A Life Told in Sand

Watch it full screen. Beautiful...

That's one small step for man, and....

WHAT TH'...??

Moo Gets His Own Blog

So, you give a turtle a little publicity and all of a sudden they get too big for their shell and think they're a star. Moo demanded his own blog or he'd stop doing tricks for me. The nerve of some reptiles.

So, HERE it is. Don't tell him that I'll be cross posting the pictures, but all HIS personal stuff will now be available in one place.

Tchaikovsky's First Draft

This was his final production titled "Swan Lake"



This was his working first draft titled "Turtle Pond"

Capital Punishment, Part 6

In this podcast I discuss the woman taken in adultery, "would Jesus flip the switch", and should evildoers be given life in prison as an opportunity to come to repentance.
All that and more HERE

Archdiocesan Gratitude

In spite of all the controversy(which I avoid) surrounding the Antiochian Archdiocese these days, I am personally grateful for being brought into the Orthodox Church through it ten years ago for a lot of reasons. For one, if not for it I couldn't appreciate this...

Oxymoronic Lunch

McTurtle fast food.

Capital Punishment, Part 5

Why does God command fallen human beings to make life and death decisions? Have Christians permitted atheists to define our doctrines? What does iconography have to do with the death penalty? All this and more HERE.

Eothinon Ten

"Peter saith, I go afishing..." (for the liturgically challenged non-Orthogeeks).

I took Monday off and my dad and I borrowed his neighbor's boat and went back to the "lake of no fish". The lake is not very big, it is a trout fishing lake and only electric trolling motors are allowed unlike the bigger recreational lakes. It makes for a quiet day fishing. Dad runs the "tiller" and we troll about 20 yards off the shoreline.
A couple times Dad ran us too close to shore where all the sunken trees are and our lines got snagged so we had to cut them loose. Dad's hands shake too much for him to tie a swivel and clasp a new hook and sinker, he knows it and I know it. I told him to give me the end of his rod and I put his line back together. I had a vague remembrance of being five and Dad setting up my rod and hook for me on the bank of Tompkins Lake near Millington, Tennessee. It was a wordless acknowledgment of the reality of the inexorable reversal of the roles of parent and child as our parents age.

We pass a few people who say they've caught a couple and lost more than they've caught. We fish for about 45 minutes and ZING goes the string... I reel it in and he scoops it up in the net, the first catch of the day.
It turns out it was true. We got four large trout right up to the edge of the boat and they got away. But we landed a few too. I'm going to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest WIIITTHHHH... a trout!

NI!

All in all, a good day fishing. The last time I remember holding a stinger of fish with my dad was when I was in third grade. Fifty years is too long in between. Take note, sons.

Oxymoronic Swimwear

Turtle Speedo

Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Go in Your Backyard

Baaaa....Dummmm. Baa...dumm. Baa..dum baadum baadum

Capital Punishment, Part 4

Is it possible to have a "Christian State"? Can the State govern according to the Gospel? Can "forgiveness of enemies" be a valid principle of civil order? What do the Fathers say about the relationship of Church and State in regard to capital punishment? Listen HERE

The Next Best Thing at 57

...to an aerial banner on my birthday.I love my tortoise...this is going to be one fun pet.

Today's Off Road Adventure

I live in the Phoenix area. Most of us live in the flat lands of the city. There are some "mountains" that, if you can afford a couple million dollars for a driveway, you can build a house on. But among the flatlanders, one thing you see a lot of is four wheel drive "off road vehicles". You see stuff like this on the freeways that have probably climbed nothing higher than a speed bump in an auto parts parking lot...
And then we have the "partway up the hill" noeveau riche who need something a little more powerful and roomy than a Porche Carerra to get them up the driveway with the kiddo, two bags of groceries, a soccer ball and the dry cleaning in the car. So we see quite a few of these...
Personally, I feel very safe around here because if we are ever invaded by a foreign enemy the government will have enough Hummers to conscript into service to hand one to every member of the Armed Forces.

But, there are a lot of people who drive "normal" offroad SUV's. Most of these folks will probably never climb anything higher than the curb into their driveway or through anything deeper than the puddle at the curb from the lawn sprinkler. One of my clients has a Range Rover. You can actually drive a Range Rover off road through stuff like this...
or climb stuff like this...
But if you live in the city and plan to take a short trip off the street in your neighborhood in one...

Don't drive in your kitchen.

Yep. I spent today reframing and closing off a hole where a customer drove through the garage wall it into her kitchen. She kept coming in saying, "Is it bad?... How bad is it?" I told her it was not a big deal, we take out walls and put them back all the time, she just did the bulk of the demolition for us with her car. I don't think the "range" in "Range Rover" refers to the kitchen stove.

Capital Punishment, Part 3

What does it mean to "forgive one's enemies"? What is the purpose of civil authority? Is the State constrained to function on the level of the Gospel? All this and more HERE

The Tortoise King

Much to my distress I could not find an image I was looking for from "The Lion King" song "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" which ends with all of the animals dancing on each other's heads. This Youtube frame is the closest I could get, so unless you've never seen The Lion King you don't have to watch the video to see what I'm talking about (which is in Japanese...). This just kind of sums it up.

This is Moo, the Tortoise King of my back yard.


(Click image to enlarge)
Grace, in a comment, reminded me of an image that I had in my now low voltage failing synapses but couldn't bring out of the fog...
This is from the "Town Musicians of Bremen"

There's just something about animals stacked up that is just well, ... cool. Maybe its a guy thing.