"One Thing"

If you have ever watched Columbo (an old TV detective show), you may be hearing Peter Fualk's distinctive, "Just one more thing..." However, that is not the philosophy behind "one thing", regardless of how amusing the apparently bumbly Columbo can be.

My mother coined our "one thing" in order to help her household of Lymies to be a little more productive. I, at any rate, seem to have difficulty completing anything. I frequently cannot place my finger on anything at the end of the day that I can say was really productive--or I simply cannot remember what I did. This is where the "one thing" comes in.

At the beginning of the day (or the night before as the case may be), we set ourselves one task to complete. Once we complete that--we set ourselves our next "one thing". 

Yesterday, I moved a small whiteboard off the refrigerator and stuck in on the air duct running up the wall next to my desk. (Yes, there is a metal air duct running through the dining room and into my room that is not covered by dry wall.) I find that lists are helpful...and that I tend to bury the ones I write on paper. So I thought the whiteboard would be useful. 

I scribbled my "one thing" (which was actually very related conglomeration of three things) up on the board, plus an all caps reminder of something very important. I can see this board from my seat at the dinner table. 

And you know what? I got my "one thing" done!

Now...about that then. :) 

Forgive me if you find this a bit morbid, but I spent the day working on the recording of my Granddaddy's funeral.

I took the following two pictures with the still camera in my HMC40 before the funeral started and before I turned the video recording on.

They closed the casket (and slipped the casket spray in next to his hands) before the funeral actually started. 

I do not know how long funerals usually run, but Granddaddy's was close to an hour (give or take some). We sang twice, one of the songs two of my cousins and I played our guitars. It would have made him so proud. :) The pastor read the obituary (which I think Aunt Laurie wrote?) and gave a short sermonette. Three of the granddaughters eulogized. Savannah's eulogy was pre-recorded. (Later on, Tommy and Ricky told me that they could tell how much better she was doing just from that short little recording.)

At the very end, my aunt and one of my cousins played echo Taps. And if you want to know when I really, really wanted my hankie and didn't have it...it was this:

Well, anyway...what I did was adjust volumes (i.e. turn the singing/music down and turn up the speakers) and inserted the video of Savannah's eulogy since you can't see the totality of the church media screens as well as the photo of Granddaddy that we had on the wall for his final farewell, singing "It is Finished".

Then, I went in and reassembled the slideshow (thank-you, Katherine for taking the time out of your day to turn all those slides into JPG's for me! [I don't have PowerPoint on either of my machines.]) It only ended up with five of the songs out of...ten? because the slideshow was shorter than the music playlist and so that looped as the music played during the viewing. Anyway, I put the whole of it on a DVD...the funeral and the slideshow. For folks who want the full music playlist and/or the slideshow, something else will have to be worked out (like a USB drive or a data disk). I would, in the future like to put at least some of his songs up on YouTube, but I have another project (or two) to finish before I seriously think about that.

However, to give you a taste of the slideshow, here are some of my favorite pictures from it (clicking on the photos makes them larger so you can see them better; along with the captions):

There. I have tackled my first "one thing" of the day. My next "one thing" is another one of those multi-faceted ones...Cow Cavalry related! 

Blessings on your day!

     Racheal