Bwa Ha Ha

Today is an important day in my life.  It is the first day that one of my children has to go to work in the morning, but I don’t.

 My daughter was not amused when I told her this.  Especially when I gloated about it.

Work Permits

If you are a teenager, getting a job in Pennsylvania is harder than running hurdles.  My daughter just went through this experience.  To get an entry-level job in a large well-known national company, she had to do the following:

1.  Fill out an application, and get the job offer.  (Really easy.)  Be told she was hired as soon as she got the work permit.

2.  Try to reach the school district (they are not the easiest folks to reach in the summer) to get the work permit form.

3.  Get the doctor to sign for the required physical exam.  My daughter had to have a physical exam for school sports (once for fall and once for spring), for the driver’s license, and now for a work permit.  Luckily the previous physical for her driver’s license was adequate for the work permit too.  It is an appalling waste of resources to require multiple physical examinations of perfectly healthy teenagers. 

4.  Take the form back to the employer, to have them fill out the description of the position and hours worked.

5.  Take the form back to the school district.  (And why are school districts put in charge of issuing work permits anyhow?  Should they really care about a job that will last for the summer?)  Find out that the school district gave my daughter the wrong form the first time.

Why I Hate U-Haul

The one year anniversary of my move is coming up, so it is time to share this.

If you Google “Why I hate U-Haul”, you will get over 180,000 hits.  (Warning; most of them are told with a lot of profanity.)  My story is one of the tamer ones.

Early in June of 2006, we knew we would be making a local move, so I called U-Haul to reserve a truck.  I would have preferred to rent from someone else, because 0f a previous bad experience with U-Haul, but a truck of the right size was not available locally.  Anyhow, my reservation was confirmed and I thought we were all ready to pick the truck up on a Saturday morning. 

The day before the move, U-Haul called and told me that I could pick up the truck on Saturday afternoon.  They also acted as if they had never told us before that the truck was available on Saturday morning.  After some fruitless arguing, I told them we didn’t need their truck, in fact I think I told them where they could park their truck, and I asked all of my volunteer helpers to bring their pickup trucks, SUVs, minivans, etc.  My stepdad brought his trailer as well, so we did the move without a van.  It was rather like the Dunkirk evacuation, but our movers were a highly talented bunch, including a doctor, several engineers, other highly-skilled people, and a redneck with a trailer.  We were done by lunch time.

My previous U-haul experience, from 10 years before, was a bit more colorful.  We rented a truck, got it back to my house, and then it wouldn’t start.  We discovered that the fuse box was badly jury-rigged, and the ignition would only work if you reached into the fuse box and held it just right.  I called them and told them to come fix the problem.  They sent me another truck late that night, and I signed for it in the dark without making a full inspection of it.

A few weeks after the move (a local move of about 3 miles), they sent me a bill, claiming that I had done $1200 of damage to the truck.  Since I had seven people who saw every move I made with the truck, and knew that I had not wrecked it, I told them that most likley the truck was a worn out piece of junk when I got it, and I would not pay the bill.  I never heard from them again.  They may have tried to damage my credit rating, but since I wasn’t planning to borrow any money in the near future, that didn’t hurt me. 

Road Rage

Today as I was turning left from 12th Street onto Liberty St., a guy in a really fast car was coming toward me at what must have been 60 mph (in a 35 zone).  He made what should have been a routine left turn a bit scary, so I honked at him.

Then he turned right to follow me.  He skidded, and almost had an accident with the cars on Liberty St., and then he started catching up with me.  I was starting to worry that he was tailing me (after watching an old Rockford Files episode last night, the imagination works in that direction).  So I signalled to turn right onto a side street.  He signalled to turn right also.  Then I decided I would rather be on Liberty Street than a side street if he started acting stupid, so I turned my signal off.  So did he.  I rarely wish I had my cell phone with me, but if I had it, I would have called 911 about then.

In the rear view mirror I noticed that he looked rather like Mr. T gone bad, and he looked like he was worried that someone was following him.  At a stop sign I locked my doors.  I continued on Liberty Street, and so did he.  Finally I scooted up Brown Avenue without signalling, and he continued up Liberty Street.

Rear Window

If you are looking for a good old movie to rent, try “Rear Window.”  It is directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and has James Stewart and Grace Kelly in it.  I watched it with everyone in the family 12 and over on Friday night.  A plot summary is here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047396/

This really kept us on the edge of our seats, but there was a lot of humor mixed in with the suspense.

Moonshine Shuffle 5K

On Saturday, I ran with my 3 oldest kids (Anna, Josh, and Maria) in the Moonshine Shuffle 5K, held at St. Francis Xavier Church in McKean, PA.  Results are posted here:

 http://www.erie-runnersclub.org/moonshine/results_2007.php

Anna as usual whipped us all, at 22:01.  She was the second place woman in the race.  I managed a 25:43, which was 3rd in my age group, but more importantly, I beat Josh by 9 seconds.  (Usually he is faster.)  It was a good time for me.  Apparently bicycling to work helped my running a lot.  I thought I won by more, because I didn’t hear his huge feet behind me!  Maria ran a 28:09, which was good for her first race ever.

1994 Plymouth Voyager, RIP

It was said about John Wesley’s followers that they not only lived well, but they also died well.  My 1994 Plymouth Voyager has certainly died well.

 I always prefer that my cars give me a very clear signal that I should not spend more money to repair them.  This car did that admirably.  First, there was the oil leaking and burning, at the rate of about 1 quart per 500 miles.  Then, there was the high pitched noise that started at about 15 mph, and got really ugly at higher speeds.  I was told that it was a wheel bearing, and if I didn’t give it attention, the wheel could come right off.  There was also the funny noise, at about 25 mph, when the car shifted into a higher gear.  It is a repetitive tapping sound, rather like the metallic equivalent of a cat coughing up a hairball.  The transmission guy said that it could be a pin that tends to come loose in older transmissions, and that if not fixed, it could wear a hole through the case of the transmission, leaving a lot of red transmission fluid and a lot of parts on the road.  He also couldn’t give me a maximum cost to fix it.  This condition has caused me to drive the car very gently, and only when I would not have to go over 35 mph.   Finally, there was the lovely sounds of the engine, sounding like it had maybe it wasn’t running on all cylinders.  The engine makes its own tapping sound at all speeds too, and this noise became more ominous.   What made this intolerable was that the car stereo system didn’t work well enough to drown out all fo these noises.

 The car also had the courtesy to be stay on its last legs (figuratively speaking) until I could replace it, rather than failing catastrophically on the road somewhere.  

It’s threatening rumblings even encouraged me to take up the habit of biking to work.  Now my legs are tough, I’ve lost 5 pounds, and my wife tells me I’m a hunk.  I even beat my son in a 5K race.

 One day this week, my car will go to our local technical high school, where it will be used to teach students how to fix cars.  It sure has a lot to teach.

Thinking about the Age of the Earth

I thought this was a very good way of thinking about the age of the earth, when confronted with the claims that the earth appears to be much older than the Genesis account allows:

“To use a fairly realistic analogy, suppose you had two cars, both with odometers removed, both with titles tucked in the glove compartment. One is in cherry condition, all the working parts clean, all routine parts replaced on schedule, all the larger parts replaced at the first notice of wear.

The other is rusty, worn, rattles, smokes, you name it.

It turns out on inspection of the titles that the first car is 20 years old, but was owned by a motorhead who idolized it. The second car is a 10 year old utility truck from up north that spent every winter sitting in unshoveled drifts and was owned by a slob who drove it lots of miles distances but didn’t bother with any maintenance at all.

Who you gonna believe — your eyes or the title? Are you gonna argue with the guy showing you the title? Are you going to accuse someone of deception or find the whole thing incredible? If the young earth reading of Genesis is correct, we have the title to the earth in front of us. There is no “problem” posed by the fact that the title indicates something different than normal inspection would if we didn’t have access to the title. But we do.”

Acts 27 – Paul as the Better Jonah

As a ruling elder in a Presbyterian Church (Faith Reformed Church in Erie, PA), I get to preach a sermon about once a year.  Today was my lucky day, so I preached on Acts 27.  This was my third sermon ever, which is something of a milestone.  Now my complete sermons will no longer fit on two sides of a cassette tape. 🙂

In this passage, Paul is travelling by sea from Judea toward Rome.  There is a great storm, and the ship is wrecked, but Paul and everyone aboard are saved.  (If you don’t know the rest of the story, go read it.)  As I was preparing this, I noticed how much of a contrast there was between the faithful Paul and the unfaithful Jonah.  To mention just a few contrasts:

 1) Jonah chooses to go on the ship, but is fleeing God.  Paul is put on the ship as a prisoner, but is obeying God.

2)  Jonah is a useless passenger. He sleeps on the ship, when everyone else is calling on their gods for help.  he doesn’t do anything until he is prodded.  Paul helps the crew, and is praying for the ship.

3)  God endangers the ship because of Jonah.  God saves everyone on the ship for Paul’s sake.

@#%$ Sunshine!!!

The opening of this blog has been delayed by at least two weeks due to having too much @#$% sunshine.  Do you know how hard it is to sit in your family room, in the basement, and start a blog when there is not a @#$%^$& cloud in the sky?  Just when you start to dig into the details of making the blog work, some kid (there are 5 around here, so one is likely to pop in at any time) steps in:

“Dad, will you take me for a bike ride?”  What am I supposed to say?  “No, kid.  Go eat some junk food and watch TV.” 

 Well, today I got the blog started.  I would have preferred to do it on a rainy day, but I had to settle for “partly cloudy.”  As for the kids, I made them play in the pool.