DanLog the ramblings of Daniel Pettit

Another completely awesome night of worship. Took a different track on prayer tonight. Pastor Mike spoke for a while and then had us pray to ourselves about several topics for ten minutes or so. Then to wrap it up he had us just wait on God for five minutes. As of late anyway I’ve had a problem just thinking of nothing, did pretty good tonight though. Had a few distractions pop in briefly but I was able to nip them in the bud. Per as usual God didn’t cast out any thundering proclamations for me, the only thing that I can say might have been from God is the vision of a Deer behind jail bars. since I have no idea what that is about I’m going to have to with G-mail that’s with a big “G”.

More worship and then we got a crash course in prayer technique for praying for others, from Doug who with others have trained several hundred RHites the last few weeks.

1. Ask their name.
2. Ask what they want prayer for, ask follow up questions if needed.
3. Wait on the Lord.
4. Pray with eyes open looking at recipient.
5. Okay to ask follow up questions. Keep prayer conversational.

My Group

Click for Full Size Cheesy Panorama

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To appease my sister Robbie here some photos she recently gave me.

Robbie’s 45 Birthday Party

My Moms 60th Birthday Party

Fires continued overnight, only the 57 is closed now.

Photo by Bruce Chambers ~ Orange County Register

Today was crazy hot for November 15th. It was 95F at 16th street in Costa Mesa, heading straight to my moms from there it was only 79F at her house, about one mile closer to the ocean and down from the bluff or mesa if you prefer. It was a Santa Ana of course and the brush fires were a blazing. We have a pretty big one that has cause one heck of a transportation mess in NE OC. At one point the 91, 57 and 241 freeways were closed. If you planned on going or coming from Riverside you just couldn’t get there from here today.

Smoke plume as seen from my mom’s house in Newport Beach.

Click to enlarge

Sorry about the cheesy panorama, I hurriedly did it by hand and as you can see I’m no PhotoShop wizard.

So I managed to make it over to my mom’s today and spent the entire afternoon installing the new counter top in my old bathroom. Robbie happened to be there, which was a help to lifting the counter up onto the cabinet. I had to cut out a couple sections of the cabinet to accommodate the sink bowls but that went quickly and I managed to get it right the first try.

Robbie and mom then went off to a health screening fair at the Costa Mesa Hilton.

The bulk of my time was installing the two new faucets, this proved to be more time consuming than expected. If the counter wasn’t so heavy I would have preassembled the faucets which would have been easier. Turned out I needed a tool that I don’t own and don’t recall seeing. I managed with what I had but could only get one faucet properly fastened. I really needed an extra set of hands. Which Robbie kindly provided when they returned. I then installed the pop-up assemblies and drains. Then I needed to straighten out a bit of a bow in the counter top so I set a bunch of books on the ends. That is what the instructions said to do. And I caulked the bottom perimeter. Being cultured marble I couldn’t use plumbers putty on the pop-ups so I needed to let the silicone dry, hence I was through for the day being that I couldn’t do a leak test. I’ll do that next time.

My LifeGroup decide to go watch playing of the documentary War Dance at RockHarbor tonight, instead of our regular meeting. I saw the movie in the church newsletter but being on Thursday it was an easy decision not to go since that is my LifeGroup night, so much for assumptions.

The film was not really what I had in mind, I figured it was mainly an African aid seeking film. What it is, is a happy and sad documentary of the plight of some refuge children in war torn North Uganda and their quest for the national dance championship, no this is not “Bring It On 4 In the Bush“. They didn’t focus on squalor or living conditions yes you know they live in a camp and very very simply, but they get fed and protected by their government and the UN. What they lack in possessions they make up for in pride and community-ship. Hopefully you will cry stronger with joy than sorrow, but from some of the children’s stories you will have no doubt about the existence of evil if you were not sure before.

So I finally started to install my mother’s new cultured marble counter tops. Today I removed the old counter and fixtures.

I also removed and replaced all the angle stops. The last time I did this job at my moms I didn’t know of the existence of a compression ring puller aka angle stop removal tool. Life is much easier with the correct tool.

Looks like no leaks so we are good to go for counter installation on Saturday - maybe.

A couple days ago my mother told me a story about a seasoned citizen female neighbor of hers that had a neighborhood man come over to repair her toilet for her. He warned her before he started that he worked in the nude. She of course was like “whatever you card”. Well after he had been toiling away at the project for a while she went upstairs to see how he was doing and sure enough he wasn’t kidding, a buck naked plumber. Her take on it was basically hey you seen one…. I found the whole story hard to believe. It just doesn’t make sense, what kind of person goes to do some elderly woman a favor and has to strip down to do it? And I thought George Costanza was peculiar in his bathroom shirt removal habit.

Naked Dan the Plumber
This isn’t the same guy but you can hire him for handyman jobs and of course he works naked, cause he likes it.

So the next day I spoke with my sister Robbie who I remarked that I was going to work on moms counters on Thursday but I planned on keeping my clothes on. She had heard the same story and said “Why don’t you do it, mom’s seen you naked, it would be funny!” Yah sure she has a few decades ago. Well I did think it was a funny thought, so I did take my shirt off, something I don’t normally do. In fact she probably hasn’t seen me shirtless in 25 years. Well it was amusing at least.

Well I can’t say I’m doing any cartwheels today. I am somewhat surprised that the major newspapers don’t have OBAMA LANDSLIDE plastered across there front pages.
Because it wasn’t a landslide. It was a solid victory and the strongest victory since Bush Senior, who by the way had a more decisive victory %wise and much more so electoral college wise and was the best Democratic party showing since 1964.

But I am proud ( not for the first time Michelle Obama ) of my country that a half-black could be elected president. Just maybe this will take some wind out of the sails of the hate-monger, adulterer, fraud of a Reverend Jackson.

I think the best I can hope for is that President-elect Obama will turn out to be another typical self-serving politician. One that is more worried about staying in power and not ruffling any feathers, like President Clinton. What I expect though is that he will govern to the left of his Senate record and whole heartily embrace Marxism, which with Democratic control of Congress for the next two years is not as crazy as you might think. If he does we will pine for the economic prowess of President Carter. There will also be a severe increase in global violence.

And mark my words, when the you know what hits the fan, Obama, Congress and the mainstream media will all blame Bush and the Republicans. The recession will continue through out Obama’s first term, he will say I had no idea how bad Bush screwed things up, we are trying but we just need more time, four more years. Or if Obama holds off on his plans temporarily due to the recession and the unprecedented Federal intervention in the financial markets actually bring a rebound later in 2009 and we have a minor recovery, after which Obama lets the Bush tax cuts expire ( that is a tax increase in my book folks ) which result in us falling back into a recession again by 2012. Bush will again be to blame. After all Bush caused two recessions the current one and the one that began in Clinton’s last term at least that is how Obama calls it. Bottom line it will not be Obama’s or the Democratic Party’s fault, after all it never is, and that is the trouble with society today, not taking responsibility. It is no longer what you can do for your country but what your country can do for you.

PLEASE MR OBAMA PROVE ME WRONG — LET ME ADMIRE BOTH THE MAN AND THE OFFICE.

Obama vs. McCain

Bush vs. Dukakis

Got to the polls a bit later than I normally do. I shoot for 9:30AM if I can manage, so as to miss the before work crowd but miss the lunch voters. Got there at 10:30AM and was out by 10:45AM. This was the first time I had to wait in a line for some time, but it was only 5 minutes or so. They also had about twice the amount of voting booths. Here behind the Orange Curtain we have an electronic system that is pretty straight forward.

RealClearPolitics.com

I think the only thing we can pray for now is the Bradley Effect.

Go Bradley, Go Bradley, Go Bradley Go!!

Time will tell what Obama really stands for, but if he governs by his past actions, rhetoric and associates I think we need to rethink this Red state Blue state thing. A fifth grader will figure out that the Democratic Party, the Party of O² is without a doubt the Red party.

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