“In this corner, at one year of age, hailing from Palm Coast, ladies and gentlemen put your hand together for Win-stonnnnn!”
“And in the other corner, a three-year old veteran from Ormond Beach, let’s hear it for Bro-deeee!”
Last year, my in-laws brought their West Highland White Terrier, Brodie, to our house to meet our Westie, Winston. The tale of the tape: they were pretty much the same size. We figured they would love each other. Brodie had played with plenty of other Westies at daycare. Winston believed every one, man or beast, was his best friend. We knew they would chase each other around and wear each other out and everyone would be happy.
That’s not exactly how the encounter went. Winston was on his home court and still very much a puppy. Brodie was having a “Who’s the annoying kid?” kind of day. They snarled and snapped and yapped and didn’t get along at all. We didn’t expect that. “Alright, break it up!”
Then the old man wandered out. Samson, the thirteen-year old shepherd-lab-whatever brown dog came out to see what all the commotion was. He wasn’t really interested in either of the other dogs, but the little guys settled down immediately. Samson commanded respect and was an instant calming presence in the pack of dogs in our backyard. This was his house, and both of the terriers knew it.
We don’t have Samson anymore, and Winston has grown up (a little). When he and Brodie had a rematch a month ago, they got along better. They ran around some, but decided they liked each other better from a distance. I’ll bet they do even better the next time they get together.
When I was a pastor, I noticed that people tended to behave a little better when I was around. Not always good, but better. They would clean up their language and keep the funny but questionable jokes to themselves. Many times I really wasn’t interested in other people’s squabbles, but I’m glad I could get people to calm down a little.
I learned how to use my generator. I purchased this generator after three hurricanes came close but didn’t directly affect our home in 2004. Through all that we really didn’t lose power for more than a day. My across-the-street-neighbor was going somewhere to buy a generator and asked me if I wanted him to get one for me. I said, “Sure!” and got a 5000 watt Coleman Powermate. For the next thirteen years, it sat in my garage. I never started it up. Never even put gas or oil in it. Since the day I took it out of the box, we never lost power. Even last fall during Hurricane Matthew, we were without power for less than a day. But we learned from that experience that a generator might be good to have. So this time around, I learned how to use it.I put oil in, gassed it up, tested it, and got some decent extension cords. After the rain stopped and the winds died down we were without power for five days, and ran it continually for the refrigerator, lights and fan. Worked like a charm. I learned that I could get about three hours of run time for each gallon of gas.
Waite for it... 