Category Archives: Books

Don’t let the title fool you, much of my recent activity has been quite benign, you know taxes and all that, but there have been a few highlights worth sharing.  As previously noted, The Wife and I have been quite busy.  At this point I believe this observation bears some explanation.

We have been organizing many changes within my home church and in coming weeks we will have the opportunity to see many of these to fruition.  Amplify, a new contemporary worship service will be commencing at Seneca Castle United Methodist Church Sunday evenings beginning April 17.  This service represents a culmination of a lot of hard work and preparation from many individuals.  The research, prayer, and study that has led us to this point has fostered a closer sense of community and renewed momentum for change within the church…and the new service hasn’t even started yet.

There have been other smaller projects that have developed in tandem with the creation of the new service.  I am designing and building my first website.  A lengthy process involved learning HTML and relevant software.  My first creation is the Seneca Castle UMC homepage which I created using basic HTML code.  The next will surly utilize some development software for assistance.

In addition to virtual construction, I am also facilitating some rather intensive renovation projects within the sanctuary that will expand the flexibility of our existing chancel and increase the usable space at the front of the sanctuary.

Outside of church I have been stretched my techie muscles by reformatting one and a half computers.  (The half is where the stretching comes in, the laptop is 8 years old with a monitor that doesn’t work, I don’t have the original OS CD or administrative rights.)  I have moved on to a new book, by recommendation from Bryan, my local financial expert: Financial Peace: Restoring Financial Hope to you and your family by Dave Ramsey.  But don’t worry, our financial straits are not as fraught with disaster as the title of the book would make it seem.  The lack of hope alludes to the authors past, Ramsey was a successful real estate investor, lost everything, and climbed back out to lecture, teach, and write about financial success, the book is his story.  I’ll let you know what I think when I get through it.

I also managed to reinstall Half-Life 2 on a freshly reformatted computer, through much grief and stress thanks largely to the inadequacies of the Steam gaming platform.  The Half-Life saga is one of my guilty pleasures I choose to indulge in occasionally.  I love the story and enjoy exploring the universe created around a dynamic cast of characters.  Every few years I load up the past games and play through the whole series just for the experience.

I suppose the most unusual project I have tackles lately resulted directly from a walk in the woods with my father.  Each spring I wander through the woods that borders Flint Creek behind my house and dig through the debris that was washed ashore by the swell of the water as the earth thaws out.  Usually we find a host of old bottles, usually some plastic lawn furniture or kid’s toys or sleds or snow shovels left to close to the water’s edge.  This year we found all of that, and a beaver.

In one especially large log jam that has been accumulating for many years at a sharp bend in the river we found the carcass of a large beaver pinned between two logs.  We do not know how it died or ended up in the pile of logs, but it was a rather noteworthy discovery as no beavers had been in evidence in the area around my home my entire childhood.  I grabbed a few photos and we returned to the house.  A few days later though, and after some pointed research, I decided it was just too good a find to let the waterlogged carcass rot to nothing out there.  Part of it may have been scientific inquiry, part of it may have been morbid curiosity, or all of it might have just been my constant desire to begin new projects, but I got it in my head that I was going to attempt to preserve the skeleton of that beaver.

This process certainly deserves a dedicated posting as the endeavor should last through the summer, but the abridged version goes like this:  I went back and broke the animal free, put it in an old metal water tub, covered it with sheet metal, hung it by its legs, removed the hide and internal organs, replaced it in the tub.  Currently, the beavers is waiting for a more through cleaning and for the temperature to increase and the discovery of dermestid beetles to clean the flesh from the bones.

At least if I put it in a separate posting it will allow readers the option of skipping the photographs if they prefer.