Monday, May 23, 2011

Insert Witty Storm Metaphor Here

This weekend I wrote what I wanted to write, not what I thought would lead to publication. As I had time, I worked on the passage notes to A Harmony of the Gospels, and completed several of them. Unfortunately I looked ahead and saw just how many of these are left to be written. It might be fifty pages of writing materials.

It's pouring outside right now. I'm searching for a witty storm metaphor to insert here, but haven't one. It poured last night. People may have seen news reports about tornadoes in our area. Some were spotted in our county, but I'm not sure they have been confirmed. Joplin was devastated, as you might have read. That's just 45 or 50 miles north of us.

I've been reading a book I picked up at the thrift store, titled The Templar Revelation, and it's turning out to be awful. From 1996, I think this is one of the books from which Dan Brown drew material to write The DaVinci Code. It is not well written, it is not documented. I've invested several days of my reading life into this, after 50 cents of my budget, hoping it would get better, or would become more substantive as I got past the introductory chapters. Not so.

My next article for Buildipedia is due Thursday. I think this will be an easy one, on erosion and sediment control.

I'm currently fighting with my home owner's insurance company, Nationwide, over how they jacked up the rates on me because I turned in claims last year, and then billed me 12 percent more after the renewal was complete. Just got off the phone with Kelly of Nationwide, a nice man who bore my wrath with dignity. But I will not stay with his company nor with my agent who made a mistake on the renewal. Goodbye, Nationwide. It was a nice 15 year relationship up until last August.

My quarterly doctor's appointment is tomorrow. Hopefully he'll give me three more months. I'm not apprehensive about it at all. Now that I'm checking my blood sugar I know exactly where I'll be at this appointment. I'm hoping he'll take me off my blood pressure medication. It was marginal that I should be on it in the first place. About a month ago I checked it at the blood pressure check station at Wal-Mart (I'm sure not the most accurate machine). It was 87/59, so I began breaking my pills in half. Last Saturday it was 81/69. Let's hope it's low like that tomorrow.

I'm back to this after a ninety minute hiatus. Had a couple of phone calls, ate lunch at my desk, read some writing blogs. I called Friday's post "miscellaneous", but this one is more so. Maybe that reflects my state of mind. I need to latch onto a project and run with it. With the Wesley study aside, I suppose it will either be improvements to Documenting America and expanding it's published locations or completing A Harmony of the Gospels or getting back on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People and seeing if I can finish that.

Meanwhile it seems the worst of the storm has passed, and no witty metaphor has come to mind. Will post now.

2 comments:

Gary said...

Random thoughts:

Insure with AMICA, a fine RI company.

Normal blood pressure is 110/70 or so (you seem a little low).

Tornadoes are fearsome, but I would like to see one (just not too close).

I read that Harold Camping was a civil engineer.

David A. Todd said...

Gary:

The doc said today to keep taking my blood pressure medication, at the half dose I had self-medicated to, but to stop using it if my blood pressure dropped below 100/**. Duh. In my young adult years I used to run 92/68. I'd love to get back there again unmedicated.

I'll check and see if AMICA is licensed to insure in Arkansas.

Despite years of living in or near Tornado Alley, I've never seen one. One time, back in the 70s, we were at church when way off in the distance a whisp of a cloud dropped below an approaching thunderhead. A man there said it was a funnel cloud, but it was really too far away to tell.

As for false prophet Camping, if he is/was a civil engineer (and I think I read that too), he should be prophesying the height of the water in floods of sub-Biblical proportion. Hey, that's almost a storm metaphor!