If my head weren't screwed on...

...it's highly likely that I would have left it on the bus after during a fourth-grade fieldtrip to the Alamo, left as a relic to be found by the brave soul who dared to venture into the basement...

Consider the following experiences from Monday and Tuesday:

1) I went to a local body shop on Monday to have the roof on my car fixed. My car sustained damage to the roof when I ran into my garage with a mountain bike mounted to my roof rack on St. Patrick's Day (Garage and bike were fine - car was not). The estimate was well above my $1000 deductible, but I initially told the man who estimated the damage that I would just pay out-of-pocket. When I woke up in the morning, I realized this was dumb, and reported the incident to my insurance (why have insurance if you don't take advantage of it?).

2) With my car in the body shop, my dad graciously allowed me to borrow his impecably maintained gold Toyota Tacoma. I drove it to work Tuesday morning, parked, and went in to the office. When I walked back to the parking lot during lunch, the truck was not where I parked it. I looked around, and to my shock (and relief), the truck had rolled safely to the edge of the parking lot, where, except for a bright orange parking notice, it escaped unscathed. Needless to say, I've now remembered how to operate the parking brake on it...

3) Later that afternoon, Tommy called and asked if we were still up for golf after work. I looked outside at a cloudy sky and said, "Sure." We met up at Hancock Golf Course at 5:30, with the sky darkening, but more importantly, no crowd ahead of us. We decided to play on...

...and by the time we were putting on the first hole, the skies opened up and . I told Tommy that it would get better, so we played on. We began to hear thunder by the 2nd fairway, and saw lightning in the distance at the 2nd green. We played on. On the 3rd hole, the rains came down really hard, flooding the course with runoff from the neighborhood. We ducked under a tree for a few minutes, and when the rains stopped, we managed to play 3 more muddy holes before calling it a day. I found out in the morning that the storm we played through produced softball-sized hail at Lake Travis. On a somewhat related note, the topic of our safety meeting this morning was "Lightning Safety"...

I tend to be more absent-minded than most, but every once in awhile, I'll have a week like this one, where I make poor decisions in bunches. As Brennan Manning would put it, "the cheese has fallen off my cracker." I then realize that it takes a lot of patience to deal with me sometimes, and I am grateful for the grace shown to me by my friends and by the Lord. I also see that, in light of my shortcomings, I should show more grace to others in light of their shortcomings.

For now, I think I'll be content with a good night's sleep...