Enough notebooks to start one heck of a campfire with have laid inside a compartment in my desk for several years now.
Each one contains notes of games gone by, countless interviews with athletes and coaches and details on big moments that will forever go down of some of the best in this area’s sports history.
My wife and I had a strange, wonderful experience recently. I was working from home when our doorbell rang. What used to be a childish prank – ring a doorbell then run away – is now the norm for package deliverers. I opened the door and propped up against the wall was an enormous, thin box. It was a 50-inch flatscreen TV. I hadn’t ordered a flatscreen TV.
I stared at the box thinking through the possibilities. A Christmas gift from my wife? No, we have no room for a TV that large. I checked the shipping label. The addressee was a name I did not know. The address looked like ours, “6455,” but with the poor print quality, it could have been “6466,” hence the delivery error. My smartphone said that “6466” was a mere 150 feet to my west. It was now dark and cold outside, so I brought the TV inside, threw on a coat and started up the street. I walked west, retraced my steps, then walked east. My phone lied, there is no 6466.
My wife is more resourceful in such matters, so she took up the quest when she arrived home from work. First, she snapped a photo of the shipping label and enlarged it. It read “6455,” which made the delivery even more strange. An online search of the addressee yielded a possibility. My wife fired off an appropriately cryptic note to the person on Nextdoor and on Facebook Messenger. No response. Studying the shipping label, she noticed a 10-digit number under the address. A phone number? She tried the number, gave me a smile, and left an explanatory message in a voicemail. A short time later, we got a call back.
The flatscreen was a gift from her mother for one of the grandkids, the caller explained and, yes, they used to live at our address but had moved two years ago. Even though “mom” had been to their new home at Thanksgiving, she still had the TV delivered to the old address. “My mom could get lost in a closet,” the caller chuckled and then offered to send her husband over to pick up the TV. My wife then asked that all-important Christmas question, “Is this gift supposed to be a surprise?” It was. “Do you want us to keep it here until Christmas?”
“You would do that for us?!” the caller asked. “Yes, thank you!” After more friendly small talk, the caller added, “You’ll probably get another delivery tomorrow.”
We did – another 50-inch flatscreen.
Some 2,000 years ago, God surprised the world with a gift on its doorstep, God the son, come in human flesh, born as a baby. God had promised to send a redeemer; the surprise was that the redemption the redeemer would bring required his death. Christ Jesus died for sin then God raised him from the dead so that whoever would put their faith in Christ alone would be saved from the judgment and have eternal life with God. Friends, the gift of Christmas is the Christ of Christmas. Trust in him.
In addition to the numerous sea birds that walk along the shoreline or fly overhead, small marine creatures wash up on shore or make their home near its edge.
Some are easy to identify. Others are not.
Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s deputies may start the new year with some new technology as the county seeks to implement body cameras.
Sheriff Bob Johnson presented the issue to the board of county commissioners Dec. 10 as a request for a little less than $1 million for the first five years of the program.
Navarre's girls weightlifting team closed out the 2020 portion of its schedule on a high note.
The Raiders did it by winning their own invitational Tuesday afternoon, claiming the crown with 90 points.
There’s a variety of wildlife teeming just below the surface and down into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, from tiny microbials to massive great white sharks and every shape and size between.
But for marine biologists and other scientists who need air to breath, observing and understanding this diverse ecosystem can be tricky. That is where tracking comes in.
About 180 hospitals across the state will have access to COVID-19 vaccines as of next week, Florida’s emergency management chief said Tuesday.
Division of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz said five hospitals that received delivery of a Pfizer vaccine Monday and Tuesday have reached agreements to share the vaccine with 25 neighboring facilities, usually their competitors. That means 30 Florida hospitals will have access to the Pfizer vaccine this week.
Florida this week surpassed 20,000 resident deaths from COVID-19. The largest numbers of deaths have happened in heavily populated Southeast Florida. But here are the dozen counties with the fewest COVID-19 resident deaths as of a Tuesday count:
--- Franklin: 4
