From 43 To Zero In A Matter Of Hours

Weather Change
When we went to bed last night around 10 PM, it was 43 degrees and rainy. By midnight the wind was howling and the snow was blowing. There was a "0" degree windchill factor when I walked out of the house to head to the mission this morning. Not much snow, but a lot of blow. Looks like we're going to have light flurries for most of the day. There's about a half inch of snow on the ground. Coshocton County is officially in a "Level One" snow emergency status...which means there may be snow on the ground and the road may be slippery in spots. "Level Two" is a bit more serious with driving allowed only as absolutely necessary. "Level Three" shuts the county down for all traffic but emergency vehicles. We very seldom have "Level Three" situations declared.

No great snow shots to share as we still don't have any real snow so we'll toss in a couple more snaps of me and Karen in the MMS office today.

Karen opens and sorts the mission's mail.

Karen's busy opening mail, receiving donations for the mission, and entering them in the receipting program. Soon she'll organize the mailing of each receipt to the respective donor.

Me? I'm focused on candidate development again today.

Sorting through candidate files.

Sounds, Not Sights
The phone just rang with a call from a missionary asking about the instrument panel our guys are building for his airplane. The sounds from the hangar floor drift up through the back wall of my office: voices in conversation, rivet guns chatter, the hum of an engine under going its break-in run on the stand in the test cell across Hangar A. An air drill whines. There is some laughter. I can tell the difference between the door closing on the Parts Room beneath me as compared to the door closing on the Supervisor's Office. I've been here long enough to recognize intricate sounds and get a feel for the pulse of the hangar without seeing what's going on in the hangar.

Continuing with sounds, it's windy, so the ceiling structure above my office stretches, sways, and pops. It reminds my of being on a sailboat at the dock. Do you know the sound the lines make on the moorings as the boat shifts and pulls against the lines, stretching them? It's kind of like a rapid fire popping. At other times it sounds like a creaky door slowly opening. The ocean, a harbor. Seagulls always wailing about something.

As I sit here in east central Ohio, the icy wind bashing against our hangar, with 17 degrees indicated on my computer's "weather bug," my thoughts drift back to that sail boat, the sun, salt air, a cold drink, and a hot summer day. I can't help it, the sounds in my office ceiling automatically transport me there.