Yesterday sucked...

Yesterday was one of those days that if I didn't know better I would accuse God of being mad at me.

Driving down to Fresno, to meet a dear friend and discuss some good choices she was making after a very tough couple of years, I was caught up in a police sting operation where they were waiting behind bushes to catch me and a few others who were going 11 mph over the 40 miles an hour speed limit (that is 51mph, if you are an emergite). Then, I went to the bank to deposit my check at the ATM but realized my check was 37 miles away sitting on my kitchen table where I left it that morning, which I then had to drive back to get when I realized our bank account was close to rubberizing. So I drove back home, grabbed the check and turned around to come back to Fresno deposit my check at the bank and have lunch with my good friend Dan, who treated me to a lunch of Pad Thai Shrimp (noodles). (Emergites know what that is I am sure!)

Dropped off Dan at his office, I wanted to stop quickly at a pawn shop to see if they had any ukeleles. I pulled into a parking garage, got my ticket, pulled into a parking stall on the 4th floor, walked down the four flights of stairs and across the street to find out neither of the pawn shops, next to the Coney Island restaurant had any ukuleles, but they did have a couple of $400.00 mandelins. Ran back across the street drove, walked up the stairs, drove down to check out and then the parking ticket slips under the dash board and the vinyl dashboards cuts my fingers as I am trying to reach under it to grab the ticket which I kept pushing it further into the recesses under the dash. Now my fingers are dripping blood on the dash as I drive up to explain to the parking lot attendant that I just pulled in 10 minutes ago max and my ticket was stuck under the dash board. He saw the pool of blood on the dash and probably pushed the hidden alarm button to summons the police and the Fresno CSI (who will never have a television show about them). I had to pay the lost ticket fee of $7.00 and fill out a form to explain the ticket misplacement. I dripped blood on the form which caused the Fresno PD's HazMat Team (Hazardous Material) to be deployed with their cones, suits, tape, gloves, breathing apparatus, and manuals to properly dispose of a potental AID, hepititis, or Wes Craven body fluids infected form. (well... maybe he just looked at me strangely and I made up the whole HazMat stuff.)

On the way up the hill I stopped off at American Music and bought a ukelele. It was pretty wierd because the place was filled with a generation of multi-tattooed Korn devotees and I am in there buying a uke (that's what we ukelele artists call it). They were staring at me as I asked for a Mel Bay 2006 song book of ukelele hits. I left hearing murmurs of "Dude, I hope that doesn't happen to me when I get that old..."

I then rushed back up the hill to a 3:30p appointment I had with the new pastor at Sierra Vista to step out of some responsibilities with the Time & Space Community to spend more time with my family and new responsibilities at Calvin Crest. In the middle of the conversation, the power goes out and we sit in mostly darkness for the rest of the meeting. (This was a great first meeting.) Power came on 5 minutes before it was time to go two hours later.

I then realized I was responsible for dinner and didn't pick up anything earlier, so I called home and asked Christel what she wanted, she told me she wanted me to make that decision. So I went to KFC (which use to stand for Kentucky Fried Chicken but now stands for Kitchen Fried Chicken). I waited at the drive up speaker for about 3 minutes when a voice comes out of the speaker at me that tensely says, "we will begin serving at 6:30!" No, "I am sorry..." or "you know the power outage caused the oil to coagulate or whatever and we have to wait a few minutes to heat it up and tell you what why don't you drive up to the window and we can talk about your day and I can hand you a hand wipe to clean up the blood that is spewing all over your car and the parking lot..." I just drove off. I didn't bring anything home to eat, not even any magic beans. We had bacon and eggs for dinner.

After cleaning up the dishes, I sat down and played my new ukelele until it opened up the cuts on my fingers and I had to put it back in its case before it filled up with blood.

All of this to say, I am saved by grace for faith, not of my own but it is a gift from Christ, for His purpose and plan. He isn't mad, he is still bleeding...