Raven

Last Friday night we did the cleanup/resetting shift at the Mennonite Relief Sale.  We stopped at Babbitt's Books in Normal first, which is going out of business.  They had everything at half price so we came away with a few more books for our overflowing shelves.
Working the late shift got us home later than usual, so we bought our donuts first.  Unfortunately, the ice cream booth was shut down by the time we finished our job.

Saturday night we had family come to town for Kayla's testimony and baptism.  We had an overnight guest, chores in the morning, and then had to be at church early Sunday because we served lunch.  The Saturday evening testimonies and the Sunday baptisms made for a blessed weekend, but also a very full and exhausting weekend.

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Because of my appreciation for good literature, I found it very interesting to hear Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" summarized and quoted in one of the sermons.  It was used as an antithesis to the hope that faith in Christ offers us.

With two farm meetings and two visitation/funerals, this week looks to be busy.

For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.
2 Corinthians 1:12

3.14

Pi Day!  Pie Day!

The apple is for me.  The others are for the Eureka Home Benefit Auction.


But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
Deuteronomy 25:15

Sea Hagg

One of the more colorful and interesting places we visited in Florida was The Sea Hagg.  It was an indoor/outdoor shop that sold all manner of strange sea things.  Ship parts, rusty boat motors, antique fishing equipment, sculptures, everything mermaid, seashells, alligator heads, shark jaws, nautical home decor, Florida souvenirs, fishing nets, books, nautical maps, and other sundry items too numerous to mention or remember were for sale.  We took a few pictures in the courtyard, but none on the inside of the shop.

The weather the last half of February was cooler than normal for Florida, but still pleasant and much warmer than home.  We relaxed a lot and didn't get sun burnt.  We spent a day on Casperson Beach hunting sharks teeth.  I found a handful of small teeth, but was slightly depressed and jealous when a man came walking along and showed me a bag full of hand sized teeth he found just off shore while scuba diving.  Maybe next year . . .

The weather was good for traveling and the trip home was uneventful other than some lost time in a traffic jam on the outskirts of Atlanta,  We kept driving until we were Northwest of Nashville when we stopped for the night.  That made the second day of the trip easy.

And the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.
Acts 27:44

Good Eats

Once again we enjoyed a lot of good seafood (and food in general) while we were in Florida.  I had frutti de mare at Waterfront, alligator at Phillippi Creek Oyster Bar, ship and crab scampi at Turtles, seafood sorrento at Sharky's, stuffed hogfish at Captain Eddie's, and fresh crab cakes at the Star Fish Company.
The Star Fish Company was a new stop for us this year.  It is located on the waterfront in the historic fishing village of Cortez.  It was started in the 1920's as a wholesale seafood company for locally caught fish.  A retail outlet was added in the 60's and in the 90's a dockside restaurant was added.  It is one of the few remaining working waterfronts in Florida.
You order at the window and they serve your food in a cardboard box which you eat from on picnic tables on the dock.  There were plenty of birds around to keep us company!  It was a unique and fun experience.

And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.
Matthew 4:18

Trip

Chores were finished and the van was packed.  We got on the road shortly after 9:00 A.M.  Our goal was to put in a big day and drive late into the evening and get through Atlanta (missing rush hour traffic) before we stopped for the night.  Then we could have a casual second day.

We hit snow just south of Champaign.  We were driving right into the tail of Winter Storm Octavia!  It snowed most of the day, so we were driving on snow covered roads, snow packed roads, slush covered roads, and finally ice covered roads.  In Kentucky and Tennessee we saw very few snow plows or salt trucks on the roads.  I think that in a similar storm, we would expect to see more snowplows in the city of Peoria than we saw in the entire state of Tennessee.  It was near Nashville that we hit ice and it was still icing/raining.  Fortunately the only people on the roads seemed to be travelers and trucks; the city of Nashville was shut down for the day.  They even closed the interstates just after we made it through town.  We kept plodding southeast thinking we would eventually drive out of it.  We didn't.  We drove on white ice, gray ice, and black ice. There were lots of cars in the ditch and accidents.  People don't know how to drive on snow or ice in the South.
In the hills around and south of Nashville, the shoulders were lined with semi's parked for the night.  Either they couldn't make it up the icy hills and they had to pull off, or they were afraid they would jack-knife trying to control their speed going downhill.  Tall heavily ice laden trees would occasionally fall over and reach the shoulder and sometimes even block the first lane of the interstate.  It took us three and a half hours to travel the last one hundred miles before we finally called it quits for the day at 7:30 in the evening.  We found a Super 8 and a Waffle House with only 500 miles down of a 1200 mile trip to show for our day.  So much for anticipating an easy second day!

Tuesday morning Northbound I-24 was still closed.  We got an early start and headed South.  The road had been salted overnight, but was still a little slick.  We averaged 45 MPH for the first hour and then gradually were able to drive the speed limit.  About the time we hit Georgia, it started raining.  And it rained all the rest of the drive down to Anna Maria Island.  We finally rolled into our condo parking lot at about 8:00 in the evening.  Tired from the most intense 1200 miles we've driven in a long time.

And definitely looking forward to a week and a half of rest and relaxation.

For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth; likewise to the small rain, and to the great rain of his strength.
Job 37:6