Me: Awe. That would make a cute photo of Clive.
Hellion: Oh really? Let me have a look at it.
#StupidCat
So You Don’t Have a Cross Country Ski Course in Your Backyard?
That must be tough. 🙂
  
One of my favorite things about our home (or Chickadee Wood as Pam has named it) is that while we are located in the middle of a typical suburb, our backyard is connected to around 60 acres of wood thanks to a tree ranch and an undeveloped school forest (some schools in the Wisconsin have forests for doing things because this is Wisconsin and we care about the outdoors a lot in Wisconsin).
A medium size forest in your backyard means a lot of positive things. It means that we have deer and wild turkeys that live and run through our backyard. It means that every now and then you look up and suddenly there is a wonderful barred owl landing in front of you.  It also means that when there is snow we get to walk out our back door and go cross country skiing.
Of course, I am not very good at cross country skiing – specifically I am quite slow. Still I can and do to go and I love that. This late snow (30″ in April is absurd) may be a pain in the butt, yet it also means that I get to go cross country skiing later in the day and with less layers. I am a big fan of that.
I bring this up because I believe people, and especially ministers, should love the place in which they live. One of the things that I believe helps a person to love where they live is to approach ones community as if you were a tourist. A tourist goes into a community looking for the interesting things within that community. One of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible, has the motto “always read the plaque“. Jeff T, my friend and manager in chaplaincy, likes to tell those he manages to “walk slowly through the people”. Both sayings fit in nicely with loving the place where one is. Every place has something cool about it. A minister should do enough research to discover what those cool things are.
No Goat for You
Yesterday Pam referenced that she would kind of like to have a goat. I thought that sounded like fun and decided to do a little research to discover if we can keep a goat on our property in the great village of Plover. Unfortunately, from my reading of the ordinance we aren’t allowed to have a goat in residence on our property (here’s the ordinance). That stinks.
While reading about goats I was struck by the specific list of exotic animals that are forbidden from being housed in the village of Plover. Here’s the list:
- All poisonous animals, including rear-fang snakes.
- All nonhuman primates, including but not limited to apes, chimpanzees, gibbons, gorillas, orangutans and siamangs.
- Baboons.
- Bears.
- Bison.
- Cheetahs.
- Constrictor snakes.
- Coyotes.
- Crocodilians.
- Deer.
- Elephants.
- Game cocks and other fighting birds.
- Hippopotami.
- Hyenas.
- Jaguars.
- Leopards.
- Lions.
- Lynxes.
- Monkeys, either old world or new world.
- Ostriches.
- Pumas.
- Rhinoceroses.
- Sharks.
- Snakes not naturally indigenous to Portage County.
- Snow leopards.
- Swine.
- Tigers.
- Wolves and wolf hybrids.
I’ve emphasized the ones that I personally think are funny. Obviously, the village board has these in the ordinance because they are concerned there is a very real possibility of someone in the village thinking “You know what would class up this place? A hippopotamus in the front year. I’m going to get me one of them.”
The Good News is That Clive Stays in
So the good news from all this snow has been that I have been able to let Clive out without a leash while Adam and I have cleaned the driveway several times. The snow berms have been high enough to act as a natural fence. This is nice because it has kept Clive’s nose from dragging him away from us. I like working with Clive hanging out with me.
The bad news is that he hasn’t seemed to like being out as much as he normally does. Clive typically loves the snow, but he hasn’t seem to as much today. Pam thinks it may be because he can’t see anything beyond the snow berm. I believe she very well may be correct. Large snowfalls and short dogs don’t go together very well.
Terrell Family Discussion Comparing Snowpocalypse & Other Weather Emergencies
Me: You know everywhere we have ever lived has had weather emergencies but I believe I lam most comfortable the snow emergencies in Wisconsin.
Adam: Why?
Me: Well, you probably don’t remember hiding in the basement and singing songs during Tornado Warnings in Missouri?
Adam: Nope
Me: Those were very scary. You probably remember hurricanes and preparing for them.
Adam: Yep
Pamela: I wasn’t usually scared of them except for the night before Katrina.
Me: Yeah I began to think “what if we should have left” then? Realistically the weather emergencies at other places contained the possibility of large scale death totals and destruction. A huge snow storm is still dangerous but basically we just stay inside, and shovel the driveway every so often.
Pamela: The biggest danger of this storm to me is that I will gain 10 lbs.
SIDE NOTES – we have been eating A LOT of carbs. 🙂
SNL Diner Lobster Skit
I Love Tapestry’s Leadership Team
I am a subject in a friend’s Doctor of Ministry project concerning discussions of church facilities. He told me a story of one church that he was dealing with where the leadership hadn’t told the pastor their true feelings concerning their building because they were being “Minnesota Nice“. So my friend asked if Tapestry’s leadership was OK telling me their true feelings even if it meant disagreeing with me.
I just started laughing. Yeah, they have no problem telling me when they disagree with me. 🙂
One of the things I love about Tapestry’s Leadership Team is that while I always feel like they have my back, they also have absolutely no problem telling me when they disagree with me or think that one of my ideas is stupid – which they often are. Today is one great example of this.
Today we canceled our worship gathering for tomorrow. This is a big deal for me. In all my years of ministry I have NEVER, until today, canceled a worship service. I once held a worship service for our church’s youth, open to everyone, once during a hurricane even though the main church service had been canceled. Once in Tapestry we continued our worship gathering after we had been forced to move into the school’s very small basement because of a tornado warning.
So today while discussing whether or not we should have our worship gathering tomorrow I was seriously leaning toward continuing the worship gathering because my mindset is that people should just choose not to come if they view it as dangerous. As we chatted via text messages I told them all about how I had never canceled a service/gathering. There are 5 of us and the vote at the time was 1 to 1 with 3 others considering their vote. When I told the LT that I had never canceled church Marc came back with a message saying he felt secure traveling because he had all-wheel drive and lived in town but that wasn’t true for everyone else, and we shouldn’t have church out of pride. Marc & the Holy Spirit don’t play fair. 🙂
BAM! Suddenly the vote was 5 to 0 for canceling our worship gathering tomorrow.
I hate it when I am wrong, but I am VERY thankful for our Leadership Team.
BTW – Tapestry WILL NOT have its normal Sunday worship gathering tomorrow.
Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone …
https://youtu.be/tIdIqbv7SPo
But there is Steak. 🙂 Pam is gone to an OPID meeting, therefore Adam and I grilled out.
I Need A Flat Bottom Boat for Sunday
Does someone have a small flatbottom boat that I could use for Tapestry Sunday morning? Doesn’t have to be able to float. Just needs to be small enough to easily move inside and flat enough not to rock back and forth if someone steps in it. In other words, I can’t use my canoe because it will rock back and fort.
SIDE NOTE – Andy & I caught a few brookies this morning. Yeah!
Apparently This is How Pam Thinks I Fish
Today was an interesting day. I left the house this morning at 4:45 to do one of my chaplain visits only to have my van’s alternator go out (I replaced the battery, which desperately needed to be replaced, this weekend but apparently it wasn’t just the battery that was dying). Anyhow when I saw the Charging System warning light come on about 15 miles form home, I turned around immediately and thankfully made it back home without the van completely running out of battery power. Then I waited for Pam to go to work and stole her car for the day. It was a long day today, and I finished chaplaining around 8:30 tonight.
Anyhow because I knew it was going to be a long day today I had planned on going fishing tomorrow morning with Andy L, the local InterVarsity area director, before doing some more work later in the day. Fred the Van losing her alternator meant that I was going to need to ditch fishing because Pam would need her car for a university teaching and learning meeting she is presenting at and attending the end of this week. Thankfully I have a spouse who likes for me to go fishing and knows that it is good for me, so she decided she was going to make things happen for me to be able to steal her car while she is gone. This would enable me to still get my work done while not having to replace Fred’s alternator until this Saturday. I love this woman.
Thankfully everything worked out and Pam’s way of telling me that she had arranged a university car the trip was by sending an image of how she apparently things I fish.
So this, my friends, is how Pam thinks I fish.
The thing is that sometimes this isn’t very far off. I will do anything if it helps me catch fish. 🙂