More on Missions and some other stuff

Well, now the struggle begins. I'm the treasurer for the Cedar Falls Ingathering Site. It's my job to get the figures straight in the spreadsheet we use to record vouchers, as well as to send the information to Des Moines. We have a Bazaar and Quilt Auction where the items are donated by the churches. I have to record on the individual vouchers what each item sold for and then send a copy of the voucher to the church. Not that much work, but tedious and time-consuming. After the spreadsheet is complete, I analyze the data for our local Ingathering Committee and for the state committee as well. But that's the fun part. I love to play with numbers.

I've made a decision on my weight loss. For the last month or so, I haven't even been trying to lose weight. The best I can hope for is to have maintained my weight. I'll weigh myself later and find out what my current weight is. I am going to restart the lifestyle change with small changes now and going more full scale in December. It's kind of a cop-out, but it's the way I have to do it. I'll try to keep you posted on how things go.

Some notes on Missions

Had a great day Saturday. The Laity of the United Methodist Church in Iowa have what we call Ingathering on the 1st Saturday of November. We have five sites in Iowa where we collect money and various types of kits. Some of the kits go to Nigeria as part of Iowa's Iowa-Nigeria partnership. Most of them go to the UMCOR depot in Louisiana, where they are stockpiled for disasters around the world including here in the US. Our site raised $235,000 in cash and kits for Ingathering. The preliminary total for all five sites is $965,892. We filled at least two semi's with kits. When people and churches work together, a lot can be accomplished.

Nice day yesterday

Well, had a pretty good day yesterday. Got a lot accomplished in getting ready for Ingathering. For those of you who don't know what the Ingathering is, it's a missions celebration of the Iowa United Methodist Church. It's a laity driven event, with presentations from various mission fields as well as an opportunity for the individual churches and their members to give to missions. The people give money for various projects and a variety of kits are put together and brought to the Ingathering. There's worship and a quilt and woodcraft auction. Last year the five sites took in almost one million dollars in money and kits. It's this Saturday, November 6th, from 9 to 3. Well worth going to.

Had a good time with the kids I'm helping to learn to read. There was real improvement from the previous time I was there. That is encouraging and keeps me going.

Had a WON (Worship Outreach Nurture) meeting last night. Some things were accomplished but one person is trying to control the who shebang and not letting the committee chairs do their thing. Oh well. I'll do what I can within the limits I'm allowed.

Too bad the Giants won the Series. I was rooting for the Rangers. The Rangers aren't one of my teams, but I had to root for somebody.

Thank God it's election day! I can hardly wait for the commercials to end. We'll go and vote later today.

Either I have a boring life or my memory is going

It's been over a month since I last posted. No excuses, just no posting. This time I intend to post at least once a week, daily if possible.

Election day is Tuesday and I can't wait. I am getting so tired of seeing these political commercials! Lies, more lies and damned lies. There's only one politician running only positive ads and he has my vote. Chuck Grassley has done wonders for Iowa and I want him to continue doing good. And not only for Iowa, but good things for many different people outside of Iowa.

Gardening is done. Our hard freeze is long past. I gave up on the diet a while ago, but will start again on the 1st of November. I have to do this to save my life. Morbidly obese. Sounds horrible, is horrible. I don't know how I'm going to get much exercise in since I can't walk much, but I will do what I can. Sit and Be Fit seems to be the program I will use on PBS.

Bought a scooter carrier for the back of my truck from a couple who could no longer use it. I haven't used it yet, but I hope to soon. I have to buy tie-downs to use with it. They won't be very expensive, it's just a matter of my getting out and getting them.

Still don't have life insurance, but will have Medicare next September if Congress doesn't kill it off. Just have to keep healthy and stay away from sick people. That's kind of hard to do as I volunteer an Poyner Elementary School helping first graders learn to read. Was under the weather last week. Still need a flu shot, but I haven't heard it's available at the VA and it costs $25 or so elsewhere.

It's been a while since I posted. Other things have kept me busy and I just haven't had the interest in posting. I'm trying to post daily now, except possibly weekends.

Yesterday was a frustrating day. The trip I had been planning on for months has to be called off, for a variety of reasons. I was really looking forwards to going to the Manawa Reunion. Next year.

I have a 2nd generation Ipod Shuffle that works great, except that I can't load pod casts on it. I've been fighting with it for quite a while, and have come to the conclusion that I am going to have to get something different. Right now I'm looking at a Sly Electronics SLV614 media player. It has a touch screen, 8 gb memory expandable with a microSD card and works with a variety of formats. It's available on Amazon.com, but the cheapest seller is Buy.com with free shipping. This is definately on my "get list."

I'm getting ready to start a new project. I'm going to be helping first grade students with their reading skills three times a week at Poyner Elementry School. This looks like a challenge, but I need to give back to the community. Since I'm disabled, this looks to be my best bet.

Another week begins.

Not as busy a week as last week. I hope to get more done outside as it's not supposed to rain as much. I went to an auction this weekend and bought a garden cart to attach to my tractor. That will help when I want to carry stuff and pick up trash and sticks before I mow. Of course, I have to find a place for it in the garage! Oh well, I'll do that today.

Had a frustrating week on the diet. No loss, but on the other hand, no gain. I find I'm not recording my calories faithfully, and that is hurting me. If I don't do it when I eat it, I forget and I don't have a good handle on how many calories I have left to eat. I'm doing good on not eating too many snacks, but I need to get a better count of the calories involved.

Midweek update.

Well, it's just past midweek and I think I'm doing OK on calories for this week. I'll weigh in on Sunday and find out for sure. Just have to keep away from that Dairy Queen!

It did rain, some 2.75" in the past 24 hours. I'm looking forwards to getting outside when it dries off and do some work in the yard. I also hope to get some planting done, but it will depend on how soon the ground dries out. Also, I received the Canna's I ordered. Their dwarf ones, so I will be putting them into large pots, but I'm looking forwards to the color they provide.

Tried out my new slow cooker yesterday. It worked like a charm. I used high heat to cook a chuck pot roast with some vegetables. The beef was so tender I could hardly get it out off the pot. The vegetables were canned, but they really added flavor to the beef, and were very tasty. I'll definitely be cooking in this again soon. The recipe was called "Cowboy Beef." I highly recommend it.

Looks like rain today.

Rain coming today. Not that we don't need it, but it puts outdoor things on hold. I have to get a new battery in the tractor, so I can mow. Went and picked one up at Lowe's, saved myself over $10 on the cost of one from the John Deere dealer. I have to admit though, that I'm ready to give up on lawn care. I wouldn't mind moving into a condo and letting someone else deal with the grass. I would miss gardening, but I should be able to do that in containers.

I lost 1.8 lbs last week. That's about what I want to lose, but it would be nice to have a larger loss once in a while. It seems like such a long way to 189 lbs from 371 lbs. I'm getting a better grip on my food choices and quantities. If I could walk, that would help a lot, but that's not possible right now. Maybe when I lose more weight I will be able to walk better. I hope so. I really do not want to go to knee replacement surgery.

That's enough for today. I have to get outside and do that battery change-over and mow if I can. There are other things I can do to, but we'll see what works out.

Been a while again.

I kind of let things slip again. Had several issues come up that kept me distracted from what I really wanted to do. It even affected my weight loss: only .7 lbs this week. At least it was a loss. Going to keep in closer touch with my accountability partner. Hopefully that will help.

Received my pivot rod from the composter company. I haven't had a chance to put it on, but will this week. I was hoping to do some planting, but it looks like it will get pretty cold this week again. On the plus side Green Scene is this weekend. I hope to pick up some perennials for the front of the house. I need the shade type, so it will be interesting to see what they have. I especially want a couple of Bleeding Hearts and maybe some pulmanaria. Of course, this weekend is the one we can take our junk to the city for free, so I hope to get a lot of that gone also.

Banda Compost Tumbler

Well, now that my Banda Compost Tumbler is defunct I'm in a bit of a pickle. I have searched the web for the company that makes it but haven't had any luck finding it. I also contacted a company that sells the current model, but they haven't been helpful so far. I'm thinking I'm going to have to have the parts made locally. That's still cheaper than $279 for a new one. I'll keep you informed as to how I do.

A new day to shop

Had a good day yesterday in some respects. I did work outside, screening my compost. The bad part was that my compost bin is kaput. I'm going to go online and look for parts for it. I don't know how much luck I will have as this unit is very old. I may have to buy parts locally and jury rig the unit.

I was really pooped after doing the compost. I'm out of shape and having to do it while I was seated was a chore. It goes much faster when I can stand and use the big screen. Nevertheless, it worked.

Did OK on my food yesterday. Went over by a little on calories, but I will correct that today. Looking forwards to getting groceries today and doing a couple of errands. It won't take long and will be a break from being at home.

Another new day.

Well, I'm starting another new day. It's kind a like "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." but it's of shorter duration. I have to plan for tomorrow, but I plan to concentrate (worry) about today only. I had a decent day with food yesterday. Didn't get outside much as my wife had an appointment we had to go to but I plan to get out today. I did do some strategic decluttering: getting access to a closet. Tossed a bunch of stuff and set up other stuff to be moved to the basement.

Boiled some bratwurst yesterday! Froze most of them and kept one back for supper. Sure tasted good grilled in my George Foreman Grill. That thing is so handy.

Back to checking out things on the internet and decluttering. This afternoon: outside.

A mishmash

Been a few days since I posted, but a number of things have kept me busy this last week. One thing is the fact I have to accept being retired. I'd still like to find a job, but with my disability, it can be hard.

I'm currently working on losing more weight. Last week I lost 6.9 lbs. That's pretty good for me. I usually only lose a pound or two a week. I'm better able to focus on the types of food I need to eat in addition to quantities. I rewarded myself by ordering a small slow cooker. A lot of the recipes I have are for small cookers. I have a large one now and will use that to make big batches to freeze. Even the small one will enable me to save some healthy food for a later time. I ordered the Cuisinart PSC-350 3-1/2-Quart Programmable Slow Cooker. It isn't really programmable as the only thing it will do is change from low to warm after a preset time. It has a lot of good reviews though and I hope to use it a lot.

I've done some more cleaning up the clutter in the house, removing some things and making bigger paths. I can't look at the whole house, I just have to focus or a small area at a time. This afternoon I hope to spend some time outside in the yard and maybe do some clutter removal and organizing in the garage. I hope to have it cleaned out enough by fall that I can get my truck in it! I hate scraping the windows in the winter.

It's been an interesting few days. I checked out a temp job, but it wasn't something I could do. I'm hoping to get some more outside work done today. I've got a lot of weed pulling to do and some planting. I'm back on track on my weight. I'll be losing this week.

Incommunicado

Well, after 3 days of not being on line (problems with my network setup) I am back on line. It's truly amazing how much email you can accumulate in 3 days. I'm glad it was over a weekend or there would be more. I have "cured" my problems by moving my cable modem and wireless router upstairs so I can reset them more easily than before. Stairs are a killer for me.

Hopefully this will be a good week. I have had some expenditures I wasn't expecting and a "job interview" today. I'm working through an AARP program towards getting re-employed. We'll see how it goes. It will be temp work at best.

Well, it's been a long time since I started this blog, and I haven't been posting to in. In fact, I forgot I had it. It's been a tough year with not having a job and living on unemployment, but God has provided all my needs throughout this time.

I now move into a new phase in my life as I have been declared officially disabled by the SSA. I'll be changing what I'll be doing now. No more job hunting, finally free to pursue some of my passions. It's scary, but I have great hope for the future. I'll declutter the house, garden some, maybe even start writing, something I've wanted to do for a long time.

I promise to post more often.