Currently blogging on my laptop while stretched out on my couch while watching the Wild/Canucks game on my phone. 2013 is awesome. I'm so glad the world didn't end in 2012.
My last blog post ended with "Duty calls, folks." I've often thought that, if I am still blogging until the day the I leave this life for the next, my final blog post will have some sort of fitting sign-off. For example, when my boyhood pastor passed away (December of 1999) he had been working on a sermon for the last Sunday of the year. The title on his sermon notes was "Jesus is coming--are you ready?" And the Bible on his desk was open to the verse about keeping watch, since you never know what hour the Lord will come. Maybe one day (preferably after meeting my great-grandchildren :-)) I'll end a blog with something like, "and if that's all I'm remembered for, all these years later, I can be happy with that." Or, knowing me, something much simpler and more appropriate, like, "Dang. I'm tired." And then that'll be like my Internet last words. Either one I'd be fine with. Either would have its own sense of poetry. And really, don't we all want a poetic end to our days?
Side note: I really want to read Gilead again. Actually, I really want to read anything again. I have yet to finish a book in 2013, though I've started many. What a strange year it's been.
Anyway, as you could probably guess from the last blog about my family members getting sick and then no Friday Features blog (I even played half an hour of Ecco the Dolphin for a RNGOTM--and yes, I know Ecco isn't Nintendo, but then again the feature isn't monthly either, so what's in a name?)--holy cow, Clayton Stoner just scored. That happens, like, once a year--I got sick over the weekend. Basically, we all traded stomach bugs. Actually, I started with a head-cold and some congestion, but I didn't get a chance to tend to that because Kim and Isaac got really sick and so I had to take care of them until I got really sick. It actually started to look like Robbie had dodged the proverbial bullet (now they're giving Charlie Coyle credit for the goal--sorry Stoney!) when, at about 2 p.m., we got the call from his school. You know the one. The one that goes, "Please pick up your kid, he's throwing up." Poor guy. He's pretty broken up about it. He told me today was a bad, horrible, horrible, terrible, awful, bad day, and that he doesn't have enough words to say how bad it is.
So, more taking care of sick family members tomorrow, now that I'm (mostly) over my own bout. Wednesday we have our first audience for Ballerina, and then we embark on our three-bookings-a-week schedule. All kinds of adventures ahead between bookings and baseball season.
It is good to be alive, friends.
(Oh, and a quick recap of Ecco: I imagine this game was developed by a man whose children were constantly bothering him about how much fun it would be to be a dolphin, so he finally got sick of it and made this game to show them that it would not be fun at all. Actually, I think what happened was I played a bad ROM of the game, because the youtube footage I saw looked much smoother than the version I played. It's actually a pretty innovative game for its time, but I can see how it gets boring quickly. I did Wikipedia the story of the game, though, and it gets crazy. Like, time-traveling-dolphin crazy, and then some. The sound was a little grating on the ROM that I played. Every time Ecco would get hit by a jellyfish he emitted this ear-piercing shriek. Which is probably true to life. It was kind of funny, because I had the screen door next to my computer open while I was playing, and every time I'd get hit and Ecco would wail (pun only slightly intended), it would drive some dog downstairs absolutely crazy. True story.
