A productive weekend

It’s been a productive weekend here at the Whidbey Island Ott House. I’ve been giving our humble little abode a face lift. Specifically, I’ve been working on Sarah’s new room (previously known as the catchall room where all of our junk went). I don’t have pictures to post yet (though I took some) because I want to wait until I’ve completed all my touch up paint work tomorrow. However, I promise to get some photos to you then! Perhaps the hardest part of putting in new trim and doors was hanging new doors in old door frames. Jesus once said (and I paraphrase here), “don’t put new wine into old wineskins.” I think he could’ve said the same thing about doors (and being a carpenter, he probably understands what I am about to say here). The worst part about hanging new doors is putting on the hinges and realizing that the door frame isn’t perfectly square (or that the strike plates are at different heights). I struggled to get the bedroom and closet doors up yesterday, but finally managed to do it. I had hoped to avoid having to sand down the doors, but had to take off just a bit of both of them. The second worst part about buying and installing new doors is purchasing cool six panel doors that left me, poor clumsy me, with the task of chiseling out indentions for the hinges. I thought about asking Melissa if I could buy a router, but decided against it. If anything, my next power tool will be an automatic nailer. At any rate, I’m not up to Melinda and Jason standards yet, but I think I’m on par with the skills of a BUCA. Then again, maybe not…

Of course, today was also church day. I didn’t have to preach today, so I had a somewhat leisurely morning (read: I had no last-minute sermon to polish up). We had a guest chaplain in today. He was up to visit one of his reserve units that is doing its two-week annual training here at NAS Whidbey Island. He’d put out to his unit (without asking us) that he would be doing a service at 1000 at the chapel. Because we have Catholic service at 0900 and Open Christian (Protestant) at 1100, we couldn’t accommodate that request, so the boss let him slide into our service. Word to the wise: Semi-charismatic Korean Presbyterians don’t believe in staying on schedule. He preached for almost an hour (including two videos) and the whole service ran almost two (compared to the normal one hour length). Overall, I think people enjoyed the service, but it was certainly a change from what we do. I’m inspired now though—I’ve got to get cracking on next week’s sermon. I’m sure I could talk for an hour straight and I’m equally sure that my wife (among others) would pay rapt attention the whole time…

Until tomorrow (unless I’m lazy), cheers!