Riverbend Journal

I’ve traded in the daily grind for skies of endless blue,  With golden sand beneath my toes and nothing left to do.  The sun is warm upon my face, the salt is in the air,  I’m lost within this paradise without a single care.  -Written by Gemini the Artificial Intelligence Be back in a week or so. -Ed

Years ago, we bought a cross from some organization that was raising funds for the Holy Land. It is made of olive wood, supposedly from local trees but looks mass produced.  It is also just one cross. My wife has been after me for some time to make her some crosses for other areas of the house and so with Christmas nearing, I thought it was the perfect time to finally fulfill that wish. I sorted through my scrap pile of small pieces that were too big for me to throw away and picked out some contrasting small chunks in quarter sawn sycamore (lighter wood) and walnut (darker wood).  In the weeks before Christmas, it is too cold for me to do any gluing or finishing out in my garage so I am limited. To compensate, I did my cutting out in the garage and then brought the pieces inside on days my wife was at work for the actually gluing and finishing parts. Not ideal but it got the job done and kept them secret until today. I also started off with four of them but broke one in a cata...

I've had somewhat high cholesterol, ever since I took my first general diagnostic blood test that I can remember, maybe twenty years ago. It isn't get to an ER now or even at your earliest convenience high but it has always been above normal. During my last two general workups though, the last one being last week, that number had crept a couple notches higher. My physician, technically an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP) since my previous MD retired, just told me to lay off the Christmas cookies and sent me on my way with a clean bill of health and my second dose of the Shingles vaccine. My private MD, i.e. wife, on the other hand, has I guess you could say a vested interest in my health and asked me if I would agree to a CT Scan to check my calcium score. Evidently, that is doctorese for checking how much arterial plaque one has built up in their major arteries near their heart.  Since I know my mom also had high cholesterol and I'm pretty sure my grandparents...

In the back of the large hall, the doors, evidently needing damper adjustments, slammed and rattled about every thirty seconds making it hard at times to hear what we were there for. During the brief intermissions, people were shouting up on stage trying to embarrass the performers as they walked off. Even during the performance, people were standing up and jockeying for position to see who could get the best angle for recording the event on their cellphone or perhaps blind the most people behind them with the backlight. The performers themselves weren't without fault as one wore a mini skirt so short, she constantly had to hold the hem down to protect her modesty. Another one didn't perform at all, simply stood on stage making "rabbit ears" behind those next to him, doing wrestling poses and making faces.  As each act ended, people leapt out of their seats to rush through the doors in the rear making sure to let them slam shut and interrupt the next ten minutes of th...

  In the era of global warming, we have had an unusual amount of snow the past couple weeks. That suits me just fine as what little shopping we do has already been done and I am happiest avoiding all the consumerism madness going on around me.  With the snow still falling, I opted to spend the second to last shopping weekend before Christmas enjoying a nice fire in the fireplace and reading. To do that however, required me to go out in the sense that I had to open the patio door underneath our deck and walk approximately five feet to my wood box to carry in a supply of firewood and I did that maybe six times in a row before deeming the firewood supply sufficient for a couple fires. I only paused long enough to take the above photo.  Soon the fire was started and I indeed spent the rest of the weekend reading in front of it with only a trip out to go to church on Sunday morning for the third Sunday of Advent before returning directly home. I did make one other trip outside...