Yesterday a student borrowed a pencil from my “found items” cup on my desk. He went to sharpen it, and came back to me asking what was wrong with the pencil. When he handed it to me, I noticed it said “DO NOT SHARPEN” on it. Why?
It’s an erasable pen! It’s a clever idea, but who reads pencils before they sharpen them? I think this is a diabolical plan hatched by the pencil sharpener industry to ruin sharpeners so that people have to buy replacements.
My sharpener is still working, by the way. I jiggled a trigger inside the sharpening mechanism and things seem to be working okay now. Except that kid yesterday sharpened this pen it it.
One of my co-workers from last year is a pastor in downtown Baltimore. Once a year he goes on a weekend retreat with a large segment of his congregation. For the last three years he’s asked me to sub for him on the Sunday morning they’re gone. I guess he figures I qualify because I’m a Religion teacher. It freaked me out at first, but yesterday was my fourth time, so I’m starting to lose a little of the anxiety.
Yesterday was also a Ravens football game, so the remaining crowd at the church was even smaller than usual. Counting the guy who sat in front with me and did the readings and prayers, there were five people there besides me. But at least that made it a little less nerve-wracking. I always mess up on some part of the liturgy though. Yesterday it was the Psalm. I didn’t announce it and there was a long silence until the organist decided he should just go ahead and play. Then I was nervous I was singing the wrong Psalm, so I looked it up in the middle of singing and lost my place. It was bad because we were singing responsively. The organist is a good sport though, and he just waited until I found my place and came back in.
I have a really hard time writing long sermons, so I think the people like it when I visit. 
HERE is what I wrote for yesterday. It’s not quite word-for-word, but it’s pretty close. At home it lasted ten minutes. I think it was shorter in church.
I wore my new socks to choir practice yesterday. They did not keep my feet from getting cold. But to be fair, it was really cold in the choir room. Even women going through hot flashes said so. Technically, these are “boot socks”, so maybe wearing non-boots negate their warming powers. I will have to try the socks in another situation to see how they do.
More interestingly, I was really groggy and sleepy during choir practice. This wasn’t my usual narcoleptic seizure. It almost felt like drugs or something. I had also felt like that Wednesday night at the Church Council meeting. Is it just a coincidence, or is there something at church that’s knocking me out? Could there be a carbon monoxide leak there? Could I be more sensitive to it because of my years of carbon monoxide poisoning in my old pickup truck? I asked the guys sitting next to me in choir if there was a carbon monoxide alarm on the furnace. They didn’t know.
Thankfully, I won’t be at my own church today. I won’t be poisoned any further. But I need to figure out what’s going on. Is it carbon monoxide, or is there some other reason I was almost passing out on two different occasions at church?
My church dinner group “for eight” lost a couple, so we have six. I hosted dinner for them last night. We had fondue. It was really fun.
We started with a cheddar cheese fondue and dipped bread and vegetables in it. But I forgot the apples, dag-nabbit! I used a crockpot for the cheese. I had to save my actual fondue pots for the meat course.
The meat course was boiling broth that we warmed chicken, beef, and shrimp in. I was too chicken to have them cook the meat from raw to done, so I cooked it all ahead of time. That way we were just warming it. I got a bunch of sauces to try with the meats. My favorite was A-1 Teriyaki sauce.
The final course was chocolate. I melted milk cocolate chips with some half-and-half. I did this in a crockpot also, but started too early. the chocolate was starting to taste a little scorched. Then I added some amaretto. Perfect! It was smooth and sweet. Does amaretto always do that?
Here is a picture of the wreckage after everybody is stuffed:
I’m hosting my “Dinners for Eight” group from church tonight. “Dinners for Eight” is a voluntary church activity where we get put in groups of eight and take turns eating at each other’s houses. I really enjoy it. It’s a good way to get to know people at my church better. But somehow the time has gotten away from me, and suddenly this thing is happening, so yesterday I left school quickly to come home and clean. One of the things I HAD to clean was the aquarium. It’s right next to the dining table. They would have noticed an algae-clogged view of nothing.
I have a contraption I hook up to my bathroom sink that drains the water from the tank while I’m cleaning, then refills it with fresh, clean water. While I was draining and cleaning the tank last night, the suction slowed down a little. The water sound from the bathroom changed, too. I went to check it. D’oh! The sink was overflowing! I usually take the drain out of the sink, but had forgotten, and it clogged with algae and was no longer draining. There was a good half inch of water all over the bathroom floor. Aquarium water. Dang it! I had to go to Bible study, so I just left a bunch of rugs and towels to soak up the water and headed out.
It cleaned up pretty well when I came home, but I know that water wasn’t all absorbed by the rugs and towels. It’s probably soaked into the floor now and sometime the floor will give way and someone will fall through to the basement. Probably me. Stupid Brad.
