What You See Is What You Get!

The answer to that is "Very carefully" I work with a person whose picture should be next to the word idiot in the dictionary. He holds a fairly responsible job which he does very well. Soooo why is he an idiot. Well it's because he does not have a clue as to how others percieve him. He is somewhat like the boss on "The Office" T.V. show. My coworker has the same job as I have so I occasionally have to work with him. He is vertically challenged so he always has to be the center of attention. He is a very frustrating person because if I or anyone else says something he always has to " one up" that person, even if he has to lie. There are many more things but, I wil stop it there. I wonder sometimes how much of his annoying personality is because of my perception of him. I am a believer in the old saying " If there is a problem between people how much of it do I have responsibility for." All conflict has at least two parts, everyone who is in the conflict must own part of the problem and fix their part. This is really the root of the current conflict in the midddle east. Both sides think they are 100% right and the other side must fall because they are 100% wrong. In life we must fix our part of the problem because in the end we only have a chance to fix ourselves not anyone else. Wow, I just solved the whole middle eastern problem that people have been trying to solve for centuries (Speaking of haveing a big ego!!) Well I have run on quite long enough I need to figure what part of the conflict I have at work is mine and I can fix.

Well welcome to St. Louis in summer. I have lived in this area my whole life and everybody who lives here knows that it is very hot in the summer and can get very cold in the winter. But, this summer "takes the cake"(what ever that means) Every day is in the upper 90's with very high humidity. Most people will say that is at certain times like New Orleans. Couple this with the storms that have caused power outages to up to 500,000 people for up to 10 days and it is surly a mess. Cheryl and I were blessed during the outages we lost our power but we were out of town and the power was back on when we got back. But, as the saying goes we can't change so why do we complain. One thing I find interesting is how 1,000 people in New York city go without power and the national news goes on about it for weeks but in the midwest 500,000 people are without power and nothing is said after 2-3 days. Oh well I guess nothing happens unless it happens on the coasts.

It has certainly been 4 or 5 weeks of blessings for Cheryl and I. We were able to go on a cruise with our best friends from church. I have talked about that before. We were able to go to Cal. to see Todd being ordained and installed at Grace church in Lancaster. What an incredible time that was, I also talked about this before. We went to Branson MO with our long time friends Bob and Marti( we have been together as friends for ever) We had a great time at a very beautiful campground right on lake tablerock lake. We were able to take a boat on the lake and had a great time. We also went to Dick Clark's American Bandstand theater and saw The Comet's of Bill Haley and the Comet's. A very interesting show, all the members are 72 years old except the drummer who is 83. I sure hope I can be like that when I am that age. Branson was very hot as was St. Louis. St. Louis was experiencing storms that cut electricity to about a total of 700,000 people between the two storms. We missed the storm that cut our power for 3 days, when we returned home our A/C and our fridge were running. All of our food was spoiled but we were not put though all the problems that so many were. As I said Cheryl and I are truly blessed.