Morning Fog

Some mornings the fog hangs low on the lake and shrouds the moon in gossamer veils.

A Little Autumn Color

Texas isn't known for much autumn color. I decided I would take some pictures of what is probably the height of our arborchroma. This is the tree in our back yard looking southwest. The grass has gone brown now.


Looking south towards the marina, a nice mix of autumn display.

Yamaha ES8

I've been asked to play the organ at our new church. But it's a difficult instrument mainly because the church ran out of money and were not able to build a swell box around the pipes (that's the thing that regulates volume). So there's no soft setting on the organ. The church has a lot of stone and that makes the room acoustically very "live." The organ has two volumes; fairly loud and make-your- head-buzz loud. Since there's no volume pedal, you can only control the volume by the selection of stops selected.

So I decided I would purchase a good keyboard synthesizer to hook up to my computer so that there could actually be some variety of music. I found this Yamaha ES8 on eBay. It has like a 1,000 or more different sounds programmed into it, including some great pipe organs from around the world. It has the capability of "sampling," which means I can record a sound, copy it into the keyboard, and it will create a voice that will be pitched to every key on the keyboard. So, I could sample the church organ, put it into the Yamaha, and with a good amplifier and speaker I don't think you could tell that it wasn't the real organ.


By programming some of the music on my computer I don't have to work as hard. Right now I'm scheduled to play on December 7, Decembeer 14, and Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. But there's about a 200 page manual I have to go thru just to figure out all this instrument can do. So I'll be busy, but it will be a lot of fun.

Last Sunday at Cedar Hill

Yesterday, November 16, was our last Sunday at Good Shepherd Church in Cedar Hill. Julie and I have decided to unite with the the Episcopal Church here in Granbury (well, actually it's in the nearby town of Acton). As part of the diocese of Fort Worth, our new congregation (ironically also called Good Shepherd) has departed from the apostate US Episcopal Church and will be part of a new "denomination" within the Anglican Communion that adheres to apostolic faith and the witness of the Scriptures.

The cake was served as part of the farewell reception planned for Julie and I. We will miss Good Shepherd Cedar Hill and our many wonderful friends and fellow believers we have come to love. We plan to keep in touch with many of the folks who attended my Bible study class and hopefully they will come hang out on the Cliff regularly.

Wii Mii

We bought the Nintendo Wii video game for my Christmas present. Got the sports package and the HiDef version. As all Wii-bees know, you can create representations of yourself called a Mii. Above is my Mii (as designed by Julie and our friends) in the boxing ring. Is this really what I look like?


Our friends liked the boxing game. Here's Marc Hutchens going toe-to-toe with an opponent (and at times I thought he was going to punch my TV set).


I knew I was a winner (with a little help from my friends)!

Hard 8 in Stephenville

Some of our friends drove down from Cedar Hill to take us to a great place to eat in Stephenville, the next county seat south of Granbury.
Here's Julie, Rebecca Hutchens, and Steve Clark waiting in line.


Some impressive transportation.

Hard 8 has 6-8 huge meat cookers outside.  You tell this guy what you want.  A slice of steak, some prime rib, a couple of ribs, some brisket, and a baked potato.  You buy it by the pound!

It was delicious.  

Steve bought a couple pounds of ribs to take home.

Good buddy Marc Hutchens  finishes a plate of goodies.  Great place if ever you're in Stephenville.

Halloween in Bentwater

It begins with putting an orange ribbon on your mailbox.  This lets the organizers know your household will participate in the Bentwater Halloween festivities.  The kids meet at the marina and get on the haywagons to ride through the sub-division.  Homeowners go out to meet the kids -- not the other way round.  Hallooween was over for us in about 2 minutes.

This boy had the scariest costume.

Here's Hanna Montana with Indiana Jones.  The kids were really sweet.

The red-headed Luke-look-alike?