Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

I'm SLOWLY working through the details of migrating over from one internet service provider to another, and from an old clunky pawnshop laptop to brand new shiny black desktop. I hate to throw things away. Right now, in my man cave there is a box of 5 1/4" diskettes with DOS 2.1 programs on them. I have textbooks from courses I dropped. There are cables hanging from my wall that go to ports that aren't MADE any more. And the computers themselves? Well, before the LAST pawnshop laptop expired, it was the top of the stack of three of them. That's right; when one died, I buried it under the next one. Desktops? Yeah, I have three of them lined up against the wall in my man cave. There is one up in the attic, and one next to the furnace in the basement. I think I finally threw away the Color Computer I had stashed out in the shed for years and decades. Still have the slimline tape recorder that stored the programs on cassette tapes, though. It works, if I ever find a casset...

I posted last week about being a former techie, now morphed into a technophobe. Well, I didn't QUITE complete the story. In case you missed it, I BROKE the brand new iPhone in just under a week, by dropping it, then kicking my chair onto it. I think. Anyway, it LOOKS like it's been shot, but not even I would do that, although I know you THINK I would. Umm, those having seen me shoot a chocolate cake that earned my displeasure. (I used a shotgun.) But I DIDN'T shoot the phone. And fortunately, I had insurance, so it's getting replaced, I think. I'm not SURE, because I completed the forms at the AT&T store, and there are some emails from the company that I'm not reading. If the phone doesn't show by Monday, I'll read them. But, in addition to getting the new phone and tablet, I also got the zoomy internet. And when the tech came to install the fiber optic cable, it was VERY noticeable that my laptop was not working well, at all. Things that loaded FAST...

Surprisingly, I turned out to be a pretty good cook.  There's no particular reason for this, except for the fact that my mother and my grandmother both did  outstanding work in the kitchen.  Maybe I absorbed technique. At any rate, I shoulder a sizable fraction of the cooking duties around this place.  And I am quite pleased with the fact that on more than one occasion I have presented my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, with a meal that she has said she didn't like, only to watch her gobble it up with relish and ask for more. I even made her the best sandwich she had ever had in her life. But last week, I blew it. She had selected a turkey tenderloin as the entree. It came packaged in a tube; we've had it twice before, once with bad results, the second time with great results. This time, though, I read the instructions on the package. It clearly said "Place on grill for 45 - 60 minu...

At one point, I made a paltry living off computers.  I was a reseller of IBM mainframes and peripherals, and I also built desktop computers from components. When I moved into what became my last job, I was still endowed with that techie glow.  People would come to me for advice on computers, and frequently asked me the fix whatever problems they were having.  I even wrote a scheduling package to assign new students a classroom schedule based on class sizes. Years went by, and I was able to allow that skill set to elapse into obsolescence.  Then more years went by; and in time I, too, became obsolescent.  So I retired. I owned a telephone, and I owned a desktop computer, and I had no interest in staying current on the latest digital trends.  If my phone broke, I went to the nearest Big Box store, and bought a replacement for $14.00.  When my desktop computer broke, I replaced it with a laptop computer; when that broke, I went to the pawnshop and picked ...

This is what happened a week ago. I think. I've been sick, so it might have been two weeks, but I think it was just one week. Daughter Bess lives in Screven, way down in southeast Georgia; and she and husband Sam had a new little baby on February 13. Baby William Isaac Blackstone spent his first week in the intensive care unit in Savannah, and followed that up with another week of quarantine, so we didn't get to go visit until last weekend. We packed up Claire's Truck with our stuff, except for the fat black Manx cat SugarBelly, and headed down there: my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA; 12 year old Kenneth, 10 year old Alicia, and me. The plan was: arrive in Screven on Friday, do  a day trip visit to my friend Billy & his wife Vicki on Saturday, and on Sunday..... ...yeah, on Sunday. There's the rub. What would we do on Sunday? We are an inter-racial family. We live in metro Atlanta...

There is no way that I'm going to be able to give these words the power of what I experienced this weekend. I just want you to know that up front. I am sitting here amazed; there is no font or alignment that represents the way I feel. I have been blessed with a few TRUE friendships in my life. I've had numerous friendly acquaintances, even some dear relatives. However, I can only think of three life-changing, perspective-clarifying friends in nearly 64 years, and Billy Doniel was the first of these. He and I first met when we were in the same Cub Scout pack, which I think was age 9. My family moved out of state then, and after that, I moved out of my family, so it wasn't until we were 16, in 1969, that we were neighbors and began hanging out together. Neither of us had a GREAT home situation. Both of us had people that loved us, but he was being raised by his grandparents, who were also tasked with caring for his angelic younger sister who had Down's Syndrome.  For my p...

Greetings, to all my friends out there in Internet land! We just got back from a sort-of last minute trip to south Georgia last night around 8:20 or thereabouts. I have MUCH to share, but some of it needs further meditation in order to process. My daughter and her family; my best friend from high school; First Baptist Church of Screven; and singing "Darktown Strutters' Ball" with my 89 year old mother; those will all have to wait. Today, you get to hear about my encounter with the Georgia State Patrol, on the road from Screven to Canoochie Creek. We have two functional vehicles. One is a 2010 Econobox which is the daily vehicle of my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after, trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA. It gets 7,532 miles per gallon, and two adults and two very small, very naughty children can fit inside, as long as everyone promises not to think deeply and thereby use up all the oxygen. Luggage? Ummm...two pair of socks an...

My firstborn son is an instructor and administrator at a private school north of Atlanta. About a month or so, I wrote a brief rant about school choice. I then followed that with an appreciation of the work home schoolers do. And I offered my son the opportunity to provide a rebuttal. Instead, he wrote about something that was more important: pickles, tickles, and family. Here it is: I have never been fond of receiving pickles. My beautiful wife will remind me that I do like fried pickles and she is right…technically.  But I like things that are fried much in the same way that she likes things that are chocolate covered – it isn't really about the filler.  The cucumber just doesn't hold a great appeal to me in the same way that other chemically pickled foods do: corned beef on a camping trip, for example, is a culinary delight that aims to “wow” no-one but may very well surprise you.  But pickled cucumbers taste to me like sadness steeped in vinegar.  I've been a goo...