The First Post After Martha's Birthday

We didn't really get started celebrating with my wife until Martha got home from Burger King Saturday afternoon. Prior to that Sarah, Jeffrey, and I went to Breakfast with the Boys at Bethany Lutheran -- we go every other Saturday since I have to get them up early to go with me --  where the chefs served seventeen of us breakfast pizza and we all ate well. The kids wouldn't eat all the eggs and sausage and onions on the pizza, of course, but there was still plenty to enjoy. Besides, I still get to stay for the Bible study after the meal and got quite a bit out of it about salt and light (how Jesus describes those who believe in Him from the Sermon on the Mount, particularly Matthew 5:13-20). I especially got to thinking how salt that seasons food and preserves it -- that was its primary function in the days before refrigeration -- is actually comprised of two elements, sodium and chlorine, which are poisons in themselves.


Combined chemically, they become what's fit for human consumption. Sodium chloride.


Friday morning before work I stopped at our local Barnes & Noble for "Coffee With A Cop" an event that combined three of my favorite things: books, coffee, and (good) conversation. And with no outstanding warrants on me I figured it was safe to go! But seriously, I got to talk with one seventeen-year veteran of Minot's police department about ... well, what people talk about when they meet. Who are you, what do you do, what's happened outside our regular jobs; anyway, I drifted over to another conversation, got to see Minot's mayor at the then-second safest place in the city with about a dozen police officers there, and I'm told by Martha's mom Sharon and one of her sister Mary's co-workers at Kmart I even made the nightly news. I was in the frame when the cameras were rolling so no, I said nothing profound that morning. I did pick up a children's book of excerpts from Shakespeare though -- B & N is discounting a lot these days. It takes a while to find the good stuff.


And it's taking me a while to finish it too.

Friday night was spaghetti night, with plenty of sauce which made me happy! We've still got quite a bit of it in the fridge, so we should eat well for the next few nights easy. At least I do, I don't mind the leftovers but I DO mind ramen, whereas Martha and Sarah will delight in making it again and again! When we were at Marketplace Foods Sunday after church we bought a box of twenty along with some Super Bowl fixings even though we don't really watch the game anyway. Jeffrey was a little miffed about that, as he told me when we were playing chess (yes, we do that; over the weekend, we played five games and he won three of them) he was afraid he'd be the only one of his friends who didn't watch the Patriots come back from behind to smack down the Falcons in overtime. And that is a simple explanation of what happened, I admit that ... but life goes on.


Make a plan. Stick to the plan. Always deliver.


Such is the mantra of the main characters of the animated movie Storks that we watched twice this weekend. After we got home from Martha's birthday dinner at our local Ground Round, we picked out a movie to rent -- that is, Martha picked it out from three the kids and I had selected -- and childbirth in this world is hardly painful if you just write to Stork Mountain and ask for a baby! Evidently the parents on the children wanting a baby brother or sister can do that, and wolf packs can also form whatever vehicle they want ... I wonder if I fell asleep halfway through Saturday's showing because of some illogic (even more than usual for an animated film) I couldn't digest disguised as my own digesting dinner. But I did watch it Sunday with the family again after church where the kids made prayer books with us in Family Sunday School and I did like it. The movie, of course,

And making the books.


David