The Road Not Chosen

My lovely new laptop arrive Friday morning at 9am. It is a wonderful as I had hoped. Harold was away on a 5 day trip to Wyoming to work with a worship team there so I was able to spend lots of time loading software, tweaking my new machine and learning my way around Vista. I find Vista to be not nearly as complicated as I had heard. I had read a lot of tips and tricks beforehand so that probably helped ease my transition. Now the only hard thing is going between Vista on my personal laptop and XP at work.

This picture  is of our church van, which Harold took on his trip. On the way home from the airport last night, he was viciously attacked by a large deer. Needless to say the deer lost but did its best to cream the van. Harold was 2 1/2 hrs. away from home when it happened. He was able to limp home by driving 50 mph. Not fun! This poor van was also attacked by a deer a couple of years ago when our pastor was driving it. Maybe we need to get a brighter color van?? (Or smarter deer.)

The rain has been endless in our next of the woods. I had been so proud of myself for actually planting flowers on time this year and not waiting until July like I usually do. My reward has been mixed. Some of my flowers look great, as these examples show. The orange flowers (no idea what they are, some kind of lilly I think) started as one flower 4 years ago that I randomly stuck in the pot. I didn't know that it was a perennial. So each year it drops seeds, giving me an abundance on my investment. I'll have to give some away next year!  

Others have not faired as well, succumbing to rot from the constant deluge:

Even the animals around here are growing weary of the rain. A couple of days ago I watched with great concern as a blackbird sat on my deck for over an hour. I though he was dying & knew if he did I'd have to dispose of him since Harold was gone. The bird revived and flew away. When we got home this afternoon Harold thought we had a dead rabbit lying next to the deck. (A family of them live under the deck.) It was all flat and not moving. We banged on the window and it raised its ears. A while later it hopped away. I think it was trying to dry out, as I'm sure living under our deck is like living in a muddy pond right now.

One of elders, Tony, spoke on Sunday about the role of the local church in society. It was awesome and very motivating. He talked quite a bit about the arts in the local church. We are very blessed with an abundance of musicians, artists, dancers & writers so all of us were really worked up! I had talked to my friend Michelle a couple of weeks ago about us starting a writers group. After church Ginger, who is currently shopping a novel around, mentioned she thought we should start a writer's group. Well, out of the mouth of 2 or 3, right? So that's what we're going to do, which will be very exciting and fun.

Hope you all are having a good summer. Enjoy your 4th of July next week!