This and that

We just had Thanksgiving yesterday.  It was a lazy day, no pictures to prove it, but take my word, the only thing we did yesterday was feed ourselves, which meant we both cooked and we both cleaned up.  We took naps, talked, and watched 2 movies.  What a wonderful day!  


I will let Don speak for himself as to what he has been up to, which has been a lot, but I can only speak for myself.   I find myself leading a bible study, chairing a committee, volunteering at the food cupboard in town, and a few other odd things to keep me occupied.  I am also learning to knit on the loom, as well as make a shawl and a few more scarves for the winter.  

I now find myself nursemaid to my one little kitty, Rosie, who has been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, and need to give her medication twice a day, which is hard enough for me to remember myself, but Rosie is doing better, although she has a growth on her tummy which needs to come off at the end of December.  It does not seem to bother her much, so I am hopeful iit is nothing too serious.  


Now onto the house.  This is a picture of our front room, dining room, and entry way.

We resurrected the old dresser/bed for storage and using it for dish towels, table cloths, etc.  I am loving this green color we chose for the walls. It is the color of green kelp and reminds me of the water. 

Don and I sanded the old church pew and refinished it.  It is so beautiful now.  I love the color.  We placed it at the bottom of our stairs.  It is a good place to sit and take off and put on one's shoes, although now that we have a back porch that is usable, we tend to go in that way, but for company, the front door is still as welcoming as ever. 

Ah well, Rosie is settling down for her afternoon siesta, and I must get back to other pending activities.  

Adventurous Summer

I know it has been a long time since I have posted anything on my blog, so if you want to do a little happy dance for this new post that is just fine with me.  I have been INSANELY busy for the past few months!  First of all, I graduated from Luther Seminary (YAY!)  As my seminary career was winding down my career as a pastor was cranking up!  Perhaps I should explain a bit.  See, way back in February I was assigned to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  Then I was given a congregational profile for Grace @ Calvary Lutheran Church in Butler, Pennsylvania.  The church looks like this:

It is a very large church that has lots of room and lots of enthusiastic and friendly people in it.  The inside is even more beautiful than the outside.  With the architecture of the building I affectionately call it "the castle."  The church voted to call me as their pastor on the weekend of the 26th and 27th  of June, and my start date was scheduled for July 1st.  With travel from Pennsylvania to Minnesota and back to Pennsylvania, it turned out that I was not able to start until July 2nd, but that does not seem to have affected the relationship of the congregation and me at all.

It is summer so there are not many people in worship regularly, but the average attendance hovers at about 140 in worship.  I really like the building, the people and the town, so I am prayerful that this call will be one that will last a very long time.  I also hope that Anna comes to love Butler as well.

Since the church does not have a parsonage we looked briefly at the possibility of renting a house or apartment in town, but there really isn't anything worth renting that would suffice for our needs, so we bought a house.  The address is 123 East Patterson Avenue, Butler, Pennsylvania 16001 and the house looks like this:

                                                             

It is a three-bedroom, one bath house in a nice, fairly well-kept working class neighborhood.  It needs a new roof, but the seller may pay for at least part of that, so we are not concerned about it.  We really like the layout of the house, and the kitchen is very nice, with all new appliances and cabinets, and plenty of counter space.  There is a nice dining room with plenty of space for all we need, and there are three bedrooms, so that we can accommodate visitors (hint-hint).  It also has a very large back yard and once we get that fenced the cats can play outside as often as they like!  It has a one-car detached garage that is pretty small, so it may become a potting shed in the future after I build a bigger, two-car garage.  I am looking forward to adding special features to this house to make it home, such as a wood shop in the basement and making a craft room for Anna upstairs. 

Right now I am in Butler by myself because the purchase of the house will not close until the 29th of July, so Anna is still in Saint Paul with the cats while I am renting the previous pastor's house.  He has it for sale, but it is too big for what Anna and I need, so we are more satisfied with the house we bought.  We will be loading a U-Haul truck on the 26th of July to make the big move, so if you would like to help out there is plenty to do!  In the meantime I work at the church in Butler and Anna works at the dining hall at Luther and packs boxes of our stuff.  I know it will all work out well in the end.  Happy Independence day andGod's peace be with you!  Blogged by Don

I dumped Facebook

So now I will probably be the only guy in America without a Facebook account.  I think I was on it for about a year and in that time I found it to be more and more annoying.  It got to the point where I no longer wanted to look at it because rather than telling me what my friends were up to, I would see little updates about all of the stupid Facebook games and suggestions to add people as friends that I don't even know.  Then the new format came and I couldn't even find a way to look at my whole friends list unless they were online.  No, the whole thing got to be too stupid for me, so I dumped it.  I know there are those who will say it was too harsh of a reaction, but let's face it, I'm just not that interesting that I need to be on Facebook, and it seems that most of you fill up your Facebook time with games, so I don't really see the point.  I will be concentrating on my studies this semester and finishing my MDiv. degree, anticipating a call somewhere in the ELCA by the middle of this summer.  Have fun on Facebook, and if you get curious about what I'm up to, call me or email me and we can get caught up that way.  In the meantime I'll be reading about the newest efforts toward effective evangelism.  Blogged by Don.

Here we go again

Anna and I have this nasty habit of telling ourselves that we won't buy anything we have to move because we are only living here in Saint Paul temporarily until I graduate from seminary.  The problem is we keep coming across stuff that is just kind of fun to have around!  For instance last weekend Anna was on a women's retreat with the women from Eden Prairie United Methodist Church where Kathy and John are members.  It was only a weekend away but I found myself missing her terribly!  All I did all weekend was wish she was home with me; that and fix the vacuum cleaner. 

The vacuum cleaner had broken its belt so I needed to go to the hardware store and get another one, and on the way to the hardware store I drove by the Goodwill Thrift Store.  I just thought, "Ah, what the heck; Anna is away on retreat and I've got some time to kill, might as well go inside and see if they have anything interesting."  So I stopped in to browse and found these sherbet bowls.  They are similar to the sherbet bowls I bought at Goodwill about two years ago, and there were plenty of them.  I got to thinking that they would make great tea-light candle holders because the pattern in the glass would reflect the light nicely as the candles burn in them.  The other sherbet bowls are packed away in storage because Anna and I wanted to unpack only the essentials since it is my last year of school, so they are not easily accessible, besides this is a different pattern that I have seen many times and I was curious about it already.  So I bought four, took them home (after I finished my mission to the hardware store and got the vacuum cleaner belt) and cleaned them up, put the tea-lights in them and got them set up for when Anna came home.  Then I fixed the vacuum cleaner and tested it to make sure it works by cleaning the living room. 

As I mentioned, I was already curious about these patterned sherbet bowls because they are similar to the Anchor Hocking Wexford ones that I had purchased previously, but the pattern in the glass is different.  I have seen plenty of these sherbet bowls before in thrift stores and antique stores, and since Anna and I have been collecting Wexford I have sort of ignored these.  But the price at Goodwill was really cheap; much less than I had seen them priced in the antique stores, so I figured I may as well pick them up and see what happens.  It also seems to me that I'm not sure if the old sherbet bowls we had when I was a child were the Wexford pattern or this one.  This prompted me to do a little research. 

What I found out is that these sherbet bowls are actually peanut butter jars.  They were sold as the peanut butter jars for the "Big-Top" peanut butter brand, and people were encouraged to keep the jars as dishes when  the peanut butter was gone, and of course to buy more peanut butter so that you could build a whole set of dishes.  Replacements Ltd, even lists these sherbet bowls with "Big-Top" as the manufacturer and Peanut Butter as the pattern, but that isn't really the whole story.  Since "Big-Top" is a brand of peanut butter they had the jars/dishes made by the Hazel-Atlas glass company in Wheeling, Virginia.  These bowls were made for "Big-Top" in what Hazel-Atlas called the "Gothic" pattern, but if you look on the Replacements, Ltd. web site you will discover that they have no entry called "Gothic" under the Hazel-Atlas brand name, so the pattern apparently was never released elsewhere. 

The pattern was discontinued in 1957 when Hazel-Atlas was taken over by the Continental Canning Company.  Why would Continental Can want Hazel-Atlas?  Well, you are probably familiar with Atlas canning jars, and Hazel-Atlas was the manufacturer of those.  Unfortunately, the Hazel-Atlas company didn't survive this takeover and the company went out of business in 1964.  Atlas brand canning jars are now produced by the Jarden corporation in New York.

Will we now collect the "Big-Top" peanut butter pattern?  I don't think so, we have too much Wexford as it is, but it is kind of fun to know the history of these things.  The more I think about it, the more I think we DID have these sherbet bowls when I was a kid in New Jersey, but I wonder if they came from my grandmother's house, because the pattern was discontinued in 1957 and I was born in 1958, and I don't think my parents stock-piled peanut butter just to get the dishes.  It is possible that they bought enough peanut butter to make a set, though, since they were married in 1955, they would have had two years to eat enough peanut butter to collect a set of dishes.  Did we have BOTH patterns, the Wexford and the Peanut Butter?  Anything is possible; maybe my parents collected the peanut butter glasses and the Wexford came from grandma's house.  I don't remember.  As far as these sherbet bowls go, Anna was delighted with them and enjoyed seeing the tea-lights sparkle in them just as much as I hoped she would.  After the tea-lights had burned out she turned to me and said, "I hope you don't mind, but I'll probably go ahead and use those as sherbet bowls."  Ah, sherbet; how romantic!  Blogged by Don

Adventures in Jet-Setting

Perhaps "Jet-Setting" is an old word.  Way back when air travel by jet was just beginning to be popular there were some people who were rich who could afford to travel a lot.  There were no such things as "frequent flyer miles" or "discount travel web sites."  People who wanted to fly just went to the travel agent and bought tickets.  Those who were rich enough to take trips frequently, say, more than once per month, were called "the jet-set."  Anyway, with all that as background I will tell you about my recent trip to Western Washington.

I flew out of Minneapolis on the early (7am) flight on Tuesday, January 5th and, with a change of planes in Denver that included a stop long enough to buy breakfast, I got to Seattle by 11:30 in the morning.  By the time I got to the rental car agency and picked up the car I was on the road to Bellingham by noonish.  I was kind of excited about the rental car because they rented me a PT Cruiser, and I had been sort-of interested in purchasing one, but had heard bad things about the gas mileage and long-term reliability, so I was interested in trying one out for myself.  Anyway, my plan was to pick up Daniel at 3pm and have an afternoon of frolic followed by dinner at LaFiamma, Daniel's favorite pizza restaurant.  I would call the trip to the Pacific Northwest uneventful so far.  Things went very smoothly as a matter of fact.  I got to Bellingham early enough to get some lunch before I picked up Daniel, and got him on time at 3pm.

Daniel and I engaged in one of our favorite father-son winter activities, playing pool at Park Bowl.  He has improved noticeably since the last time we played, but I still managed to take two of the three games we played.  We also played air-hockey and, combining my air hockey victories in the wee hours of New Year's Day after ringing in the New Year, I can brag that I am currently undefeated in air-hockey in 2010.  Of course, I am writing this on the 10th of January and I have only played about 10 games so far on two separate occasions, but still, it sounds better to say I'm undefeated for the year, so there!  We had a good dinner and great conversation before heading to Bellis Fair Mall to see what has changed in the years since I have seen it, and I picked up a CD of Handel's Messiah to play in the PT Cruiser.  Ah, the trip from Bellingham to Federal Way was nice, with all that music in my ears.

I truly enjoyed staying with Jon and Karen while in the area.  They are great hosts.  I got to their house after 10pm and they didn't mind, and in the morning Jon even fixed me a big breakfast of eggs, sausage and some really good coffee.  As a treat they had raspberry jam.  I don't know why it is hard to find raspberry jam in Minnesota, maybe because it is hard to find raspberries in Minnesota, period.  So being able to have raspberry jam on my toast was even a treat.  At 9am I headed to Tacoma for my approval interview on the campus of Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland.  It was January 6th, 2010, the day of Epiphany on the church calendar, as an added bonus, or a good omen, or whatever, I saw a bald eagle landing in a fir tree as I was getting off of highway 512 and onto Pacific Avenue.

The approval interview was really nice.  The candidacy committee is full of warm and gracious people who are not only concerned about the welfare of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is their job, but they are also concerned with how I am doing personally.  They were very warm and welcoming, and the end result of the interview is that I am approved for ordination in the ELCA.  Now comes the assignment process, but that will be on a different blog entry.

After my approval interview and a nice lunch conversation with Paul, my pastor from Bremerton, I went back to Jon and Karen's for dinner.  When Jon learned that I had passed my approval interview with flying colors he suggested we go to dinner to celebrate, so we helped the local economy by eating at Azteca.  For evening entertainment we watched the new Star Trek movie.  I think I may have been the last one in our family to see it, but that has been cured.  Going to bed on Wednesday night was the last thing that went smoothly on the trip.

I got a call at 3am on Thursday morning from a computer of Southwest Airlines telling me that my flight had been canceled.  I was scheduled to fly from Seattle to Chicago and catch a connecting flight to Minneapolis, but there was a snow-storm in Chicago, so that ended that plan.  After giving up on the phone reservations after 7 minutes on hold, I figured I had better head to the airport and book a different flight.  First I had to turn in the rental car.  It has been a while since I drove from Federal Way to Sea-Tac airport in the dark, and somehow I managed to find myself on the wrong side of Pacific Highway and almost past the airport!  Luckily I had the good sense to recognize the airport lights that were on my right instead of my left, and got turned around before I drove too far.  I got the rental car turned in and headed to the airport.

At the airport I was naturally greeted with a VERY LONG line at the Southwest Airlines ticket counter, and a gentleman got up on a baggage scale to bellow out to the line, "In case you have not heard, Southwest flight 3511 with service to Chicago has been canceled.  If you need to go to Chicago I suggest you just go home and try again tomorrow, since this snow storm will keep the airport closed at least until noon."  I didn't go home.  I figured I don't need to go to Chicago, I need to go to Minneapolis, so when I got to the front of the ticket counter that is what I told the ticket agent.  She said to me that she could get me on a flight from Seattle to Denver and then from Denver to Minneapolis, but the soonest flight out was at noon, and I wouldn't get into Minneapolis until after 10 that night.  She was surprised that I said, "That will work!" right away.  She said to me, "Wow, I can't believe you're so agreeable!"  I said, "Well, YOU didn't make it snow in Chicago!"  She laughed and booked my flights.  The only downside is that all of this happened at about 5am, and the next flight to Denver was at noon!  That meant sitting in the airport for 7 hours!!  What do you do in an airport for 7 hours?  I slept a little, had breakfast, went to the Borders store in the airport and bought a magazine, a book and a newspaper, went to the nearby coffee stand and bought a large mocha, then went to the food court and sat down for a long wait. 

Maybe you are wondering what paper, magazine and book I bought.  The paper was the Seattle Times, naturally.  Even though I don't live in the area any more I still kind of like knowing what is going on.  The magazine was Country Living.  Why Country Living?  I like it because they talk about doing things that I like to do, like re-purposing an item from one thing to another, such as making a coffee table out of an old boat door, or making a cabinet out of an old console TV and stuff like that.

The book I bought was one that Jon had recommended the day before.  Mitch Albom has a new book out called, "Have a little faith" and Jon told me about how it talks about the commonality of faith among different religions uniting people rather than dividing them.  Reading that book sure helped make the day pass more easily.  It is one that I would also recommend.

I read the paper over my large mocha and my magazine after that, and both were long ago finished before I had to board my flight to Denver.  The book got started after I went to the gate to start boarding and I got a large chunk of it read between Seattle and Denver.  I called Anna to chat when I landed in Denver and updated her on the status of my flight to Minneapolis which had been delayed by half an hour and we chatted for quite a while, after all I had four hours to kill until my flight.  Even with all of the chatting I had time to grab some dinner at the Italian food stand in Denver and read some more Mitch.  The flight to Minneapolis was delayed just a little more, plus they had to change the boarding gate, but I finally got out of Denver at about 8:30 Mountain time. 

From Denver to Minneapolis I finished the book, got a nap, and calculated how much time I had spent in airports compared to how much time I had spent flying, and it is no comparison!  I was in airports for a total of eleven hours compared to four and a half hours of flying time.  I got home to our little apartment in St. Paul at about midnight Central time, thankful that this little adventure was finally over.  I hope the next time I have to fly it is in the spring, summer or fall.  Winter flying is too adventurous for me!  Blogged by Don

Winter 2009

Winter of 2009, our last winter here in seminary housing. Since winter has started we have begun feeding the critters around the seminary such as birds, squirrels, and now rabbits. It is protected a bit by our window with the big bush and being on the south side of the building, although we have gotten our share of snow as you can see.

January is about to start, the coldest month of the year. We have had 2 weeks off for Christmas break, with many people having left for 2 weeks, and many still going away for January-term or J-term. J-term is actually quite busy at the seminary with convocation, this is where over 200 pastors and lay people descend upon the seminary for classes, and I will be busy in dining.

Don is leaving for a couple of days in January. His last interview process with his candidacy committee will take place January 6. His brother and sister-in-law again have been kind and gracious enough to let Don stay for the days he will be in the area. He flies out January 5, drives up to Bellingham for dinner with his youngest, Daniel, and then back in time for bed. He has his appt January 6 at 10 a.m. , and then will have lunch with our pastor for Bremerton to discuss ordination plans, although he has to get a call first. Hopefully there will be time enough for visiting Jon and Karen Wednesday evening as Don needs to leave early the next day to catch his flight.
For a treat, we went to the Como Park Conservatory and saw all the greenery and pointsettas. It was not only warm but beautiful and a great way to enjoy the festivities of the season.


Sorry we have not kept up on our blog. It seems the time between September and December has just flown by, with work, school, and a little bit of play mixed in, to keep us occupied. Will write again next year 2010, hard to believe. So much will happen this next year, so much to look forward to.

Happy New Year's!

Posted by Anna

Confessions of a brass player

So, you may as well know that since our return to Saint Paul in September I have been playing with the Luther Brass group. We are a small brass ensemble made up of students and other people on campus who play brass instruments. We have two trumpet players, two french horn players, two trombone players and a baritone player for a total of seven players in all. Now, with all of this surrounding support of other players I had been hoping to simply play along in simple obscurity for the most part, but when our tuba player dropped out of the group it became necessary for our other trombone player to bring out his bass trombone to fill out the low brass sound. He prefers playing that instrument anyway, so he is truly enjoying himself. The only problem is that now there is only one instrument in the entire ensemble on the tenor part. Want to know who it is? I'll give you a hint; the full name of the instrument I play is "tenor trombone." So there you go, I am carrying the trombone part all by myself! I suppose one day I should really learn how to play the thing! Actually, it is all coming back to me with the help of the handy chart above.

Seriously, I am having fun and we are playing regularly in chapel and even a little bit outside of chapel. We have played three times in chapel so far this semester, and last Friday we played for the youngsters in the seminary day-care. Today, in honor of Reformation Sunday yesterday, we played Reformation chorales from the roof of Olson Campus Center. You've heard of a Fiddler on the Roof? Well, this was kind of like that except there were seven of us, plus our director, Dr. Paul Westermeyer, and none of us were playing fiddle, so really it was nothing like that. Besides which, our roof is flat and surrounded by brick so that no one ever falls off, and there is even a small eating area for people to enjoy in nice weather. Today was a bit cold for eating outside; with the temperature in the mid-forties while we played. Still, we drew a crowd of onlookers from the walkway below, and we had fun, which is the main idea. Now if only I could remember that F# is in fifth position I'll be fine! See? Seminary isn't all serious theology! Blogged by Don