A Thanksgiving Story

Last night, as I exited the restaurant where I had gone to pick up some takeout food for my wife and me, a man walked around my car from the parking lot, his eyes lowered, a grocery bag of clothing in one hand. "I've been homeless for a couple of days," he said. "Could you help me out with a hot meal?"
He looked up briefly as he asked, and there was something in those eyes that spoke of real need. "I sure could," I said. I dug in my wallet, the same wallet that moments before I had rummaged through without a thought to pay for the night's dinner for Ann and me. I handed him two fives. "That ought to do it," I said.
He thanked me quickly and darted off. I watched him, wondering where he was headed. My normal thought process when someone asks for money or stands on the corner with a sign is to not give because I don't want to be feeding a drug habit or helping an alcoholic get more booze. Part of me was worried that I had just done that with this guy.
Instead, I watched as he made is way across six lanes of traffic in a beeline for KFC. I knew then that I had truly helped someone who actually needed it, my hand began to move around my body to pat myself on the back.

And then one of the wolves in me began to whimper. This man needed more than food. Where was he going to go? How was he going to stay warm that night when the temperature got down in the 20s? I thought about going over there and giving him my coat, but I didn't do it. I thought about maybe offering him a ride to the homeless shelter, but I didn't do that either. Needing to make it home to relieve my wife who had had a tough day, burning a couple of pies and such, I did nothing else
Later last night, the wolf within began to howl.

Forty minutes of pain

My newest workout at the gym is what I call "Forty minutes of pain". It's really refreshing. What that involves is forty minutes on the stair climber. I have recently bumped this up to forty. It used to be thirty-eight, and I will still do shorter time periods when I don't feel up to the forty, or when my time doesn't allow me to complete forty minutes. But today, I did the forty and it was forty minutes of pain. I began the routine doing 71 steps per minute, then increased by 1 step every four minutes, until I got to 28 minutes, after which I increased by one step every three minutes. My goal was to burn off 700 calories. I didn't quite make the 700 by the end of the forty minutes, but after about 44 minutes (the last four part of the cool down) the calorie counter registered 700 calories burned. I also burned a few after the stairclimbers as I did my abdominal workout today. Here are the vital statistics:

Minutes: a little over 44
Floors: 191 (at about 17 steps per floor)
Steps: 3247
Calories burned: 700 (maybe 75 more doing the ab workout)

There's one more statistic that's worth noting:

Pieces of pie burned off: two

So there you have it, I have burned off several pieces of pie since Thanksgiving, but still haven't burned off all of the pie and other things I've eaten. Thus go the holidays. I also have a much harder time making it to the gym to do said workout from about mid-November through the end of the year, simply because my job as a mailman gets pretty crazy during that time period.

The bottom line is that forty minutes of pain is worth it to me so that I can do the things I love, which includes eating.

Ushering in the Christmas season: My light hanging debacle

I got my Christmas lights put up on Thanksgiving morning. Actually, I had been invited to a Turkey Bowl football game, and had briefly considered running a 5k that morning. As it turned out, it was very cold, and for both playing football and running, a little colder than I would like. As for the football game, I wishfully considered it and then decided that it was a great opportunity for injury to occur--injury that would seriously hamper my ability to bring in income at my highest opportunity for overtime.
So, in order to reduce the risk of getting injured, I opted for putting up Christmas lights. I used to watch Bishop Stevenson (not really a bishop, but that's another long story) out there in the frigid air in his insulated coveralls putting up lights. He did it at night too, probably so he could see how they looked as he got them connected. Anyway that job looked very cold in the dark. I was doing it in the light.
And it was still very cold. I came in several times to get warm. Of course, it would've been a bit warmer if I'd had gloves on. As I began putting them up, I realized that for another year, I had forgotten to buy some new clips to attach to the rain gutter or shingles and I was going to be stuck with using the metal screwed in hooks that previous owners of the house had used. It was either that or wait until the next day off to get them up, and since it takes me a while to motivate myself to do it in the first place, that wasn't going to happen. It was now or never.
As I actually began hanging the first string of lights, I realized that last year, I had lost several of the metal hooks--never a good option because they fall out so easily--and that there were huge gaps between the places I'd need to secure the light strings. In some places the gaps were about eight feet long. This is not conducive to good, straight, uniform light hanging, but perfect for Dr. Seuss-type decorating. Did I mention that I'm a natural for the Dr. Seuss lighting?
Within an hour or two, I had the lights up and working, despite having started at the wrong end of the plug and having to figure out a new way to connect power. Now, all that's left is the star on top of the roof. I hope to get that done next week sometime and then maybe I'll take a pic and post it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who take the time to read my posts. Sometimes the things I write may seem strange, incoherent, or just not your cup of tea, so to speak. Fair enough. As an individual, I have my own idiosyncrasies, my own way of looking at life. I'm thankful for all of you and your own differences and ways of looking a things. I wouldn't be posting anything if I wasn't getting readers, so a big THANK YOU to my loyal readers. I hope all of you have an amazing time today wherever you may be.

And if you can reach through my computer, give Scout a pat on the head.

Gratitude: Today, I'm thankful for Flo

So yesterday I was delivering my mail and there were a lot of Progressive ads going to homes along my route. I was looking at Flo all day.

I'm kind of thankful for Flo. Those commercials early on were appealing and something fresh. I know it sounds weird, but Flo is a bright spot in a world of stupid commercials and television programs. I don't typically like commercials, but there are a few entertaining ones and the ones with Flo in them are among the best. Besides that, I think the woman who portrays Flo is probably nice in real life, and the world needs more nice people, especially in the kind of world in which we live.

So two thumbs up for Flo. I hope she has a happy Thanksgiving.

Gratitude, green lights and geese

November is typically the month when we tend to think of gratitude a bit more frequently. Of course, that's associated with Thanksgiving Day. Really, we should be full of gratitude all the time for our great blessings. I've participated in the past in events that included listing some of the things I am thankful for on social media sites. Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be posting in this blog some of the things for which I'm grateful.
This first one is going to seem odd to some, not so odd to others. I'm thankful for green lights. That's right. Green lights. Far better than red lights, green lights suggest that it's okay. Okay to proceed, okay to go, okay to do a lot of everything. If I see two green lights in a row, I sometimes think that maybe this day, God is on my side a bit more than usual--and I can always use that kind of feeling.
I was a bit sad earlier today. Feeling blue. Blue's normally my color, but not when I'm sad. But then, something amazing happened. I hit two green lights in a row and somehow I knew that everything would be all right. So, I want to thank God for making sure I saw that today.

There was something else I saw today that had God's mark all over it. I was at the gym, having just completed my workout and I was walking around just thinking for a minute. I walked down to the west doors and looked up at the magnificent sky. The perfect mixture of blue, gray, and pink warmed my heart, but just then a flock of geese flew past, heading north. Within seconds another flock flew by, this time heading south, and then a third group, heading south as well. Big, beautiful birds bringing to me, a message of peace. God knew my heart needed it this morning and he delivered, as he always does when I decide to trust in and honor him.