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No longer on the river and, again, an empty nester. Back to living on Fleming Island and making some more friends!

Saturday, August 28, 2010

The age of electronics


The score is 10-6, Tampa, and the Jaguars just kicked the ball away to end the first half of the game. There was already one lightning delay and just as Scobee kicked the field goal, it lightninged again. Last week was an extended rain delay, but thus far tonight, no rain. Earlier this evening, I thought I would go right to bed because of a beastly crying head-ache, but I had taken an Advil-look-alike while still at church and had a pina colada picked up at the cabana when I came home from the funeral. Danny was fixin' to close up shop as only four people were there, and no one having dinner. He had another tooth ache, his second tooth situation this summer. Always on a weekend, don't I know that feeling!!! I offered him my penicillin but he had some at home and his dad has pain medication but I hope that holds him until Monday. Evidently he's seen a dentist already and he cannot find anyone to extract the offending tooth. The dentists want to save the teeth, of course, but he cannot afford to save it and cannot afford to loose it, not even 21 years old yet! Poor guy!
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Since none of my buds were out there, and I was not feeling too hot myself, I took my drink upstairs to watch the Jaguar game. Once situated here and 'calmed down', my head settled down too. I am sure it was from the crying at the funeral for Mary this late afternoon, where I did well most of the time. The "....and he shall wipe every tear from your eyes...." always gets me, and add to that the closing hymn of "In Christ Alone", and I was wiped out. As we ate our funeral luncheon, or dinner, in this case, the ladies were talking about how much that hymn has packed into it, in a nutshell, as it were, like John 3:16 is for the Gospel. When we sang, I did great through the first three stanzas, and then Pastor had us stand for the 4th one, and I struggled valiantly. ".....no fear in death..." It's true, there is no fear in death, because of what Jesus did for us!
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Another hymn sung was "Amazing Grace", which I sang for the third time this week, and the second time today. Toward the end of the Restoring Honor event, a whole team of bagpipers and drummers, associated with a fire department, played "Amazing Grace" as those gathered sang, and I sang from home. The first part of the day was spent watching the event on Facebook which streamed it live, plus watching it on C-SPAN while instant messaging with Linda who was on a speaker phone call with her sister, and I was being text-messaged by Justin. Whew! All the electronics were smokin'!!! Justin did not send many messages during the actual event but did beforehand and afterward. I kept him posted though on the number of Facebook users on-line watching the event, which was up to nearly 130,000 people at one time. He estimated that there was about 400,000 people there but I guess we will not know for sure until Monday. The area where Justin was standing, along the reflecting pond, forward from the Lincoln Memorial, holds 200,000. That area was full plus an additional lot off to the side which holds another 200,000 people. The 'news' people are reporting "10s of thousands" which is extremely modest because the other numbers are the ones provided by the Park Service, who do this all the time. No politics today, only honoring the troops, and earning over $5 million for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation---whoo hoo! http://www.specialops.org/
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After the main portion of the program was over, three different musical groups performed as the attendees were departing, or stayed around to listen. Facebook showed folks lining up to sign the ginormous American flag that had been carried by a mess of people so I asked Justin if they were signing the flag. He sent a message back saying they were heading to the museum instead. A bit later I got a single word text message from Justin which said, "Butter". That's all. Immediately I wrote back, "Say 'Hi' to Julia", because I knew he was at the Smithsonian standing at Julia Child's kitchen. He and I just loved that movie, I saw it with him at the theater where he kept giving me the elbow when something reminded him of me! A minute later came this picture mail from his phone to mine, which I then forwarded to my e-mail, and then saved to my computer. I love electronics, Advil, and pina coladas!

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