Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Apparently I'm a lazy bugger...

As I haven't posted anything in over two weeks, not since church camp. I guess life gets in the way of leisure, sometimes, eh?

So anyway, there are a couple of blogs I sort of half-assed follow, both written by lady cyclists of my acquaintance. Lynne I can sometimes keep up with, if the hill isn't too steep. Cecil can pretty much blow my doors off any time she feels like it. Both of them posted links in their blogs to a bicycling blog called Bike Lemming, and a post about what we as cyclists need to do to improve our image. The writer makes some excellent points. Here's the link: Bike Lemming

So what have I done lately? Let me see. Oh yeah, I spent a whole bunch of bucks and time on rebuilding a sprayer that goes on the back of our tractor, so I can commit serious herbicide around the ranch. After a number of fits and starts, it's up and running, and the weeds are dying in droves...

I've taken up what is euphemistically called "DE (for double edge) wet shaving". I've been shaving with a Gillette Mach 3 cartridge razor for quite a while, ever since I decided that I was tired of the Norelco electric I bought "for convenience" pulling the hairs out of my tender little face instead of cutting them. I recently needed to buy some more shaving cream, and ran across an inexpensive "bowl, brush and soap" set at Wally World, so I started shaving with actual shaving soap and a brush, still using the Mach 3. Then I made the "mistake" of asking about shaving soaps, since I couldn't find any locally, on one of the cowboy websites I hang out on. I now have two double edge Gillette razors, both considerably older than I am, and a third headed my way. On top of that, my Dad said he has one I can have...

I've discovered that lathering my face with a brush, and shaving with a seriously dangerous instrument, is kind of my "me time" in the morning. I've got a blade sampler pack that I'm working through, testing to see what brand of blade I want to use for the long term, and I'm getting some of the best shaves I've ever had, although some of the blades I have are seriously not going to ever grace my medicine cabinet again in my lifetime. I shave every day anyway, and instead of hating shaving, I've grown to enjoy it. But a buddy of mine at work and I have been having some slightly weird conversations since I started doing this a few weeks ago...

I've even made my own brush! I bought what is called a "knot", made out of badger hair, and drilled a piece of deer horn out for the handle and epoxied the knot into it. Really, really luxurious brush, and I've got a grand total of somewhere in the vicinity of maybe, at the outside, $22.50 invested in a brush that would have cost me at the absolute least $50 to buy, if I could find one to buy anywhere. So now I've decided I need to build something smaller to use as a travel brush...

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Church camp weekend...

Apparently, the March winds were running a little late, because instead of bringing April showers, we got May rain storms. At this juncture, rain storms are good, because we need something to make the grass grow so we can turn the cows out to eat it. Yesterday and today, we've had some good, warm soaking rains...

Friday and Saturday I went to a men's retreat at Camp Elkanah, sponsored by Calvary Baptist Church in Baker. Great camp! This is my second year going there, and this year was even better than last year. Camp Elkanah has cabins made of retreaded railroad cars, so we get to sleep indoors, and there's a big dining hall. The food was great again this year. Chapel is in a log building...

This year's music was performed by a local gospel quartet that calls themselves "Fisherman's Praise", and those guys can really sing. The wife of one of the tenors plays keyboard and she has written some of the songs that they do. She can sing very well herself, too...

The speaker was a guy named Luke Hendrix, who is a pastor, and fellow bicyclist, from Portland. He's a very engaging speaker, and talked a lot about our identity as Christians, and how the devil does his best to make us believe that our concept of ourselves has nothing to do with God. Au contraire! If we are to be the people that God wants us to be, we have to turn to God, and let Him be the guiding light in our lives! It's only through Him that we can truly weather the storms that life sends our way!

After Chapel on Saturday, I got to talking to a guy named Kurt, who lives in Pendleton. During the course of our conversation, I discovered that I'm not the lone ranger when it comes to my walk with God. Apparently other people stumble and fumble their way along, the same as me. Sometimes it's hard to believe that anybody else can feel the way you do. We both felt that Luke's words regarding our identity with God hit very close to home. I feel like I came away from the camp with a whole new outlook on life...

Luke said it sort of like this: "God will always love you; it's up to you to make sure that you are someone that God will like..."