June 2006


Personal30 Jun 2006 12:03 pm

Met a lot of people last weekend, we had a good time. Visited Ag and her family, as I mentioned, met tall bass-singing Vern the new father, Truthseeker (as previously mentioned), Paul Yates over at Ten Cents’ Worth, Darrell over at deepbrew.com, saw Joe and Crystal of course, the rest of the Goods, my buddy Benj, Josh, Annette, our wonderful friend Merry, Shari and Karen, By and Amy, and who else am I missing.

Speaking of deepbrew, he posted a pic from the wedding. Check out those glasses of iced tea!

And Truthseeker wasn’t the only one keeping me in the iced tea! Paul (who is Truthseeker’s son, by the way) got in on the act with him that Sunday afternoon during the potluck after church. They kept me supplied until the supply ran out!

Then we were at the Good’s house that afternoon, Benj and I were going over some music in the basement, and Ginger comes down with a large glass of tea and a small pitcher to refill it!

Wow. I had been so looking forward to the Good’s iced tea.

Saturday evening a bunch of people from the wedding were playing volleyball. I was hanging out with some of the guys outside, and I met a new bass singer dude. A handful of use were doing some singing, then me and By and Benj and Jeremy the new bass singer dude sang some tags. That was fun. I need to start singing again, I’m out of shape.

I whipped out the old cell phone once and recorded a tag with the voice memo feature. Somebody made a wisecrack, better watch out, he’ll have that up on Iced Tea Forever!

Family&Personal&The Den of Iniquity28 Jun 2006 02:13 pm

A lot has happened recently that I haven’t told you about. And actually it affects all ITF constituents.

I have resigned my position in the Den of Iniquity.

I’ll pause and let the enormity of that statement sink in.

Pause.

Pause.

If you’re at all like some ITF constituents who have learned this fact, you feel somewhat of a loss. I don’t blame you. What a rich treasure-trove of blog fodder!

This actually happened a couple of months ago. Here’s how the story goes.

As you know, my smart wife graduated from nursing school the end of April. Roughly about that whole month we had been in talks about a traveling nurse job offer. This job would have taken us to Indianapolis (pronounced Indiana-PO-liss) 3 days a week. It was a fantastic opportunity and we were very excited about it.

Indy would have been a long commute to the Den, so hence the resignation. I have a number of projects on the side that hadn’t been getting the due attention they deserved, so we decided that I would not try to get a job of some kind but would pursue those. Some website work, some studio work, etc.

Nothing official had been signed, but they told us (on several occasions) “You’re in, you’ve got the job.”

In fact I even alluded to the whole situation in a post. I thought I was creating some really nice foreshadowing there.

So I finally gave my notice to the Den, and on the appointed day I made the rounds to my friends and bade them farewell. Unlike the vast majority of departing employees, I left on very good terms with the company and plant management.

That was on a Wednesday. On Friday, the hospital people we were in talks with called and said, “Um, sorry, guess we don’t want you after all.”

I alluded to that too. So much for my planned foreshadowing.

So what to do then. No job for either of us. Kinda took the wind out of my sails, we were really looking forward to this.

You take one thing at a time, make one decision at a time and then deal with the results. I’m sure I could have gotten my job at the Den back, but I decided that I had taken this fork in the road and I was going to follow it. We were going to press on ahead and see where we landed.

Top priority was a nursing job for my wife. We needed to stay flexible for that, so I wasn’t going to try to find employment right then. We were pursuing several area hospitals, and finally in the next several weeks she landed an RN job at Goshen where she had been working part time as an aide for the last several years.

And she doesn’t want me back in the Den, so here I still am!

Mr. ITF is a self-employed stay-at-home husband! I did the laundry last week and the dishes this morning.

And that is the story of recent life events.

Personal25 Jun 2006 11:14 pm

Still on the road and as sick as ever of driving. Especially of driving in the rain. Utopia’s infamy for precipitation makes less sense to me all the time, everywhere else I’ve been the rain is so much worse. Utopia has a gentle and loving mist of life, but everywhere else it seems to just come down in downpours and as a deluge of Biblical proportions.

But let’s not speak of those showers, let’s speak of the recent showers of blessings being bestowed upon me in the form of iced tea! Yes! I told my wife as we were nearing our destination deep in southern Virginny, I was ready for a bucketload of sweet southern iced tea!

Ask and ye shall receive!

Saturday afternoon at the wedding reception I was privileged to meet my online buddy Truthseeker in person for the first time. And I’ll tell you what, he proved to be a true and immediate friend. I owe him big time.

This reception being in southern Virginny, of course they served iced tea. And the weather was hot. Oh my, it was hot. The tea people had their hands full trying to keep the life-giving nectar in the guest’s glasses.

I was sitting at my table with an empty glass. Truthseeker grabbed a tea boy in the vicinity, pointed to me, and said, “Go give that man some iced tea before he dies!!”

Then later when we were done eating and things were winding down, he went and found a mostly-full pitcher of iced tea and set it right in front of me!

Friendship like that just warms your heart.

ITF Business23 Jun 2006 06:45 pm

Guess where my wife and I stayed last night!

None other than my favorite-ITF-commenter-ever’s house!

After traveling through five states yesterday we arrived and spent the night at Ag’s place. We’re on the way to a wedding in Virginia so this was a good stopover.

This is a long trip, it seems like I’ve been driving forever.

Medical21 Jun 2006 07:57 am

Biofeedback. Thanks, Miss, now I’ll know what to call my gift next time.

Opportunity was afforded today to take my blood pressure not once, but twice (once in the doc’s office).

Much lower this time! Either my bodily situation has changed or I’m really getting good at this biofeedback thing. It was only 108 over seventy-something, so that is reassuring and somewhat settling.

Thanks to all of you with grave concerns over the state of my health, it appears that I’ve weathered the worst of the storm.

Medical19 Jun 2006 07:07 pm

Remember the Finger Thing? This is kinda like that, except this time I show even more astounding mental power.

I was up in the hospital again last night visiting my wife, and she took my blood pressure. It was a terrible reading, which alarmed me quite a bit. Because I’ve never taken a bad blood pressure reading in my life, not even when I was so sick I was knocking on death’s door!

It was 142 over high eighties or something with a pulse rate of 88.

I was distraught.

A few minutes later I remembered that the human mind has tremendous control over the body. I told my wife, “Take it again, I’ll lower it with mental control.”

She initially dismissed me, but finally acquiesced to my request. I willed my physicality to bend to my demands and manifest itself a lower blood pressure reading.

Sure enough! The results showed a dramatic improvement! She printed out a receipt for me (how neat! I didn’t know they could do that), which I have posted for your convenience:

You’ll see that the systolic reading is a full 8 points lower! The diabolic score is a handful of points lower, and my pulse rate was a full 3 points lower. This is nothing short of an astronomical improvement.

I wonder how much the medical field knows about this phenomenon. Maybe I should launch a campaign aimed at educating victims of high blood pressure of this amazing technique I have perfected.

Personal15 Jun 2006 01:39 pm

So I just recently shared with you the link to Kaitlyn’s story about the cell phone in church. Now I have my own example of absurdity.

I was in church last Tuesday night for a choir program. The choir was wringing tender emotion from an exquisite line of music when Chester Dude’s cell phone starts going off. Now Chester Dude was was clear up front, in the second bench I believe. Mere feet from select choir members!

He turns to his neighbor and grins hugely like it’s one big joke. Then he leans waaaaay forward and puts his head practically under the bench. I was seated only two rows directly behind him, unfortunately I could not escape.

I tried to resume focus on another emotionally musical phrase, only to hear a voice, slightly muffled but speaking at almost normal volume.

Chester Dude had answered his phone!

He had his head tucked under the bench to talk on his phone in front of the whole church while the choir was delivering their program! Unbelievable.

When he was finished, he sat back up, looked at his neighbor again and grinned like there was no tomorrow.

Somebody’s Mommy needs to take their toy away!

ITF Business14 Jun 2006 08:50 am

My wife and her Mom went and picked strawberries. Then my wife told me that they were going to “blick” them.

What ?!! Blick?!

What in the world is blick. Evidently it’s pulling the stems out of strawberries.

Only in Indiana!

In further research, I’ve found that this is a term from the Amish language. Nobody knows how to spell it though. When I keep giggling about “blick,” they all ask me, “Well what do you call it?”

I say, “I don’t know, I guess ‘pulling the stems off!'”

Misc11 Jun 2006 01:48 am

Here is a selection of items I have collected from the blogs I frequent. Everyone has their own circle of blogs they’re familiar with, and I thought I’d broaden your blog horizons with some tidbits from my circle.

Woe is he who becomes the subject of Kaitlyn‘s scathing wit! The phone rang in church one Sunday, and we get to enjoy this wonderful piece because of it.

Do you like it deep? My buddy By‘s bound to deliver. He’s not afraid to dig in and go for the depths. Recently he’s offered up some spiritual introspectivity, as well as a stimulating proposal regarding anabaptist theology.

And while I’m mentioning By I have to bring this up. He also just wrote a favorable piece about a singer dude. The most interesting part to me was that my favorite commenter (anon) publicly announced disappointment in Byran for his endorsement. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine with me if anon is disappointed. But why is it that 98% of these kinds of comments are from anon?! It makes me chuckle.

Rob and the boys went crabbing again. Sure wish I could help ’em eat all those crabs. One of these days, maybe. I visited DE a few months ago and Rob invited us over, but it was a quick trip and we didn’t make it. I don’t think he had any crabs for us then though!

My good buddy “Gallup” Glen over at Random Pitches has set a record even for him, I believe. He loves to ask questions of his visitors, he often wraps up a typical post by asking how his current topic factors in to your own life.

But Friday he packed 5 questions into a little 6-sentence post! Now that took talent. And practice, I’m sure.

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