Got Gas? 

This Is Cheryl's Baliwick! Her motto, "All Roads Lead To Walmart" 

Life, Love, and Laughter

My youngest grand daughter, Ms. Kyra, is coming to spend a week or so with Cheryl and I at our house. Managerial meetings for her mother are the excuse we're using this time. I'm not remembering right now, but I think we planned this on our trip to Nebraska before anyone knew there were going to be meetings this month. My eldest daughter asked me yesterday what Kyra and I were going to do. All I could answer was, "Oh, you know, the usual stuff. " Anything but! We plan on riding the Ultra Classic together, eating in exotic places, taking lots of 35mm pics, and throwing rocks at the water for hours on our first full day. We both like cars and trucks and jeeps, too. Last time we were together for a week we took one day and test drove new vehicles. We both thought that was pretty cool! (No you don't have to buy one, you just have to enjoy them) When she was first born I was driving around in a Corvette convert, real black. I don't think we'll be ready for another one of those for about ten years(she just turned four). Lately her favorites on the road have been the really huge four wheelers, so I suspect we'll drive several of them; no preference on the make or model as long as they have good tunes! We have the whole world at our fingertips and once we start rolling the possibilities become endless. We're going to laugh and love every minute of it. Did I forget to mention that we just " have to" eat fastfood in the park where all the playground stuff is? She informed me of this about ten days ago when we started making plans. Then there are the new babies that we will probably visit. It's kind of neat to be the pastor guy that did the wedding service, you can drop by most any time and people are happy you came(at least they say they are). I am so looking forward to the beginning of another adventure together. We're going to cut a large slice of life, place it directly in the middle of the plate and love it! I'll probably take digital pics, too, so that we can share them on the web and in my E-Mails. Like you really want to see them, right! I'm laughing about that. Yesterday is history! Tomorrow is a mystery! I think there's something else that goes with that. God bless. In Christ's Love, Preacher.

Information: Just For The Record

I have been hearing a lot about the information gathering practices of people on the internet lately. Having not used a computer previous to October of 2004 I was quite oblivious to many of the applications for which this marvelous tool is used . It might even make the most insignificant among us(me)feel very important to think that someone cares enough to want to know every detail of my life. Where I go, who I talk to, how often, and how much time, money, energy is spent with my 'puter friends. I haven't given this a great deal of thought, yet, but my initial, out of the box response is this: Why, for God's sake would anyone want to know anything about me?
Now, 'you' I can understand them wanting to know something about. Your life probably is multi-faceted, and your world is filled with fascinating knowledge that someone, somewhere would like to know. One of my biker buddies(paranoid by nature)has gone to such lengths to maintain his privacy that his computer has all kinds of programs to block stuff, and firewalls enough to protect his entire neighborhood. He surfs through anonymous hubs and never uses a real E-mail address(unless it isn't his own)when going anywhere on the net. This, then gives me cause for concern. I would think, in my limited knowledge of how stuff works, that the people that are being sought on the net by authorities are the very ones that use evey means at their disposal to not get caught. In other words, guys like the ones who worked out every detail of the 9\11 attack, people who send encrypted pages out to others who are making money nefariously for the support of terrorist activities within the borders of our country, and criminals whose life's work it is to live by despoiling the lives of others. 'Ponses are encouraged. Here is one other thought: A week or so ago all of the law enforcement people in the government; Local, State, and National did a sweep thing where they rounded up all these bad people that were wanted for, you name it they got somebody who did it, crimes. This means that they spent weeks, months, maybe even years locating all these folks so they could nab them simultaneously. Makes me wonder what the bad guys were doing while they were waiting to be nabbed, 'after' the powers that be knew exactly where they were. I do applaud the law enforcement agencies that took part in the "sweeps week" and I do support them in their efforts to keep little old me safe from harm, and I am without a doubt certain that once they found these people they would have picked them up early if they were continuing to be a problem prior to their alotted time of "pickup." Maybe I need to 'not' think about these things so much. As for someone wanting to sell my information out there to somebody else, I can only wish them well. If there has ever been or ever will be an excercise in futility, that would have to be it! One last thought: Maybe I need to do a thing where I share my own thoughts on the news. Something like "Preacher's Views On The News." How does that sound? Have a wonderful day! In Christ's Love, Preacher.

Inspiration To Realities, One Day At A Time 

Too Cold For Plants And People

The early bird sometimes gets surprised. Robins and rednecks alike were dodging snowflakes in our corner of the universe yesterday. The plants that were so happy to be back on the patio were equally thrilled to return to the house this past weekend. Temperatures have teeter tottered on the thermometers between a low on the north side of 25 degrees overnight to a high on the west side climbing to nearly 54 this late afternoon. I discovered yesterday that there are very few people that celebrate May Day anymore. Perhaps this is another sign of getting older, when one can remember the simpler times when May Day baskets were filled with goodies for neighborhood children and the ladies wore their finest dresses to church replete with white gloves, purses, and shoes to match. I've been looking through scores of old pictures in an attempt to find visible proof of how things were when I was just a lad, but, as yet, have met with little or no success. The weather never surprises the residents of the Great American Desert, though. Last August in our tent located two blocks from downtown Sturgis, the temperatures fell regularly below freezing at night. There I go wandering off again in my thoughts. Was I going to write about the weather or the cold summer we had last year, plants or birds, or ladies fashion during a bygone era? I can't remember now. Maybe it will come to me again, later. Let it be sufficient to say, "Things are not always as we remember them." There are times this is a good thing. May God bless all of your memories of living, real and imagined, for it is in imagining that we turn on the creative juices that flow within each of us and spur the individual to make his or her world a better place in which to live and raise up plants, and animals, and most important, more of God's children. In Christ's Love, Preacher.

Happy May Day!