We Get Strange Phone Calls
The fireplace business in fall and winter is a hoot. There may be a little sarcasm in that statement.
People call with all sorts of questions, requests, opinions of how we do things. The most difficult part of this job is the language barrier — certain common terms, like “insert”, mean something altogether different to us than they do most people. So occasionally — well, quite often — our initial contact with a customer involves asking lots of questions to make sure we’re on the same page with them. Questions annoy some people. We don’t ask to bug people, we ask because it’s our responsibility to get clear on what they want.
Last week one of the owners fielded a phone call from a guy who wanted to put a wood-burning stove on a boat. Apparently there are small wood-burning stoves that can be put into trailers (as in trailers with wheels that get pulled behind vehicles; there are several wood-burning stoves that can be installed in mobile homes), or into tiny houses. We’re unaware of any that are approved for use on a boat. We couldn’t help him, but the boss said it was one of the weirdest conversations he’d had since coming to work there.
I was accused of being a scam artist a few weeks ago by a fellow who had acquired a wood-burning insert from a friend and wanted to install it into his home. He had some pipe, and a plan, and just needed us to provide him with two 90-degree elbows. What he didn’t know: What kind of stove it was. Or what type of pipe he already had, so we couldn’t match it, meaning the pieces wouldn’t lock together and might come disconnected at the worst possible moment, like when he was burning a fire. He also didn’t understand that the more elbows you introduce into a chimney (and venting a wood stove is called a chimney) the more you drag the draw, which increases the likelihood that every time he fires the stove up his house will fill up with smoke. I explained that, to code, we could help him with the entire chimney, but without knowing what sort of pipe he already had we couldn’t just sell him some elbows. He stated that we had quite the scam going. I apologized that we wouldn’t be able to help him, thanked him for calling, and said to have a nice day. And hung up. I don’t know if he found his elbows elsewhere, but if he did I hope he doesn’t have any disasters in the offing.
A few weeks back we received a call from one of our customers who’d purchased a wood-burning stove and was going to install it himself. Unfortunately he’d gotten himself in a bind and needed us to bail him out. He explained the situation, one of our most experienced people tried to find a solution, but it’s not something we can really solve for him. In short, he boogered it up. It’s unfortunate, but as many times as we try to tell people that installing a wood stove, or a set of gas logs, or a gas fireplace, is not a job for someone with no experience and (in the case of gas) no gas technician certification, people believe they can watch a few YouTube videos and glean enough knowledge to get them through. When it doesn’t work, we can’t send one of our technicians because of liability issues.
The customers who purchase wood-burning stoves and actually know what they’re doing to install are a Godsend. We love them. They don’t need any help from us and that makes us very happy.
The customers who purchase a wood or gas appliance and try to install it themselves without any experience, knowledge or certifications give us headaches. They always want us to extricate them from their dilemmas, and get angry when we explain that we can’t.
Most of the phone calls I receive from gas customers who decided to save a couple hundred bucks and install their gas logs themselves have purchased an electronic ignition system. Electronic ignition systems are persnickety. There are no-kidding certified gas technicians who don’t like to install electronic ignition systems because they’re a royal pain. Whatever system the gas logs have, though, there are pressure measurements that have to be performed, and if the pressure going into and coming out of the valve doesn’t fall within parameters, the burner won’t work. Most homeowners have no idea how to do this, nor do they have the equipment to accomplish it. We sold a display contemporary burner system with glass at a substantially reduced price to a customer who decided to have a non-gas-technician buddy of his install it for him. The guy had no idea what he was doing, the pressure coming into the valve was too high and he blew up the valve. Not literally, but the innards of the valve were damaged and he needed a new valve. That’s about $200-$300 right there, and he had no warranty as it was voided when he had his non-gas-technician buddy install it. He was furious. I don’t think our explanation that he had pretty much nailed his own head to the wall on this (not that we used those words, exactly) was any comfort to him.
It’s not worth saving $200 if you end up with a $1400 boat anchor sitting in your fireplace.
Not a phone call, but another customer experience. This past Saturday a woman came in with a man (husband? boyfriend? brother? no idea, as he did no talking whatsoever) and said she’d called earlier and talked to someone, didn’t remember who, it was a woman (which eliminates only one person). She wanted to buy gas logs that day, 18″, or maybe 24″, and they said she could do that. And she can, but we need information. The size of the fireplace, for example. A person standing there pointing at something on the sales floor and stating, “It looks like that” is not sufficient information. I was able to determine that she has a universal vent-free box, or at least she claims to. And she’s replacing vent-free logs already installed in the box. And she was “buying today”, as she repeated several times. I explained we still needed the measurement information. She didn’t want to provide it, she only wanted to make the one trip and she was there to buy. “Today.”
One of the more interesting things in such conversations is the tone customers take. Some people regard retail workers as lesser beings. She was talking about a $600 log set, the least expensive one we sell, and expecting us to disregard our procedures designed to protect her and us, and keep everybody out of court, over a $600 sale.
Huh-uh. Not happening.
Eventually she accepted a measurement sheet and left in a huff. The male companion followed her out, having uttered not a word. The only action I observed from him was when it was becoming clear that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted from me sans information, and he backed up like he was expecting fireworks. There weren’t any, but I hope she didn’t attack him once they got in the car because none of that was his fault.
Ah, well. So it goes. As for retail workers being lesser beings, people should be more careful. Most of the people I assist have no idea that I served 20 years in the military as an officer in the field of command and control, that I was one of the first women in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University, that I have a BS from that institution and an MS in Systems Management from the University of Southern California. And I never learned to suffer fools gladly.
Be nice to the retail workers. They put up with an awful lot of nasty stuff from people who have no idea who they’re talking to. And our bosses frown on our punching people dead in the face.
Here We Go Again
A few weeks ago our worship pastor announced at the end of a rehearsal that he and his family would be leaving and going to a church in Texas. Conroe, Texas, interestingly enough.
I graduated from Conroe High School in 1974. Yes, I’m old.
My brother lives in the Woodlands, which is between Conroe and Houston. My aunt and uncle (my mother’s youngest sibling and the only one in her family still alive) still live there.
Life is funny.
I know that when you hand your life over to God, and commit yourself to following His plan even when it involves doing things you don’t necessarily want to do, you’re in it full weight. Our now-outgoing worship pastor told us he was sad to leave, but that events came together and made it clear that this is what they were supposed to do.
I was sitting in the sanctuary listening and thinking, Here we go again.
At the end of 2013, when our interim (for 3 years) worship leader (he isn’t a pastor) left and we hired a young fellow who couldn’t read music I thought things couldn’t get any worse. I was wrong, of course; things can always get worse. I hadn’t envisioned us hiring a musically-clueless sociopath.
I’m not kidding. The destruction he wreaked on the music program and worship ministry was considerable. I can’t say for sure whether he did it deliberately or if he was so out of his depth and convinced of his own infallibility that the destruction was inadvertent.
There are many posts outlining why I think that. My experiences working for this guy, for nearly two years, are documented. I suppose you could go looking for them if you seriously had nothing else to do. I don’t want to go over it again. Suffice it to say, I spent that entire nearly-two-year period questioning God on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis: What in the world are You doing?
He never answered me, of course. God owes me nothing. He is in control and there’s a purpose to everything He does, and everything He allows to happen. I couldn’t see it then. Maybe I see it now, I’m not sure.
I think maybe what He wanted to show me, and all of us in the worship ministry at our church, is that there is no one who can roll in and inflict so much damage on a ministry that He can’t bring someone in who is willing to be used by Him to not only repair the damage, but make the ministry better.
That’s exactly what our now-outgoing worship pastor did. I’ve been wondering for the past two years how we ended up with someone who had come from such a larger ministry, thousands of people in every service, closely connected with so many of the movers-and-shakers in the praise and worship music industry, and yet here he was in our little church, dragging us up from the pit we were in, whether we were interested in cooperating or not, and showing us that we could be better and that healing wasn’t impossible. It now seems to me that God sent him to us to help us. And he was willing to come and do that, although I wonder if sometimes he was up in the front of the sanctuary looking at the tiny group in the room (relatively speaking; probably a smaller number than was in the group of ushers at his previous church) when he was used to looking at thousands of people and a bazillion lights and cameras and wondering how in the world he ended up there.
There is no way we are ever going to be able to express our gratitude sufficiently. It’s not that he saved us; God saved us. But he was willing to be used by God to bring that to pass.
Thank you, Allen. I’m sorry you and your family are leaving. I know you have to go. Mims Baptist Church will be blessed. We’ll all be together in Heaven one day, worshiping around the throne of God and it’s going to be absolutely stupendous.
In the meantime, we’ll take the lessons you taught us and try to keep on the path. Godspeed.
Silly Season in the Fireplace Biz
So much for keeping up with this blog. Oh, well.
I work at a store that sells gas fireplace logs, fireplaces (wood-burning and gas), outdoor kitchens, grills, wood-burning stoves and inserts, and a lot of other cool stuff. We usually aren’t all that busy in the summer, but this summer was an exception. We never really got much of a break, which made it difficult to keep up with price changes and updating estimate sheets. Plus we never got much of a chance to play with the grills we have so we can be familiar with how they work and get to eat good food. People were home this spring and summer and we sold a lot of grills and a lot of charcoal.
One additional challenge this year is our distributors and manufacturers are out of stuff. A lot of stuff. One distributor has called in all of their outside sales people to work on the factory floor. I am not making that up. Seems their manufacturing work force got so much money to stay home they don’t want to come back to work. The manufacturers are so far behind they’re estimating some of what their retailers need won’t be available until next year. This is what happens when the borders close and the supply chains are shut off, even for a short time. It takes many months to catch up. We’ll all be lucky to be back to whatever passes for normal by spring. Assuming some other crisis, manufactured or otherwise, doesn’t explode.
Silly season generally begins in October. We started a bit earlier this year, which is good for business, of course. We get to keep our jobs for awhile longer. But it doesn’t bode well for our sanity or mental peace as the holidays get closer. We’re already getting people who think they’re ahead of the curve for having fireplaces and gas logs installed. Hint: They should have shown up a month ago.
The phone calls have started from people needing help with their remotes. They tried to turn on their gas logs, not working, want us to send a technician. Sure, how does late November sound (we’re that far out scheduling already)? Hint: Change the batteries. All of them. There are 4 AA’s in the receiver box in the fireplace. That’s the thing hooked to the valve that tells it when to turn the burner on and off.
Then there are people with propane who can’t get their logs to light. Hint: Check the valve on the tank; if the propane company guy filled up the tank recently he probably shut the valve off. If it’s turned off, the gas won’t flow anywhere. Also, give the air in the lines time to work its way out.
I fielded a phone call from a young woman last week. She and her husband are building a house. She’s decided, even though construction is underway and this particular addition was never planned for, that she wants a free-standing wood-burning stove in the house. Where she wants to place it is directly underneath the master bedroom on the second floor. So lots of pipe, including what’s needed to pass the pipe through the attic and out the roof. One saving grace: The termination is near the peak of the roof, so perhaps they won’t need a lot of exterior pipe. Problem: The pipe will be passing through the master bedroom. She thought they might “bend” the pipe a little so it could pass through the closet instead.
If any of that sounds like a remarkably bad idea, congratulations. You just might be qualified to safely place a wood-burning stove. I started talking to her about clearances and staying away from any combustibles and joists and whatnot. I didn’t even get into not being able to use the closet for anything if there was an occasionally extremely hot metal pipe running through it. She seemed a bit baffled and said she and her husband would look the situation over when they went out to check on the house that day. Haven’t heard from her since. Hopefully she’s letting that dream go, as I’m not sure it’s possible to do what she wants safely. Plus they’ll need a minimum (I’m guessing) of 30 feet of pipe. That’ll run them well in excess of $2,000, figuring in interior double-walled pipe, exterior insulated galvanized pipe, ceiling support boxes, firestops, an attic insulation kit, flashing, storm collar and termination cap.
There’s more to installing a wood-burning thing than most people realize. That is, if you’re not interested in burning your house down. You cannot vent a stove out of a window. And yes the pipe has to go up, and it has to clear the roof line by at least 3 feet and be at least 2 feet higher than anything within 10 feet.
Then there are the people who got a stove from someone, a friend or they inherited it from a family member. And they just need the pipe. It’s amazing how many people think you can take cheap black (interior) pipe and run it all the way up and out of the roof. They’re always astounded when you tell them any of that on the outside will rust. They might get a year out of it. And there’s no way to attach a termination cap / spark arrester to interior pipe. Not even with duct tape.
I always enjoy the folks that have some pipe and just need another section, 36″ or 48″ or so. They never have any idea who the manufacturer of the pipe they already have is, no idea that each manufacturer machines the ends of their pipe a bit differently, so if you mix pipe from different manufacturers it will never lock properly and at some point will pop apart. Probably while the stove is burning. I’ve never actually told anyone to keep a fire extinguisher handy and know your emergency evacuation plan well, but it would be good advice.
One fellow called a few weeks ago having gotten a wood-burning fireplace from somebody and he just wanted to install it. Wood-burning fireplaces use different pipe from wood-burning stoves. He told me what he needed, I told him how much it would cost and he reeled around for awhile wailing about how expensive it was. Well, yes. Good safe pipe is expensive. Never heard from him again either. I hope he found good pipe somewhere, because if there’s one thing you don’t want to skimp on, it’s venting for an extremely hot appliance.
Yesterday the manager fielded a call from a fellow who wanted to put a wood-burning stove outside. Cast iron rusts. So does steel, if it’s not stainless. That’s an awful lot of money to throw away, putting something in an environment it was never made to work in.
What we haven’t had so far, although they’re coming, they do every year, are the people who refuse to give us any information about what they’re putting the gas logs they want into. No measurements, no indication the fireplace has been inspected and deemed safe by a certified chimney sweep, no clearance to combustible information. It’s always charming when a customer, and it’s usually a man, starts bellowing in your face about not having to tell us anything and just sell him the logs.
We don’t work that way. It’s how the business has managed to stay out of court for 41 years, so far. We try not to kill our customers, and we try not to help them kill themselves. The belligerent ones never win the argument, but apparently they aren’t getting that word out to each other. Maybe they don’t actually have meetings. They should, it might help.
I’m not complaining. I’m grateful to have a job. It’s just that the free-floating stupid seems to get worse every year, and this year people are also stressed and angry.
It’s gonna be a wonderful holiday season. God is teaching me something. Hopefully it doesn’t have anything to do with jail.
Marketing Confuses Some People
A customer just called. His gas logs were installed in February. Seems our installer told him he could get a large artificial pine cone to put in front of the valve to hide it. And he can. We’d have to order it.
His assumption was that the pine cone came with because the log set he bought has a photo in the brochure that has the pine cone sitting there. It doesn’t, of course. It’s a marketing photo which as we all know, if we’re paying attention, doesn’t necessarily reflect reality.
For example:
Buy a Mercedes, get a lion that knows how to drive.
Sheez.
Choose a Side
Today on Facebook I got into a bit of a rock-throwing contest with a Democrat. I know this person personally, although not well, and over the years he’s made it clear that he drank the Kool-Aid and is a True Believer in the Democratic Party Line.
The issue was a video posted by another person (also someone I actually know IRL) supposedly addressing Joe “Where Am I” Biden’s threat to confiscate someone’s “AR-14.” I didn’t watch the video, so cannot comment on it. The Democrat, apparently an expert in ballistics, posted this:
The salient comment is where he claims his party doesn’t want our guns. Anyone who has been paying attention at all for the past few decades knows that’s an outright lie.
Of course, I had to put in my comment. No, I have no sense. Gray is me, brown is the Democrat.
The “LOL” icon is his response. Apparently he thinks that’s part of intelligent discourse. Which would explain this:
His first mistake, besides aligning himself with a political party whose stated objectives include continuing the systematic murder of all the unborn babies they can get their mitts on, was assuming I’m a Republican.
Nope. I’ve never been a member of any party. My mother told me many times that aligning yourself with any party was a mistake. She voted Democrat, but she never joined the party. She’d be horrified to see what the Democrats have turned into.
Another mistake was using a meme as an argument. The vapidity and lack of serious thought is amazing.
Yet another mistake was the response of “whatever.” A person says that when they don’t have an argument and they know it.
Here’s the thing. Aligning yourself with the Democrats, or the Republicans for that matter, is buying into everything they stand for. Assuming you can figure out what that is. The Democrats have made figuring out what they’re all about easy. Frightening, but easy.
The Democrats are the party of kill-all-the-babies. The Democrats are the party of letting cities burn and thugs and hoodlums victimize citizens and doing nothing to stop it, not even speaking out against it. The Democrats do want our weapons, and our ammo, because without those we can’t defend ourselves against the fascists who want to control every iota of our existence. The Democrats are the party of the destruction of Christianity, as much as they can manage it, because we’re standing in the way of letting everybody do whatever they want to do, to whomever, for as long and as often as they want.
I have a co-worker who’s a Democrat. She’ll tell you at the slightest hint of interest that she’s a Democrat and her father was a Democrat so she’s going to be a Democrat forever. Never mind that the Democrats are nothing like they were when her father was living. She’ll also tell you she doesn’t support everything they’re for. She is, for instance, against abortion.
But it doesn’t work that way. You call yourself a Democrat, you’re in for the whole thing. Even if you don’t agree with certain bits and pieces. It doesn’t matter. As a Democrat you support, if in no other way than by voting for a Democratic candidate, abortion and gun confiscation and the LGBTQ revolution and the destruction of the family and the suppression of Christianity and the sweeping aside of anyone who gets in their way.
Because that’s what the candidates believe. Listen to the words coming out of their mouths.
There’s a meme running around Facebook of a quote attributed to Maya Angelou. It says, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”
Indeed.
What do I believe? I believe in leaving people alone and letting them live their lives as they see fit. I believe that all lives matter, even as-yet unborn ones. I believe in letting parents decide where their children will attend school. I believe that an armed society is a polite society. I believe in salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ and that He is the only way to Heaven. I believe that if a person chooses to follow another path, they should be allowed to do it without interference.
God gave us free will. And He honors our choices. Even when they break His heart.
I follow His lead.
James Clyburn Says Trump Is Mussolini
I meant to post about this when I saw the headline, about 3 weeks ago. Didn’t. Oh, well. It’s a blog, not a news service.
You can follow the title link if you’re so inclined to read about what James Clyburn thinks about President Trump. He’s Mussolini, according to the House Majority Whip and representative of South Carolina’s 6th District, which includes part of the county we live in, but not the part we live in.
It never fails, the Democrats’ ability to project on others their own motivations, thoughts, intentions. When the Clintons left the White House their staff (might have been Hillary too, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised) left a considerable amount of damage behind. No outgoing Republican president’s staff (or family members) have ever done such a thing.
Clyburn states he doesn’t believe Trump intends to “leave the White House” peacefully. He also thinks Putin is Hitler.
So, where are the concentration camps? I don’t dispute that Putin has a habit of dealing with his adversaries in a permanent way, but as far as I know he hasn’t yet embarked on a program of systematic oppression, incarceration, torture and genocide of millions. Maybe I missed it. Somebody send me a link.
I’m not a fan of Putin, by the way. He’s a KGB colonel and will always be, whatever his present job title. KGB officers are not nice people.
I’m aware of the present foofaraw regarding the latest development in the slow implosion of the U. S. Postal Service. It’s been in decline for decades. Some of the latest alarm is centered around removing mail boxes. The Post Awful has been doing that for a long time, when demand in those areas declines to the point that leaving a mailbox in place, which requires a postal employee to visit it, empty it, and cart whatever little is inside it to a postal center, becomes a financial drain that can’t be justified.
I’m more concerned about the hoopla about mail-in ballots, which by the way are a completely different critter from absentee ballots. Mail-in ballots are sent not by your local government agency for voter registration, but by non-profits who have an interest in gaining your personal information so they can use it for whatever nefarious purposes they may have. Absentee ballots require that you prove who you say you are; I voted absentee many times during my 20 years in the Air Force, as I spent most of my time overseas. A mail-in ballot, which will show up to a person’s address multiple times without being asked for, is simply an attempt to get you to tell them information like your social security number. Why anyone in this day and age would willingly scrawl their social security number on a piece of paper they didn’t request and then send it back to the address someone else printed on the form is beyond me.
The Democrats are claiming Trump is adopting “strong-arm tactics.” This is is response to his attempt to do what the local government in Portland, for example, is steadfastly refusing to do: protect their own citizens from the “peaceful protesters” who are systematically burning down their city.
I wonder what sort of thought process a person has to go through to get to the conclusion that eliminating the police will turn the whole place into utopia, complete with pink fluffy bunnies and unicorns farting rainbows. Actually what happens is the bad guys, once they realize they can do whatever they want to do, to whomever they wish to do it, and as often as they want to, will do exactly that. And the hapless law-abiding citizens who live there will be destroyed along with their city. The police, once jettisoned, will not come back. The evil crowd will come to their homes and there will be no one to help them.
My older sister lives in Oregon. Not sure where, exactly. Might be near Portland. She’s solidly in agreement with BLM et. al. And when they come to destroy her, she will be utterly unable to defend herself. She thinks she’s immune.
Nobody is. Vote carefully.
My husband and his siblings have a story they like to tell about their maternal grandfather. I’ve never understood their pride in it.
Hubby’s mother was English. His dad met her while stationed in England. Her father, according to family lore, was stubborn. So stubborn, in fact, that their claim is that his word was law. No matter what the situation. “If he said this was black,” someone will say, holding up a white sheet of paper, “it was black.”
Reality doesn’t work that way. We humans don’t get to shift or change reality, or truth, to suit us. Things are what they are. No matter how much a person may wish to change reality, it isn’t within our power.
There was a time I read Kathleen Parker’s columns. I liked what she said and how she said it. That changed some years ago. I can’t quite recall when or what she said that made me wonder about her perceptions of the world. At some point time I stopped reading her because she has, judging from her columns, at best a tenuous grip on reality.
There’s a column that was published recently in the local paper. The date on it is July 24, 2020 (I had to find it online elsewhere; we have a subscription to the local paper but online access has to have an account attached to it and I’ve never been able to make it work). It starts with the assertion that Black Lives Matter (aka BLM) is only trying to correct injustice heaped on the heads of black people everywhere. As if there weren’t injustice everywhere, for everybody.
Only a fool would question the implications of the Black Lives Matter movement — and I’m not about to rush in.
Like all movements, reforms, crusades and wars, this one has the potential for unintended consequences, the most serious of which would be a countermovement of contempt or, worse, dismissal of the important message BLM activists have tried to convey. I’ve never had any trouble understanding those messages and am impatient with those who insist that all lives matter.
Of course they do, but that’s not the point. The best retort to this common refrain was a tweet I saw recently that read: “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter, (too).”
Apparently she missed the announcement by their founders that they are, in fact, Marxists: https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-co-founder-describes-herself-as-trained-marxist/
I suppose it’s possible that Ms. Parker has managed to get so many years into her life in this world without grasping who Marxists are, or what they want. That’s the only reason I can imagine that she continues in her column to claim support for the group now systematically destroying Portland and Seattle, among other places.
She cherry-picks incidents, in one case going back seven years to cite something that happened to Oprah Winfrey in Switzerland.
I don’t dispute that bad things happen. This world is broken. Bad things have been happening since we arrogantly betrayed our Creator in The Garden. His plan for us is to rescue us from our arrogant stupidity, eventually, in the meantime teaching and molding us. We’re not supposed to be cruel to one another. We’re not supposed to hurt each other.
God gave us free will. We have choices. All of us. Some of us are making extremely bad ones.
The news today is that they’re burning Bibles in Portland. If George Floyd was, as I also read, a Christian, this does not honor him. But then the riots and arson and wanton destruction has never been about George Floyd, or any other victim of “systemic racism”, whatever that means.
How is it possible to have “systemic racism” in a country that elected a black President? Twice?
It’s an excuse. The objective is to destroy America. What America stands for is anathema to this crowd. They don’t want anyone to have the freedom to speak their minds, to raise their children as they choose, to have homes in safe cities and towns where they don’t have to worry about being hauled out into the street because of the color of their skin or religious choice and beaten. They don’t want the churches to exist, to help other people, to spread the word about Jesus.
I suppose all this might sound like paranoid shrieking to some. The truth is, however, that as bad as things have always been, they’re getting worse. The enemy, the devil, knows he’s running out of time. He’s stepping up his efforts and there are people in cities like Portland and Seattle who are watching everything they worked so hard for be destroyed by people who don’t care what kind of pain and destruction they have to inflict, just so they get their way.
I wake up every morning a bit surprised that I’m still here. And, honestly, a bit disappointed. I keep expecting the Rapture. It’s coming, I know, and I’m ready. But God doesn’t work on my schedule. For all I know, the Rapture isn’t happening for another year, or 10 years, or 20 years, or 100 years. Nobody knows but God, and He’s not telling.
Best to be ready to go, though. Because after it happens, as bad as things are, they’re going to be much, much worse. And then even worse.
One of my co-workers just spent a considerable amount of time working with a customer trying to get a house ready to sell. It was built in the 90s by a major homebuilder who shall remain nameless, because apparently both wood-burning fireplaces were installed with their chimneys terminating in the attic.
If this seems unsafe to you, congratulations. You’re smarter than the contractors who built the thing.
My co-worker finally had to explain that we couldn’t get the pipe for the fireplaces as they’re no longer made, company went out of business, pipe not available. So she was telling him about vent-free gas inserts.
All was proceeding swimmingly until she quoted a price to run the gas line.
“Gas?” He said. He thought she was telling him about vent-free wood-burning inserts.
Vent-free wood.
My brain, being weird, coughed up, “Yeah, there’s a tesseract at the top of the firebox that sends the smoke into another universe. If they ever figure out where it’s coming from we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”
She didn’t tell him that, of course. I doubt he’d have appreciated the humor.
Vent-free wood. If we ever figure that out we’ll make millions.
Propaganda
My brother posted this photo on FaceBook a few days ago. Well, to be more accurate, he shared this photo that someone else posted. There was a note under the photo that indicated that we needed to vote carefully.
Timing of photographs is important. Take, for example, this one:
You’ll recognize it. The Falling Man, taken at the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001. He looks almost serene. He wasn’t, of course. Imagery from before and after this moment tell a totally different tale. He was, naturally, terrified.
The photo of the woman above, being hauled away by, as the Left would have us believe, Trump’s Gestapo, indicates she is being unjustly imprisoned for trying to exercise her First Amendment rights. When my brother posted it, my only comment was, “Context?”
Thus far he has declined to respond.
I don’t have a lot of spare time, so it was a couple days, today, in fact, that I was able to do some searching to find the photo and hopefully more information.
Most of the posting and reposting of this picture occurred on Twitter. Twitter is, as a source of unbiased and useful information, not reliable. So I kept poking around and discovered the one constant in all the postings was the presentation of this image as being of a mother in Portland, OR being arrested.
Questions I’d like to have the answers to, and never will, include:
- What was she doing just prior to her being grabbed by this law enforcement person, who judging from his expression is a bit freaked out himself? Was she “peacefully protesting”? Was she engaging in a little self-expressive arson? Was she spray-painting a local business-owner’s property with obscenities and/or BLM slogans? Was she (foolishly) standing around watching?
- Who is she looking back towards? An accomplice? Another victim? Her car in flames having been fire-bombed by protesters who objected to the presence of a white woman?
- What’s in the backpack? Bible tracts? Snacks? Water? Incendiary devices? Weaponry and ammunition?
Let’s assume for a moment the characterization is accurate. She’s a mother. What we do know, then, is that as a mother she is an abject failure.
Some years ago I posted in this blog an opinion regarding a local woman, a mother, who chose to stay out all night partying, at first with her friends and then with strangers, and wound up raped and murdered. My statement was that while she never deserved what happened to her, she bore some responsibility for it. She had choices. She knew her children needed her and she decided her need for recreation outweighed everything else and made some remarkably stupid choices. In my research of her, which was brief, I discovered she had an unfortunate habit of making unwise choices. When I posted to the blog my thoughts on the matter, certain of her friends and family members launched an enthusiastic attack on me. Virtual, mind you, not literal, and therefore not difficult to deal with.
Besides my amazement that anyone besides me even knew my blog existed at the time, I was appalled at their assertions that she could do whatever she wanted because she had a right to do what she wanted.
No. She didn’t. Neither did this woman pictured above.
Her children should have been her number one priority. Nothing she wants is as important as doing her absolute best to protect her children’s best interests. And her children’s best interests are not served by her arrest.
What a lesson she’s teaching them. That politics means more to her than they do.
No wonder the world is such a mess. And getting worse. God help us. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
People Are Twitchy
Something we’ve noticed at work: People are twitchy and getting worse.
We expect it’s a combination of Wuhan virus lockdowns and mandatory mask-wearing, riots and arbitrary violence in (Democratic-run) cities, and a general sense that things are spinning out of control. There has never been a shortage of rude people, but the uptick in actual rudeness up to and including irrationality is noteworthy.
I had a bit of a confrontation with a customer last Thursday. She called, upset that the gas logs she’d purchased from us almost 2 years ago were, in her words, “falling apart.” She sent photos.
They aren’t falling apart. They’re vented logs, so they can go into any configuration they want on the burner, as long as they stay put. One of the smallest pieces fell off. It’s not broken. Just unsecure. We have the same log set in our showroom and we’ve got the small piece sitting on the floor of the fireplace in front of the burner, because the stupid thing won’t stay put. I sent her a photo of ours, so she could see.
Haven’t heard from her. This might mean she realized she was mistaken and has put the log back somewhere in the fireplace.
It might mean that she’s gearing herself up for a verbal nuclear detonation right over my head in a day or so.
Can’t wait to find out which. Pray for me.
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