I can't fix it...

I can't fix it... no matter how much I want to, no matter how obvious it is to me, no matter how much it breaks my heart or causes me to pound my head against the wall in frustration.

I can't fix it... no matter how much I try, no matter what limits of myself I press to, no matter what amount of energy I expend.

I can't fix it... no matter how much they want it fixed, no matter how much they turn to me, no matter what they expect from me.

I can't fix it... and when I try, when I let myself believe that I can, I always wind up here - disappointed, frustrated, defeated, and angry at me and them.

I can't fix it... and really, why would I think I could? I can't even fix me.

I can't fix it... but there is One who can.

I can't fix it... and even knowing that, I can't make them go to Him - I can only point tp Him.

I can't fix it... but I can walk along side them until they make the choice to take it to Him.

I can't fix it... but I can take their hand and stand with them as they make the journey.

I can't fix it... so I have to let go, to put MY trust in the very One who I am asking them to trust.

At long last...

Well, after almost exactly two weeks, I finally have a functional heating/cooling system again, as of yesterday afternoon. And just in time too, as this weekend looks like our first extended stretch of hot/humid weather.

They finally got the additional parts I needed and were out yesterday afternoon to fix the furnace blower. I have a service contract on my furnace, so I won't actually be charged anything additional, but they did fill out and give me a copy of the bill - $1300+. Let's just say I'm making out like a bandit on that service contract at this point. At current reates, I could keep the service contract in place for about another 9-10 years, not need any additional work done, and still be money ahead. In fact, the repairman said that they are thinking about changing their contracts to put a limit on the amount they'll cover in fixing a blower motor (mine is a little more complicated than a standard blower system apparently) specifically because they saw how much my parts were. Oh well, I'm not paying this time, and I would say that if the motor blows up again any time soon, it'll be time to replace the entire unit.

Vintage Grape Juice

This happened yesterday, and I was going to post about it yesterday, but I felt like 3 posts in one day after a month of silence was both a bit gratuitous, and would also set a standard that I could possibly hope to come close to ever again. And so, here we are.

Anyhow, I was putting away some dishes yesterday, and I wound up opening a kitchen cabinet that is probably the one I open least frequently. Don't get me wrong, it's not some deep abyss, I probably go into it at least once every month or so. However, there's not much up there that I regularly use. Anyhow, this time, for whatever reason, something caught my attention that I felt was worth investigating. It was an unopened bottle of Giant brand grape juice that made me wonder: "Hmmmm, how long has THAT been in there?" I really didn't know, but I was sure it was a pretty darn long time.

So, I pull the thing out and take a look at the cap. "Sell by: 9/22/04" Whoa. Now, by itself, that might not be the biggest story ever. I'm sure many folks have things that time forgot buried deep in their cupboards. The catch in this case - I've only lived in this house since May 2005.

That's right, when I moved, I brought along a bottle of grape juice that was 7 months expired, and now have kept it for an additional 4 years! Tonight when I got home, I grabbed it and actually opened the thing just to take a whiff, because, well, aren't you almost obligated to do that in such a situation? It still hasn't made it to the dumpster yet, and we'll see just how long that takes.

My heating/cooling saga

Now that I'm in the blogging mood, I might as well tell this story...

My A/C is currently not functional. Well, that's not really true. The A/C is working just fine. In fact, so is the actually heating unit in the furnace. The problem is that the furnace blower won't run, which means that the wonderful cool (or warm, depending on the situation) won't leave the furance and head into the rest of the house. This happened a week from last Friday. My A/C takes a long time to get the temperature down if it gets behind, but does a great job of maintaining once it gets to the right temperature, so I usually try to anticipate with the forecast when I turn it on. Friday was not that warm, but it was to get pretty hot on Saturday, so I threw the A/C on when I got home on Friday night. It ran for a while, and then cut off. I thought that it had been a rather short cycle, but didn't think much of it until I went outside a bit later and realized that the A/C unit itself was still running. Oops. After some quick self-diagnostics confirmed the issue was that the blower wasn't working, I called the repair company and they came out on Saturday, confirmed what I already knew, sort of, and ordered the part. Fortunately, Saturday was a single hot day, rather than the beginning of a wave, and it cooled off very nicely overnight so I was able to keep the house very comfortable.

On Wednesday, they came back out with the part. Unfortunately, it turns out that there are 3 different parts involved in making the blower run, and the part they replaced was not the one that was causing the problem, at least, not all by itself. So, we're playing this game again at some point this week once the other 2 parts come in. Anyhow, not a huge deal, it wasn't that warm during the week. There were, however, several pretty warm days toward the end of the week, and by Saturday night, it had gotten to right about the point in my bedroom where I start to be uncomfortable sleeping. Fortunately, again, it was a pretty cool evening already, so I was able to open up the house and cool things down a bit before bedtime, and then by Sunday morning, it was perfectly comfortable in the house.

This, however, is where I should have checked the forecast. I'm figuring it's going to warm up later in the day, so I'll leave the house open for a while and then close things up in the afternoon so it doesn't get too warm in the house. So, I went downstairs to the basement (which is easily the most stable part of the house temperature-wise) for a few hours. Little did I know that we were looking at a high of about 60 for yesterday, so when I came back upstairs, it was about 58 in my kitchen (it was still about 55 outside), 62 in my living room, and not much warmer in my bedroom, with no real hope of help from the weather for warming things up, and no functional heating.

So, I did what any resourceful person would do in this situation: I put the oven on the cleaning cycle. This was actually quite fortuitious, because it needed done, and I always have a hard time figuring out when to do it, because if I'm running the heat or the A/C, it winds up making the temperature in the house really uneven, because it's maybe 10 feet from the thermostat. In this case, it was just the ticket to make the house quasi-comfortable again.

Now, if only they would actually get the parts and get out here to fix the thing so I don't have to be creative again in the future, it would be great!

More Falcon magic

I've been pondering my return to the blog for the last several days, but being that I'd gone almost a month since posting, I really felt like I wanted to come back with a bang. Well, as they've made a habit of doing over the past number of years, some Messiah College athletes gave me a perfect opportunity.

With a 2-0 win over Coe in this afternoon's national championship game, the Messiah College Lady Falcon softball is your 2009 NCAA champions. The championship, which is the first for the softball program, is the 3rd championship for Messiah teams this academic year, and the 9th for the athletic program overall, with all of them having come since the fall of 2000. I've been over the incredible run Messiah athletics has been on over the past decade a number of times, and it just keeps on rolling. This one, more so than any in recent memory, however, came completely from of the radar at the beginning of the season. The Lady Falcons were 22-21 last year, and didn't even make the championship game of the conference tournament, so I don't think anyone forsaw the magically 43-4 run that ended this afternoon with them hoisting the walnut and bronze trophy that signifies a national championship. I believe I read where a 30 win season was the team's pre-season goal.

However, in softball, as much as in probably any team sport out there, it only takes one 1 player to make a complete and total difference, as long as that player is your pitcher. Such was the case for the Lady Falcons this year, as they rode the arm of freshman sensation Jessica Rhoads to paydirt. The numbers were just staggering - a final record of 28-1, an era of roughly .5, averaging almost 2 strikeouts per inning, holding opponent's to a batting average of about .080, and it all culminated in a 4 game run at the College World Series in which she allowed only 1 run (in the first game of the tournamet) In what will have to go down as one of the all-time great awards "snubs", I believe I read the other day that Rhoads was not named as an All-American. That really speaks to just how much Messiah came out of nowhere - they weren't even ranked until NCAA tournament time, and then they were very near the bottom of the Top 25.

Anyhow, it's just incredible to see another Messiah championship go in the books! Let's go Falcons!

(Oh, and for the record, I just scooped both Messiah's athletics homepage and the official site of the D-III softball national championship with this report. I rock! :-) )