Smoked Out

I had an unpleasant experience recently when my wife and I went to Texas Roadhouse for the first time in many months. Oh, the food was great. But I had a difficult time enjoying it. Cigarette smoke kept wafting into my nostrils and lungs.

When I inquired, the server explained that smoking is allowed in the bar, which is a big open area in the middle of the restaurant. There are no exhaust fans.

So the next day I called up the city health department. After all, Springfield passed a restaurant smoking ordinance a few years ago that allowed smoking only where alcohol sales are hefty, and separate ventilation systems were required. But it turns out the code is pretty toothless. For example, eateries that seat less than 50 get a free pass. And there is an exemption for restaurants that sell $200,000 or more in alcohol a year. No separate seating area or ventilation system required.

Missouri is one of only a dozen states not to regulate restaurant smoking. I guess medical studies that show cigarette smoke, even secondhand smoke, can kill you aren’t enough to force laws that would protect patrons from those who seemingly can’t last an hour without lighting up. I really feel sorry for the non-smoking servers who have to work in these conditions.

Patty and I also have tried eating outdoors at a couple of restaurants, but few have any restrictions there. I guess if smoke is outside somehow it’s not unhealthy. Meanwhile, we’ll stick to those establishments that ban or restrict puffing to certain areas.

Remodeling Takes Shape

Patty and I have been married 32 years today. One thing we’ve learned over the years, sometimes the hard way, is to try to keep debt to a minimum. That’s why it’s particularly gratifying to see our house remodeling nearing completion without taking out a loan. For the past five years we’ve been socking away part of our paychecks to make the larger house a reality. Delayed gratification never felt so good. It’s especially rewarding when people ask, as they have repeatedly done, who is financing the job.

Our remodeled bathroom will have a whirlpool tub to relax our aging bodies and a shower that we can actually move in without bumping our elbows on the walls. A new guest room will be a place for company to relax and have their own bathroom facilities.

Goals are important in marriage. While this isn’t necessarily a spiritual boon (although Patty will be able to use the hospitality suite as a prayer room when vacant), achieving a shared dream can draw a couple closer. Disagreements over what nozzles, windows, light fixtures, and paints to incorporate have been kept to a minimum. And, despite having to go fetch our clothes from the living room every morning, we even drew closer through the upheaval. We removed the wallpaper that we’ve hated for 11 years in the hallway as well as in the existing bathroom. We painted those rooms and made them look much nicer. Togetherness in sweatiness.

Living Long

I took a work-related health survey a few weeks ago. After answering a bunch of questions about my lifestyle, the computer figured I’d live to be 90 years old. This is based on such factors as me not smoking, not boozing it up every night, staying away from fast food for the most part, exercising regularly and the fact that my mom is already 92. Apparently baby fat is not a hindrance.

Of course predicting longevity is a bit of a crapshoot. I could get run over crossing the street. Or I might die from a cancer caused by what is in the water that I drink or the air that I breathe. The chemicals on the food I buy at grocery stores or in restaurants might do me in. Or I could get some dreaded leg or foot ailment and not be able to go walking weekday mornings anymore.

We try to increase our odds of sticking around. While much of our wellness is beyond our control, we can take measures to improve the probability of living longer: eating healthy foods, not being a couch potato all the time, reducing or eliminating the pharmaceuticals in our bodies, using non-toxic products to apply to our face, head and underarms.

The biggest threat is bigness. It’s a constant struggle to keep those extra pounds off as I age. But that extra cellulite in the gut is a great risk to cause a heart attack or stroke. There may be something more important than sticking around a long time: taking care of myself so that I feel well during my remaining years.

Man’s Best Friend

I’ve never been much of a pet person, but I must admit I have a special fondness in my heart for Buddy, who has been our dog since the first week we moved to Springfield. We got the lovable mutt from the local animal shelter as a puppy, and he’s been with us for 11 years.

Of course some of his behavior is aggravating. He still chases the UPS truck, begs for food from our plates and doesn’t always smell great. And his seemingly constant shedding of fur isn’t a treat for our floors or our lungs. But Buddy is a loyal, obedient friend, walking with me in the pre-dawn hours every morning.

Buddy has a sensitivity toward vulnerable humans. Once when friends visited us and their toddler wandered off from the yard, we found the two-year-old girl down the street, Buddy herding her back to the house. Near the end of my dad’s life, when he would lie down on our couch, Buddy would be right by his side, keeping him company. He also camps outside the door where our one-year-old granddaughter sleeps whenever she spends the night.

For all his typically goofy dog behavior, I must say I’ll miss Buddy when he goes. But if he keeps taking those walks, that might not be for quite awhile.

Putting Things Together

This spring I’ve been amazed at how my son and my remodeler have put things together. Both are artists and craftsmen.

Zach is a music composition major at Drury University. At a recital in May, students performed two pieces he had created. It amazed me that a son of mine has such a musical gift. I can play notes on a trumpet and carry a tune, but how can he put together a score featuring piccolos, vibraphone, celesta and glockenspiel? Then do another composition incorporating flutes, clarinet, violins, guitar, cellos and double bass. It’s beyond me how his mind works like that. Indeed it’s God’s gift.

Equally impressive is the job that Melvin Hopke is doing at my house. How he can knock out a linen closet, toilet and shower and make hallways that connect exactly to the new addition. How carpenters, roofers, electricians, plumbers, drywallers can come in one after the other and with precision create a new living space with great precision. That’s something incomprehensible to my non-mechanical mind.

Of course some people have told me they have no aptitude for writing. That’s one of the few artistic endeavors that comes naturally to me. If God hadn’t granted that gift, I don’t know what I would be doing.

Marketing Savvy

I must hand it to Ruby Tuesday’s. A couple of years ago, just as the economy began to tank, the mid-level-price restaurant chain began an aggressive coupon campaign to get customers in the door in order to stay in business. The approach has worked. Whenever my wife and I dine there, which is once or twice a month, the place is nearly full. That wasn’t the case in early 2008.

Ruby’s has been sending me $10 coupons for the past couple of years. Essentially a couple dining out can get one full-course meal for free, or nearly free. The coupons have come in the local and national newspapers, direct mail and e-mail. The saturation marketing strategy has worked. Customers, especially middle-aged diners like me, love a bargain.

Kohl’s is another company that has adopted the strategy, blitzing my computer and mailbox with too-good-to-miss offers on shoes, suitcases, dinnerware and clothes. Other corporations would be wise to follow the plan of Ruby’s and Kohl’s if they want to stay in business.

The Obama Haters

Seeing the intensifying vitriol aimed at President Obama on the Internet grieves me. Unfortunately, much of the loathing comes from the keyboard of Christians, who, according to Jesus, are supposed to love their neighbors — and their enemies. The Apostle Paul also admonishes Christians in Scripture to pray for their government leaders.

I lived through all this enemy camp stuff in the 1990s during Bill Clinton’s presidency, but the presence of the Web has only ratcheted up the hatemongers. I admit I’m not fond of Obama’s abortion and gay-rights policies. But for the Christian, the answer is prayer, not verbal broadsides.

I’m talking about people who intentionally spread lies, such as Obama is a Muslim or that he canceled the National Day of Prayer. Such information, repeated without bothering to check the facts, only makes Christians look ignorant.

But the visuals are worse: People who put Obama’s picture with a slash through it, a “Nobama” meter declaring that there are only 1,000 more days until the president is out of office.

Such a fomenting environment reminds me of the South in 1963. John F. Kennedy had a lot of people who hated him. He went to Dallas to try to reverse some of that. I pray all the Obama bashing isn’t giving rise to such a climate again.

I hope Christians will stop all the incivility and disrespect that has become commonplace in politics. We’re supposed to be part of the solution, not the problem.