After Labor Day

The Labor Day holiday is over and now it’s time to get back in harness – sort of.

I’m in the home stretch formatting the Glog manuscript while waiting for Donald and his friend to finish the book cover design.

Since I’m that close to finishing Glog (which I think is the best thing I’ve ever written), today I began gathering materials for a small Christmas book. I’m inclined to call it Gravedigger’s Christmas after the first true story in the collection… or I may go with A Warning About Illicit Kissing On Christmas Eve, another true incident.

I’d planned to work on manuscripts all day but life intervened.

I went to breakfast with my friend Wes. Of course we talked about Katrina’s aftermath, which led us to the fall of man and the character of God. Wes told me about Tillman’s (I forgot what its called) view of the purpose of life. In case you haven’t guessed, Wes is a theologian and actually a member of a national association of smart guys who think and talk about theology (I forget what the organization is called too, but is sounds important).

Me, I don’t think about God much except to say “Thank You” once in a while.

Ginny had an eye exam so she took the afternoon off work. Afterwards we went to Wal-Mart to buy a digital camera but came away having only bought bird seed.

The camera counter lady knew less about cameras than we do, so we decided to pass on buying one…. Good thing too. Because this evening Donald called saying he’d give us his “old” camera because its been upgraded since he bought it as state of the art six months ago and he wants an excuse to buy himself an even better one.

Ginny and I had asked all our kids to neither call nor come by over the Labor Day weekend because we wanted to be alone to restore our own souls. So we’ve been on the phone all day catching up on their activities and plans:

Donald and his friend baby-sat three boys Saturday for some friends to give the parents some respite care. Sounds like they had a blast.

Jennifer and Pat called saying they finally sold their house and have signed a contract on a new one. That’s a relief. For a while there I thought the two of them and their five dogs would end up living out of a grocery cart beneath an overpass.

The latest on Eve is that she was featured in a newspaper article last week. I’m proud she’s doing so well. She also attended a friend’s wedding over the weekend.

Neither, Fred, John or Patricia have been heard from this month; I assume that’s good news.

This afternoon Ginny & I shopped for groceries to stock up for Tropical Storm Ophelia which is projected to strike Jacksonville dead on. With all the tv coverage of Katrina, we thought about our own hurricane preparations and both of us remembered a cartoon popular back during the Cold War of the Kennedy/Eisenhower era when everyone expected atomic war any day.

The scene is a store selling home Fall Out Shelters.

A portly middle-aged couple stand bewildered on the showroom floor amid displays of various types of shelters.

A swarthy salesman supplies the caption saying:

“Well, Folks, just how big of a bomb do you want to survive”?