Well, the March concert of the Cherry Creek Chorale is over. Didn’t make it? You can still get in on our last concert of the season in May. I’ll be posting about that music over on the “Behind the Music” blog and giving links to buy tickets. I have to say, this concert ended up being truly great. It wasn’t until Thursday night’s rehearsal, when the drummer and bass player showed up, that I really fell in love with the second half of the program, all classic tunes from old movies. The first half was great, too.
Debi Simons
A Winning Book
We had been driven out of our house this past Saturday for showings, so one stop was at the library. Honestly, I don’t patronize the library much any more, the physical one at least. I get audiobooks and e-books, and I listen to podcasts and read political articles online. So my former at-least-once-a-week library habit has dwindled away to almost nothing. But we needed a place to hang out, so there we went. One of my favorite places at this branch is the nonfiction new book shelves at the top of the stairs. I couldn’t tell you how many great discoveries I’ve made there. Saturday was no exception; I picked this book off the shelf and sat down in one of the chairs upstairs, thinking that I’d read a chapter or two, and I was hooked. I ended up reading all but two chapters, which for me nowadays is kind of a record, and I made sure to read the conclusion.
Procrastination Regrets
This post is going to be in the “I should have known better” category. As I wrote last week, we have put our house on the market, and we started showing it this past weekend. The realtor had scheduled the first appointment for noon on Saturday. Oh man! As I said to Gideon, “You wouldn’t think that getting a house ready to show would be so much work when I really try to keep it in good shape all of the time.” Jim was still finishing up the basement ceiling which had had to be repaired because of this mysterious leak that turned out to be caused by water overflowing from a plant pot in our entryway.
The Only Source of True Love
I John 4:19 in the Christian New Testament says, “We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.” (The Message)
The note on this verse from the Zondervan NIV Study Bible: “All love comes ultimately from God; genuine love is never self-generated by His creatures.”
So you can’t really “scare up” love. It is true that we humans tend to feel kindly toward those whom we treat kindly and vicious towards those whom we treat viciously. But where does the impulse to do the kind deeds come from? (The source of the impulse towards viciousness is all too clear.) Why do you want to love that person in the first place?
I was reminded as I was writing this post of the beautiful old hymn “The Sands of Time Are Sinking.” Here’s the second verse, which helps answer the above question:
O Christ, He is the fountain, the deep, sweet well of love!
The streams of earth I’ve tasted more deep I’ll drink above:
There to an ocean fullness His mercy doth expand,
And glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.
How Happy Have We Been in this House?
Well, yesterday the “for sale” sign went up on our front lawn. We are selling our lovely, lovely house (note that I don’t use the word “home”). I can still remember the day that we pulled up in the driveway and opened the front door. My heart just about stopped as I saw the soaring living room. (The heart issue might also have come from the fact that we’d set off the burglar alarm.) Then I remember the months-long stretch when the bank couldn’t seem to make up its mind to go ahead and sell us the house.
Figuring out the Final Happiness Quotient.
Two events coming up for me, one very long-range and one occurring next week:
The long-range one is a trip that Jim and I are discussing that we’d like to take for our 25th wedding anniversary, which takes place on May 30. We’ve decided that we’re going to go to France, probably sometime in September when the tourist tsunami has passed but the weather is still nice. Right now the trip is in the “wouldn’t it be fun” phase.
A Timely Update
I wrote last week about the author Laura Vanderkam and her ideas on time management. She has a three-part series of short e-books that offer great ideas. I’d already read “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast,” and when I went onto her site last week I noticed this one, which I bought for about $3 through Audible.com. (I’m an Audible member and pay a monthly membership fee of $12.95–something like that–but since these short books are only about $3 it’s not worth it for me to buy them with my credits,, so I just bought it directly.) I also bought “What the Most Successful People Do at Work,” also for around $3. And then I realized that I needed to listen to her book 168 Hours: Why You Have More Time Than You Think, which I did buy with an Audible credit. (My Audible credits are stacking up, so I need to use them.) The link to her website above will give you ordering info on all of her books.
A Third Time Tool and a Helpful Author.
I wrote yesterday about two tools that I’m finding to be useful: SwipesApp and Evernote.
Today I’m writing about a third tool that I knew about and had tried to use before and also about the author who brought it to my attention. I’m trying not to make the tool into the Next Big Thing, a mistake I often make. The tool is called “Toggl,” and I had first heard about it from an author and blogger I follow named Laura Vanderkam, a time management consultant.
Two Tools I Use
If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I’m always getting excited about one tool or another that is going to be The Greatest Thing Ever to help me be more productive. So at one point I was touting something called a Pomodoro, a little online timer that has you work for 25 minutes without any interruption and then take a break for 5, with a 15-minute break every fourth section. It was supposed to make your productivity explode, as you’d have all these pre-set distraction-free periods. But it didn’t really work for me very well, because if I really got going on something I didn’t want to have that timer going off at the 25-minute mark. And,to be honest, I found the restriction on breaks to be annoying. So I took it off my phone. Other tools, probably too numerous to list, have met the same fate.