I had to go out this morning of all mornings – it was snowing and I feel not-so-great. Yet, I hop into the car. And I got slightly aggravated.
A simple suggestion – will those who are not inclined to drive on snowy streets please stay home. How about a better idea? Why not just park the car and take the bus! It solves all problems. You can get where you want to go without causing other drivers to take the Lord’s name in vain. See, when you drive less than 10 miles per hour on River Road that is snow and slush covered, other drivers get upset. We want to drive, say, 20 miles per hour – a safe speed considering the conditions and the speed limit. But no, we have to crawl along while you drive slower than slow.
When that kid on the bike this morning zoomed past your car, that should show you that it is time to park the car at home and take the bus.
I am now in the office much calmer than when I was behind the wheel. Not that I feel great – today I took a tiny step backwards. Still coughing and my head is more congested than it was yesterday.
Today, I think I am going to cancel my visits. Push them off till tomorrow, if my visitees are so inclined.
“Pastor Iovine, I think you are too blunt at times. To call the Speaker of the House dumb seems a little harsh.”
One of my weaknesses is tact. There are times when I am a little too judgmental. Also, I can be rather harsh, to use a word from the emailer. I don’t like wasting time. While I write too much and bloviate at times, I like getting to the point.
The Speaker tried to expound the notion that in order to reduce the cost of government, there needs to be fewer people. How to accomplish this goal? Promote family planning, i.e. abortion and contraception services. And who will get this money? Groups like Planned Parenthood, who perform abortion services.
So, instead of reducing the programs that government offers to cut costs, the Speaker wants to expand “family planning” services, meaning she wants more abortions.
Yesterday, while hacking up a lung, I decided to clean my bedroom. The sheets needed changing, the furniture needed dusting, and the carpet needed vacuuming. However, in the course of dusting I made an error: I knocked over my television.
And yes, it died.
It was a 20-inch Curtis Mathis television, bought for less than 90 bucks back in 2000, about seven months before I headed off for seminary. Then I just wanted a small television for my bedroom. And from Yonkers to Fort Wayne (and back several times), from Fort Wayne to Sayville and back, this television took the ride. From the time money was plunked down until yesterday, the television worked flawlessly.
But after dropping it, the old Kmart blue light special is kaput.
Oh, to attain such a high position in government … yet so dumb.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says that contraception will help stimulate the economy. Using her logic, the government mandating that parents can only have one child should be even more stimulating to the economy — less people taking less from government means the government would have more money to help others.
With all due respect to the Speaker, what she is suggesting is expanding contraception and in conjunction with that, abortion services, in order to keep the population down.
This is a scary idea. Or is it more of an idea that baffles the mind? Regardless of your opinion of contraception, for the Speaker of the House to suggest that fewer people would help the economy is just politically weird. Democrats should be slightly embarrassed.
I have been pretty sick-free for almost a year, a year and a half. For a while, I’ve had this feeling that when I do get sick, I was really going to get whacked.
And I did.
My body has been racked with the worst cold/flu that I’ve had in a long while. My body has been pounded with heavy congestion in my head and chest; my throat has been raw; every part of my body ached; I somehow got around with a slight fever that topped out at 101; and I’ve been hacking with the ugliest cough I’ve had since I contracted pneumonia back in December 2003.
From Friday until yesterday, I felt like I was put through a ringer.
Today has been a little better. After speaking with my doctor – who yelled at me and called me an “idiot” for not calling her when I initially felt symptoms coming on – she suggested that I go out and pick up Mucinex D at the local pharmacy. That is what I did this morning and popped the first two pills at 11:15am. And I have to be honest, I didn’t believe that $14 box of pills would work as prescribed.
But it has. Wow!
My head is cleared up and my phlegm in my chest is looser. Yes, I am still coughing, but not as loud.
After a couple of days with these pills, I will call my doctor on Wednesday and let her know how I am doing.
Today is going to be a slightly busy one – nothing too outlandish.
However, I do have to run to the Apple Store with my iMac. When I turned it on yesterday, for some reason the operating system would not boot. Instead, I got a blue screen that changed shades several times. Hopefully the Geniuses at the Genius Bar in the Garden State Plaza can fix it.
Otherwise, a couple of visits are on the docket, though they will be short. The reason? I’ve been battling a cold. Yesterday it really hit me hard and I felt myself getting sicker throughout the day. This morning, I didn’t feel so bad, though very stuffed up. However, since returning from church this morning, I am not feeling so hot.
I had a relatively normal weekend – nothing out of the ordinary. The snow, of course, played havoc on Sunday morning church attendance. However, there isn’t much we can do about these little blasts of snow that make church attendance low. Those who attended, I pray, had a fruitful, faith-building time as we celebrated the Lord’s Supper. And, for the first time ever, I mentioned the New Jersey/York Jets in my sermon.
You had to be there.
Pastoral duties are going to keep me in town instead of heading out to Fort Wayne, Indiana for a conference at my seminary alma mater. So I will be around all week.
This weekend’s sports action didn’t overly excite me. I wasn’t thrilled with the NFL Playoff match-ups. Two weeks from now, the Steelers and the Cardinals will meet in Tampa for the Super Bowl. And to be honest, it doesn’t thrill me. If the Eagles made the Super Bowl, I would be very interested. But my heart just isn’t in this one. Right now, I would like to see the Cardinals win it for a couple of football reasons, namely I like their quarterback, Kurt Warner, and think Larry Fitzgerald is the best receiver in the NFL.
Otherwise, the Rangers reminded me why I love this team and yet hate them at the same time. They beat a solid Chicago Blackhawks team on Friday night in the Windy City after the refs did everything in their power to give the game to the hometown ‘Hawks. But then on Sunday, they follow up that tremendous win with a stinker in Pittsburgh, being shutout 3-0.
That Italian basketball player with a bad back actually played a game for the Knicks this weekend, but Chris Duhon got hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I like Danillo Gallinari – maybe it is the Italian in me that’s pulling for the kid from the Old Country. Even if he played more this season, I don’t know what he would have actually delivered to the Knicks. He is a long-term project that I hope pays off.
Over the past week, I started to crunch my financial numbers as I prepare to get my taxes done. Someone I know took my numbers and made a quite startling discovery:
Last year, I worked 4274 hours, or on average, 82 hours per week. This includes everything pastoral-related that I do in a day. Considering I didn’t take vacation last year, this number is obscene. After taking out all those beloved taxes the government charges, including Social Security and New Jersey state taxes, my friend make a stunning discovery that even shocked me.
I earned $4.68 4.13 an hour last year.
But it gets even more interesting – if the parsonage benefit was taken out of the salary equation (which is the actual salary received number), he figured that I made $4.13 3.83 an hour in 2008.
And that is with dual Masters degrees.
UPDATE: Oops, he emailed me. He goofed on a calculation. The new numbers are above.
A couple of newspaper-people I know were shocked that I have stopped receiving home delivery of the Record, the New York Post, and the New York Times, making me a literal “newspaper-free” news hound. Even today as I sit here in my church office, I cannot believe that I do not have a newspaper on my kitchen table every morning.
Last night, I found out that Slacker radio’s iPhone application became available. Of course, I downloaded the free app and began to listen to some quasi-rock station I created on Slacker online.
If you haven’t found Slacker, go and find it. It is a wonderful service. They offer three levels of membership – free, plus, and premium. The plus and premium levels are paid levels that allow you to skip unlimited songs; premium gives the added benefit of allowing you to save the songs you like.
Of course, I am a free subscriber, which only means I can only skip 6 songs per hour per station and I get a couple of commercials each hour. Not a deal breaker by any means.
The service has a couple of avenues to listen: directly online at their website; through free apps on your iPhone and Blackberry; and with their own player, about the size of a small iPod (costs around $200). I have listened exclusively online, until last night when the iPhone app became available.
I love satellite radio, especially because of their sports coverage. But their recent merger of their music channels left a lot to be desired. For the past couple of months, I have listened to Slacker in the home and church offices more than I have XM (though I do listen religiously to the NHL Home Ice channel). Slacker’s music provides a lot of variety, even within individual stations.
Yes, we are in for a cold snap. A couple of days of ridiculously cold weather is not going to remake the New York/New Jersey landscape.
It’s going to be cold.
I don’t need to hear weather forecasters and reporters act as though it has never been cold here. Aaarrrggghhh!!!
Otherwise, my Wednesday is busy. I will be in the church office sometime around 8:45am and be there until 11:30. I have a couple of visits this afternoon and then back to church to get ready for Midweek Divine Service at 7:30pm and our bible class.
Today is going to be a little busy for me. A half-hour before Morning Prayer I was looking at my To Do list and my calendar. It is packed.
My calendar has 4 events that are mandated – meaning, I can’t change them.
My To Do list has 9 high prioritized items, all of which need attention today. On top of that, I have three other items that can be accomplished today or tomorrow. But tomorrow, I already have 7 high prioritized items that need attention, on top of my 5 events I have to attend to on my calendar. And tomorrow, the “have to attend to list” doesn’t include our Midweek Divine Service.
Hence, my next couple of days are busy, busy, busy.
A couple of other Tuesday morning items:
1. I have my report from last night’s Voters Meeting – I will start uploading it to the blog. Obviously, I will keep names off and just give the general report. I will do this later today.
2. I believe I have to take a greater administrative role in the function of Saint Matthew’s. Professionally, I do not want to do it, but I have little choice since I am the one who is here at church more often than the rest of the staff and the members. I will outline what I am talking about either tomorrow or Thursday.
3. Yes, we are having problems with the Post Office, again. I am sick of it. I mailed a copy of our Elders’ Schedule to our Elders – none of them received it. One of my Wednesday To Do’s is to get another letter out and hand deliver it to each Elder.
To me, the top two stories of the sports weekend had to do with the Giants and Brendan Shanahan.
- Eli Manning wasn’t sharp at all, but all the credit in the world has to go to the Philadelphia Eagles who came to Giants Stadium with a game plan, and they executed it perfectly: Stop the run, pressure Manning, and keep the Giant receivers in check. Without a real downfield threat since Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg, the Giants have been very one dimensional relying on the running game. In the offseason, the G-Men need to get a wide receiving threat equal to Burress.
The Eagles versus the Arizona Cardinals for the NFC crown. Who would have imagined this one at the start of the playoffs?
- Brendan Shanahan has decided to play for the Devils, considering the Rangers were stringing him along all season. The Rangers flirted with Mats Sundin to a sickening point, even though reality (Sundin wanted $10 Million; Rangers could only offer close to $3 Million) was staring at them in the face. Shanahan probably would have taken less than what the Rangers could max out at in order to stay in New York. And the Rangers? I mean, who wouldn’t Shanahan – player who can actually forecheck, score every now and then, and provide leadership on and off the ice?
Last night, “24″ gave me the sense that its writers have gone back to the magic formula that made the show mesmerizing. A seemingly solid plot filled with complex characters, including Jack Bauer, who is trying to come to grips with his terrorist-fighting past (and future). The new president seems like a keeper, though right now, I can’t put her in the David Palmer category. Her Secretary of State – he looks like he can be a devious one. Jack’s new “partner” appears to be someone like Jack – willing to do what it takes to beat the bad guys. She is definitely someone to keep an eye on. Her “boss” is a weasel, but looks to be one who is going to stir the pot all season.
And Tony Almeida is back as a bad guy. Have to love it!! Can’t wait for tonight’s two-hour show.
My list of appointment television shows is small – I watch “Damages” on FX and “24″ on Fox. When I say “appointment,” I mean that I would drop everything just to watch them. However, with a DVR, I tape both shows just in case, which really takes the “appointment” out of “appointment” viewing. Plus, I can pick up “24″ on iTunes and watch it whenever I want.
Otherwise, outside of sports, my television viewing habits of late aren’t very spectacular. I record the “Law and Order” series of shows, “ER ” in its final season, and “CSI” shows, most of which I haven’t watched (I just delete them), though I am interested in the Las Vegas show because Lawrence Fishburn is taking over the lead.
I don’t have a living, breathing personal organizer or a house cleaner. I use “Remember the Milk” to organize my “To Do” list and my iPhone calendar to organize by appointments. Thank goodness for my iPhone where everything is synced. And I figure out time during the week to clean the house.
But this owner of a catering company on Long Island makes it sound like she’s sacrificing a lot when she gave up her personal organizer and cut her maid to only 2 days a week.
She should stop whining.
She should thank God she has a five-bedroom house (even as she is a single woman) and has cash in the bank.
All opinions and ideas expressed on The Pastor's Blog are those of the individual writers. Copyright (c) 2006-8 - Saint Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 225 Center Street, New Milford, New Jersey 07646. Design Downloaded from www.vanillamist.com
If you haven’t found Slacker,