Labels, and the impossible writing that accompanies them!

     As I was making changes to the blog this evening, I happened to notice that there are 41 links listed, each of them occurring only once. That is about to change. What follows is the Freestyle writing including 19 of the links that I have previously listed. I'll try to get the other 22 into the next post.


     When Yakob was a little boy, he wanted to be in the Union Air Force. He wanted to fly airplanes and visit far-off places like California. The intervening years had instead immersed him in a world of automated phone calls and book reviews, baby news, frustration and e-mail. Too much of which was currently occupying his phone. He couldn't even load his Bible software without it crashing. 
     "What ever happened," he wondered, "to the good old days when family sent actual letters, and actual comic books like Boy Wonder sat on actual bookcases?" Instead, as a e-news blogger trying to make a living in the brutally competitive news media, Yakob experienced daily frustration as his technology became ever more rapidly obsolete. 
    Yakob's thoughts continued as he hurried across the street, dodging around one of the many barricades erected recently. "Beards were only for old men, gaming had gone from on-line to live. Christians were a persecuted people, and few of his readers could separate fantasy from fiction. God's word was often considered a relic from 3000 years ago."
     Even the food had gone down hill. "When I was young," he remembered, "and Mama went on her diet, she never ate this poorly." Neither had he, not till the war. It was the war that changed it all. The war . . .

Works in Progress

     One of the many things I started while I was on my nice extended vacation was a set of matched bookshelves. Real bookshelves, made out of real wood, not the prefab kind that the movers keep destroying every PCS. The first one is about half done now. The second one is still in the pre-assembly stage, which means I have cut all the pieces out, but have lots of work to do yet.
     As I have journeyed on this little adventure, I have already learned a couple things that apply not only to bookshelves, but to life. Here they are:

1) Measure once twice, cut once! If you don't want a lot of scrap wood in your life (or your garage), you are going to make sure you properly assess before committing. This is something I have said I've learned before, but it is one of those lessons that just keeps getting reinforced.

2) Plan how long you think it will take, then double or triple it. This is good advice for woodworking projects, parenting, trying new restaurants, golfing, and on and on. The applications are endless.

3) Somedays you will not actually make any visible progress. As disappointing as this is, you must persevere or you will end up with: a garage in which you can no longer park your vehicle, hundreds of dollars worth of wasted material, a disappointed spouse/parent/child/co-worker, and less willingness to take the risk and try something new down the road. YOU CAN DO IT!

4) IT WILL NOT BE PERFECT! No matter how hard you try, no matter how precise you think you are being, wood and metal will not join together in perfect harmony. But Life isn't perfect either. Prepare, do your best, but be prepared to have to make some patches or spot repairs, or even invent a brace to try and bring it back into square.

    Does anyone else have life lessons to share? Feel free to comment and we can all benefit!