Random Walk

It all started with an anniversary.

Well, really, it started with a wedding, followed by a couple of kids, then a few years of stumbling around blindly, then there was hope.

And a decade or so later, there was an anniversary, our 20th. We decided to go to a Weekend to Remember here in town to celebrate; we'd heard good things about the event and wanted to check it out.

It really was good -- we highly recommend it. The content was crisp and sound, the speakers were excellent, and the whole enterprise exuded passion and commitment, two words that, as I reflect, had been missing from my so-called professional life.

During the weekend, there was a brief mention of a "staff opportunities presentation" to be held before the final day got started. We decided to check it out, figuring we had nothing to lose.

Man plans, God laughs.

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you."

- Genesis 12:1

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

- Jeremiah 29:11

"OK, but Little Rock???"

- Random Walk 11:13:2008


I apologize for letting the dust form on this outlet; there has been so much to say and yet so many reasons to withhold it, but last night the Random Wife and I accepted God's call to join the mission staff of FamilyLife in Little Rock.

If there was a word that somehow combined petrified, excited, bewildered, overwhelmed, joyous, spent, and thankful, that's the word I would want to use to describe our feelings now, but for the moment, "at peace" seems to do it best. Stay tuned, and I mean it this time.

Steve Martin used to do a comedy bit in the mid-70s where he likened shots at Richard Nixon to "...telling Ike jokes," implying all that could be said had been said. Ike had the last laugh on a lot of us in Houston, but it certainly could have been worse.

Those of you who expressed concern for the Random Family, thanks indeed -- we are fine. We lost a couple of trees, one of which waved farewell on about 90 feet of Random Fence, and the opted to give us a new Random Skylight in what used to be -- and a few weeks and $$$ hence will again be -- the Random Son's room.

Fortunately we weren't around for the carnage, having sagely evacuated not just the city, but the entire continent a full two weeks in advance. The big Random Trip for 2008 had us in England for five days, and Israel for 19. It was a spectacular trip, one we'll be processing for years.

I kept a bit of a diary on our journey, and will be backposting it over the next couple of weeks, so I hope you'll tune in.

The Random Family in Caesarea

Hey, she's been published, but inspirational Amish romance novels? What a bummer to find out you can't sell the movie or television rights because it would offend your entire target audience. May also explain the Web 1.0 look of the site, too.

OK, I'm being catty -- which is only appropriate, since I picked up the trail of the above from a business card at Carol's at Cat Spring, an old favorite at which the Random Adults celebrated surviving 40 miles of rolling hills in the summer heat this weekend past.

We had a “do” the other night to attend, so I dusted off the blazer and dress slacks, and rooted around in the sock drawer for something other than white cotton. Just before I belted out some sarcastic remark about the laundry service in Random Manor – because chicks dig a winning sense of humor, you know – I found an old pair of black dress socks that I hadn’t worn in years.

Not just any pair of black dress socks, but dress hosiery, mind you. The kind that came with little form-fitting bits of tissue stuffed in each sock when purchased, so that they crinkled delightfully in the bag. Decorated with little teddy bears holding a martini glass up the side. Cost nine dollars at the rhymes-with-their-prices-don’t-go-low store. Nine dollars. One pair. $4.50 per sock.

Pulling them out of the drawer, I got a familiar sinking feeling in my heart. You wouldn’t think a pair of socks could be particularly evocative – although for $9 you’d expect them to do something special – but this particular pair recalls a tumultuous time in the Random Family. A time when priorities went askew for awhile, but fortunately landed back in their places, a little battered and bruised, but still operable. Nine dollar socks made sense during this time, which should have been the revelation we needed to set things right, but it took us a couple more years of blundering to get to that place.

So I put them on with just a tinge of apprehension. In Hollywood, the strings would have begun to play swirling sounds and the FX boys would begin earning their paycheck, but in my closet, all was still.

Until the Random Wife shouted up the stairs, “Are you going to knit some socks, or just wear them?”

I shoved those nine dollar socks into a more sensibly-priced pair of loafers bought shortly after those priorities returned home, and shuffled off.

With all the extreme weather in the midwest of late, the media are dutifully reporting the work of volunteers to fill sandbags and place them on the various levees and riverbanks to hold the river back, and the obvious question finally dawned on me: what happens to the sandbags after the danger is past? Put another way, why don't they just leave the sandbags there for the next time? Aesthetics?

Update (6/18/2008): I continued to do some digging after asking what may have seemed like a rhetorical question, and ran across a PowerPoint presentation from Dr. James Blatz of the University of Manitoba, a professor in their civil engineering department. The presentation mentioned the importance of timing around sandbag placement AND removal, but without any printed elaboration. Dr. Blatz was kind enough to respond to my query, as follows:

...The point of the importance of removing them is not obvious in my presentation as you have noted since there is some discussion I add around that point. The comment is actually specific to the area I discuss in the presentation (in around the Winnipeg region) where the dike corridors are right at the top of marginally stable riverbanks. The Red River cuts through a weak lacustrine clay layer and placing the large surcharges of sandbags on the tops of the banks can actually cause them to fail and take the bags with them thereby destroying the flood protection level. So part of the issue with timing is waiting for the river to rise enough such that the flood water acts as a lateral hydrostatic force on the riverbank allowing the added surcharge to be placed safely (the sandbag dike) and then when the water recedes below the sandbag level after the flood you need to remove the surcharge quickly or if the water drops too far, reducing the lateral hydrostatic force, the sandbags can cause the banks to fail. This is particularly a problem along the Red River since the dike corridor is relatively narrow since people build their homes close to the river. If you had the dike corridor quite a way from the natural riverbank edge this would not be a concern and you could leave them up as long as you like. However, the sandbag materials are usually very cheap (end run materials) and are not protected against UV degradation (with carbon black or another admixture that would increase the cost significantly) since they are generally only to be used for short term applications and as such after a few years exposure to UV the dike would be highly impacted and the integrity would likely not be safe for resisting flood waters. You would see many ruptured bags along the surface and sand running out and so on....

Thanks to Dr. Blatz for taking his valuable time to deal with such a trivial subject for a layperson. We now return you to your regular randomness.

There's a lot going on around here at Random Manor worth reporting, but this news story vaulted to the top of the list:

A 27-year-old Houston man died early today after his pickup truck slammed so hard into a Katy Freeway overpass railing that he was ejected through the closed driver's window and fell about 40 feet to the ground, police said.

The accident occurred at 2:10 a.m. and the driver, whose name was not released, died at the scene.

Police said the man was not wearing his seat belt when the crash occurred.

Witnesses told accident investigators the man was westbound on Interstate 10 and seemed to be trying to exit at Antoine when he lost control of the 2001 Chevrolet quad-cab truck and it spun into the railing.

Investigators said they found crack cocaine in the pickup.


The Random Kids are at an age where we as parents are making that transition from benevolent dictators to trusted advisors. So while I'm sure there is a lot of pain and sorrow behind this sad ending, I will confess to being glad so many "teachable moments" are in there as well.

Back when I was probably 14 or 15, a cousin of mine broke his leg in a mishap that occurred rather late one Friday night. A day or two later, as the dinner dishes were being cleared away, I said something to the effect of, "That was sure crummy luck," to my father. Rather than the distracted "Mmmm-hmmm" of assent I was expecting, he put down his newspaper, fixed me with a serious stare, and said, "Random Son, I think you will find that luck tends to degrade rather dramatically after midnight. Tell me, what good things do you suppose might have been likely to happen to him at that hour?"

As I had been more or less perennially lobbying for increased laxity around my parents' draconian curfew policies¹, I stammered a bit, looked around for help, and settled for, "Uh, I don't know?"

He returned to his paper. "Exactly."

2:10 AM.

Not wearing his seatbelt.

Drugs in the car.

Mark Twain had it right. My father was an idiot at 14, but looked pretty darn smart at 21.

And twenty-five years later, the man is a freaking genius.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.


¹ A memorable highlight: one evening, my father looked at his watch in response to my "Is it OK if I go to the Random High School Kids' Semi-Cool Hangout Establishment?" query and said, "It's 9:45 now, so... sure, just be back by 10:30."