About that eighty-one cent check.

Each month we pay our mortgage company the agreed-upon interest and principal on our home loan plus some extra they put into an escrow account to pay our property taxes when they come due. Many if not most of us do the same.

Once a year the mortgage company recalculates the amount to be withheld for the escrow account to be sure there is not too little and not too much in the reserve when it comes time to pay the taxes. In our case the readjustment is typically small, sometimes a little up and sometimes a little down.

It turns out that there is a law, probably a good law, which forbids the mortgage company, in our case one of those too-big-to-fail banks, from withholding too much money; over withholding to their advantage and our disadvantage. From what I can tell, the law allows only small margin of error for the banks when they calculate the monthly escrow amount. They really should not have more of our money than they reasonably need. That’s why we received the check for **ZERO AND 81/100 DOLLARS**. Continue reading →

The appointment was for 11:15. I expected to be in and out in maybe fifteen minutes. All the doctor was going to do was confirm the lab results and say, “See you in a year.” In fact, that is exactly what happened, except for the fifteen minutes part. Oh, I may have been with the him for 90 seconds, but I was in the waiting room for nearly 90 minutes. Sure, pass on your “I can top that” story.

The staff was understanding and when I finally saw him and before he said anything else, the doctor apologized. The fact of the matter is that he was not off saving a life or counseling a distraught patient who had just received very bad news. The fact of the matter is that he is a really good doctor. He takes time with his patients and listens to their concerns and answers their question and likes to talk. At 11:15 he was at least an hour behind schedule. For sure, I will go back a year from now because I like a doctor who takes time with his patients and answers their questions. Even if I have to wait for over an hour to hear that everything is fine and see you next year, I’ll go back.

But I hate the wait. Continue reading →

It’s going to be a miserably hot Saturday, but a group of a dozen or so LPC folks are going to brave the heat to join others from the Hunting Park neighborhood in north Philadelphia and those from other supporting churches in the first of two consecutive Saturday cleaning days at Hunting Park Christian Academy. We’ll paint and scrub and mop and sweep and do our best to help put the old building that houses HPCA in good shape for the opening of school on September 1.

LPC people know the HPCA story. For seventeen years, HPCA’s mission has been to “provide a quality, affordable, Christian education that celebrates a diverse community and leads children to know and serve the Lord.” About 200 students, pre-K through eighth grade, attend the school, which is housed in that old church building (where an active church worships on Sunday). Continue reading →

Vacations are a good idea.

Becky and I returned from a ten-day vacation in Montana on Wednesday. Our time away could not have been better. We spent the first half of the vacation in Glacier National Park. My apologies to social media folks whose feeds were flooded with one photo of spectacular scenery after another. The second half of the vacation was taken with visiting Becky’s brothers in Billings, and it was a very good time. Continue reading →

Becky and I will be leaving town as the DNC arrives in town. When we made our reservations for the trip to Montana, we were not thinking that we’d be missing all those Democrats.

We leave very early on Monday morning, and with a stop at O’Hare in Chicago we ought to be in Bozeman, Montana, before noon.  Then a five hour drive to Whitefish near the entrance to Glacier National Park, where we plan to spend a few days hiking and taking in the beauty and wonder of God’s creation in that amazing place. At the end of the week we will head back to Billings, a seven hour drive (Montana is a big state), for some time with two of Becky’s brothers who live there.

By the time we are back in Philadelphia, the Democrats will have left town. We didn’t plan it that way, but we’re okay with it. Continue reading →