Thursday

Hey, I want to try opening a blog post in a new way. Here goes:

A criminal’s best asset is his lie ability.

When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.

So what do you think? What? Well, fine! You try coming up with something creative and see how it works out for you.

I think I might have had too much coffee or something this morning. Oh well. I did wake up in the middle of the night for a while. I got my Kindle out, coolly equipped with the little attached reading light, and read for a while. That did the trick. I am reading Chrissie Wellington's book presently and am enjoying it. I'm reading another Donald Miller book as well. Chrissie's book is my night time, go to sleep, book.

See those six window panels in the picture? They are now refreshed, actually replaced with new ones. My friend Don measured, cut, primed and painted all the new panels. Then yesterday we took the old ones down. I hung out of the window opening and painted the frames. Standing in the frame, I could not still reach the top, so I had to stand on a ladder and then hang out the opening. One lady came by and looked at me; she seemed alarmed. I had to assure her that I was fine and was not going to jump.

Then another time, a lady with a big, big beehive hairdo came out of the Store, just as a huge drop of black paint came off my brush. It was like slow motion watching it fall right in the middle of her high hair. I crouched down behind the opening, peeking out to see if she felt it. She did not. RELIEF! If you see a big haired lady with a black paint spot in the middle, then you'll know what happened.

[The 2 previous paragraphs contain some truth and some fiction.]

It took most of the morning, but all 6 panels are now in and looking good. Most people will never notice, but they would notice the old ones as they continued to fade. I think there is probably a pretty good life lesson in there about taking care of things. The Store continues to do well. We have had record sales every month of this year.

After lunch my physical labors continued. We are swapping the youth group and preschool space, so I got involved in that for a while. I managed to squeeze a short run in there as well. Then last night we had a tremendous group of people show up for our "For the Sake of Others" class. Last night's task, in part, was to move the heavy stuff, and some of it was really heavy. Everything was done and no one was hurt. Blessing.

I'm taking this morning off to ride with 2-3 people, and we'll follow the ride with a 3 mile run. Tomorrow I plan to run 7, I think, and then Saturday will be a bigger brick: 43 mile ride and 5 mile run. That will give about 100 miles on the bike and 30 miles on the run. This will be my "low" bike week. Last week I had 156 miles. Swim? Working on a plan for it.