Perish the thought that a lot of unseemly panting should be taking place when I have the means to stop it, so here are a few pictures of the Gruesome Twosome....the Dreadful Duo....the Pernicious Pair:

Magellan and Eisenhower fighting over the mouse on the cat toy/scratching post Kenny made for them:

Eisenhower's claws make short work of climbing to the top.  And here's a rare photo of all three cats within picture range of each other:

Cats aside, my next project  -  apart from clearing out the bookcase outside my bedroom so Kenny can get to it to paint and so on, then starting in on my bedroom, a task which would give Joshua pause ("Couldn't I go retake Ai again?")  -  is trying to figure out how to operate the automatic sprinkler system.  This was one of Don's Chores, about which I know zip.

Well, considering the widening yellow patches on the yard and the way Don's special drooping crepe myrtles are looking definitely peaky, I'd better figure it out PDQ. 

It is with the heart well kept as it is with the eye; if a small dust get into the eye it will never cease twinkling and watering till it has wept it out: so the upright heart cannot be at rest till it has wept out its troubles and poured out its complaints before the Lord -- John Flavel

This afternoon was the first of the summer's "Back Yard" events at Christ Chapel, which featured hot dogs, chips, lemonade, and a bounce house for the kids after the 5 p.m. service.  Kenny had kindly agreed to help as well, so at 3:30 p.m. we showed up for duty, spending the next hour wrapping and stacking 500+ hot dogs, along with a few others.  Fortunately someone else handled the steamer.  Still, shoving that many hot dogs into buns and wrapping them in foil and stacking them on trays to be conveyed to the warmers set up in the Great Room (the large area outside the sanctuary) takes some doing.

I'd gone to the 11 a.m. service (though after a restless night I fear I skipped SS and choir), but went into the afternoon service for the intense pleasure of singing "I'll Fly Away" and "Victory in Jesus", which are two of my favorites.

Do you know, almost all those hot dogs got eaten?  There were more than enough, however, leading Dr. Kitchens to spend a little time hawking hot dogs:

He was taken aback to discover I'd scurried off for my cell phone so as to take his picture.  He don't know me very well, do he?  The senior pastor pushing hot dogs on people definitely caught my fancy.  ;^)

As I said, there was a bounce house that was immensely popular with the small fry:

On July 12th will be ice cream after the afternoon service (all this is free, BTW), with another Hot Dog Event on the 26th.  It's my fond hope Alex, Beth and the girls will come to that one! 

Today the church prayed over and "commissioned" both a young man leaving to be an Army chaplain (first one from Christ Chapel, so far as Dr. Kitchens could recall), and a team leaving for one of those "sensitive" regions west of China for a couple of weeks, up in the mountains, to villages where the gospel is unknown:

Backpacks and inflatable kayaks are involved in this trek!  I'll certainly be praying for both the success of their mission plus travel mercies.

We now possess not one but two devil cats.  As given as Magellan is to biting....which is VERY...is how given Eisenhower is to using his claws. 

We're a scratched, bitten mess around here. 

Zeus spends most of her time hiding, and when she does come out it's to look at me accusingly, and really, who can blame her?

My ticket was dismissed without my having to say anything other than stand up and plead "Not guilty."

The judge apparently looked up my driving record on her computer, realized there's no way I could have an invalid license, and dismissed the ticket.

Dmitry went with me, bless him, and held my hand as we waited my turn. Dumb as it may sound, I was still nervous even though I had the note from the DMV, clearly stating "LIRD" as being a non-ticketable status, and it's just a SS alert.

Still, both tickets are now g-o-n-e, one via defensive driving and the other by being dismissed.

I'm hoping those are the last tickets I ever get in my LIFE.

Here are a few photos of the Ivy abode as it is in its improved state:

Isn't it neat?  I love the new screened-in porches! 

Kenny's next projects - big ones, there are always some small ones afoot - are to re-wallpaper and paint the hall, and paint my bedroom, which hasn't been painted since we moved in.

On another note, in a little bit I leave for the Fort Worth court house.  I've decided Jonathan needn't come with me as, one, I will truly be surprised beyond measure if the police officer shows up, and two, I've got the note from the woman at the DMV.

If I can find the stupid thing I'll also have my driving record, but of course I put it somewhere so it wouldn't get lost and now I can't locate it. 

Have you ever known that to fail? 

Doubtless it'll turn up later in the summer or around Halloween. 

It's frustrating how many natural-wonder events take place here and I seem to miss each and every one of them.

There have been several earthquakes in the mid-cities region but I've not felt a one.

And last night there was a really good-sized meteor that hit the atmosphere - complete with tail and everything - but I was sound asleep. 

Most annoying.

On the plus side, I feel confidant that Justice Will Be Done on Wednesday afternoon, which is when my court date is for the "invalid" license ticket given to me when I was rear-ended back on January 15th.  For those who don't recall, I received a ticket from a young police officer because there were some letters on my license when he ran it where no letters should be, and his reasoning was that since "clear" means nothing's there, then letters means it's not clear, and not being clear means it's invalid, and driving with an invalid license is a ticketable offence.

Mind, he had no idea - he said so himself - what the letters meant, and it wasn't suspended, but so far as he was concerned it wasn't clear, either, so here's a ticket. 

I got my friend, Kathy, to drive me out to the Alta Mesa DMV, where I was told by the woman at the front desk that all it meant was there was an administrative matter needing to be corrected and my license was most certainly not invalid.

Guess what?  The city of Fort Worth didn't care, and my options were to either pay $260 (or thereabouts) or fight it in court.

So I'm fighting it in court.  Court #4 at 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

Today I went to the DMV in Lake Worth to get my license renewed (once it's within a year of the expiration date one can do that) and after returning home to retrieve my SS card, got the error remedied.  The lady at the counter was vehement that the mistake was on their part, not mine, and that actually the letters meant do NOT give a ticket!  It's simply to provide an alert that there's an administrative matter requiring attention.  She even wrote a note to that effect, bless her heart!

When I show up I'll have my note from the DMV, and my clear driving record (which I have because of the speeding ticket, which is a mite ironic, isn't it?), plus Jonathan as a witness to the police officer's muddled thought processes.

Loaded fer judicial bear, by jingo.  

Of course, odds are the police officer won't show and the ticket'll be dismissed because of that instead of the evidence and witnesses I bring with me. 

As Jonathan said, it was an unusual - but welcome - case of instant gratification. 

This afternoon I was driving him and Dmitry to Louis and Mary's house for our June celebration (Father's Day plus various birthdays and their anniversary), and was on I-30 heading west when a white pick-up entered the freeway and proceeded to move not only into the right-hand lane, but the middle lane, which is where I was.  

Fortunately there was no car in the left lane so I could swerve into it to avoid a collision. 

The driver of the pick-up blithely drove on, apparently oblivious to the near-accident.  I prefer to drive in the middle lane, so I moved back into it, behind the truck.  To my surprise a police car pulled up on the left and when I slowed down, pulled in behind the truck and turned his lights on.  HA!  Busted, buster!  

Jonathan and Dmitry were absolutely thrilled and high fiving each other, as they kept pointing out how rare it is to have someone do something wrong and see justice - in the form of being pulled over by the police - done.

Very satisfying, to be sure. 

Computer Cat!

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime? 6.5 or higher is required.

The US Gymnastics Championships will be in Dallas this August and having received one of those "buy your ticket now with your Visa card before they go on sale to the general public" emails, I thought I'd get a ticket to the men's competition on August 12, which would have been Don's and my 38th anniversary.

He wouldn't have cared two hoots to go, so it's not like I'd be moaning about how much he'd love to see it.  No, he wouldn't. 

But it's idiotic how a $35 ticket winds up being $48.50 by the time a $6.25 "convenience charge" is tacked on, along with a fee of $2.50 for the privilege of printing it out myself, plus a "processing fee". 

It's astonishing anyone goes anywhere, considering the outrageous charges for tickets these days.

Doggone it, I'm not paying almost 50 bucks for a $35 dollar ticket.