Fictional character, Dr. Emmett Brown: "The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" quoted from the 1985 movie: "Back to the Future"

Good morning and welcome to my version of current events or maybe it's a written exercise depicting my show and tell for today, on this Thursday, August 25, 2016. I've mentioned this before but it is still amusing. To me, anyway. I often keep my phone on vibrate to keep from annoying people when it rings. I keep my phone in my shirt pocket. I suppose since the doctor has now christened me into the federation of the elderly I notice that I occasionally have a momentary muscle spasm but it signals itself in the same way my phone does when it vibrates. That's right. I have attempted to answer my own spasm before. I thought you might get a kick out of that one. Let me see. The election campaign continues. Donald Trump is currently trading Twitter insults with the media stars of the Morning Joe show because he doesn't like their comments about him. It's pretty ugly stuff. His wife is saying she might sue a number of media outlets for some of the reports they have done on her. Defamation. Good luck with that one. I saw where they have discovered another 15,000 previously unseen emails from the Hillary Clinton archive. Information overload. So much has been said about her potential failing health, she decided to prove that she was doing just fine. How? I read that she went on the Jimmy Kimmel show and right there in front of millions of people she did something that should silence any concern about her physical stamina. She opened a jar of pickles. There's a meme floating around on Facebook that warns parents. The gist goes like this: If you feel your conscience will not allow you to vote for the Donald or for Hillary and you end up voting third party or for a write-in candidate, you must be prepared to tell your children how you allowed Hillary to become our president leading to our nation becoming a complete police state. I think they wanted the reader to think North Korea. Now that's what I call a warning. Just a few of my drive-by hit and miss notices for you to consider.

The other day after the volleyball games were over our daughter-in-law told us an interesting story. Their high school team has two girls already committed to scholarship deals, one to Clemson and the other to Baylor. The girl going to Baylor at times dominates the field of play. She spikes the ball so hard, a return is typically useless. A particularly animated coach of one of the losing teams came by where the parents were seated and said in passing that their team really has only one player. He said that to the wrong person. Our Mitzi informed him in no uncertain terms that all the girls work hard to see the team achieve success. He wouldn't leave it alone. Finally, she told him that it must be really embarrassing since according to his estimation her team only had one player but yet that single player caused his entire team to go down in defeat. That little story reminded me that it is always best not to mess with a Mama bear. I've seen the wife spring into action when one of her own was being attacked. I remember my mom getting stirred up. I had my arm twisted while at recess at school when I was maybe 6 years old. I came home with a limp arm. They ended up putting a cast on. When we got home from the doctor, mom dragged me over to the house of the parents of the boy who twisted my arm. She gave them a stern lecture. There's a lesson here, one more time: It's best not to mess with a Mama bear.

I saw an article in Tuesday's online version of the Wall Street Journal reporting on why 4 a.m. is the most productive time of the day. Since I am a committed early riser, I was, as you would expect, drawn to that teaser in the headline. Most of the people triumphantly talking about all they get done in the early hours before dawn were business executives. That would not be me. I did keep the same early hours when I was, by some estimations, at least a facsimile of a business executive. Maybe I was a business executive wanna-be or one with training wheels. The point this article was making had to do with the fact that when distractions are eliminated, huge amounts of productive work can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time. I cannot report great productivity on my part these days because of my early schedule but I do typically work on my blog early in the morning. I try to stay one day ahead, therefore, if today is Wednesday, then early this morning I would be publishing Wednesday's edition and already working up the Thursday one. I also work on my Bible lessons. And, yes, I do prepare for the work day, checking emails, and catching early phone calls. I suppose I saw a thread of vindication in that story for those of us who get on with it while it is still dark-thirty as they used to say back home. I know. It doesn't work for everyone. Just sharing. Not shaming. Please don't ask the wife what happens to me around 8 p.m. each evening sitting in my recliner, or perhaps better put, reclining in my recliner. Have a great rest of the day and may God bless. Amen. .....More later.