Bu-ddy

Here's just a quick picture of the butterfly bush outside our garage.  This time of year it is hugely popular with butterflies, moths, bees, and hummingbirds, and when we pull up to the house, there they all are visiting with the flowers, and it's just a nice welcoming committee.

It was a rainy day today, and a quiet one.  The rain was in the morning, and it gave way to grey overcast skies the rest of the day, and cooler temperatures - quite pleasant, actually.  We had dropped Maddie off for Team Edge practice this morning, as that's up and going again.  Afterwards, she was with Nate all day playing games and spending the day over there.  

Mom and I were getting a few things done around the house.  I was having some difficulty with the ol' esophagus, which might lead to a visit with an endoscopy, but we'll see how things progress here.  I did get the walking on the treadmill done, and finished the last episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" while marching along.  My next target on the treadmill is watching the entire Weird Al Show series, but that's just 13 episodes.  Anyway, it's been great to get that exercise in each day.  

So our country is interesting.  There's this desperate attempt to make peace between Russia and Ukraine, but instead of an entire world focused on ending wars, social media is ablaze about Cracker Barrel changing its logo.  That's been the talk this weekend online, which I think is an interesting snapshot about humanity in general.  For the record, we're probably going to take a temporary break from Cracker Barrel, as apparently not just the logo is changing with this restaurant chain.  Man, we've been loyalists too.  This issue is like the one with Disney - we just loved these institutions so much, and then they do stuff and go down roads we can't really go so much.  Seriously, they were like a "part of the family," and now there is a little bit less of that connection.  We certainly don't run out to see every Disney movie anymore, and hadn't been down to Orlando in years.  And now, our visits to Cracker Barrel might be more limited too.  We'll see how they respond next week.  I really do like going there because of the nostalgic atmosphere and ambience.  But if all that goes, what's the point?  Disney seems to be righting the ship a bit, but our general enthusiasm for a lot of this has greatly dwindled.  And maybe that's okay.

Changing the subject, I finished 1 Samuel today too, reading over that interesting passage where King Saul goes over to Endor.  Not the forest moon of Endor, but in fact the place in Israel.  The discussion about familiar spirits ensued, and how this one imitated Samuel and basically spoke the truth about what was to happen.  Certainly an unusual spot.  We're moving forward through 2 Samuel after this, but it's been fun diving deeper and reading commentaries about all of this.  I've been in the Perry Stone commentary Bible and it's a thick one with lots of extra commentary and insight, and it's all been pretty fascinating.  It's best to go through some of these and not just read it to read it, but rather to stop to work out details and motivations and understand the events of the time.  

Tonight, we watched "Encino Man," as Mom was wanting to see that again.  Maybe because of this classic line of dialogue from Weasel:  "If you're edged 'cause I'm weazin all your grindage, just chill. 'Cause if I had the whole brady bunch thing happenin' at my pad, I'd go grind over there, so dont tax my gig so hard-core cruster."

That line of dialogue cracks me up every time, this California slang at the time, with a lot of made-up stuff no doubt.  But there's a lot of other fun stuff in the movie too including the epic line from Nicodemus himself:  "No Wheezing the Juice!"

This started out as a mini-Brendan Fraser marathon (with "George of the Jungle") last night, but might transition to a Pauly Shore marathon here.  I'm from the generation that watched movies like "In the Army Now" and "Son-in-Law."  Never saw "Jury Duty" or "Biodome," but maybe a bit of old-school is on the schedule here.  Anyway, we were having a fun time watching this one tonight.

Okay, enough about that.  Time for bed.  We read from "Feet of Clay" tonight, already an intriguing mystery going on, and after that, time for prayers and a good night's rest!