Back from "mini-vacation"

Hello again, blogfans!

We're back from Abilene, which is where we've been since last Thursday visiting MDB's brother and his wife. It was an interesting trip!

On the way up, we decided to stop in Snook, Texas to eat at Sodolak's steak house, home of "chicken-fried bacon."

Yes......chicken fried bacon.

You can read about it here on MDB's blog!

Actually, it wasn't half bad and not nearly as greasy as you might think. We arrived in Abilene in the mid-afternoon and basically just relaxed for the rest of the day.

On Friday, we got up and took a little drive. We like the area and we're interested in finding property in the vicinity, so we started the "scoping out" process. Then, we drove back into Abilene and met an old and dear friend for lunch.

Yes, even though it was the first "face to face" for us, my friend Kathy, MDB, and I had a very nice lunch together and spent a wonderful time talking. A little history;

Kathy was one of the originals on the old IWon.com politics chat board, a place I used to frequent with some regularity beginning 1999/2000 or so. When discourse became absolutely vulgar and when attitudes towards Christians became totally untenable, I formed my own chat board on the Network 54 Website called "Jesus Is Lord." Kathy was one of the more frequent and reliable contributors. Well, as things usually go, our little group on JIL gradually dwindled until there weren't many of us left at all, so I opened it up to the public. Big mistake........HUGE!

JIL, which had been home to some of the most erudite and sophisticated Christian dialogue I'd ever been exposed to, became the home of anti-Christian, JW, and CoJCoLDS spam, making it completely unsavory for any of the previous posters. Even though we tried to reason with them as best we could, like IWon before it, the spamers were more interested in disruption and divisiveness than in meaningful dialogue, so I shut it down.

It was a sad day.

I started another one after that called "Jesus Is Lord of All," but it was never the same and I deleted it a couple of years ago mostly because of the lack of interest. To be fair, I never had the time for it after I was laid off in 2003 and my lack of attention killed it as much as anything.

In any case, through it all, Kathy remained steadfast and was always a thoughtful, well-stated and articulate poster and, above all, she became a good "cyber friend" and a beloved sister in Christ, so it was really good to meet her finally!

Saturday, we drove down from Abilene toward Ballinger then east toward Coleman and back to Abilene. The area between Ballinger and Coleman was really very pretty; rolling hills, large oaks, mesquite, and cedar. We spent a lot of time going through MDB's brother's father-in-law's place in Ballinger. It has some really spectacular terrain and a couple of spring-fed tanks that hold some fairly large bass (we spent time catching some of them on Sunday).

Speaking of Sunday, we went to church at Highland CofC with Kathy on Sunday morning and really enjoyed the service. We were unable to stay for Sunday School, but the service and the sermon were really awesome!

Sunday, we loaded up and went back to Ballinger again, this time to fish the tanks previously mentioned. Most of the large-mouth bass we caught were in the 1 1/2 to 2 pound range. We threw them all back of course, but they were a lot of fun to catch none-the-less.

Last night, we got a call late. A tropical storm had developed in the Gulf and was headed for our back door! We drove all day and made it home at around 3, spending the rest of today making preparation for the coming storm.

God, let it be a mild one, I pray, and let no one get hurt in the storm, the flooding, or the aftermath of the storm. I ask it in Jesus' name, amen!