Tennessee State Flower

I was going to be the proud owner of not one, but two, of Tennessee State flowers, plus a weed...........................here they are..........................

well - I was all signed-up and ready to go for Direct TV - all the channels, local channels (requiring the second disk) and an antenna to get High Definition from the local area......

The installer called on Wednesday and said he was sick and he wanted to reschedule for Friday...... OK was my answer............ Friday came, 1 pm came......5 pm went........... no installer?????????? so I called Direct TV and cancelled............ the lady I talked to said that the installer had set it up for next Friday..............not this Friday....... I said that was wrong, that I knew I couldn't do it next week............ I cancelled my order...........

So, now I am watching the playoffs in High Definition from Comcrap............... I still think the product they give us is poor.............for over a year they have been telling me that we will have duel DVRs and SportsSouth........and we have neither.......... they are great liars.... and they just raised their prices for their bad service............ but it is installed and it only requires one wire(cable)................

Oh Well.................... Instead of Direct TV I got to buy a new washing machine today!!!

take good care of yourself, john

It's about time!

Participants in the 'Human Zoo' are watched by a young girl at the Adelaide Zoo January 10, 2007. (Matt Turner/Reuters)

Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070109/ts_nm/australia_zoo_dc

John and Sandy and Dennis and Marie

Happy New Year from Amelia Island

We went to Amelia over New Years to vist Marie's brother Larry and his special frient Ellen.. After dealing with all kinds of shit on Friday morning we finally got away at about noon..... Dennis and Marie drove and Sandy and I hung out..................

We got to Larry's home around 8:30.......... Here is a picture of Larry and his dog, Ed....

Here are Dennis and Marie.........

Dennis is in Larry's garage.........it is a football watching haven.....three tvs and an frig for adult the adult beverages that Dennis refered to in his blog...... yummy!!!

We saw a church........Memorial United Methodist Church in downtown Fernandino Beach........... we were actually at an antique mall..............

Also there are three wise men..







Notice that you are not seeing neither Larry nor Dennis nor John.... Uumm, imagine that!!




Okay, here is Sandy............... That is Larry in the background............ Sandy is watching football!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In the Garage!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Besides eating, drinking, and watching football, we saw a most incredible display of lights that you can possible imagen............ an entire street with lighted homes (a couple didn't have 'em).... the display was remarkable..................

Ok, I do not have a picture of Ellen........ and my camera battery is getting low...... so, that is all from Amelia Island.............. Tomorrow, we will do Savannah........

We had a great time......... God bless you all, and remember, take good care of you so that you can take good care of someone else!!!!!!!!!!! love, john

Snow in East Tennessee

Brrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!

I'mmmmmm back!!!!! And here is the whole, hole story!!!!

As you know by now, Dennis & Marie and Sandy and I went on vacation over the January 1st weekend..... We left, thank God, on December 29.......... around Noon.... The plan was to leave earlier and this is where the story begins!!!!

The picture above is the hole that Marc doug to find our septic tank lid..... On the 29th shortly after 7 am I met Dennis and Marie at the vet where our dogs were going to be boarded... all went well and we left I came home and they went home to pack and come to our home to pick us up for our excellent adventure to Amelia Island, Florida.

When I got home, Sandy was trying to plunge the upstaies toilet that was clogged-up. She was not having much success and ask if I would try. I flexed my muscles and took over the plunging..... When I plunged, stuff flew out of the upstairs sink and bathtub, but could be rinsed out.... progress we thought......... We I plunged and I plunged and I plunged some more and finally, we decided the clog was not going away so we put a not on the toilet - "Do Not Use." Then we went downstairs to get ready for Dennis and Marie....

When we got down stairs Sandy noticed that the floor in our entry-way and downstairs bathroom was wet...... I looked and we discovered that the downstairs tub and stall shower were being occupied by sewer waste..... the stall shower was actually full and running over.... what luck!! We knew our vacation was ruined..... someone was praying........ (it was not me!!) We called Roto Rooter and got their answer service and we Mr. Rooter and got the answer service and we called Rooter Man and got a person.... and so we decided that whoever called back first would get the job...............because, we figured out that the septic tank had backed-up into our house... It, by the way, did not take a Ph.D., which I have, to figure this out...........

In the meant time Dennis and Marie called telling us they were on the way and we told them what had happend and they came over the give us moral support.... (they also provided us with bathroom shuttle servce to their home as it was needed...........) While Dennis and I were a bathroom run one of the people I called returned the call....It was now 9 am an hour after our departure time............ Marc called from Rooter Man and said he was on the way and got directions from Sandy.... A little while later Marc called from Rotor Rooter - it turned out to me the same person....... the other person called later and we told him we did not need his services after all.... I turns out the Marc from Rooter Man, is starting his own business while working for his brother-in-law who owns Rotor Rooter............. very soap operaish!!!!

He arrived 10 and 10:30......................found the septic tank, doug the hole you saw at the beginning and sucked out all the stuff from our septic tank into his truck.... and was gone before noon....... meantime, Sandy was cleaning up the downstairs bathroom while I watched Marc.............. Thank you Sandy!!!!!!!!!! We left on vacation around noon.....

Today Marc retruned to install a riser.... makes it easier to suck out your septic tank which you should do about every three to five years (not knowing this rather important fact, we had never, in 7 years had it cleaned out.....)

The lid!

The riser! The riser in the ground!
Marc cutting off the excess riser!Marc filling up the hole!

The riser cover at ground level!!Now it will be easier to clean out the septic tank the next time............

and that is the whole, hole story!!! cheers, john

ps: many thanks to Dennis and Marie for hanging in during the shitty times as well as the good times - true friends..............

We wish you a merry Christmas,

We wish you a merry Christmas and

the blessings and joys of God's gifts to you

for the New Year...

and..

May the road rise up to meet you;
May the wind be always at your back;
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rain fall softly on your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

God bless you all... John and Sandy

Heeee Haaaa!!!!!!!!!! May you have a blessed and holy Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The semester is over, the grades are in, the college party is behind us, the presents are bought (and wrapped or bagged as the case may be) and now the silent and out loud (shout with JOY) contemplation of the meaning of Christmas begins.................. Oh! Yah! Cooking too!!! But for me, cooking is a time when I can contemplate Christ, his birth, and the beginning of the journey to our salvation.... Yep, cooking gives me that opportunity.....cutting the grass does that too, but the grass is not growing right now and the mower is put up for the winter........
So, cooking........... Here is my new try for this year.........

It is called a Buche de Noel or Yule log..........

It is a jelly roll-style vanilla sponge cake covered with Ultimate French Chocolate Buttercream icing. The object is to try and make it look like a log laying on the forest floor with snow..... It is my first try and there is a way to go to say it is okay... that is my judgment.... next year I will try it again, and it will improve... can't wait to taste it all together, we have tasted the icing and the cake crumbs...... pretty yummy!!!!!

Now I want to share some pictures of our home.... This year I gave Sandy lights (part for her birthday and part for her Christmas)..... Here is a picture of the lights.

Here is our yard art...an angel...Sandy and I made it, there is really only one, I moved the camera with the shutter opened!!!! maybe?????

Here is the most important of all, our nativity scene........... Come Emanuel.........

Now our Christmas Tree....... This year we bought our first artificial tree. Last year when I went to burn our tree, it was so dry that one little book match made it burst into a flaming inferno....without the music... I told Sandy that it worried me that something that was so flamable was in our old, wooden house.......... she agreed and we bought a very nice tree... and here it is............

And here is some more of our Christmas that Sandy shares with me and those who visit!!

Oh yah, Jill is here and we are thankful for her presence.................



And so we, Sandy and John, wish you a joyful and blessed Christmas........... With the promise of our salvation, God sent his only child to save us...... Thank you God..............

See the - ELF

click the link

http://www.elfyourself.com/?userid=fa466832d4948b1769e994aG06121508

you too can elfyourself!!!!

Happy Day!!

Live MISTLETOE

for sale on e-bay!!!

click here or click the picture

REMEMBER.....

a dollar today is worth a kiss tomorrow!!

xxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooo

MERRY CHRISTMAS

http://www.thecompassgroup.biz/merryxmas.swf

CLICK AND ENJOY!!!!

I got a phone call from Matt today to tell me thank you for the Tickle Me Elmo I sent him... He was laughing on the phone.... He said that he and his mom had a thousand laughs in the few days he had it and that he had taken it to church with him so that they could laugh too....

Humor is second to praying and eating to help with cancer treatments...of course the drugs are important too..........and God bless his care team....

Matt had his first treatment Thursday and he sounded a little tired as one would expect...

Please keep praying.........and then pray some more. God bless you all, John

Tickle Me Elmo TMX

for auction on e-bay

http://myworld.ebay.com/vanblog

Wednesday - I am anxiously awaiting 130 final assignments in my Information Systems classes. For this assignment the students have to evaluate Internet access and hardware necessary to create a home wireless network. They have to evaluate cable, DSL, and satellite Internet connections; two wireless routers; two laptops and two desktop computers; two wireless printers; and two 500 gigabyte network disk drives capable of being accessed by all users on the wireless network.... and then select their system and justify it... All assignments are to be turned in either in class at 9:45AM or 12:45PM or left for me in something called the digital drop box by 1:00 pm for the 50 on-line students............... I also have two final papers for my two graduate strategic experience teams and I am on a dissertation committee for a student in the Education Leadership and Policy Analysis Department of the College of Education and I am reading her dissertation. Her final defense of her dissertation is on the 19th. Starting tomorrow at 1:40 PM my students, all of them, will be taking their final exam on-line through our on-line course system called Blackboard.....they have to take the two hour exam sometime in the week starting this Thursday and ending next Thursday... It all seems like a lot of work.....but it is the end of the semester after all.... I am anxious to see if my students can create a reasonable paper evaluating that wireless stuff and make reasonable assumptions when selecting their system......predictably, some will and some will not....

As Kurt Vonnegut would say, HIHO....... He also said that mirrors were leaks into the universe .... and he used the * as a symbol for ass hole......I like to have an * or two in my passwords...... I probably should not have told the world that but I did and that is that..

By comparison, Matt will start chemotherapy tomorrow... I think I have the better deal right now........ please continue to pray for him and his family.

Remember, take good care of yourself so you can take good care of someone else... love, john

I am home for a few hours this morning getting a package ready to send to one of your student workers in my department, the Management and Marketing Department. Matt Fay has cancer. It is a fast growing kind that they will be treating with chemotherapy drugs starting on Thursday. Today he is getting a chest catheter for doing blood tests and taking the chemo drugs. He and his family, mom and dad, need your prayers. They live in Clinton, Tennessee.

Twenty years ago, I had a fast growing cancer in my lung. I had a chest catheter and was treated with chemotherapy drugs.... Because of God's good grace and my doctors and nurses, I survived... I had people all over the country of every faith imaginable praying for me.

Please, have everyone that you know pray for Matt - God listens.......

Thank you, John

THANK YOU GOD!

REST IN PEACE

JACK

Last evening, about 9:30 PM, we received a telephone call from a lady who identified herself as D. J. She told me that on the night of November 11 she and her husband found Jack in the middle of Greenwood having been hit by a car. They put him in their car and drove him the the pet emergency care facility near the Tri-Cities Airport. By the time they got there Jack had died. They left him there, as they should have.

While this is not the news we had been hoping for, it is good to have that closure and not continue to wait for him to come prancing down the street..... I think that if he were going to die, it is wonderful that he did not have to die alone by the side of the road. God bless those people for having the courage to pick up a stray dog in the middle of the night and try to rescue him. So to D.J. and her husband I say, thank you and God bless you.

While I do not know what happens to animals after they die, I do know that they are created by God and that God has a plan for all of his creatures. If there is a heaven for dogs, then Jack is there....my guess is, his spirit is roaming the universe right this very minute in search of the mystery on the other side of the next galaxy.

Yesterday and the day before as I pulled into the driveway in the late morning, there was a deer eating from our garden. The deer did not immediately run off but paused and looked at me on Saturday and us on Sunday. I said at the time that it was Jack stopping by to say "good bye." I suppose that is silly, but from a creator who made heaven and earth and the universe, who's to say?

I have spent today calling around to the people who have helped, or sending e-mails where I could, thanking them for there thoughts and prayers. Frankly, I cannot stop crying and Jill is sad too. I know that Sandy is sad too, but she is holding herself together better than I am. We, Jill and I, are pretty much hanging out together today.

Here are some pictures of Jack (and Jill too) in memory or our time together. Here is their first day here.The early days: Jack has the blue collar.

Eye Surgery:

Later:

Couch potatoes:

And finally, his last picture before the great escape:

Good bye my friend. Come visit me in my thoughts whenever you want. We will always have a favorite place in our memories for you. God Speed. With my love, john