I believe there are times when all of us fall
short in the expectations we have for ourselves.
The current brouhaha about Tiger Woods comes to
mind. I have fallen short on several occasions,
most of them are on a deeply personal level and
involved the way I treated, or mistreated,
someone I cared about. An example would be that
many years ago, when my two children were under 5
years old, my ex-wife and I asked our next door
neighbors to look after them while we went
shopping. They agreed, but insisted that we
return early because they wanted to go to Easter
Sunday Sunrise Service the next morning. For
whatever reason, we picked our children up after
midnight. I remember being so ashamed as I
knocked on their door. My friend and his wife
were justifiably angry and told me so. I
remember making myself a promise to never allow
something like that to happen again. I was 22
years old then and in all the years since that
time, to my knowledge, I have never broken a
promise. So, I do not assume that Tiger Woods
cannot change his behavior. That change will
happen, in my opinion, not because he let someone
else down, it will be because he let himself
down.

Jerilyn's mother, Gladys, recently underwent back
surgery. It seems, at her age (91), the
vertebrae keep fracturing, requiring the doctor
to make a small slit on her back, inject some
type of glue, and then 1½ later send her home to
recover. It is fast becoming apparent to us
that her days of visiting on Sunday are over.
She seems determined on staying in the Health
Care section of her retirement community and not
going back to her apartment in the Independent
Living section.

I recently discovered that Jerilyn's oldest son,
Dean, was in need of a pair of car ramps. I did
the necessary research online and in the local
paper and soon realized the price for that item
really increased from way back when I bought
mine. Craigslist online revealed that a fellow
in a town close to us (Smithfield) had a pair he
wanted to sell cheaply. So within a few days,
his old rusty ramps were setting in my shed,
awaiting the necessary sanding and painting. It
is never a good thing for me to get involved in a
project like this. Seems like it takes forever
for me to finish it. The sanding wasn't a
problem, but the weather failed to cooperate
temperature wise. All spray paint cans will
tell you not to paint unless the temp is at least
60°. I don't worry about it very much if I can
get temps close to that and the sun is shining.
I finally got tired of waiting and waded into the
painting thing, ignoring the temp. What I found
out was the paint would appear dry after several
hours, but would not harden. Even the slightest
trauma to its surface would result in missing
paint. The project is on hold until the weather
changes. It may be spring before Dean gets his
ramps. Hopefully, he will not need them until
then.

I have been searching for a way to transmit the
music from my PC to my stero system. I found
unit that does that, made in China. They have
several models, ranging from .5 watts to 10
watts. A lot of AM stations used to transmit at
50 watts, so 10 watts was out of the question.
The .5 watts had a range of 1600 feet, which was
more than I needed, but the specs said the power
could be reduced. The FCC gets upset when your
signal reaches other homes, so I knew I had to be
careful. Well, in about 10 days the unit arrives
to a tickled-to-death guy at 49 Carriage Hill
Drive. I open it up and the package contains
absolutely no instructions. "Well", says I, "it
doesn't seem to have that many buttons and places
to plug things in, I should be able to figure
this thing out". So off I go, merrily plugging
things in and getting ready to go on "The Air".
Aaah! The sweet sound of music coming out of my
stero was great, and clear as a bell, no hum, or
crackling at all. I go out, get in the car and
tune it to 87.5 on the FM dial (the transmitting
frequency I set my unit to). I commence driving
around the area to see how far the signal is
traveling. A half mile away and the signal is
still strong. "Man", says I, "this could land
me in jail. I gotta do something about this". I
get back home, examine my transmitter closely and
there is no way to reduce the signal strength.
Finally, it comes to me, remove part of the
antenna. It comes in 3 sections, currently I am
down to 1 section and the signal stops at our
front yard. Prison time avoided yet again!

A few days ago I exchanged letters with a lady
that, unknowingly, had a big impact on my life.
It was the summer of 1951 and I was 10 years old.
The Page coal camp was home to about 20 families,
whose fathers worked for the Page Coal company.
None of the families owned a TV and the only
telephone was a company system that identified
you by the number of rings (to the best of my
knowledge only the important people-bosses- had
telephones). There was very little contact with
the world outside that small coal camp. That
summer, Gwen Mullins began reading a novel to her
5 children on her front porch. The reading
session lasted an hour and took place every day,
except Sunday, rain or shine. She was kind
enough to let other children become fascinated
listeners. It was amazing to me how she could
change her voice to become the character speaking
and draw me into the world of that story. To
this very day, I do most of my traveling through
books and I know that my fondness of them stems
from the delight derived from listening to Gwen
Mullins read. She is probably close to 90 years
old now, but, I'll bet good money she still reads
and I hope her grandchildren had the opportunity
to enjoy novels read by such a wonderful person.

As most of you know, each year I give you a
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