Both Rev. David Adams at Bell Buckle and my father at Goose Pond were using the Wesley Study Bible, instantly recognizable even from the pews from its two-tone green-and-brown binding.

It only served to remind me that I haven’t seen my Wesley Study Bible in months. I have no idea where I might have left it, perhaps at some church where I went as a lay speaker. I was looking at the lectionary passages tonight for this coming Sunday – I will be speaking at my home church, First UMC Shelbyville – and wishing I had my Wesley Study Bible to look them up in. I have plenty of other study Bibles, but I really do like the WSB.

I have several Bible translations on my Kindle, but an e-reader display isn’t ideal for the footnotes and marginalia of a good study Bible.

I kept hearing from people that, in some ways, diet sodas could be as bad for you or worse than regular sodas. There’s been some research along the lines that artificially-sweetened drinks cause the body to expect calories – and when they don’t come, you get cravings.

So, earlier this year – not for the observance of Lent, but by coincidence a week or so after Lent started – I gave up diet sodas. I resolved to drink more water. I had a filter pitcher, but I bought a new one in a more convenient size. But I also resolved to allow myself the occasional iced tea, juice or what have you. On a few occasions I’ve even allowed myself a limeade or a regular Coke, which tasted impossibly sweet.

I think I’ve been drinking too much of the sweetened drinks as time has gone on, and that’s one reason I haven’t lost much in the past few weeks. (I gained a little weight back a few weeks ago when I was down with a cold and not walking regularly, and I haven’t quite lost it yet.) Now that the weather is finally warming up, I’ll be drinking more, and I’ll have to be even more careful about it.

I’ve bought Mio (or the equivalent) a couple of times in the past few weeks, although that’s getting me back on the diet-sweetner train, and so I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Today, at Walmart, I bought some ice pop molds. I used to have some, years ago, but had long since lost them. They were in a seasonal display along with several other things, including snow-cone syrups. I figured the berry snow-cone syrup would be a good flavor for the pops. I wasn’t sure exactly how much to use, though. The directions for snow-cones called for two ounces of syrup drizzled over four ounces of shaved ice, so I made up a batch of four pops with a similar two-to-one ratio of water to syrup. The taste is a little less sweet than I expected – but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe an occasional frozen treat will be refreshing and help me drink more water the rest of the time.

My prior webcam cost about $5, literally from the checkout line at some dollar store, and, frankly, the video looked like it came from a $5 webcam. A few weeks ago, some stranger left a snarky comment on something I’d posted noting that better webcams are now available.

Last weekend, I wanted to post a video encouraging people to attend the symphony concert, and so instead of using the webcam I held my phone at arm’s length. It worked, but it wasn’t very convenient (and my arm got tired).

I went online to see how much a new webcam would cost. One of the results was from Walmart’s online shopping web site; a Logitech webcam for $13.30. (Remember that price.) A few days later, after payday, I went online and ordered that webcam under Walmart’s “ship-to-store” program, where you save on shipping costs by picking the item up at your local Walmart store. They said that pickup was available as soon as that day, indicating that the store already had the item in stock.

Walmart accepted my order, but then a couple hours later cancelled it, saying that the item wasn’t available at my selected Walmart store.

At lunchtime yesterday, I decided to drop by Walmart and see what they had in terms of webcams. I had been to Walmart a day or two earlier, before payday, and vaguely remembered there being one model on clearance sale.

I found a webcam on a cart with other clearance sale items, marked down from $18 to $15. There were three of them on the cart. It looked like a good little webcam, so I purchased it and brought it home.

It wasn’t until I got the webcam home that I figured out it was the exact same model, the Logitech C110, that I’d attempted to purchase online. My online order was cancelled because the webcam wasn’t in stock for the regular price of $13.30, and yet when I went to the store the item was, in fact, there, for the low, low markdown “clearance” price of $15.

I e-mailed Walmart’s online store, including a scan of my cash register receipt from the brick-and-mortar store, and hoped for an apology or maybe even some credit. This morning, I got an e-mail saying they were reviewing it but basically making the excuse that store pricing and online pricing weren’t necessarily the same. I can understand some variation between the two, but the fact of the matter is that they told me the item was out of stock when it was in stock, and the full retail price online was less than what the store was saying was a marked-down “clearance” price. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Happily, the webcam itself seems to be working well, and it’s a great improvement over the dollar-store model.