Scattershooting Sunday

Hello one and all. So much to cover, so little time. Without further ado, here is a brain dump of what's been going on.

Today is my sixth wedding anniversary to my lovely wife, Christy. We have had an enjoyable weekend. Friday I came home to a nice home cooked steak dinner with a dessert of sweet potato pie - yum! Saturday we went out for dinner at JR's Steakhouse. While we enjoyed our dinner together, it had more to do with the company than the establishment. My steak was very unevenly cooked which is unacceptable at $32.99. At Chili's or the like you might overlook it, but not at a "fine dining" establishment. Today we put six pennies in the "chapel piggy bank" during Sunday School and had "Happy Anniversary" sung to us by the remainder of the Sunday School group. Overall it was a very nice weekend. Can you believe it has been six years since that hot Saturday afternoon at Faith Lutheran Church in Plano?

Today was also Confirmation Sunday at Holy Shepherd Lutheran Church. I absolutely love being in a small congregation. This year's confirmation class totaled one young lady. Someday Rachel will appreciate the fact that she had a sermon preached largely for her - that day may actually be today. The sermon was based on Rachel's confirmation verse, 1 John 5:13. I thought it was very special. It made me remember my own confirmation some 20 years ago. While there were seven in my confirmation class, I found it easy to relate to being a class of one. Much like Rachel, I could picture myself up there alone with the Pastor reciting the responses as quickly as possible during the Rite of Confirmation. Let me say again that this is a special congregation. If you are looking for a Church home in the north Fort Worth area, give it a shot.

Christy will attest to the fact that I am a spontaneous - read unplanned - person. However, even the post take it as it comes person enjoys some stability. For about a year now, Marcus has been the coffee man at work - that was until about 2 weeks ago. Monday Marcus was there, and Tuesday he had accepted a promotion at another location. I saw Marcus between 7:00 and 7:15 a.m. everyday for at least a year, and for I can't remember how long he greeted me each morning with, "What's up, bro?" He had worked at Starbucks prior to working our Starbucks Cafe at Southwest Airlines. He explained a lot to me about coffee and the Starbucks way of preparing and serving coffee. We also talked about Cowboys, Mavericks, cars, and many other things that you might talk about with a bartender. Now he is gone, and I can say that I miss him. There hasn't been a consistent replacement for him yet, but no one will ever truly replace Marcus. He understood customer service. He knew me, and he knew what I wanted when I walked up. While he had a different mild, medium, and bold coffee each morning, he knew what I wanted. It wasn't always the same each day. It would be easy to remember that someone always gets the bold, but I don't like Sumatra. On Sumatra Friday, he knew that I wanted House Blend - the medium. So far the random face of coffee neither has a consistent rotation of brews nor do they know what I want. This doesn't even consider the small talk about life. Wherever you are Marcus, I hope that you are enjoying your promotion.

Vine leftovers day was the Thursday before last. Since then I've been reading All That Road Going and Christy and I have watched The Best of Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen on DVD. My review of the comedy DVD is hot off the press while I'm a little less than half way through the book. The next Vine newsletter is scheduled for May 15, and I'm hoping for another good selection of music. While it is fun to get the electronics stuff, the music is what I wind up getting the most out of on a consistent basis. I enjoy most of the books, but I have never read a fiction book a second time. I'll refer to a good work related book for years to come, but there haven't been many of these. Plus my music tastes are pretty diverse, and I love finding new artists. (BTW, Christy got me three CDs for our anniversary, and one of them was by a trumpet player, Chris Botti, that I had not heard of before.)

There might be more, but I've been writing for a while now. It's after 10:00 p.m., and that means it is time to get some sleep. I know that I haven't been the best at responding to e-mail or making phone calls of late. Rest assured, I am not mad at anyone or anything else bad that you might think of - beyond having an insane amount of things going on. (I didn't even mention the garage sale that the Church youth group had last weekend. Ask Christy about her "tan".)

Until next time...
PH