect location for you.
Dear Festival Foods … Move Here
Boy #1 Has Now Been Bowfishing
I Saw Navel Gazing
A year and a half ago I used the above photo “edited” of the statues of the Satyres en atlante which depicts Omphaloskepsis (navel gazing) during a message at Tapestry. I used it to talk about some a tendency people sometimes have to contemplate what seems deep but actually doesn’t matter to real life, i.e. navel gazing. I had forgotten that the statues were located at the Lourve . So when we went to Paris I was thrilled to walked into the section of Roman antiquities and see it standing in the middle of one of the rooms.
I left my photo unedited because of two things:
- It is on my own self-hosted blog and not a 25′ screen at church, and
- The bulge that I covered up is actually just the knot of the wrap that is around their waste. I just thought it would be too distracting during our worship gathering to leave it uncovered and try to explain that it was merely where the wrap was tied. Also, covering the knot with the word “art” was pretty funny, so that was also a win.
SIDE NOTE – if you are considering a vacation anywhere you should talk to Pam. She is amazing at planning. You would not believe how little we paid for all four of us to go to France and basically be able to do anything we wanted to do because of her skills in vacation planning.
One Year Into Robinhood
I’ve posted before about Robinhood, a free investment platform that I started using a year ago, but I thought I would post about it again for two reasons:
- Apparently Joe H decided to join Robinhood and it looks like he used an old invite link that I had posted, so I received a free stock. I received one share of Under Armor. This is by far my highest price free share yet (UAA closed Friday at $21.36, where as my previous highest value free share was about $4). Thanks Joe! I hope you got a nice share like my brother did – he received a free share of Apple.
- I’ve been investing speculatively through Robinhood for a year now so I could judge how I have done.
As you can see from the graphic attached to the post my return for the year was 13.75%, whereas the S&P 500 for the same dates brought a return of 10.783%. Thus I beat the S&P by 2.967%. Of course, that is counting my free shares for referring people to Robinhood, and the S&P doesn’t get those, so I probably lost to the S&P.
Maybe it is a good thing that I don’t handle anyone else’s retirement. 🙂 BTW if you want to try Robinhood and want a free stock use this link http://share.robinhood.com/robertt429. I’ve had a blast doing a small amount of speculative investing through Robinhood.
2nd Day Airbnb
I’m sure I’ll post more about our adventures in France later on but it will take a while to think through some of them – for example my very complicated feelings about cathedrals. For now I will once again post the video I made to show my mom the Airbnb we are staying in for the next two days. I’m impressed at the excellent, affordable places Pamela has found fur thus trip. Downtown is a brief walk and the Museum of the Battle of Normandy and Bayeux War Cemetery are just at the end of the block. Pamela has organized an amazing trip without us being stuck on preplanned tours or in hotels.
Speaking of corporate, the plan for the evening was to visit a French market, buy supplies, and made supper back at the Airbnb. Unfortunately, by the time we got around to it all the markets were closed. Mickey D’s saved the day … or at least kept our stomachs from growling.
SIDE NOTE – here’s Pam at the restaurant where Julia Child had three meal that changed her life and led to get taking up French cooking. Pam loves Julia Child and I tried to encourage her to have a meal there but she decided against it. 150 Euros for Frog Legs and Duck in Blood Sauce weren’t her type of thing.
Our AirBnB Yesterday
Iceland
The Trip Begins
Hour Reminders Next Week
Today in Tapestry I encouraged the “threads” to pick one or two moments during the day to use as a reminder that as a disciple of Jesus Christ we should recognize Him as mediating our present experience. In other words, for a follower of Jesus we would connect with, view, and experience everything through Him.
I used this image as an example:
I have written about Jesus as the mediator of our lives in this post. Such practice has been a part of the church for a long time as the canonical hours. I will be singing the doxology, a prayer that recognizes that all things do praise God, while also being a confession and commitment that we will praise God.
Anyhow below is the church Google Calendar with the canonical hours setup as a reminders. That way you can subscribe to the calendar and have reminders on your phone.
Clive Loves Car Rides
I am posting this video just because I believe Clive deserves more blog time than any cat. This dog seriously loves car rides. The video above is from a semi-forced ride tonight that Pam “guilted” me into giving Clive. It was only semi-forced because I really love driving Clive around.
I went to return Pitch Perfect 3 (yeah Shelley!) and when I returned Pam told me that Clive had sat at the garage door whining the entire time that I was gone. I would love to say this was because he was missing me, but the truth is that he was probably just upset that I had gone for a ride without him. This dog seriously loves car rides.
Put his harness and lease on and the dog runs to the garage door. Convince him to walk out the front door so that you can actually go for the walk and the second he exits the front door he starts to run to the outside garage door or if there is a car in the driveway he runs straight to it. Open your car door for a second, and pop he jumps in. If a stranger wanted to steal my dog all they would have to do is open their car door. Given the choice between me and a car ride with a stranger I am pretty sure that Clive wouldn’t even think twice, he would choose the car ride.
The good news is that Clive has good musical taste so we listened to The Clash during our ride through the country roads South of Plover.