HOW TIME FLIES!

In my Fall "busy-ness" (and still no online computer at home), my blog time has fallen behind. As I said, though, I've been busy on many fronts.

HOUSE UPDATE: We have been moving slowly but surely on the progress of things at the house. My brother, father and I have been diligently cleaning out over the past few months, as we've had weekends free to do so. We're just about to where we want to be, although we still lack a couple of more cleaning sessions - we can only do this when we can get a dumpster, too. We've had the roofing company here this past week before Thanksgiving working on putting on a new roof. They still have to do the shingles, but by next week - the roof should be complete. Then, it's on to the inside - this is where things can REALLY get started. Our estimated completion time has now moved up to probably sometime this next summer.

FUMC: Things at Faith UMC have been busy. There's always a lot going on, it seems, which I love. I'm always planning ahead, while still working with the folks on what's currently happening. We had a great outing on October 29th - it was an annual event called "Trunk 'n Treat. It was sort of the culmination of the Pumpkin Patch that we had all through the month of October. We had our children's & youth ensemble sing as well as Sherry and I. Most of the work, however, has been on our Christmas Musical for this year - "Once Upon A Child." All of the groups are coming along nicely with it, although there are some sound concerns which we'll have to address to bring things to fruition. Now that Thanksgiving is over, we're into the home stretch - pretty much just doing run-throughs until we present in about 2 weeks. Once all that is over (whew!), then we'll be able to concentrate on the rest of the holiday music as we move toward Christmas Eve.

CROSSROADS: Sherry and I had an opportunity to travel to Flagler Beach to sing a the Family Fall Festival put on my Flagler Beach United Methodist Church. Our good friend, Pastor Doug Swan was in charge of the festivities. We left on Friday night - the 3rd of November - and stayed in Micanopy overnight and then drove on to Flagler Beach the next morning. It was a chilly and windy day. We sang two sets - one outside on the stage and one inside. It was a pretty full day topped off in the evening with a treat of dinner by Doug at a place there called Alfie's. We spent the night in Daytona Beach before coming back on Sunday the 5th. Sherry is slated to sing at the Shalimar Church in Port Richey on the first Sunday of December. She will have some help from her oldest daughter, Tayna, as I cannot attend that one.

THANKSGIVING: One of the great benefits of working for the school system is that we get the entire week of Thanksgiving off (at least until they change it! - which hopefully they won't). This is a great breather for me - I can get a lot done around the house as well as things I've been putting off that must get done. It also gives me the opportunity to travel to north Florida and visit with my mother and her husband, as well as my sister who lives in Thomasville, GA. It's always a great time and is nice to "get out of Dodge" for a while - it's a whole other world up there! But, I had a great visit. We had Thanksgiving at my sister - Rebecca's - house. The only bad thing was that the Bucs were, once again, disappointing in their blowout loss to Dallas. I drove back yesterday and it's nice to have a day before I get back to work.

DA BUCS: I don't know what to say! I get so frustrated with this team - I realize not every year can be THE year and that there has to be someone who's on the bottom. I guess it's just that we haven't been this far down in a long time - we've gotten un-used to it. We sort of always had the defense to bail us out - but that's gone, now too. We lost too many good assistant coaches and the veteran players (for the most part) on the defense are too aged to play the way the "Tampa 2" is supposed to be played, I think. So, with the combination of the above, plus a difficult schedule, plus a lot of young and rookie players (including quarterback) - we are where we are. I hope they don't look too hard at replacing Jon Gruden - I think a major coaching change is what the team DOES NOT need - they all need a chance to get the "new" Bucs team to gel. It's embarrasing, but I will continue to watch.