Things Rattling Around

Every once in a great while I need a post where I just do a brain dump of everything I'm thinking about or have thought about in the last while. This is one of those random thought posts. Bear with me.

• Is there possibly any better smell in the Fall season than burning leaves? I think not. The smell instantly takes me places. Today, for some reason, the smell took me back to a fall day when me and three high school friends took a couple of canoes and paddled down a portion of the St. Croix river. On that day, I smelled burning leaves, much like today and perhaps because it was us "kids" doing an adult thing, it stuck in my memory. Pair it with a familiar smell and, well, there I was doing my best time jump back 35 years or so.

• I got a new phone today. The whole experience is certainly a peephole into Hell, if not a full-fledged trip there. The process, terms and paperwork are nothing short of exhausting. Because everything's on a "payment plan" it's not too unlike buying a car. (Of course they didn't want my working trade-in.) After all was said and done, I told my wife that while I know there are people out there who "love their phones," I am not one of those people. I like my phone, but it's a phone. It's a tool, and unfortunately a tool we can barely do without anymore. Has my phone saved me a few times? Yes. Is it convenient? Yes. Is it ungodly expensive to have one? Also yes. Do I love what it brings me? No. I have it, because I need it. Like my friend John says about his boat, "It's a boat, not a baby." Well put. Don't love it. Love my wife. Love my kids. Like my phone.

• I recently had another nonfiction story accepted by Sundown Press. It's for their Christmas
  
  anthology titled, Memories from Maple Street, USA: The Best Christmas Ever. I am very excited about this book because I love the idea of a collection of peoples' stories about Christmas. The one I wrote outlines a Christmas in 1983 and it is one of my favorite stories of late. Very happy with the way it came out. 

• I saw where Flip Saunders, ex coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, died today at 60 years of age. I was floored as I usually am when a celebrity dies. Sixty isn't what it used to be and it just seems way too young to die. It was cancer (of course) so there's another reason to hate cancer. 

• I bought a MyCloud backup drive on Woot the other day. It allows the whole family to share pictures, folders and documents. It also allows us to backup our computers easily. It's one of those geeky things that means something to me, but probably nothing to anyone else. Sorry for bringing it up. (And, for the record I like it, but I don't love it.)
• I have really come to enjoy the families that make up our Collective MKE church. It is a small group of families, but we come together weekly, and sometimes twice weekly, to share in each others' lives, pray for one another and laugh together. As I once said, church used to be about a building to me - a building with a weekly obligation - now it's different, and I feel like part of something bigger.

• The Packers are 6-0 and with a bye week, not much going on. I haven't watched as much of them as I would like, mostly because of other things going on, or just really nice weather. I'm one of those guys who has a hard time sitting inside when it's really nice out. Especially knowing that in a month or two, the bottom's going to fall out on the weather. 

• This has been such a spectacular fall weather wise, that I hate to see it end. I have come to dread winter and wish we could have a couple more months of temps in the 50's and 60's. Next weekend when they change the clocks the darkness will hit me squarely in the face. Bring on the vitamin D.

That's it. That is the noise in my head lately. Sorry, now you can hear it too.

Blogging off...