Blah, blah, blah...

Where's Oswaldo?

2006-10-14T00:28:00.000-04:00

Oswaldo Chambers strikes again. (And no, no matter how hard I try, I can't find his bespectacled self and his red-striped shirt in ANY of his books! WHERE'S OSWALDO??? He sure writes some good stuff, though).
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"Give Me to drink." How many of us are set upon Jesus Christ slaking our thirst when we ought to be satisfying Him? We should be pouring out now, spending to the last limit, not drawing on Him to satisfy us. "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me" -- that means a life of unsullied, uncompromising and unbridled devotion to the Lord Jesus, a satisfaction to Him wherever He places us.

Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him. It is easier to serve than to be drunk to the dregs. The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of God, not a call to do something for Him. We are not sent to battle for God, but to be used by God in His battlings. Are we being more devoted to service than to Jesus Christ?

Toasting Marshmallows

2006-10-12T21:53:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed a distinct difference between my blog posts of last week and those from this week. "From the sublime to the ridiculous," you may be thinking. "What happened?" The answer is nothing. I'm still on the same path I was then. The work of the Holy Spirit is going on this week just as it did last week; it's just a little quieter...not as easy to put a finger on...not quite as mountaintop...less bubbles frothing to the surface...but still deep and good. I believe it and know it's true. I'm trusting God, learning to be stayed upon Him, peaceful, content to keep plugging at whatever unfulfilling tasks I'm doing as He teaches me that He is my All. It's settling in even as the frenzy fades. I still want more and more of Jesus, and He knows that because I keep telling Him.

I was thinking today about how DJ prayed during our meeting that God would light us on fire. I believe He did. Last week the flames were high, leaping and dancing and licking in a dazzling array. But what happens when the flames die down? What does it mean when they cease to reach as far, or flicker as brightly? What then? Are we cooling off, loosing the spark of the Spirit?

No, friends, I think not. It is then, when the spontaneity subsides, that the heart of the fire becomes embedded in the coals. Here, in the coals, is where the true heat lies. The flames are the outward display, but they are not the true source of the fire's life. They spring, instead, from the coals...red hot, quiet, unmoving...where the fire continues to burn its hottest long after the impressive pirouettes of gold and blue have vanished. The lack of flames, therefore, does not constitute a lack of fire. The heat may be as searing as ever; it is only contained for a while.

Furthermore, a bed of coals can leap into flame again in an instant with just a simple stirring or the introduction of appropriate fuel. To try to keep the blaze roaring at all times may result in an expense of energy that leaves you exhausted, or, pardon the pun, "burnt out." Much as we desire the flames to be high at all times, it is perhaps more important to welcome those times when we deepen the red glow at our core, realizing that as we are faithful to tend the coals in our soul, we will be ready for the time when the Holy Spirit will draw forth flames.

Every good toaster of marshmallows knows the ideal conditions for producing the perfect marshmallow. Would those be billowing flames? I think not! What good are flames when toasting a marshmallow? Flames are entirely unpredictable, and might reach out and ignite your precious charge without an instant of warning. Suddenly you find yourself waving your stick desperately in the air, blowing and spitting and sputtering to douse your snack-turned-torch. If you're lucky, you're camping with someone who "likes" the charred version. If you're not, you drop it into the fire and try again.

But when you want that perfect golden brown which sheaths melting goo, you wait for the flames to die down, and seek out a corner where the contained heat of the coals burns hottest. Here, with patience and diligence, the fire becomes useful to you, and you are able to channel its power in the creation of something good. The process is slower this way. The marshmallow doesn't get done as quickly as the one cooked in flames, but the result in this scenario is perfection. It gets toasted, not burned.

So, friends, where ever you might be right now, don't let the fire go out. But remember that flames don't define a fire. You can still burn hotly even if you feel like nothing more than a single coal. Don't be disappointed by the coals when you'd rather have flames. They don't mean you're any less on fire for God. Tend them and stoke them in preparation for a day when the HS calls them to life, but never fear you're not bright enough in the meantime. Heat in a fire is more important that its brilliance. In these times of "coalness," it may be that God is using you to toast some marshmallow to a perfection that glorifies Him.

"Never pump up joy and confidence, but stay upon God." -Oswald Chambers

Giving lip

2006-10-12T20:06:00.000-04:00

Most of the summer, I kept to myself in my cubicle, listening to Rush or whatever else. But I've been settling in more the last few weeks, so I've been interacting more and more with my coworkers, loosening up and giving them lip. It's been wicked fun and made working at the bank much better. The true Craig springs forth, and so far they seem to like it. Except for Kelly.

I have an ongoing thing with Kelly, the girl who told me I should be moving out on my own, whereby I make fun of her dogs. Every chance I get. She has a pitbull and a bulldog. Now, my thinking is, if you're going to keep an animal in your house, why would you choose one that's ugly and mean? Even more pressing is this question: if you're going to keep an animal in your house, why would you choose TWO that are ugly and mean?

It all started when I heard Kelly telling Martha, across from me, about her dogs, and insisting that it's a stereotype that they're the meanest kinds of dogs. So I asked her what kind of dogs she had, she told me, and I promptly replied that I hate pitbulls and bulldogs. I don't really (shhh, not a word), but at the moment it was the best way to get a rise. She responded with a tirade about her dislike for composers. Ha, ha. I really get her angry and she just makes me laugh.

A couple of days later, I told her I had thought of something POSITIVE to say about her dogs: "They probably taste good!"

Funny thing, she didn't really see the "positive" side to that. (I was trying really hard, too!)

Her boyfriend brought her dogs to work some time after that and Martha met them, so afterwards I asked Martha if they looked tasty. She says yes. HA! I was right! Why can't Kelly think of it as a compliment?

This morning, Pennie came to work with a muffin purchased from a nearby coffee house. Pennie is a remarkably funny woman to whom all sorts of things always happen. In the summer, she was making regular phone calls to bank branches to have them fax forms to her, when she received a phone call from her husband who was working at home. He wanted to know why he kept answering his phone to find fax machines squealing on the other end. With the light of dawning horror, Pennie realized she had been giving the branches her home phone number to fax the forms to. Completely absentmindedly...even though she makes these calls and gives out the bank fax number probably every single day. Pennie used to share her cubicle with Nate H. when he worked there, and she told me how one day during stretches, Nate lost his balance doing a quad stretch and landed on top of her as she sat obliviously at her desk. I laughed and laughed...Pennie is a very funny woman and sure knows how to tell a story!

She's also lucky. Within the last week or so, she's bought three winning scratch tickets. Two of them were for $100, and one for $50. Unbelievable. I offered her $10 for one of them, figuring since she only paid $5 she'd still be making a profit. She didn't go for it. Weird.

That was merely a rabbit trail. As I was saying, Pennie came to working this morning with a muffin she purchased from a coffee house. When she went to put it in the microwave, what should she spy, baked right into the edge of her muffin but a SPIDER!!! Legs splayed, in fact very well preserved, but a true, blue spider baked in her muffin. (It wasn't really blue--that's an expression, "for those of you in Rio Linde.") I saw it with my own two eyes and it was absolutely disgusting. Imagine if she hadn't see it until in the midst of eating it. That would have been difficult, though, given the size and prominence of this creature. I told her maybe she had ordered their special Halloween muffin and the spider was made of sugar. If only it were so. This muffin came from Dunkin Donuts, by the way...the one next to Walmart in Keene. Feel good about eating there? She called and they sent someone over to verify the error and give her a $10 gift certificate. 10$??? We'll see if that's the end of it. Maybe she'll be one of those famous people in the newspaper who get lots of money from a lawsuit. Maybe I'll get famous on her coat-tails as a firsthand witness of the spider-muffin.

This was all leading up to a continuation of my earlier story.

Later in the day, after this huge uproar, I asked Kelly a very pointed and sincere question. I asked her if she thought Dunkin Donuts made muffins with pitbulls baked into them...

...because, if they did, I would buy one.

All I got was a cold, "Shut up!" She then turned to order her lunch with Martha and Ryan.

So I asked if they were ordering hot dogs.

Score lots and lots of points for me. I am definitely winning the lip competition...that is, if there even is a lip competition.

(I hope so!)

Olive Juice?

2006-10-10T21:12:00.000-04:00

Today Memory Lane carried me back to the juvenile joys of junior high. Thank the Lord I have left them far behind! At least, I think I have. I certainly hope I did this in junior high and not in high school, though I really wonder.

I learned this vice from Elspeth, I think, oh corrupting Canadian that she was!

Okay, so to do this trick, you look at someone at some distance away, across a crowded room, for instance, and catch their eye. Then you deliver a sufficiently alluring smirk and mouth the words, "Olive juice!" Try it. Or just do it to yourself in the mirror. The point is that it appears as if you are mouthing the words, "I love you," but of course, you aren't. The ideal victim would be someone to whom such an admission would be entirely inappropriate, and who would register proper indignation. Then, in the midst of their shock and reprimands, or maybe just raised eyebrows, you can smugly declare, "All I said was 'olive juice.' What's wrong with that?"

Why, oh WHY was that so funny? It was even hilarious today as I remembered it, though it's hard to say if I was amused by the immaturity or by the humor of it. But it made me smile even as I scorned how juvenile I was. It still cracks me up!

It was pretty much the best trick ever in eighth grade.

Infiltrated?

2006-10-10T21:02:00.000-04:00

At work today, Aunt Sponge waddled down my row and gave everyone a caramel-filled chocolate. Everyone, that is, EXCEPT FOR ME!!! It was the most inexplicably rude thing ever. People on both sides of me got chocolate...the girl across from me got chocolate...but it was as if I didn't even exist. All the time I spent formulating my polite, "No thanks!" was wasted. (It wasn't about the chocolate--it was about being offered the chocolate.)

Which makes me wonder...

Do you suppose she reads my blog and resents being called Aunt Sponge? I don't know why she would. Sponge is only disgustingly fat and stupid, not evil and sinister like Spike. Hey, it's practically a term of endearment!

Except for when she is rude to me, and then it gets imbued with every ounce of vitriol I can produce: "Sponge! Sponge! SPONGE!!!"

[Disclaimer: She doesn't either waddle. She walks like a normal person. It just sounds more dramatic.]

Amazing

2006-10-07T19:12:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry I keep stealing words from other people to post on my blog, but sometimes that's the best way. This morning I read a bit in My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, and one of the entries was just perfect for me. It was all wonderful and edifying with excellent quotes and challenges sown throughout (go discover some for yourself!), but the following spoke with particular emphasis.
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Will You Go Out without Knowing?

"He went out, not knowing whither he went." -Hebrew 11:8

Have you been "out" in this way? If so, there is no logical statement possible when anyone asks you what you are doing. One of the difficulties in Christian work is this question--"What do you expect to do?" You do not know what you are going to do; the only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing. Continually revise your attitude towards God and see if it is a going out of everything, trusting in God entirely. It is this attitude that keeps you in perpetual wonder--you do not know what God is going to do next. Each morning you wake it is to be a "going out," building in confidence on God. "Take no thought for your life, . . . nor yet for your body"--take no thought for the things for which you did take thought before you "went out."

Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you go out in surrender to Him until you are not surprised an atom at anything He does?

Suppose God is the God you know Him to be when you are nearest to Him--what an impertinence worry is! Let the attitude of the life be a continual "going out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have an ineffable charm about it which is a satisfaction to Jesus. You have to learn to go out of convictions, out of creeds, out of experiences, until so far as your faith is concerned, there is nothing between yourself and God.
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And so there, that question I hate SO MUCH, "What are you doing?" or "What do you expect to do with your music degree?" does not loom so big or bother me as much. The whole being a Christian artist thing is part of what makes the waiting and the wondering extra challenging. People have asked me what kind of job I'm going to get as a musician and the answer is always, "I DON'T KNOW!" I squirm when good, Christian people ask me with a tone of skepticism what kind of job I can get with a music composition degree. I'm not in music because it's going to support me the rest of my life!!! I went to music school to equip me for ministry, but that doesn't automatically set me up for a JOB, a business, a lucrative marketable skill. That was not the point! But everyone else in the world goes to college to prepare for a career, so they can't really understand why someone would go to expand their ministry then graduate without a clue as to what they're supposed to be doing every day. It's a weird situation. I hope that somehow the ministry and the career may merge and turn out to be one and the same. But I don't know that yet.

What I do know is that I am completely rambling. I was only going to post that entry from Oswald Chambers! The point is, with all my questions about how it's all going to work out in the future...well, go back and read that gem again and you'll find all the questions answers. The nay-saying silenced. The trust deepened...

"You do not know what you are going to do; the only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing."

Ahmen.

Sabbath goodness

2006-10-06T21:58:00.000-04:00

This week has continued in much the same vein as the weekend which began it. I have been filled with desire for more and more of Jesus instead of looking furtively around at where I am right now and what I'm doing (or rather, not doing). Of course, I've been working long hours at the bank every day, not fasting and meditating on my knees in a monastery somewhere, but God can deepen my relationship with Him wherever I am, even when I'm not reading the Bible or praying. He can even draw us closer when we're typing mindlessly at a computer. ("Oprah calls it 'multi-tasking...'" to throw in a Sweet Home Alabama quote.) Anyway, the result is peace and a melting away of that which doesn't matter so that only Christ remains. The Holy Spirit has been faithful to work on me this week, giving me insights into the depth of God's love for me. Isn't it wonderful when you can see the work going on? 99% of the time it's silent and invisible, but those times when it springs forth...mmm, hmmm. That's what I'm talkin' about!

My spirit has come back several times to an all-absorbing purpose summed up in a pithy phrase--nope, not "this world for Christ in my lifetime." Sorry to shock you...that's a great one, too. However, I favor something I remember first hearing from my sister Kendra: "To know Christ, and make Him known." I love that because, unlike the other one, it starts with the most important, deepest part--knowing Jesus myself. Then, from that, erupts the desire to make Him known. I like how it starts with the BE, the innermost communion and intimate relationship with the Savior which is what I really need right now, then moves on to the DO by bringing the knowledge we have to others. So, yeah...to know Christ and make Him known. I'm excited about that.

Along with becoming a truster, prayer warrior, follower and all that stuff this week, I also became a big spender. :-) I spent a lot of money this week; computer parts, film developing, car inspection, even some new clothes all called on the old pocketbook. But it was GOOD because it was almost a direct response to being able to trust God. For the last few weeks I've been pinching the purse strings hard, working tons of overtime, trying to get as much money in my bank account as possible before going off and doing whatever. There was quite a bit of worry and fear motivating that desire to save, and also a lot of clinging to things I want to do with that money. Not much trust to be found anywhere. For example, I've been almost fanatically dreaming a trip to Greece for a while now. Suddenly, I felt like maybe if I worked hard enough, I might be able to pull it off next year. I wanted it so badly! But I also am pretty sure God wants me in Israel for a while this year which is an expensive proposition, so I was a bit panicked trying to make sure I could make them both happen. I was rather like the boy with his fist stuck in the cookie jar who can't get it out without letting go of the cookie he's snagging. Lots of tension and stress were at work in me.

But this week, with all that happened last weekend, suddenly I felt freedom from pressure in finances because GOD IS TRUSTWORTHY. What a basic lesson! I thought I'd learned that one already... (I'm such a backslider!) But the past few days I stopped stubbornly holding on to all those other things because they are the chaff and Jesus is the wheat. Lots of chaff blew away this week. It wasn't even a difficult fiery furnace or anything! More like, "Poof!" The funny part is it ended up making me feel like I could spend money, so I did. Did God mean He'd provide for us even when we're extravagant? Hmm. Get back to me on that one.

The thing is, I found it hard to believe God would provide for something as frivolous as a trip to Greece. I could easily believe that He would provide to go to Israel because that's SPIRITUAL, but it seemed like if I wanted Greece, that trip would be up to me to finance, so that's what I was planning on doing. But I know He wants me to put Him first and stop hanging on to what I think will make me happy. There was much release in my spirit this week as I sought to refocus on the One Needful Thing instead of all the other desires that were cluttering up my life.

As you can see, there've been lots of heavy spiritual lessons this week! Definitely not your typical newsy amusing post.

(Deal with it.)

Furthermore, God used the strength of my desires (to travel, for instance) to make me wonder what it would be like if I longed for the things God longs for with the same intensity. I've been praying that God would make me desire what He wants as badly as I do the things I want.

Today I was reminded of a section in The Silver Chair that is apropos in the extreme to what we've been going through recently, or at least what I've been going through. Remember that scene where the witch of the underworld fills them all with a sickly sweet smell and convinces them that the true world and Aslan are all their imagination? But then, one person, Puddleglum, holds forth and dispels every lie with his faith and declaration of the truth. That's all it took to break the haze. I feel like I had been subjected to a bit of the obscurity myself, but that the Holy Spirit came along and filled my heart with Truth so the web of deception and humanism was destroyed and NOW! I can see clearly the world above with the sun and grass and ASLAN! I grabbed the book tonight and the whole section is just so refreshing. I could tell you all to go read it yourself, BUT I have no assurance that you'll do so. Maybe you don't have the book readily available. Maybe getting it off the shelf is too unSabbatic.

So, yes, I'm going to type out the relevant portion in a wicked long post which you can read below. I hope you're edified by the allegory. There are so many significant insights to draw forth from it--a full sermon, in fact! But I'll leave that to you instead of going on ad nauseam myself. Really think about it, though, and consider the symbolism...you might even get as much out of it as your Bible reading today! I will say one thing...it was pain that cleared Puddleglum's mind and allowed him to clearly see the truth. I'm not sure I noticed that before.

Excerpt from The Silver Chair

2006-10-06T21:44:00.000-04:00

Now the Witch said nothing at all, but moved gently across the room, always keeping her face and eyes very steadily towards the Prince. When she had come to a little ark set in the wall not far from the fireplace, she opened it, and took out first a handful of a green powder. This she threw on the fire. It did not glaze much, but a very sweet and drowsy smell came from it. And all through the conversation which followed, that smell grew stronger, and filled the room, and made it harder to think. Secondly, she took out a musical instrument rather like a mandolin. She began to play it with her fingers--a steady, monotonous thrumming that you didn't notice after a few minutes. But the less you noticed it, the more it got into your brain and your blood. This also made it hard to think. After she had thrummed for a time (and the sweet smell was now strong) she began speaking in a sweet, quiet voice.

"Narnia?" she said. "Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia."

"Yes, there is, though, Ma'am," said Puddleglum. "You see, I happen to have lived there all my life."

"Indeed," said the Witch. "Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?"

"Up there," said Puddleglum, stoutly, pointing overhead. "I--I don't know exactly where."

"How?" said the Queen, with a kind, soft, musical laugh. "Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?"

"No," said Puddleglum, struggling a little to get his breath. "It's in the Overworld."

"And what, or where, pray is this...how do you call it...Overworld?"

"Oh, don't be so silly," said Scrubb, who was fighting hard against the enchantment of the sweet smell and the thrumming. "As if you didn't know! It's up above, up where you can see the sky and the sun and the stars. Why, you've been there yourself. We met you there."

"I cry mercy, little brother," laughed the Witch (you couldn't have heard a lovelier laugh). "I have no memory of that meeting. But we often meet our friends in strange places when we dream. And unless all dreamed alike, you must not ask them to remember it."

"Madam," said the Prince sternly, "I have already told your Grace that I am the King's son in Narnia."

"And shalt be, dear friend," said the Witch in a soothing voice, as if she were humouring a child, "shalt be king of many imagined lands in thy fancies."

"We've been there, too," snapped Jill. She was very angry because she could feel enchantment getting hold of her every moment. But of course the very fact that she could still feel it, showed that it had not yet fully worked.

"And thou art Queen of Narnia too, I doubt not, pretty one," said the Witch in the same coaxing, half-mocking tone.

"I'm nothing of the sort," said Jill, stamping her foot. "We come from another world."

"Why, this is a prettier game than the other," said the Witch. "Tell us, little maid, where is this other world? What ships and chariots go between it and ours?"

Of course a lot of things darted into Jill's head at once: Experiment House, Adela Pennyfather, her own home, radio-sets, cinemas, cars, aeroplanes, ration-books, queues. But they seemed dim and far away. (Thrum -- thrum -- thrum -- went the strings of the Witch's instrument.) Jill couldn't remember the names of the things in our world. And this time it didn't come into her head that she was being enchanted, for now the magic was in its full strength; and of course, the more enchanted you get, the more certain you feel that you are not enchanted at all.

She found herself saying (and at the moment it was a relief to say): "No, I suppose that other world must be all a dream."

"Yes. It is all a dream," said the Witch, always thrumming.

"Yes, all a dream," said Jill.

"There never was such a world," said the Witch.

"No," said Jill and Scrubb, "never was such a world."

"There never was any world but mine," said the Witch.

"There never was any world but yours," said they.

Puddleglum was still fighting hard. "I don't know rightly what you all mean by a world," he said, talking like a man who hasn't enough air. "But you can play that fiddle till your fingers drop off, and still you won't make me forget Narnia; and the whole Overworld too. We'll never see it again, I shouldn't wonder. You may have blotted it out and turned it dark like this, for all I know. Nothing more likely. But I know I was there once. I've seen the sky full of stars. I've seen the sun coming up out of the sea of a morning and sinking behind the mountains at night. And I've seen him up in the midday sky when I couldn't look at him for brightness."

Puddleglum's words had a very rousing effect. The other three all breathed again and looked at one another like people newly awaked.

"Why there it is!" cried the Prince. "Of course! The blessing of Aslan upon this honest Marsh-wiggle. We have all been dreaming, these last few minutes. How could we have forgotten it? Of course we've all seen the sun."

"By Jove, so we have!" said Scrubb. "Good for you, Puddleglum! You're the only one of us with any sense, I do believe."

Then came the Witch's voice, cooing softly like the voice of a wood-pigeon from the high elms in an old garden at three o'clock in the middle of a sleepy, summer afternoon; and it said:

"What is this sun that you all speak of? Do you mean anything by the word?"

"Yes, we jolly well do," said Scrubb.

"Can you tell me what it's like?" asked the Witch (thrum, thrum, thrum, went the strings).

"Please it your Grace," said the Prince, very coldly and politely. "You see that lamp. It is round and yellow and gives light to the whole room, and hangeth moreover from the roof. Now that thing which we call the sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter. It giveth light to the whole Overworld and hangeth in the sky."

"Hangeth from what, my lord?" asked the Witch; and then, while they were all still thinking how to answer her, she added, with another of her soft, silver laughs: "You see? When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing; the sun is but a tale, a children's story."

"Yes, I see now," said Jill in a heavy, hopeless tone. "It must be so." And while she said this, it seemed to her to be very good sense.

Slowly and gravely the Witch repeated, "There is no sun." And they all said nothing. She repeated, in a softer and deeper voice. "There is no sun." After a pause, and after a struggle in their minds, all four of them said together, "You are right. There is no sun." It was such a relief to give in and say it.

"There never was a sun," said the Witch.

"No. There never was a sun," said the Prince, and the Marsh-wiggle, and the children.

For the last few minutes Jill had been feeling that there was something she must remember at all costs. And now she did. But it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights were laid on her lips. At last, with an effort that seemed to take all the good out of her, she said:

"There's Aslan."

"Aslan?" said the Witch, quickening ever so slightly the pace of her thrumming. "What a pretty name! What does it mean?"

"He is the great Lion who called us out of our own world," said Scrubb, "and sent us into this to find Prince Rilian."

"What is a lion?" asked the Witch.

"Oh, hang it all!" said Scrubb. "Don't you know? How can we describe it to her? Have you ever seen a cat?"

"Surely," said the Queen. "I love cats."

"Well, a lion is a little bit--only a little bit, mind you--like a huge cat--with a mane. At least, it's not like a horse's mane, you know, it's more like a judge's wig. And it's yellow. And terrifically strong."

The Witch shook her head. "I see," she said, "that we should do no better with your lion, as you call it, than we did with your sun. You have seen lamps, and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You've seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it's to be called a lion. Well, 'tis a pretty make--believe, though, to say truth, it would suit you all better if you were younger. And look how you can put nothing into your make-believe without coyping it from the real world of mine, which is the only world. But even you children are too old for such play. As for you, my lord Prince, that art a man full grown, fie upon you! Are you not ashamed of such toys? Come, all of you. Put away these childish tricks. I have work for you all in the real world. There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan. And now, to bed all. And let us begin a wiser life tomorrow. But, first, to bed; to sleep; deep sleep, soft pillows, sleep without foolish dreams."

The Prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down, their cheeks flushed, their eyes half closed; the strength all gone from them; the enchantment almost complete. But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. Then he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn't hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human; for his feet (which were bare) were webbed and hard and cold-blooded like a duck's. But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth. And three things happened at once.

First, the sweet heavy smell grew very much less. For though the whole fire had not been put out, a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh-wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell. This instantly made everyone's brain far clearer. The Prince and the children held up their heads again and opened their eyes.

Secondly, the Witch, in a loud, terrible voice, utterly different from all the sweet tones she had been using up till now, called out, "What are you doing? Dare to touch my fire again, mud-filth, and I'll turn the blood to fire inside your veins."

Thirdly, the pain itself made Puddleglum's head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought. There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic. [I find this quote particularly astounding!]

"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

"Oh, hurray! Good old Puddleglum!" cried Scrubb and Jill.

Bank-a-licious!

2006-10-04T20:51:00.000-04:00

There are two girls who work at the bank who almost always walk together on their break, and they remind me of the Aunts Spike and Sponge from James and the Giant Peach. One tall, gaunt, and sallow-cheeked with thin, blond hair...the other short and round and, well, spongy. Okay, I'm using a LOT of imagination to come up with these descriptions, but I am amused to see them walking together because there is such contrast. In truth, the only reason I came up with this comparison is because Aunt Sponge once referred to me and my walking partner as "Bonnie and Clyde" when they passed us this summer. My penchant for quick retorts wanted to pounce, but nothing came, so I set my mind to discovering a truly inflammatory something to call them. And "Spike and Sponge" is just so perfect. Of course, I have NEVER said it...out loud. But now that it has been invented, it comes to mind almost whenever I see them together. Shame on me!

If you've been keeping track, you'll notice quite a collection of characters at my workplace. Eesma, Gollum, now Spike and Sponge, and oh yes, that woman who is so insipidly grinny I can't help but wonder if something is missing upstairs. As Christians, of course smiling and cheerfulness are part of the package deal and shouldn't surprise us, but even so, I think this woman is a little bit loopey. I love it, though, because it totally cracks me up. During walk breaks, I'll pass her going the opposite direction, and she makes eye contact from miles away and just grins like a schoolgirl until she gets close enough to say, "Good morning!" How funny she is.

Today at work I learned the woman who works across from me is only four years older than I am when, (shhhh! don't tell!) I thought she was a good solid ten years ahead. I thought she was mid-30s. She has even reached 30 yet. Um, I'm not exactly sure, but I don't think women in that stage of life generally approve of such over-guessing. Glad I never opened my mouth!

I heard another woman near me telling someone today that she has a nephew or some small boy in her life that they call Buddha because he has a huge, round belly. Oh, my, I think that is unbelievably funny and I conveyed my approval! Calling a toddler (or so I surmise he is) Buddha is just side-splitting. Now I wish I knew a fat, round-bellied little kid so I could call him that.

The project I've been working on at the bank involves signature cards for Canadian customers who are having certain accounts transferred to one of our American banks (we were bought by a Canadian company, which is why this transition makes sense). Anyway, amidst these hundreds of sig cards, I come across letters that people sent in with their cards however many years ago. Most of them just say things like, "Please find enclosed my opening deposit..." or "Please change my account to joint and add my wife," or "Please send my ATM card to my US address ASAP." Occasionally they get a little feisty with, "This is the THIRD time I've faxed this card to you!" or "For the record, I'm very distraught that you would make my account dormant without notification." From a business standpoint, I disregard them all because I'm not the least bit interested in the history of the sig card, just the sig card itself.

But this one was so funny I snagged it and brought it home for my blog--highly unconventional, to be sure. It was destined for the recycle bin anyway, and there's nothing classified in it that I'll pass on. Isn't it funny when people get all chatty and personal in a business setting?

"Hi Bess,

Thank you for your assistance.
Please let me know if there is any question and how long it will take this application to be in effect. I can be reached directly at [phone #].

How is Toronto? I was amazed seeing the Markham address--I thought it was in New Jersey. Well, TD is now huge--all over North America. I like it.

Thank you.

Regards,
Ahmed _____"

Yes, Bess, how IS Toronto?

In the words of others...

2006-10-03T20:18:00.000-04:00

From my poetry collection:

Faith

This much I know:
God does not wrong us here,
Though oft His judgments seem severe
And reason falters 'neath the blow,
Some day we'll learn 'twas better so.

My puny reason cries
Against the bitter and the cruel blows,
Measuring the large world by the inch it knows,
Seeing all joy and pain through selfish eyes,
Not knowing hurt and suffering may be wise.

But I have come to see,
So vast God's love, so infinite His plan
That it is well it was not left to man
To alter or to say what is to be,
When reason failed, faith also then would flee.

God knoweth best!
Through the black night and agony of grief
Faith whispers low: "Hold fast to your belief!
In time His purpose He shall manifest,
Then shall you learn how greatly you were blest."

- Edgar Guest

The Light of Faith

When the dark days come and the clouds grow gray
All men must brave them as best they may,
With never too much repining;
And bravest is he, when the shadows fall,
Who sees in the gloom of his darkened hall
The light of his faith still shining.

In those lonely days when his heart shall ache
And it seems that soon shall his courage break,
There is only one place to borrow;
One place to go for the strength he needs,
He must bind with faith every wound that bleeds,
And cling to his faith through sorrow.

For truly forlorn is the man who weeps
When his dead lies buried in floral heaps
And friends his path are lining;
And a pitiful creature he's doomed to be
If he cannot look through the gloom and see
The light of his faith still shining.

-Edgar Guest

Nearer Home

One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o'er and o'er, --
I am nearer home today
That I ever have been before; --

Nearer my Father's house
Where the many mansions be;
Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the jasper sea; --

Nearer the bound of life
Where we lay our burdens down;
Nearer leaving the cross,
Nearer gaining the crown.

-Phoebe Cary

Lean Hard

Child of My love, lean hard,
And let Me feel the pressure of thy care;
I know thy burden, child, I shaped it;
Poised it in Mine own hand; made no proportion
In its weight to thine unaided strength,
For even as I laid it on, I said,
"I shall be near, and while she leans on Me,
This burden shall be Mine, not hers:
So shall I keep My child within the circling arms
Of my own love." Here lay it down, nor fear
To impose it on a shoulder which upholds
The government of worlds. Yet closer come;
Thou art not near enough. I would embrace thy care;
So I might feel My child reposing on My breast,
Thou lovest Me? I knew it. Doubt not then:
But loving Me, lean hard.

-Paul Pastnor

O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go (verse 3)

O Joy that seekest me thru pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.

-George Matheson

Our Hope

A shout!
A trumpet note,
A Glorious Presence in the azure sky!
A gasp,
A thrill of joy,
And we are with Him in the twinkling of an eye!

A glance,
An upward look,
Caught up to be with Christ forevermore!
The dead alive!
The living glorified!
Fulfilled are all His promises that came before!

His face!
His joy supreme!
Our souls find rapture only at His feet!
Blameless!
Without spot!
We enter into Heaven's joy complete!

Strike harps,
Oh, sound His praise...
We know Him as we never knew before!
God's love!
God's matchless grace!
'Twill take eternity to tell while we adore!

-Anne Catherine White
(I DARE you to find a poem with a higher exclamation points per word ratio!)

And finally, once more...

Thine Eyes Shall See

Thine eyes shall see! yes thine, who blind erewhile,
Now trembling towards the new-found light dost flee;
Leave doubting, and look up with trustful smile
Thine eyes shall see.

Thine eyes shall see! Not in some dream Elysian,
Not in thy fancy, glowing though it be,
Not e'en in faith, but in unveiled vision,
Thine eyes shall see.

Thine eyes shall see! Not on thyself depend,
God's promises, the faithful, firm, and free.
Ere they shall fail, earth, heaven itself, shall end;
Thine eyes shall see.

Thine eyes shall see! Not in a swift glance cast
Gleaning one ray to brighten memory,
But while a glad eternity shall last
Thine eyes shall see.

Thine eyes shall see the King! The very same
Whose love shone forth upon the curseful tree,
Who bore thy guilt, who calleth thee by name,
Thine eyes shall see.

Thine eyes shall see the King! The Mighty One,
The Many-crowned, the Light-enrobed; and He
Shall bid thee share the kingdom He hath won:
Thine eyes shall see.

And in His beauty! Stay thee, mortal song!
The Altogether Lovely One must be
Unspeakable in glory; -- yet ere long
Thine eyes shall see.

Yes! though the land be very far away,
A step, a moment, ends the way for thee;
Then changing grief for gladness, night for day
Thine eyes shall see.

-Frances Ridley Havergal

Today

2006-10-02T23:43:00.000-04:00

This day began quirkily when I drove past a dead porcupine in the road at the end of the Hansen's walkway on my way to work. It was just lying there, on its side, no injury apparent to my eye. Fairwood Roadkill??? Who would have thunk it?

It continued in frustration when my breakfast protein shake tipped over on the passenger's side mat and left milky soy protein concoction all over. Ew. Don't look forward to that when the milk turns sour.

At work I was engrossed in deep thought all day...except for that moment when Laura and Martha and I talked about school shootings in Amish country, and Laura said something about using a bow and arrow, so I demonstrated by shooting them all speedily with my imaginary bow and arrow which left them in stitches. We definitely shouldn't have been laughing at that, but we definitely were.

I dropped many rolls of film off at Ritz, full of Fall and butterfly pictures.

Then I dropped my car off for inspection at a place in Marlborough, walked to the gazebo and read my Bible while waiting for Clyde to pick me up.

The day ends with a long evening spent composing the longest blog post ever--well, since my last longest blog post ever. You can read it below.

What a day.

Praise the Lord for Vision!

2006-10-02T23:15:00.000-04:00

Dear Comrades,

I am marvelling at how quickly God can turn things miraculously around! Brace yourselves--that's my opening line for a LONG and RAMBLING testimony about the last three days! You may have already read DJ's report, or maybe you were there, or caught a few crumbs somehow, but here's the whole loaf of how God met me during the Feast.

You've probably gathered from my blog that I've been pretty discouraged recently. Hm, it feels strange mentioning it because it was almost another lifetime ago. But I was, somewhere back there. Whatever you detected from my blog, however, was only the tip of the iceberg. Uncertainty, closed doors, lack of light--I felt profoundly frustrated and consequently was dealing with a lot of discouragement and spiritual negativity. It was almost entirely internal, but present nonetheless. Even my Bible reading was infected with a sort of skepticism which I really hated but didn't know how to overcome it. That was the whole issue--how to become UNdiscouraged? I didn't want it...most certainly wasn't wallowing in it, but couldn't just pull up the ole bootstraps and make everything better. Pep talks and support from friends and family were nice, but couldn't effect a change in my heart. As I said, my Bible reading wasn't helping much. What I needed was the Holy Spirit to do a miracle...

...AND BOY DID HE EVER!!!

During the evening meetings at the Feast last week, I gleaned some good insights, but I was still too discouraged and dead tired from more overtime at the bank to receive the makeover I needed. And so I was during the Sabbath meeting, too. Feeling low, tired, voice hurting which kept me from singing enthusiastically, listening and agreeing on the surface but not breaking through. Plodding, at best.

Then Claire gave a tearful and inspired testimony about her difficulties and oppression of the last several months, and how she was so sick of it that it drew her ever closer to Jesus. She stressed the words from #212, Earth's Sabbath, where it proclaims, "As the sun at noonday shineth, So the Son of God shall rise; From His wings He spreadeth healing, Vision for the failing eyes." That was what I needed to hear! Someone who for months had felt much the same way as I did, but was reaching out and taking hold of the vision for her failing eyes, and RECEIVING IT! My entire heart and soul perked up at the Holy Spirit's call and responded with a hearty "YES!" What I had been seeking unconsciously was VISION for my failing eyes! And now I wanted it, oh so badly!

The very next thing, the song Jerusalem the Golden was called for, and in that glorious, mountaintop song, my vision of the goal, the joy, the future, and my Jesus, was restored. Had we sung it before Claire's testimony, I would have struggled through it with little inspiration, but as the Holy Spirit worked it out, the stage was set to have the DESIRE for vision fulfilled by the VISION within a few minutes. And as I sang, the knots of discouragement, the rut, the bind I was in, the wall between me and faith--all dissipated like mist and were replaced with encouragement, joy...vision. The last verse especially brought tears to my eyes, and in those words I felt as if the negativity in my spirit broke.

"To Thee be praise forever, Thou glorious King of kings!
Thy wondrous love and favor Each ransomed spirit sings:
There God, our King and Portion, In fullness of His grace,
Shall we behold forever, And worship face to face."

Now THAT, my friends, is Vision!

I left the meeting renewed, reborn, rejuvenated, and lots of other "re-" words I won't conjure up. My circumstances hadn't changed at all, but the Holy Spirit had performed the miracle I needed and suddenly all those things that had dragged me down were no longer able to. Praise the Lord, it was wonderful!

But that was only the beginning!

In the Saturday morning meeting, I was able to worship God in His House without the former spiritual negativity, and the difference was remarkable. There was reality and no wall. I testified to the amazing power of God when given the chance, and that felt refreshing, too, just to stand up and talk about what God had done the night before. In all of this I believe God was preparing me for the spontaneous prayer meeting that Andrea pulled together Saturday night at her house for people in their 20's. I can't imagine how I would have responded then without this prior breaking-up of fallow ground in my heart.

In the informal meeting, the Holy Spirit was at work once more. Many of us poured out our hearts or shared insights or told where we were spiritually in our current situations and how we were seeking to further vision and faith in our lives. Common themes included making Jesus everything, and holding every other part of our lives as nothing compared to Him, and wanting to LIVE our faith out in college and the workplace, and being willing to adapt the vision from our Bible School days to the situations in which God puts us, and wanting to take up as a generation the torch of the Kingship of Jesus and carry it forward, and...oh, people, there was so much more! I can't possibly report on this meeting with effectiveness. It lasted two hours, and didn't feel in the least bit long or boring. It was simply anointed. And heart-binding. And it drew us FORWARD and closer to the heart of God. We pledged ourselves afresh to seeking Christ and Him only.

I was thinking that it felt a lot like the old Bible School days, when we were all together daily, united in vision and youthful enthusiasm, praying and believing and following God together. But then I realized that it was far, far better than Bible School, because now we are adults in diverse walks of life, and we've been out in the world and battered around and discouraged, and we've been through unimaginable grief and suffering, but we STILL want to go on and follow Jesus with everything that is in us! If anything, we want it more than we did back then when our dreams of life were still untainted. Now we have matured just a little bit, but nothing has diminished that desire to follow, follow, FOLLOW Jesus! We still share vision to extend the Kingship of Christ and remove the covering and bring His love wherever we go. Our lengthy time of sharing was followed by heartfelt prayer from all thirteen of us, and Andrea fetched a couple of men in spiritual authority to pray for us and seal the deal at the end.

Then we ate food and talked some more. :-) Several people indulged in bowls of store-brand Lucky Charms. Just the thing at 11:30pm.

For those of you who weren't there but would have been had you known about it or were closer to Fairwood, fear not. We included you in our prayers! I trust the same Spirit will be visited on you, and you will be encouraged and strengthened and renewed in your vision for exalting Jesus wherever you are. You're not alone. We're a fighting unit all in it together.

I could almost stop there. Those were the EVENTS that happened in the last three days. But the Holy Spirit has been teaching me so much in my heart in between all these activities, I must mention some about them. It's like a reawakening of spiritual sensitivity...kind of like a deluge all of a sudden. The Holy Spirit has been opening my eyes to things I need to embrace as part of making Jesus my All. Today at work I didn't listen to the radio or music or anything because I was THINKING all day. It was wonderful! Here are a few thoughts and insights I'll pass on.

A couple of weeks ago, Uncle Dave wrote me an e-mail in response to a blog post telling me I needed to repeat this little phrase over and over again to myself, "I am not what I do. I am who I am." It really helped to put my situation in perspective, and I brought it to mind at work a few times after that. But I don't think it was the time for that to work its way in and make a lasting difference. He also said, "You can be content doing anything as long as you know who you are [a child of God] and where your destiny lies [the Throne]." Something Melissa said in her testimony on Saturday really struck me and added a new dimension. She said God is stripping away everything that would keep our love for Him only on the surface, and thus making it deeper. Then, Saturday night, Andrea talked about how she wanted Jesus to be the only thing that mattered in her life.

All of these things in tandem made me realize that I have a prime opportunity where I am in my life right now to make Christ my all. Why? Because I have nothing else!!! No school, no career, no family (i.e., wife and kids), no plans, no responsibilities, little money. What DO I have? I have Jesus. And that's enough. I can love Him more without splitting my energies in a bazillion directions. It's GOOD that I don't have anything to fill my life with, because if I did, if I were in school as I have been for three years, then my love and trust for God would stay static on the same level as Melissa implied. But by pulling away these exterior things that I hide behind, He challenges me to go deeper in both love and trust. Now I don't have a crutch or security blanket, and my only option is to immerse myself in Jesus. I must follow Him closely, even when I have no idea where that will lead.

I also realized that I have been focused for a long time on glorifying God with the things I do, when maybe He just wants me to learn to glorify Him with who I am. I tend to be one of those Martha people who get busy with many things, earnestly wanting God to use them for His glory. That's all well and good, but not the whole picture. Now that I'm forging into the unknown where it's anyone's guess what will come next, I can't use tasks like school to prop up my life. Instead, maybe He wants me to glorify Him with WHO I AM by being His friend, His follower, His lover in my inmost soul, and not worrying so much about doing. "One thing is needful...", remember? As someone said in our meeting, sometimes breathing is all we can do, and it's all we need to do, because even that has power.

And I ramble ever onward...

Saturday night I got inspired again about being faithful in prayer for the evangelization of the world. This is an area that usually produces an inadequacy complex in me, however, because I tend to think that to be a successful prayer warrior I have to dedicate lots of time and lots of fervency and have a prayer list to rival Uncle Frank's. Otherwise, I'm really not much good, and should slink around in shame if I'm not constantly thinking prayerful thoughts and dropping to my knees every moment and completing my prayer list every day. The thing is, there are people who do all of those things easily. But even if that is a desirable goal for the Holy Spirit to work into me, it was real to me Saturday night that I don't have to be a "Prayer Warrior" to be a prayer warrior. Just do it, just do something, and don't let discouragement that I'm not "doing enough" deter me from doing anything. Get in the battle consistently, even if it's just a small daily prayer for the covering to be removed so lost souls can see Jesus...or honoring the blood for your school or workplace. If you're BELIEVING God, even for just that one minute, that's ENOUGH! Starting there, God can expand! And it doesn't have to be long and grand. I prayed pretty regularly while in school for Israel and the ten tribes (and many of you)...it didn't seem like much, but looking back, THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT! I want to be doing that: enough slacking off already! Nothing amazing is required to be a pray-er. Just do it. It was neat how prayer came to mind more than once today AT WORK, and I confess it seldom does. I'm usually too consumed with monotony. Again, the Holy Spirit is on the move.

My third year of Bible School, the overwhelming lesson God had for me was Trust. I really connected with it, too. He worked it into me again and again, and that carried me for a long time. But I think God saw I needed to relearn that lesson, so here I am again without a clue as to the future. I am forced to trust. But now that I've had my vision refreshed, I'm kind of happy and excited to be in this position. It becomes an adventure trusting God instead of misery. And because of the transformation I'm now willing to trust, instead of grasping wildly at straws to make something happen or sitting dead in the water because nothing does.

And with that I will quell the bubbling over. It's late!

The emotionalism is already starting to wear off, but this weekend was not about emotions. It was about God's Spirit, and the Truth. Neither of those will be different tomorrow or the next day.

In Christ,
a follower, a truster, a prayer warrior, a visionary--
Craig

Kimberly!

2006-09-25T21:51:00.000-04:00

I found your husband today at the bank! Or at least his name!

The guy's name is Jack Jacke.

You get your Jack, and you also become Kimberly Jacke at the same time!

Cool, huh?

And then...!

2006-09-25T21:04:00.000-04:00

These pix are well over a week old. Friday, 9/15, our first monarch emerged, and we've had one every two or three days since then. Soon I will be an empty nester. :-)

The onset of Autumn

2006-09-23T17:20:00.000-04:00

Yesterday evening was the quintessential autumn evening in our home. The aura was everywhere, quite unexpectedly, I might add. My mum was burning a pumpkin-colored brown sugar and spice candle in the kitchen, and its scent gently suggested a tone of fall all through the first floor. Then there were the candles by which we had Sabbath meeting. For some reason a candlelit Sabbath meeting seems more fall or winterish than summerish, even though we use them all summer, too. With sundown coming earlier, it was dark by 7pm, and yes, our evenings are increasingly chilly, so all contributions together, we enjoyed a delicious foretaste of fall. I mentioned to Kayla that I felt I should be eating pumpkin pie and making a Thanksgiving List. That's how strong it was! Which is very convenient because I was thinking earlier in the day I should post something about fall in New England.

Those of you coming to the Feast next weekend will be glad to know the resplendent colors of autumn are well underway in Dublin. I was already out camerafying them in the wetlands last weekend. Some years the peak isn't until the third week of October, so it's only just started when the Feast rolls around. This year I'm guessing the peak around here will be the end of the first week, so you should see some crimson and gold and flames of orange, even if they aren't yet universal. For those of you not coming to the Feast...well, you can enjoy it vicariously through this post.

Mmmm...I love fall. Yes, there's a certain aspect of melancholy in it, but that's part of the beauty in it. At work yesterday I was thinking of the things I love about fall and decided to post of list of its delights. Did I do this last year? Maybe I just raved about the season--that's nothing unusual. The funny thing is, I feel like raving about every season whenever it rolls around. Remember how I extolled the virtues of snow and winter last year? And spring is absolutely amazing around here, made all the more so by the length and harshness of winter. I think the quote, "He who is forgiven little loves little, but he who is forgiven much loves much" is appropriate when referring to New Englanders and spring. I don't see how those living in any other part of the country can love spring quite so much as we do. The joys of summer go without saying...but I stated them anyway in my post about exercising on summer evenings around the lake. Now it's fall's turn.

Which leads me to the greatest case for living in New England: every season is distinctly present and extreme, unlike many other parts of the country. You can savor the characteristic attributes of spring, summer, fall, and winter. I think beautiful, unchanged weather two-thirds of the year and rain the other third would be rather boring. Give me any day the blizzards and biting winds, followed by crocuses, robins, and melting snow, fading into long, hot summer days where relief can only be found in Dublin Lake, and then the cool, spicey days of harvest when opulent foliage radiates from every limb.

The List

1. The foliage in New England. Brilliant...simply brilliant! When or where else is nature so compelling with vibrant colors? What compares to the striking hues of a red maple tree, or the golds and yellows of sugar maples and oaks? My favorite are those rare trees that start turning gradually from top to bottom, so while the leaves on the bottom boughs are still rich and green, you can trace the colors through the rainbow up to the top...yellow, orange, and finally crowned with red.

2. Weather: the flight of humidity! That clear and crisp bite of fall mornings and evenings, while the afternoons display azure skies and sunshine. Even when it rains, it's not so bad, because you feel like staying in all warm and cozy, unlike summer rain which just ruins all your plans.

3. The sweaters which have been packed away for the summer months come down off the closet shelf and you enjoy them all over again as if they're new! (Yup, I'm wearing the first of the season today! the red one I got for my birthday.)

4. Apple cider and applesauce! And biting into an apple during the Feast...one that came from an orchard instead of from the produce section of the supermarket.

5. Pumpkins and pumpkin carving.

6. The start of school (usually).

7. Candy corn (I ate a few yesterday).

8. Longer Sabbath evenings.

9. Hot drinks make sense again. I drink them in the summer, too, but in the fall they have the function of warming you up!

10. Baseball play-offs. Um, some years this is more of a factor than others. (It's not at all a factor this year...) :-)

11. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and WINTER are just around the corner!!! (go ahead and groan, all you snow-haters.)

Feel free to add to the list in the comments box.

And now some Fall pictures from past years to get you all in the mood...

Who would want to live anywhere except New England in the fall?

Official stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb day!

2006-09-23T11:07:00.000-04:00

I kind of wish I'd remembered it was Blue Jeans day at work yesterday BEFORE I put on my brand spanking new snazzy shirt from Penney's. From the moment I walked in and saw people in jeans I thought, "Whoops!" It's not that I would have dressed down for Blue Jeans day--I never do. But at least I would have known better than to DRESS UP! Such a faux-pas. Me in my radiant, bright salmon-colored dress shirt and everyone else in blue jeans and sneakers. The day is quite appropriately called by Andrea "Official stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb day!"

Officially, it's Blue Jeans for Charity day. We have it once a month, and employees have to chip in a few bucks to be able to dress casually. The money is then donated to a charity such as the NH Food Bank or NH Association for the Blind. At least our company makes something honorable out of slackishness. Lindsay says at her company they donate into a pot which then pays for department pizza parties and such. That is a crying shame!

I got quite a few compliments on my shirt, though, along with one girl, Kelly from Compliance, telling me that I kind of overdid it dressing like that on blue jeans day. This same girl, the other day, when it slipped out that I still lived at home (and I'm 25!), asked me, "Don't you think it's about time you were moving out on your own? Don't you get tired of your parents?" I was taken aback, especially by the tinge of "Um, are you normal?" sentiment that I detected. I emphatically told her that, no, I shouldn't be moving out on my own and explained that I had been home-schooled for ten years so my parents weren't really an issue. Not sure that helped my case any! Martha helped by pitching in that I had been in school, which is an excellent point. Just how and when did she think I should get my own place, travelling constantly between Hartford and NH, working in Keene, hoping to go to grad school and in the meantime travel the world? Moving out would make not an ounce of sense at this stage in my life.

Besides, moving into an apartment by myself with the money I make at the bank...let's just say I couldn't afford much besides my rent, car expenses, and bread and water. But to this girl and others that's not a problem because they don't move out on their own. They move in with someone special and share expenses. Or they go ridiculously into debt. Um, neither of those are really an option for me.

I got really annoyed at the scenario. Rant against cultural constructs forthcoming. Yes, I'm 25, and still living at home after three years of Bible School and getting a college degree, tentatively seeking out the next step. She is twenty-two, and is shacked up with her boyfriend to whom she is not married. And yet she and all the rest of culture look at ME as the one at fault! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE??? Everyone, when they hit 18, moves out and, at least among those working at the bank, move in with a significant other. Another girl in the Compliance dept. just turned 23, yet she had two kids with her boyfriend before he left her probably a year-and-a-half ago, and now they fight over their two adorable toddlers. But who at the bank is abnormal??? CRAIG IS ABNORMAL! Of course.

Everything is so twisted.

Kelly got engaged this week, diamond ring and all, which is a step in the right direction, but they haven't set a date because they want to wait a while. Excuse me for sounding dubious, but two years ago around Christmas the girl with the two toddlers ALSO got engaged with a diamond ring to the man from whom she is now alienated, and they also didn't have a date. What good did it do her?

All is messed up, and I'm frustrated that I should be the one looked at askance.

And to cheer everything in this post up a bit, I found a customer yesterday whose last name was Zitz. Okay, I know when it's spelled it's not quite as effective, but imagine speaking it, introducing yourself, having your name called in the waiting room, etc.: "Mr Zitz..." Most unfortunate.

The Return to Hog River

2006-09-23T10:36:00.000-04:00

Thursday after work, I made a flying trip to my alma mater in Hartford to order transcripts, drop off recommendation forms for professors (which are due too soon for me to mail), and take CDs of my recital to a couple people. [The muddy torrent that flows through the center of campus and floods every stinkin' time it rains is affectionately called "Hog River" by the students. I always thought that was its name, until I heard an admissions person giving a student tour and saying the real name, and explaining that the students all call it Hog River. I still don't even know the real name...]

Anyway, the Man from Hog River returned to Hog River--back to old stomping grounds.

It was sooooo weird!

I haven't been there since May (which is an unusually long hiatus since I did summer school the previous two summers). And now, here I am again! It is SO familiar, the new school year is in full swing, and yet I am completely detached from it all. I saw plenty of people I knew from classes or playing in my recital, but no one I knew well enough to talk to much. Even so, it was rather an unworldly experience...checking the bulletin boards...but wait! Where's my ninety-pound backpack and my planner full to overflowing of projects I should be tackling? Have I got in my hour of voice practice yet in the miserably drab and hot practice rooms? Um, yeah. It was strange to be back. And yes, I sort of longed to be learning again, despite the unwanted pressures of it all. I know it's a cliche, but you appreciate what you had more once you can look back on it. I definitely miss music school.

I ran to the school library after my errands to savor the blazing fast internet, and catch up on video blogs from the summer (aka, watch Drew M. for about three hours...haha, thanks Liane!). I hadn't seen the Red Sox/Braves vlog or the Calloway Gardens one, either, so got those, too. The other day at work I was listening to Robin Bullock's Green Fields (which I recommended on my blog a year ago), and was euphorically inspired to make a video blog using that music as the background. It was so perfect! I've been inspired before many times to use his music for a slide show of pix, too. Pretty much every time I listen to it I think that I need to use it for background for SOMETHING! Brad used my favorite track for the vlog with the calapitter where Claire kept asking for ice cream. Oh, well. So then I sit down to watch the Red Sox/Braves vlog and LO AND BEHOLD! another Green Fields piece! Probably the second best one for media use! I feel so betrayed! It's like he stole my ideas before I even had them.

And then I got dinner at the same Subway where I ate dinner the Friday before my recital. Another flashback to a previous life. The last time I ate there I was on the other side of a huge mountain unlike any other, facing it with trembling knees. Now it feels like the distant past.

Then, as I cut across on secondary roads to get from the Subway to the fastest route to the highway, I relished the fact that I know my way around that area like none of the rest of you. It's kind of interesting to have a little spot on the planet that only you know how to navigate really well, and that you can find the local ways to get from here to there because you've used them. My first year, especially, I spent time in my car just exploring to find out where roads went and taking alternate routes. And all of that knowledge still remains even though I will probably never live there again in my life. Strange.

And then I came home, indulging in a Blizzard on the way. (When I realized in the morning that I would pass a DQ on the trip, I almost leaped from my chair and danced a jig in my cubicle, but instead I bottled it up and sort of "skip-frolicked" during my afternoon walk, after being SURE no one was in sight.)

[Too braindead to think of a title]

2006-09-20T20:50:00.000-04:00

I created two mixed metaphors that I really enjoy thinking about. It happened when I was starting to use one metaphor in conversation, and the second half of another sprang to mind, so then I combined the other two halves and it was equally funny.

They are,

"If the shoe fits...make lemonade!"

and

"When life gives you lemons, wear them!"

[Polite chuckles]

Has anyone ever seen the Muppet Frog Prince? Oh, it's an old favorite of mine from way back in the days when Uncle Bob and Aunt Joy lived in Fairfax. I remember watching it umpteen times in their family room. The princess is under a spell which forces her to speak in spoonerisms (see why I LOVE it???)--probably where I first learned to speak Spooneresque. Anyway, the king is a doddering old muppet fool who has "press conferences" with the public from the balcony of his palace. He announces news to them, but always has a sage standing by his side to deliver instructions to the people in a clipped British accent as to how they should respond, and they always do exactly as he says. It's hilarious and consequently oft quoted by me! You really should go out and watch it--right now!

So anyway, in one scene, the king tells a miserably corny joke, and the sage announces to the audience, "POLITE CHUCKLES!" so everyone chuckles politely, and the king is insulted in the extreme and says, "Polite chuckles???" so the sage quickly covers with, "Uh, growing to deafening applause!!!" which is duly obeyed. Oh, maybe you just have to see it. I had no intention of blogging about that now but somehow it surged onto the computer screen.

The other amusement of note is the clip I heard on the radio today about an English tourist brochure just issued in Jerusalem in which the translation got slightly muddled. It was supposed to say, "Jerusalem: there's no city like it!" but instead it says,

"Jerusalem: there's no such city!"

[Polite chuckles!]

Two things

2006-09-18T21:19:00.000-04:00

Did you know the name Algernon means "man with a mustache or beard?" I saw that in a Baby Name book this weekend and went, "Aha!" Now you know it was significant in The Importance of Being Earnest (the movie) that Algy shaved his mustache when he adopted the identity of Ernest. He was erasing that which made him "Algernon" to become someone else. Such insight into the entertainment world!

I forgot one of the best parts about Laura's granddaughter being born. Several times on Friday Laura told how, when the baby came out with the umbilical cord around her neck, Laura said, "Oh, look! Baby Katrina's going bungee jumping!" Isn't that AWFUL??? But Laura is just that type of person. She drives a truck and smokes and her husband has lots of guns, and she says blunt things that no one else would say. Though I'm not really sure if she actually SAID this in the delivery room, or if she just thought it. At one point she even made it sound like the DOCTOR said it! Oh my.

Love Tank: Overflowing!

2006-09-17T20:13:00.000-04:00

I love my Aunt Ali...to pieces and back together again.

And she sure knows how to fill up a guy's Words of Affirmation tank until it is bursting at the seams! She did so today in grand order during a "chance" encounter in the Fairwood circle. Through many compliments and supportive ideas of things to pursue and assurances of talent and future and hope and wonderful things in store she routed the malaise that subtly creeps in when one is in limbo as I am.

And she clearly UNDERSTOOD what it's like to be no longer a student, but not anything else yet, either, and tired of everyone asking you what you're doing and, though unintentionally, making you feel worthless because your answer contains something less than "Conquering the world, thank you!" (My answer is still, "I don't know" or "Uh, working at the bank," then I cringe because I know that was less stunning than what the inquirer was expecting.) She remembers those days, and her strongest exhortation was to ENJOY the in-between time and be very laid back about hastening to the next step. Don't stress out feeling like you need to make something happen or you're wasting your life.

I really needed to hear that!

Then after all the encouragement about chilling out despite the pressure to perform and the feeling of inadequacy if you're not accomplishing something, she went on and on about how talented she thinks I am in a particular area and had all sorts of ideas of ways I could pursue it during my "off" time. I felt profoundly affirmed and overwhelmed with support and suddenly like, "Yeah, maybe I can pull back and explore those areas that I never would if I were back in school or tackling a 'real' job! Maybe I should have the courage to do something smaller that I want to do, instead of seeking out something big and important to put on my plate because that's what everyone expects!" (and what I expect!)

I know it's probably a silly Disney cliche, but sometimes it's just nice to know for certain that someone "believes in you." Know what I mean? You don't even realize how badly you need it until it happens, and suddenly, you're not worried anymore that you're only doing diddly-squat because someone believes in you even when you're doing diddly-squat and they rave in visionary terms about how your future will flower and blossom. And suddenly you think maybe they're right and in the meantime you can listen to them and relax.

Then the discouragement is held in check.

Thanks, Aunt Ali, I really needed that! My words of aff tank is sooo full.

I'm reminded of my favorite country song, Who I Am, which entered my listening library through Sue Thomas, F. B. Eye, in case you were wondering. :-) I was listening to it at work the other day, and would have been bawling if I were the bawling type, because it expressed something I needed a lot. The gist of the song is that, even when life doesn't turn out to be amazing and grandiose, I'll be fine because I have roots and know Who I Am. So even when life is frustrating... (and here I quote from the song)

"nothing changes who I am!
I am Rosemary's granddaughter,
The spitting image of my father,
And when the day is done, my mama's still my biggest fan.
Sometimes, I'm clueless and I'm clumsy,
But I have friends that love me,
And they know just where I stand!
It's all a part of me,
And that's who I am!"

I declare, life is now better!

It's a Miracle!

2006-09-17T19:52:00.000-04:00

A week ago Friday, one of my supervisors gave me a Symphony chocolate bar to thank me for working at the bank this summer. Guess where it is? Sitting in my dresser drawer!!! I ate two squares last Monday but haven't touched it otherwise. Do you know what a breakthrough this is for a CHOCOHOLIC like me??? I don't think most of you know how bad I was, except maybe my mom. When I got a bag of Valentine's Day chocolate, "discipline" meant making it last 48 hours! Once I started in on chocolate of any sort, I pretty much couldn't stop until I devoured the last scrumptious morsel.

Last week when I ate my two squares, they were so yummy, but I didn't really need any more. Weird.

It's kind of sad, really. Chocolate is pretty much my identity. Who am I if not a lover of chocolate? To me it has always been synonymous with being a lover of Truth. (Haha) I still love it, but it doesn't control me like it once did. (Chocolate, that is, not truth...)

Andrea told me this summer that she didn't crave chocolate as much after taking a break from it, but I scarcely believed her. I mean, I thought that I could never stop craving it even after not having it for a long time. Now I believe her.

I think this is a good sign, even if a sad one. My goal this summer wasn't just to lose weight, but to learn discipline so that I take control of what I eat rather than letting what I eat control me.

"The end of an era..."

(maybe)

Baby Update

2006-09-17T19:38:00.000-04:00

Ah, yes. The baby that was born as grand-daughter to my cubicle mate. She was, indeed, all the buzz on Friday. Six pounds, 11 ounces, 19.75 inches long, only 8 hours of labor, 2 hours of hard labor, and only 35 minutes of pushing. :-) I know all the info cold. For a first baby, everyone agreed that the mother had it easy. My cubby-mate, Laura, said she was hoping it would be a hard labor to convince her daughter not to do it again anytime soon. What a loving thing she is!

Her name is Katrina Marie, which I realized later was very ironic because she was born the day after my sister, Kendra Marie, at approximately the same time (2:14pm), and she's a firstborn. Such coincidence.

The thing Laura was most proud of was that her daughter didn't swear at all during the labor. She was so afraid she would and embarrass her. I guess Laura was around when a friend's daughter had a baby and she swore loudly and consistently so that others around in the hospital could hear her. But not Laura's daughter! Oh, her mother was so proud! :-)

I saw a couple of pictures, too, and I have to admit to detecting a hint of cuteness in her.

Overall, Friday was a hilarious day in the department. It was one girl's birthday, and she had helium balloons, and a couple of the ladies were inhaling them toward the end of the day (Pennie, KJ) and it was SO FUNNY! I laughed a lot.

Hope Deferred

2006-09-16T09:51:00.000-04:00

Last evening, as I returned home from work and began sweeping up the long Fairwood driveway in my car, Katie G., who just finished her first week of Bible School, came SPRINTING across the front lawn, pell-mell, helter skelter, at break-neck speed to greet me, with arms and smile flung wide, the perfect picture of delight, exuberation, and anticipation. I was flattered. Almost. From the moment I deduced she
was, indeed, coming to greet ME, in my car, I knew there was some tragic mistake. A mistake which could only end her joyous frolic in disappointment...for her, anyway. For whoever it was she was intending to greet with such alacrity, I knew it most certainly was not meant to be me!

I kept driving, and she kept coming...and coming...and coming. Um, "awkward!" In retrospect I probably should have at least stopped, if not stopped and leaped from my car, hurtling in her direction with a matching disposition of cheer and huggishness. But I just kept going. Better to minimize the embarrassment. And so it was that she came
right up to the edge of the lawn, probably dumbfounded why I didn't seem to notice her and stop the car, as I whizzed past her and caught a glimpse of the "perfect picture of delight, exuberation, and anticipation" turning instead into the epitome of blond blankness. There was a hint of confusion, another of disappointment, but mostly just a look that said, "Oh!"

I have roared with laughter over and over again since the incident!!! Hilarious! Side-splitting! The perfect conclusion to a long week of work! What a sight...that I will NEVER forget, much to Katie's dismay.

I learned from Katherine as I got my supper in the kitchen (we're on duty), that Amy B. was supposedly coming to town, and she has a teal car as do I. Mwahaha! She expected Amy and got...ME!!! I laughed again...and again. [stop to allow a few gales to subside]

Next came the hardest part of all: quelling the almost overpowering urge to get in my car, drive out the exit, and COME BACK, seeing if I could repeat the scenario once more! I really, really, REALLY wanted to. After all, she would never suspect that I could come home twice in the space of ten minutes. She would be sure to think that FINALLY Amy was here, and I could have another good laugh. But I didn't. That would have just been mean.

When I walked into Sabbath meeting later, Katie flashed me the most sheepish smile I have seen in years.

From beginning to end I can only sum it up as completely priceless!

("Don't worry, Katie! We're not laughing AT you, we're laughing ABOUT you!")

"Meanwhile, back at the cubicle farm..."

2006-09-14T19:40:00.000-04:00

[Finally! A blog title that inspires me to blog again!]

I've been giving overtime a whirl this week at the bank, so I'm plum wore out and lacking steam. I started work at 7am three days this week, worked till 5 Tuesday, till 5:15 Wednesday, and till 5:30 today. That's a ten-hour day. I know this may not seem like much to some of you, but it's new to me. I don't usually sleep much more than 6.5 hours a night, so adding a couple more hours at work each day takes a toll on my evening energy level. It hasn't been bad while at work--just after I get home, and especially tonight because it's Thursday.

Why torture myself? Well, I realized that my time at the bank is going to run out before long, so I might as well get as much money in my bank account as I possibly can before going on to other things....whatever those may be. Of course, I get paid time-and-a-half for it, so I'm looking forward to the paycheck when all this effort is going to start showing.

And then I get home and think about my To Do list which feels miles long (Feast Music, college scholarships and applications including many essays to write, some composition projects I'm working on/hoping to work on..., exercising which I haven't done all week), the To Do list which looks intimidating at the end of the day, and wonder if it really is worth the extra money. The jury is still out. Meanwhile, I blog. :-) (J/K--notice I'm only blogging this one night.)

The daughter of the woman I'm sitting next to at work this week (it's Laura, KJ) was having a baby today. Oh, my word! This is Laura's first grandchild and she was psyched all day! Until she left to go to the hospital, that is. I got to work at 7am, and she'd just found out her daughter was in labor, and from then until 8:30 or 9, I heard the same spiel over and OVER again as each new person she'd seen that day walked by her cubicle. Finally, I told her that for the next person who came by, she should let me tell them because I had it memorized by then.

She invariably accosted her passersby with:

"WE'RE IN LABOR!!!"

Once I incredulously asked, as I wanted to many of the times, "WE'RE in labor???" I most certainly did not feel like I was in labor. Laura most certainly did not look like she was in labor. For crying out loud, no one around appeared to be in labor! And yet every few minutes, to someone new, "WE'RE IN LABOR!" They all knew exactly what she meant because she's talked about this for weeks, and of course, in typical girl fashion, they all oohed and aahed and wanted all the gory details.

Other parts of the spiel included her daughter telling her the night before to "stick a fork" in her because she was ready to be done being pregnant. "My hips hurt, my feet are so swollen you can't tell where the toes stop and the foot begins," etc. I don't know what she was complaining about because the baby wasn't even due until next Monday--it's not like she was two weeks overdue or anything. (Oh, what a harsh, unfeeling male I am.) Also, her daughter didn't want her coming over until she went to the hospital because she knew her mother would drive her crazy in the early stages. The contractions were 12-15 minutes apart in the morning when she called, and the doctor told her not to come in until they were 4 minutes apart. She had a scheduled appointment for noon today anyway, but in any case, she lived just "from here to the front door" from the hospital. Yes, yes. I repeat it because I heard it all many times this morning. MANY times. Finally she left, and called back later to report the baby girl was born at 2:14pm and she was taking lots of pictures.

Tomorrow should be interesting! Eyefuls and earfuls of baby news all around!

I thought through something this week that I didn't like very much. I was thinking about how much money I have. Then I realized it's all imagination. I mean, I don't HAVE that money at all! How does it work? My employer gives me a piece of paper every couple of weeks saying they're giving me a specified amount of money. I take that PIECE OF PAPER to the bank, where they type into their computer the amount of money on my piece of paper and add it to my "account." But there's no money in my account. My account is simply numbers on a computer screen. There is no money that is mine there. My employer never gave me money. I never gave the bank any money. No money, in fact, ever changed hands anywhere. It's all numbers in a computer. Yes, I can go withdraw all the money the computer says I'm entitled to whenever I want, but until then, I'm penniless except for what's in my wallet.

Pardon me if I buy a shotgun and head off into the woods with a sack of bills to perch on grumpily the rest of my life.

And finally, all but one of my monarch calapitters are in their chrysalises! Something like 16 of them hanging, waiting to emerge. One died while hanging...he never turned into a chrysalis, just sort of shriveled. But there should be 17 butterflies coming along shortly, after the final critter turns green. One of them is almost black, and ready to spring forth, and another is not far behind.

Here are a few pix taken with a digital cam to show you their progress.

Corn-eating procedures

2006-09-10T19:32:00.000-04:00

Does anyone else eat their corn on the cob AROUND the cob, instead of in rows from end to end? I mean, you can either eat it back and forth like a typewriter, or you can start at one end and spiral all the way down the cob until you reach the other end with a clean cob. Does anyone do the latter?

Because I do.

The Dreamer

2006-09-10T19:17:00.000-04:00

I had a "wedding musician's nightmare" last night. I chuckled awhile back when Claire posted about having had one as well, because I could totally relate! I've had these a couple of times before and boy are they stressful dreams to have! Basically, they're horrifying dreams of unpreparedness right before you're supposed to play for a big event. Kristi, can you relate? Lindsay? Funny that a certain kind of dream can be limited to only certain kinds of people. Most of you, having never had to play for a wedding, would never dream of having a nightmare about it.

Pardon the pun.

It was Jeff and Fritha's wedding except it was at Fairwood. Also, it was somehow Kimberly's wedding, too. I mean, not all of them at once, but part of the dream it was KJ telling me what she wanted in her wedding, and the rest of it was Jeff and Fritha. (Sorry, Kim, I didn't get a glimpse of who you were marrying or I'd be sure to pass it on as light from God!)

Kimberly told me she wanted me to sing a song at her wedding; she didn't care what--I was just supposed to pick one. I was also supposed to play before the wedding. So then, somehow, it is TEN MINUTES before the wedding and I am running around in a complete panic because I haven't rehearsed the song I'm supposed to sing ("The Lord's Prayer") at ALL! I don't even have an accompanist! And even if I had an accompanist, I don't think I have the music in the proper key! I'm pretty sure that it's too high for me in the key I have at my house (C major) and for some reason I'm certain I need to sing it in B-flat major. In any case, I haven't practiced it in any key, so I really don't know anything, and I'm completely terrified. I find my mom in the Main House kitchen cutting food for the reception and ask her to accompany me. That's fine with her, but I'm extremely worried that she won't be able to sight-read it in the key that I need to sing it in. (If I had it in that key.)

AND I AM COMPLETELY PANICKED!!!!!

On top of all the panic, or rather, contributing majorly to it, is the fact that I was supposed to start playing the prelude music FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO!!! So everyone is being seated in the church in complete silence while I dash around trying to get my act together to sing this one measly song. That was probably the most mortifying part of all.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Such stressful, terrifying dreams ought to be outlawed!

My apologies, KJ, but I am SO GLAD you're not getting married in ten minutes!

Bumper Sticker of the day

2006-09-07T20:48:00.000-04:00

There was this great bumper sticker I saw a few months ago that I forgot to blog about! I can't remember exactly how it went, but it was something about Rosie O'Donnell and gun control...Um, I'll probably think of it in a little while.

JAY SLASH KAY!

THIS bumper sticker was seen really and truly today:

"FORGET WORLD PEACE
ENVISION USING YOUR #$%^&! TURN SIGNALS"

Indeed.

(And yes, the sticker used symbols instead of real profanity...I wasn't editing anything.)

Blood Brothers

2006-09-07T20:25:00.000-04:00

On the radio this week I heard about an international celebrity who recently lost 40 pounds after surgery and an illness. I instantly felt a bond with this man! No, I haven't lost quite that much (though it is closer to 40 than to 30 now), and I'm certain he didn't go through all the same trouble I did (getting sick sure would have made it easier!), but even so! He must feel pretty good about himself now. After all, I know what it's like!

So here I am feeling brotherhood for one of the world's greatest communists! Who ever would have thought it? Me and Fidel--practically twins!

I also heard on the radio that the 14 ultra-evil terrorists who have just been transferred from the CIA to armed forces' control at Gitmo are receiving three "culturally sensitive" meals a day. Which makes me wonder: are they eating falafels down there? Because if so, I'm moving meself to Gitmo!

The last six months in pictures

2006-09-04T00:11:00.000-04:00

My apologies to those of you with dial-up! Including me...

Claire smote my conscience on the way to Sarah's wedding when she said she'd been hoping I'd post pictures from our Martha's Vineyard trip so she could see the little cottages I described in such glowing detail. Such a slacker I am! And just last week I got loads of great pictures from our Canada vacation! So why not kill all my birds with one stone and do a picture extravaganze as a continuation of my blogging extravaganza?

I got on a roll and did a LOT of picture scanning this weekend to get you all caught up on my current photo albums. You can click the new link in the sidebar to get the full show! These pictures are only scanner quality, which means they're much better in real life. For example, blue sky and water tends to scan in so dark that they're black. All the pictures of my sailing expedition appear to have been taken on a sea of black ink. Ah, well. Come visit and you can see them all, and then some (I only scanned the best or most interesting ones).

Bringing these many pictures to you was an act of severe devotion. Scanning 150 pictures, then uploading them to Shutterfly and some of them to my blog is one draining activity, let me tell you!

Happy eyefuls!

The Canada Vacation through my lense

2006-09-03T22:13:00.000-04:00

West Quoddy Light, ME

West Quoddy Light, ME

One of many churches in Pugwash, NS

Gardens at Green Gables, PEI

Green Gables, PEI

Apple tree at Green Gables

Green Gables, PEI

Our first morning campfire

KayBec in Port Hood Provincial Park, NS

Cows in Pugwash (tons of these in Canada!)

Milk cans by a driveway in Pugwash

Exotic sunset over Pugwash

"Dunvegan Castle", Woodleigh Replicas, PEI

"Robert Burns' Cottage, Woodleigh Replicas

Gardens at Woodleigh Replicas, PEI

"Anne Hathaway's Cottage", Woodleigh Replicas (Shake- speare's wife)

Straight out of Dickens! Woodleigh Replicas

Sunset along the Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Island

Beach house in Port Hood, NS

Painting drying on the wharf at Peggy's Cove, NS

Artist capturing Peggy's Cove, NS on canvas

Adirondack chairs on Cape George, NS

Granbethian singer at Peggy's Cove, NS

Adirondack chairs in Baddeck, NS

Harbor at Peggy's Cove, NS

Adirondack chairs in Port Hood, NS

Granbethian singer encore

Cape George Adirondack chairs once more

Our sailing expedition in pictures!

2006-09-03T22:00:00.000-04:00

And here is my sailing day with Uncle Earl in August!

The Captain himself!

At sea

Katie and Aaron

Ryan Charlie

Sailing paraphernalia

Bria the bookworm

Long-promised photos for Claire!

2006-09-03T21:25:00.000-04:00

Pix from our family's trip to Vartha's Mineyard way back in the Stone Age! (see June 2006 Archives)

Oak Bluffs, the place with all the charming cottages, isn't nearly as amazing on film. It's hard to capture "quaint" on film. The lighting was pretty difficult, too, with shadows from trees everywhere. But the glimpses of fancy woodwork and bright colors should give you a rough idea.

Chatham Beach, Cape Cod

Edgartown Light, Martha's Vineyard

Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard

Lunch break on Martha's Vineyard

Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard

Oak Bluffs

Discard pile for shells in Menemsha

The family on the ferry

Oak Bluffs

Boats on Martha's Vineyard

Solar panel on Martha's Vineyard that reminded me of DJ

Pix from trip to Boston with Kendra!

2006-09-03T21:23:00.000-04:00

In April I went to Boston with Kendra and some friends and snapped a few shots...

Good ole Quincy Market, cradle of The Nation!

Aboard the USS Constitution

A Garden Gnome I saw in a shop in Quincy Market, and took a picture of expressly for the benefit of Liane...then never told her or showed her until now.

The Church we thought was the Old North Church at first...it didn't look at all as I remembered it!

Quincy Market...yeah, what I said before.

The Lighthouse trip to Maine...

2006-09-03T21:18:00.000-04:00

You may remember we took a lighthouse-hunting expedition during spring break in March. Well, here are a few of the results. (Just a few, mind you!)

Pemaquid Pt. Light--alas, the sky scanned a bit dark!

Portland Head Light

Portland Head Light

The family on the Rockland Breakwater

Pemaquid Point light, with excessively dark sky again

Owl Head Light

Marshall Point Light

"Blistering barnacles!" on the rocks below Pemaquid Pt. Light

Poll of the Day and Cultural Constructs

2006-09-03T16:06:00.000-04:00

[Beware! This post goes pretty deep!]

I know, I know--I just did a poll yesterday! It's a bit coincidental, though, that I'm doing another. I haven't turned over a new polling leaf, intending to conduct them constantly. In fact, this particular topic came to mind about ten days ago as I savored a piece of succulent grilled chicken, and I intended to blog about it, but only now am getting around to it, so just forget you participated in a poll in the past 24 hours, and by the way, do you think this is an excessively long run-on sentence, worthy of St. Paul's status, or am I just imagining that and it's really well within the confines of normal English grammar, or at least, short and readable enough not to be annoying even though I really didn't intend to make it this long in the beginning, but realized it was getting there after the "poll in the past 24 hours" bit, so decided to really go all out and write the world's king of run-ons.

(*BIG GASP FOR AIR*)

Besides, for this poll you have to leave your answer in the comment box. :-)

The question is, folks, "chicken or steak?"

Someone asked me this question while we were ordering in a restaurant a few years ago. But they weren't asking me which I was ordering, but which type of man I was. Was I a chicken man or a steak man?

I don't think I had ever considered it before, and it was a difficult question. I think he was asking, all other considerations aside, if I could have whatever I wanted whenever given the chance, which would I choose. The answer hasn't gotten much easier now than it was then. You see, steak is such a luxury, it seems natural to want it when I eat out (though I never get it because of the expense). But I sure do love chicken! The fact is, I most often order chicken. But is that purely because of financial considerations, or truly because of preference? Which do I actually ENJOY more?

The weirdest part about the conversation was the way my questioner made it very clear that "steak" was a man's man answer, while "chicken" was a wimpy answer. He cajoled me toward the "steak" answer to prove I was a man. And I recognized that this thought would probably be accepted in a widespread circle, rather than be confined to this individual.

So in my considerations the past few days, I want to know where that comes from. Why on earth should it be more manly to like steak than chicken? Because cows are bigger? Because steak is harder to eat? Because there's more blood in steak than in chicken? Where do these ideas come from?

I'm thinking it's a cultural construct.

My first summerterm of college, I took a course called Gender, Identity, and Society to fulfill my "social context" requirement. It was a minefield of horrendous proportions for a conservative Christian like myself, but it brought up some excellent, discussion-worthy points. The whole issue of "cultural construct" was one of them: basically the idea that the culture around us conditions us to act in certain ways or fulfill certain stereotypes because that is what is culturally acceptable. No one knows who decided what culture will allow--there is certainly no committee making decisions--and yet there are continuous expectations levied by "culture."

It's so true! However, this in itself is a minefield for someone of my worldview, because for most secularists, the cultural construct includes the Biblical construct (gender roles, diverse expectations of men and women, innate differences of creation, etc.), and all are evil and need to be eschewed. Personally, I completely embrace and affirm all constructs that are derived from Scripture, but the challenge is to recognize cultural constructs that are independent of the Bible and are completely worthless or, in some cases, hinder the discovery of fulfillment within the Biblical construct.

An example of a worthless cultural construct would be the color pink. Why is pink a feminine color? Why do we all know instinctually that pink is for girls? Is it because our eye is innately designed by God to discern masculine colors from feminine colors? I'm skeptical of that explanation. And yet we merely glance at something pink, and it screams, "GIRLY!" at us. Men recoil, while feminine hearts sing. Weird, isn't it? Here's a question: is the association of pink with womanhood a Biblical construct? Can you think of any possible reason from God's Word that pink is forbidden to men? Um, no. And yet wearing pink is pretty demeaning to most of us guys. Even some girls view it as too girly for them. We just "know" it's a "weak" color.

I don't bring this up because I love pink--not at all! I'm just trying to illustrate a point. It seems to me that color is one of the first areas where the cultural construct takes effect, from a very young age. (Think babyhood!) Somehow, our culture teaches us that pink is a girly color, and blue is for boys. Yellow and green are also slightly more masculine, but might be considered neutral in some cases.

Is pink a girly color in other, particularly non-Western, cultures around the world? I don't know the answer to that question, but I suspect it isn't. If it were universal, that might be the first argument that suggests it is more than a result of cultural whim. Now, I see no benefit in getting rid of this cultural construct. It's not as if it's hurting anything or anyone...except for maybe that sixth-grade boy who's scared to admit it's his favorite color for fear of ridicule and friendlessness. But even so, it's useful to identify cultural constructs where they exist, balance them against Scripture, and realize that you can work against the cultural grain if you need to. And it can be an uphill battle!

An area of abundant issues is the cultural construct surrounding expectations of men. Surprisingly, my feminist professor and I had a great deal of common ground on this subject, though for different reasons, I'm sure! She stressed the fact that the cultural construct harms men. I had to agree. For example, consider the unspoken demands that stereotypical men be unemotional, insensitive, lacking a sense for beauty, and uncommunicative. While many men might be this way naturally, many are NOT, so to create a cultural stereotype with these attributes as prerequisites, and label anyone who departs from them as "unmanly" is a shame. The worst part is, that in fulfilling this cultural construct, many men turn themselves into the worst possible husbands imaginable, or, even more damning, never allow themselves anywhere near faith in Christ. To them, religion is "weak," only for people who are emotional, sensitive, open, etc. This is an example where cultural construct may prevent the fulfillment of the Biblical construct.

Now, the Bible is also clear that men are to be no mamby-pambies, but instead to lead with strength, faith, and vision. Also the Bible is clear that men and women do not possess the same attributes in all areas; it would be a gross mistake to proceed as if they did. But to require men to crucify their emotions, deaden themselves to the feelings of others, pretend there is nothing beautiful in the world around them, and keep all their thoughts to themselves (remember? ... "unemotional, insensitive, lacking a sense for beauty, and uncommunicative") is to make them miss out not only on much of life, but on many of the rewards of Christianity as well. In this area we have good reason to examine Biblical construct and cultural construct, to separate the two, and, most of all, to keep the wheat.

Which brings us back to the issue of chicken or steak. :-) I think I struggled a lot answering the question because I wanted to say chicken, but I knew, based on cultural construct as conveyed by my friend, that was not the acceptable answer. So where in the Bible does it say steak is more masculine than chicken? Get back to me on that...

I have to proclaim now that I love both chicken and steak passionately. This opinion was pounded home with startling force by the recent men's retreat at Fairwood where one of our meals was grilled meat of both varieties. They were delectable in the extreme, thanks to Paul's expertise.

However, if I had to choose one of the two to be allowed to eat for the rest of my life, giving up the other till my grave, I would definitely take chicken and leave steak. There, I said it. Cultural construct be da--, well, you know.

Now is when your share you own unadulterated-by-cultural-construct opinion. Also unadulterated-by-financial-considerations opinion.

What'll be, folks?

"Chicken, or steak?"

An appropriate poem

2006-09-02T20:50:00.000-04:00

And the blogging extravaganza continues! Lots more to come!

I was reminded today of this poem, which I sang at my Bible School graduation, so I decided to look it up. It eloquently sums up my heart's desire as I stand at a crossroads with 18 bazillion paths to choose from.
_____________________________________

Christ, my Life, my Only Treasure,
Thou alone
Mould thine own,
After thy good pleasure.

Thou, who paidst my price, direct me!
Thine I am
Holy Lamb,
Save, and always save me.

Order thou my whole condition,
Choose my state
Fix my fate
By thy wise decision.

From all earthly expectation
Set me free,
Seize for thee
All my strength of passion.

Into absolute subjection
Be it brought,
Every thought
Every fond affection.

That which most my soul requires
For thy sake
Hold it back
Purge my best desires.

Keep from me thy loveliest creature,
Till I prove
JESUS' love
Infinitely sweeter;

Till with purest passion panting
Cries my heart
"Where thou art
Nothing more is wanting."

Blest with thine abiding Spirit,
Fully blest
Now I rest,
All in thee inherit.

Heaven is now with Jesus given;
Christ in me,
Thou shalt be
Mine eternal heaven.

-Charles Wesley

Pet smells

2006-09-02T14:20:00.000-04:00

When I say "pet smells" I do not mean the odors given off by the animals you keep in your house. I could say a little bit about those after cleaning out the caterpillars' aquarium on Wednesday, but won't. I'm talking instead about little smells of which you are particularly fond. Get it? "Pet" smells.

I love the smell of Scotch tape! Or any clear/invisible tape, for that matter. Present-wrapping is therefore usually a happy task for me. I love tape scent so much that at work this week, I gave in to my impulse to tape a piece of it across my nostrils so I could smell it with every breath.

Mmmmm!

Do you suppose that was an inappropriate use of bank property? I certainly didn't buy the tape myself. Maybe next time I go to confession I'll straighten that out...

And here's a weird question of motives: when one has a blog, does one genuinely have weird impulses to do interesting things and then happen to blog about them afterward? Or does one have weird impulses and act on them BECAUSE one has a blog and knows it will make a good story?

I think it can go either way. I was trying to decide whether I would have taped tape over my nose if I didn't have a blog. I certainly love the smell of tape, completely independent of my bloggishness, and I suspect I would have wanted to smell it more, and maybe have even thought about putting it on my nose...I almost think I've thought of that or done it before. But I think having a blog definitely pushed me over the edge this time.

Oh, the dangers having a blog poses on one's judgment!

So what are YOUR favorite scents? Do you have any random smell fetishes? Pet smells?

Time to confess.

Lifeline # One: Ask the Audience!

2006-09-02T11:23:00.000-04:00

It's pretty much official that I am not attending graduate school this year. For those of you who haven't been kept up to speed, it was all narrowed down to Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. (The only other school I was accepted to was Hartt, and the faculty there strongly encouraged me to broaden my horizons somewhere else.) I just had to wait for scholarship info, which meant waiting all summer! The school gave me a Graduate Assistantship, but, unlike some schools where a GA covers all tuition, this one included only a $5,000 grant and a work-study deal. Put that against expenses somewhere in the $24,000 range per year and you're pretty much up a creek. I asked them for more money and the Admissions director informed me she tried hard to find some, but couldn't.

You'll remember that one of the scholarships that put me through undergrad I am no longer, in fact never was, eligible for. Also Federal Pell and SEOG Grants (other funding for the past 3 years) go only to undergrad students. That left me with a meagre allowance from the Dublin Scholarship, and the Lord Scholarship which notifies in August. The amount they award varies every year, supposedly based on student need and earnings, but in reality completely devoid of anything I could call sense or reason. :-) When we returned from vacation, my award letter was waiting (quick side note: how many of you have ever received a potentially life-changing piece of mail? I have received many through schools and scholarships, and it's still stressful every time!) and told me they were giving me about 40% of what they gave me the past three years; they would have had to give me 300% of what they'd given me previously to make it so I could go.

And so God had definitely closed the door. That's okay, since I was only knocking to see if He would open it in the first place. Yes, it's disappointing, but also a little exciting because I think I'm ready to try something other than school, for a year at least. The question is, what? A big reason I wanted to go to grad school right off is because I know life has a way of taking over and never letting it happen. A steady paycheck gets addicting, after all, and few people are willing to give it up to go back to school in their thirties.

It's also frustrating that God didn't close the door decisively back in April so I could have begun making alternative plans in earnest. With this uncertainty lingering, it seemed awkward to begin a job search. I think it's probably bad employment etiquette to look for jobs and tell them in your interview that you won't be taking it if you get enough money to go to grad school, and you won't know that until the third week of August.

At this point, I'm pretty sure the type of job I'd like to have eventually is teaching academic music subjects (theory, history, composition) and working with the choir at a private prep school, mostly since those are the only high schools that offer such classes. Someone strongly encouraged me to send out a resume to one this summer, but it didn't make sense if school was still an outside possibility.

So now, here I am, too late to get a "real" job, not going to grad school, and wondering what's next!

People have been asking me unceasingly the past weeks what I'm doing this year, and I just say, "I don't know." And I don't, either. It's not very comfortable, but it's true. Fortunately, I have extended my welcome at the bank for another month or so, so at least I'll have some more money in my pocket when I set off into the world to discover my fortune.

But what will that fortune be?

Argh! I just wish I KNEW! Patience comes a little more naturally to my personality type, but this is a situation where patience is very unnatural, as you can imagine.

I have lots of ideas floating around in my head, and have started making concrete inquiries to see what might be possible. But in the spirit of true "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"-ness, I decided I would poll the audience! What's your opinion for the next year of my life? Of course, it scarcely matters since none of you are God, but it will be fun to see what my friends think. I have included many options, some of which I am truly considering and some of which I am NOT. I'll let you decide which is which. :-)

Vote for as many options as you want--you needn't limit yourself to one! Surely my life the next year won't include only one of these. And you can vote every day. That way the friends with the strongest opinions will come through. :-)

If you have your own suggestion for my future, feel free to leave it in the comment box.

But better than all the votes or suggestions in China would be your prayers that God will lead me! I really need that guiding light...

What should I do with my life next?
	Start playing the lottery with a vengeance
	Move to Thailand and teach music in the CFI orphanage
	Dedicate my life to writing a Broadway musical
	Subscribe to a mail-order bride service
	Go to Israel, studying Hebrew and with UHL
	Continue working at the bank
	Backpack around Europe, taking hundreds of pix
	Get married pronto and make this my "year off" with my wife (a real suggestion!)
	Find a job in the music industry (private teacher, theory teacher...)
	Make a voice/piano/cello recording of original songs and arrangements
	Get some of my compositions published
	Become a stay-at-home adult couch potato and mooch off my parents
	Pursue photography--start selling prints to individuals and stock agencies
	Become an Anime devotee
	"Start a school...by yourself" (Melissa's suggestion)
	Teach science and algebra at Andrea's school
	Apply to graduate schools for next year--find more scholarship money!
	Become the next star on American Idol, singing Warrior Songs, of course!

Free polls from Pollhost.com

A blogging extravaganza!

2006-09-01T21:11:00.000-04:00

Just a warning, folks, that I feel like blogging a LOT this weekend. So check back often! (Now, when I forget or get distracted, you can all be properly defrauded.)

I found another luckless foreign chap at the bank who came to America probably having no idea that his name would raise eyebrows everywhere he went, especially in the back office at the bank. MY office! This poor unfortunate's name was Lap Fan L_____. I believe the person is Chinese. My, my! "Lap Fan." That is really, really sad.

When I blogged about camping on vacation, I left out what I thought was one of the funniest parts. Has anyone heard the Maximum Strength Anvisol (dental product) radio commercial? It's one of the old staples on the Keene airwaves. It features a woman calling the dentist's office in great oral pain (toothache), and trying to explain without moving her mouth what the trouble is. Most of the communication is done through the receptionist asking questions and receiving moans and grunts and one-word replies from the other end. The best part is when the receptionist asks, "Aren't you on vacation?" and the woman says in the most contorted, miserable fashion, "Uh-huh--camping!" If you've never heard this commercial, I just can't convey to you over a blog how funny it is when she says that. I'm pretty good at imitating her, though.

So imitate her I did, MANY times over the course of our vacation (just ask Kayla...um, when she gets back from Australia, that is.) Just out of the blue, or mostly when we were somewhere near a campground, "Uh-huh--camping!" Mwahahaha. My biggest fan laughs again (me).

Lastly, I wonder if the prettiest color in the world might be the light jade green of a monarch butterfly's chrysalis, sparkling with little gold laces. How can an ugly caterpillar create such a beautiful color, and WHERE does the gold come from? I think maybe the chrysalis is even prettier than the butterfly that emerges from it, but we won't dwell on that because it thwarts the inspirational value of the rebirth experience. :-)

My observation stems from the fact that I have a glass aquarium full of monarch caterpillars this year, something I became inspired about doing earlier in the summer and followed through on when the season came. I sought them out last week on milkweed around Fairwood and brought them home for observation. Currently I have four chrysalises, two hanging caterpillars, and ten or so more chomping away on milkweed leaves. It's really fun to have "pets" to check on and see their progress and how fat they get and wait to see them change into something far better than a striped caterpillar. So much like science projects way back when I was in school!

Okay, gotta run! Younger bro and I are home alone this weekend, so we have movies and we need to get cracking on them!

Apocryphal Tales from the Creation

2006-09-01T20:57:00.000-04:00

On the eighth day of the world, following six days of thought and Masterful creativity capped with a restful, glorious Sabbath day, God arose and began to evaluate whether creation truly was complete. Wasn't there some additional work He could do to make the world even more perfect? Another way He could show to man His loving care through the world around him? Something missing, perhaps?

God thought for a little while, then decided to sleep on it and went back to bed for two more days.

And when He woke up, He smiled and said, "Aha! This is it!"

For with that act, God had fashioned the crowning touch on all His creation, the one final assurance to man that He loved him with an everlasting love: He had created the three-day weekend.

And God saw that it was good.

Enjoy it, folks!

(I can just hear the dismayed cries of "Sacrilegious!" I'm used to it...)

Borderlined (beware...)

2006-08-29T18:29:00.000-04:00

Last week on Paul Harvey, I heard him tell of a man and his tongue. A doctor discovered cancer in this man's tongue, so it had to be cut out. However, this doctor very diligently fashioned him a new tongue, using the man's own flesh and skin, and the end of the news clip asserted that the new, improvised tongue was in working order, with nerve endings and all. Now isn't that nice?

Oh, small detail. The flesh and skin used to create the new tongue came from the man's toosh...as in--yes!--his rear end. Now this man is walking around tasting with a portion of his buttocks in his mouth. Now THAT is embarrassing!

Today as I considered this man tasting with a tongue taken from excess real estate elsewhere on his body, I got to wondering what it would be like if our sense of taste weren't in our mouth. Come to think of it, what if our senses were generally misplaced throughout our body?

Imagine your eyes being on the soles of your feet, and every time you wanted to see something you had to wave your foot around in the air. What if your hearing was in your armpits and every time you wanted to block something out you could just clamp your shoulders down really hard? Or, conversely, when you were listening intently for the pin to drop you had to put your arms over your head for maximum exposure.

What if you smelled with your fingertips? That would be quite a trial when it came to changing dirty diapers! And say your finest tactile sense was on the tip of your nose. LOTS of nuzzling to see if something was smooth and soft, hot or cold!

And lastly, like this Paul Harvey story made me wonder, what if you actually tasted with your rear end? Imagine having to SIT on all your food before eating it, just to be able to appreciate it! I suppose you could pop it in your mouth and eat it without tasting it at all, but where would the fun be in that? Nope, you'd definitely have to plop down on every bit of delectable food in sight before putting it in the mouth for the good old chew and swallow routine.

I'm glad God was imaginative and creative enough to fashion our five senses. I'm gladder still that He didn't go overboard in the process.

But it sure livened up the day thinking about sitting on all my food!

Bumper Sticker of the Day

2006-08-27T23:37:00.000-04:00

I saw a hilarious bumper sticker a few months ago (Clyde and I were just casting about in our minds for when it could have been and decided it was during our trip to Martha's Vineyard the end of May). Anyway, it was so funny I was going to put it on my blog and I made a mental note to that effect.

Well, I forgot.

Then, tonight, Amy P. told a group of us who were playing games that she saw a funny bumper sticker and told us what it said. I was like, "Oh, yeah! I saw that same one and was going to blog about it!" So now I'm catching up. Alas, half the people who read my blog were in the same room, so they heard it from Amy instead of from me. I've been scooped. But the other half of you can read and enjoy it for the first time.

Bumpah Stickah of the day

"Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat."

True, eh? I love witty people who come up with pithy ways to poke holes in the liberal "logic."

49 States?

2006-08-27T23:32:00.000-04:00

I read this quote in World Magazine and it amused me a LOT! Had to share it...

MIT's Richard Binzel on the debate among astronomers leading up to a vote this month about whether Pluto will continue to be classified as a planet:

"People were probably wondering: 'If they take away Pluto, is Rhode Island next?'"

Mwahaha. I laugh. And then I say, "Good question!"

Vacation Addendum

2006-08-27T23:20:00.000-04:00

Lest you think I wrote out EVERYTHING interesting I could have said about our vacation...

Katie asked in a comment on the previous post if we went to Bras D'or on Cape Breton, and the answer is yes. Bras D'or Lake or Lakes is a huge body of water stretching far inland and connecting to the ocean through a narrow channel, I think. We drove along the lake for quite a stretch and it's truly beautiful. Alexander Graham Bell built his home (or summer home?) beside it, saying that Cape Breton was the place that reminded him most of his native Scotland.

However, the reason I'm writing this is to see if any of you know what interesting connection Bras D'or Lakes has to most of the people reading this blog. Well, sort of an indirect connection. At least, something dear to our hearts visited that location.

Anyone know?

Think long and hard before reading any further because I'm about to give it all away.

Think...

Guess...

Wonder...

Okay, I'll tell you.

The Coronet made a pleasure expedition there before we owned her! Yup, you can read all about it in a book in the Fairwood Library that details the Coronet's early, pleasure-cruising history. There's another book that tells all about her scientific expedition to Japan to view the corona during a solar eclipse. I read both of those books back in my school days, so it's kind of a random bit of trivia that fits in with our vacation. You can probably read all about it in a much bigger book about the Coronet, too--also in the Fairwood library--but I don't know because I haven't read that one. The lake certainly is a gorgeous and expansive area in which to do some sailing! And so convenient to get to it from the ocean and then be inland. The Coronet also, if my memory serves me correctly, got stuck in the mud in that lake, in some channel that wasn't deep enough. AND, I believe that while these rich people were cruising around up there, they either went ashore to a party at A. G Bell's house, or he and his wife came out to the Coronet for a shindig. I can't remember which. Haven't read the book in a long time.

Anyway.

From My Land (as opposed to Anne's Land)

2006-08-25T23:46:00.000-04:00

Ah, the joys of neglecting one's blog!

I'm going to do a whirlwind report of vacation because I've been thinking of other things to blog about this week and feeling like I can't do them until I get the old news out of the way. Kind of like a clog in the blogging pipeline.

SO!

Two weeks ago on Saturday morning I got up early to pack for vacation. I was going to Sarah L's wedding where I was slated to play the piano for the reception (why I was invited), and had to be all packed before I left. After driving to Chestnut Hill, I linked up with Linds, Amy P, and Claire for the drive to the Gloucester area. En route I had my first Dunkin Donuts iced coffee since May 28th, and it was SO GOOD!!! Such a treat...made the day.

The wedding was beautiful, and what I really enjoyed the most about it was not having a single care or responsibility. I can't tell you for sure the last wedding I attended where I had no music responsibilities during the ceremony--probably ten years or more! It was delicious to sit back and enjoy it, actually watching the bride walk down the aisle and all that. The other strange thing was being at a wedding where I knew about four people. Usually they're at my church and there's only four people I DON'T know. I skipped the receiving line because I HATE receiving lines, and talked to Bill and Cherilyn instead. I wouldn't mind receiving lines as much if it were just the bride and groom, and MAYBE their parents, but when you throw the wedding party in there it just becomes overkill. Since pretty much the only person in the receiving line I knew very well was Sarah, I figured it was no great loss to congratulate her personally later, which I did.

Reception following...at a community hall in Rockport. Lots of great eats (with a seafood theme...though I mostly enjoyed the excellent breads with spreads like hummus and such). As it was winding down, my family came driving into Rockport to pick me up and head out for vacation. I climbed into our VERY FULL mini-van for the first leg to Maine. Mom was in a frightfully silly mood at this point, cackling and guffawing from the front seat at even the slightest suggestion of humor; and sometimes without the slightest suggestion of humor. Um, okay. Kind of a scary way to start vacation. :-)

We stayed at the Randall's Camp that Saturday night, just a short way toward Canada, but about as far as we could sensibly go after leaving MA in the evening. I was delighted to get back there since I have fond memories of vacations there as a child. I remember my pet clam I kept by my bed way back in the day so I could watch it open. Ahhh, the joy of memories. And then watching Arachnophobia (sp?) on the tv and Dad turning it off just as the hosts of spiders were coming out everywhere because he couldn't stand anymore. I still don't know how that movie ends. Yes, we got to go upstairs and try to sleep that night with visions of spiders everywhere and no closure at all. Great memories from that li'l camp.

The next day we drove through Maine, had church in the car (sigh...), and stopped at West Quoddy Lighthouse which stands on the easternmost point of land in the United States! Quite significant! The lighthouse is striped red and white, so it's rather picturesque, and worth the time out of our way to see it. I had wanted to see it when I researched for our lighthouse trip in March, but it it hours and hours up into Maine so looked impossible. Little did I know five months later I'd be there. Serendipitous, to be sure.

Sunday night brought us to our rented house in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. It was rather a quaint little place, with 1950's decor (orange linoleum in my bedroom), but fully functional and a pleasant home base. Pugwash is also a charming little village with a harbor on the Northumberland Strait (separating PEI from NS), and we enjoyed our time there a lot. Our land-people were named Lawrence and Wilma. Don't you think those are the perfect names for elderly Canadian people in a backwater town like Pugwash? I certainly did.

We had dinner with our dear friends Bil and Phev the next day, and discovered the library (my one chance to check my e-mail the whole week) which is in an old railroad station and even smaller than the Dublin Library used to be.

I also began some reading. I read Anne of Green Gables on this vacation and much of Anne of Avonlea, and loved them both! Nope, I'd never read any Anne books before. I started Anne of GG at least once, but it didn't seem so necessary since I'd seen the movies when I was about two years old and the element of surprise was spoiled. Anyway, that is truly inspiring, refreshing, wholesome reading, and I was uplifted and amused and enjoyed it thoroughly. I'd have to say it's high on my list of recommended reading.

Of course, the Anne movies are also high, high on my list. I'm not even ashamed to say it. I know a lot of guys who scoff and scorn when they hear talk of those movies and categorize them as "girl's movies." Get a life. I mean really. They aren't girl movies! They're about human nature, and relationships, and love, and friendship, and growing up and childhood and all that great stuff! Besides, the music alone can almost make me start bawling as I remember my own childhood and growing up years and friendships and so on. Wildly nostalgic in a way. Okay, I'm not feeling so eloquent, but there were a lot of excellent things flowing out of my heart as I read that book. I love it, love it, love it. Many opportunities for laughing and just as many for crying. So glad I did that on vacation...probably a highlight of the time. I hardly read any more. When I have free time, I usually sit down at the piano or try to compose something or blog. Reading is a luxury, for sure, and I savored it on vacation (an Agatha Christie paperback also claimed some attention).

We took a two-day trip to Cape Breton Island and got to camp! Yippee!!! I LOVE camping! It's so much fun! We camped on Cape Breton nine years ago and I shared a tent with Kendra and it POURED that night and we were soaked and Kendra whined loudly and frantically every ten seconds when she discovered something new in the tent that was wet. The funniest part was that all of her whining was directed toward Mom who was dry and trying to sleep in another tent. "Mooo--OOMM! The clothes I was going to wear tomorrow are wet!" (fifteen seconds elapse) "MOOO--oommm! My feet are in a puddle of water!" I kindly mocked her the entire time, telling her to pretend she was Jemima Puddleduck and such things. So she punched me and I almost felt it. Finally I was like, "Why are you whining to Mom? What's she supposed to do about it?" And Kendra was like, "She can SYMPATHIZE! Which is more that you can do!" Ah, yes. Good times. This time when we camped, there was no Kendra and no rain. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and all slept in a big tent and it was loads of fun.

OH! While we were up there in the sticks of Cape Breton, we went into a little convenience store and I heard a couple chattering in...wait...could it be? It IS! HEBREW!!! When I heard her say "gleeda" that sealed it. (We were getting ice cream in there, and gleeda is Hebrew for ice cream.) Oh, my. I was really excited. If I'd had a couple more minutes I would have conjured enough courage to start speaking to them in their native tongue. THAT would have been fun. I was imagining conversations in my mind. But they drove away before I got my courage up. Of course, the awkward part in that is that I'm sure they can speak English far better than I can speak Hebrew. Still, 'twould have been an adventure.

The thing that seems to be "in" around NS is Adirondack chairs. Seems like a lot of houses had them out on their lawn, and quite a few had them in several brilliant colors. It was kind of a cool trademark to see scattered about. I came home thinking we should paint the ones at Fairwood bright colors and leave them out on the front lawn all summer for the picturesque quality.

Okay, our Cape Breton trip was Wed and Thurs, following Mon and Tues lazing around the house. Friday we went to Halifax, stopping first at Peggy's Cove, a touristy coastal village with a lighthouse. It felt like NS was a little empty of tourists until we got to P's Cove. The whole place was crawling with them. One "attraction" was an old lady dressed in what I can only say looked like one of Granbeth's classic pink and orange polyester house dresses, sitting by the light house playing an accordian and singing sea songs. Local color. Definitely. And a short walk away, a man strumming his guitar and wailing at the top of his lungs. He was truly awful. At least the woman had colorful clothing to make her interesting. Both, of course, had money receptacles open on the ground. We climbed around on the extensive rocks surrounding the lighthouse, glimpsed a few whales in the water, breezed through the gift shop, and left for Halifax.

I already told you about Halifax. It's a pretty sweet little city, with a classy waterfront, all decked out and crowded for the Busker's Festival. The break dancing was cool. For part of one act they selected four men from the crowd and made them do a "dance-off." I was terrified of being chosen and tried to be small. He picked a guy right in front of me and for a couple seconds there I was worried he might be picking me. These four men basically had to make fools of themselves trying to outdance the other men. Oh, my. So glad I was only a spectator.

Dinner with the relatives outside Halifax was great. I haven't seen the younger two Jones cousins for years, and meeting the two new members of the family (the new wife and daughter) was really fun. G's wife is awesome and we had a great time talking (all of us younger ones). She is so extroverted! Definitely a bit of an anomaly in that family, and it was really fun to see. And they all have wicked strong Canadian accents!

Saturday we didn't go or do anything. I read more and we relaxed at our Pugwash house.

Sunday, as you know, we went to PEI, where I last left you at the welcome center. The weather on PEI remained pretty gray and mostly wet throughout our stay. That was a disappointment, but at least it didn't constantly pour. I love PEI...it is sooo beautiful. It's mostly just farmland, but it's very red and green and then there's lots of coastline so that adds blue into the mix. It just has sort of an idyllic luster to it in my mind. Probably all the L. M. Montgomery books contribute strongly to that.

We drove around, to Charlottetown, then up to the north shore and down through Cavendish (the real location equivalent to the fictional Avonlea). We stopped at the Green Gables house which inspired the book, and Kayla and I paid the fee to go in to the grounds and such and look around. I went 9 years ago, but Kayla didn't remember it much so wanted to go, and I didn't have a camera back then, so I accompanied her. The rest of the family waited in the car.

We camped again that night, at the same campground that we used nine years ago! I give it high recommendations, so if you're going that way, ask and I'll point you in the right direction. The campground is on the North Shore, just steps away from a red sandy beach, and we could hear the surf pounding all night. Yet the campground is in a glade of trees so there's lots of shelter and not too much wind. They even have Wi-Fi which is supposed to be accessible from your campsite, but it wasn't working when we were there. That night it rained while we camped, but the tent was MOSTLY waterproof, so only a few things got wet and not people.

Monday, our last day of vacation, we intended to explore the western part of the island. That's the only part we hadn't seen much of our last trip, so it was a priority this time around. Alas, it was not to be. About noon, before we'd seen much except for the road, the transmission in our van went all funky. With 207,000 miles on it, it probably isn't the best vehicle to be taking on extensive vacations, but what else could we do? What was supposed to be a long coastal drive with lighthouses and landscape turned into three hours at a garage in Timbuktu, PEI, waiting for the car to get fixed. Fortunately there was a large drugstore across the street, and I visited it about six times during the wait (I'm not even kidding) to pass the time. We also got ice cream at a local joint, and I got the equivalent of a blueberry Blizzard (except it was called something else), and it was soooo amazingly delectable! I think it was even better than DQ! So that was a grand discovery. In the end, the car fixed itself, or rather, I'm sure God fixed it. But at any rate, the mechanic didn't have to do anything or replace anything. He was really nice and genuine and charged us reasonably. We climbed back into our not-so-trusty vehicle and turned around, abandoning our plans for the western portion of the island because of time constraints.

Part of the reason was my desire to see Woodleigh Replicas, a place that features miniatures of 30 buildings (homes, castles, and churches) from England. It's set in gardens with fountains and stuff, and I really had my heart set on seeing it after discovering it in a tour book. Clyde, Kayla and I went in and wandered around in the gray and wet weather, while the others waited in the car (Mom and Dad probably playing games on their palm pilots, as usual.)

Charlottetown was our last stop (again), where four of us went to see Anne of Green Gables the Musical, a professional production that runs every summer. It was very well done and highly enjoyable! Catchy tunes and splendiferous voices and all. We spent the night in Charlottetown and drove all the way home the next day. It was really weird at the end of the day to realize I'd gone from Prince Edward Island to home in the same day. It seems like it should be a galaxy or two away.

And that was vacation! yay! I hope to post pictures once I get some back, but I shouldn't promise because it was recently pointed out that I promised pictures from our Martha's Vineyard excursion and never delivered. Whoops! The best intentions, of course. But MAYBE you'll see a few shots of Adirondack chairs and Woodleigh Replicas and lighthouses and such.

I unpacked that night and went back to work the next day.

So life rolls on.

From Anne Land

2006-08-20T10:52:00.000-04:00

The welcome center for Prince Edward Island has public computers with internet access! Weird, huh?

I only have ten of my fifteen minutes left. This is an entirely spontaneous post without any forethought. A full report will follow when I get home.

Um, it's raining. The rest of you are in church and I'm in a welcome center posting to my blog. Weird. But the weather has been beautiful most of the week...I mean, really amazing, so we can't complain. One day it rained a bit, but that was just a sit-at-home-and-veg day anyway. No loss. I've taken lots of pictures--too many, as usual. I'm completely blog-ignorant at the moment, not having read any since a few minutes caught in the library last MONDAY. Another weird thing, that. We've been to Cape Breton Island, and Halifax, and had dinner with our relatives there (Maureen & Co.), and now we're on PEI and it's raining.

Nova Scotia is beautiful...charming, quaint, farmland and ocean, and devoid of inhabitants. It's so big and empty.

I got some great reading done. More on that later.

Friday we saw the Buskers Festival in Halifax, which is a bunch of street performers doing stunts and shows. I thought of Brandon with fond recollections...he would have been right at home...for yes, there were two shows of BREAK DANCING!!! It was amazing and hilarious and looked, well, just like Brandon on the floor of that house we were painting in Israel. Except they were black and from the Bronx. But other than that, well, they were pretty much the same. :-) Other than that fact that they were in complete control of their every movement and doing back flips and stuff.

Okay, gotta run. Afraid the family might be waiting for me.

MORE WHEN I GET HOME!

Denny's, et cetera

2006-08-11T17:37:00.000-04:00

Yesterday a crew of fourteen friends, many of them bloggers, spent the day at Six Flags New England! Yay! I meant to post about the anticipation prior to the event, but never managed it. The outing was Diane's brainchild, and she organized and communicated and researched and such so we could go. (Thanks, D!) Ten people went from the Fairwood area (Diane, Brandon, Andrea, KJ, Katie, Davey, me, Clyde, Chad, and Erin L), and we were met by two Manchester people (DJ and Wes) and two Rhode Islanders (Melissa and Sara L). A good time was had by all. :-) We were there, of course, to celebrate Kristi A's birthday while she was in absentia, or whatever that phrase is. Just kidding...but Happy Birthday, Kristi! I didn't forget!

Okay, here's the best part: on the way, the Fairwood people stopped for breakfast at Denny's!!! That's what I wanted to blog about earlier this week, because I was looking forward to it SO MUCH!!! I mean, in looking forward to the whole day, I think that's what I was dying for the most...going out to breakfast and eating like a normal human being! (The diet was definitely postponed for the whole day...)

(Oh, and in a quick NEWS UPDATE, after starving myself for a couple of months, I have lost--drumroll, please--about 30 pounds! yesss!)

So, yeah. Breakfast. I LOVE breakfast foods! Like Janelle, I even love them for dinner! Give me eggs and meat and pancakes and waffles and all that stuff pretty much any time of day and I'll pack it away. However, it has been weeks and weeks since my breakfast has consisted of anything except a SlimFast shake and a piece of fruit. I eat a normal dinner every day, and I've made a couple of exceptions to my normal lunch of fruit, rice cake and SlimFast to go out to Pizza Hut, but I have had very little real breakfast food for ages. Okay, mom made me an omelette one Sabbath as a sort of brunch, but it was small and meatless and the Sabbath so it doesn't count.

Denny's is not Shoney's by any means (Shoney's is right up there with Krispy Kreme and Fazoli's and Dairy Queen in my book!), but it'll do. I started getting really excited about it on Monday or so. And it dawned on me that I really, really, really wanted to have GRITS!!! Yes, I'm a New England boy through and through, but I love grits! Totally weird! I think that came about from my days in Indianapolis where it was served weekly, and we could mix in cheese which would melt and make it amazing. Shoney's certainly reinforced that love. I remember once Amy P made it for breakfast in Bible School, with spicy cheese, during a huge be-at-the-woodpile-at-6AM wood drive, and it was amazing. And a treat! Now I hear they have grits at Bible School every week and it sounds like they don't appreciate it. I told KJ they were lucky! I don't think she believed me.

So here I was, drooling over my anticipated breakfast on Thursday and craving grits somethin' fearsome! By Tuesday night I was online checking out Denny's breakfast menu and getting a headstart on deciding what I would order ("phew! they have grits!"). I was pretty sure that would be the high point of the day.

Thursday we left Fairwood about 7AM. We got to Denny's in Holyoke maybe 8:30 or so. Yippee! I got a Grand Slam breakfast with grits and it was sooooo good! A benefit of dieting is the joy you have when you eat real food! Okay, let me say the grits were not up to par. They were definitely Quaker out of a box and tasted like QuickGrits. Not that I know the difference or anything. I have no idea how else grits might be made ("Mary?"), but I do know they weren't as good as at Shoney's. But they were still grits, and they went well with my easy-over eggs, sausage, bacon, and buttermilk pancakes. Yum! I'm ready to go back right now! As we pulled out of the Denny's parking lot to head to Six Flags, and said, "We can go home now." Haha. Not quite.

I've never been to Six Flags New England. In fact, I can't recall ever going to any amusement park in New England. I've been to Six Flags in NJ a couple of years ago, and to Hershey Park and Disney World, but I think that's it. Unfortunately, I tend to get motion sickness pretty badly. I was always the kid in the car that had to throw up. ("Paper or plastic," remember?) Let me just say that people who have motion sickness get pretty self-conscious about it. I mean, we feel like it's a weakness and it's somehow our fault, and we're inferior to those to whom "nauseous" is an alien eight-letter word that they don't know how to use correctly. This is reinforced when these people who have never had motion sickness a second in their lives insist, "It's mind over matter!" or "It's mind over stomache!" It's not, guys. Really, it isn't. Those of us who get chronic motion sickness can't just tell ourselves we're not sick and get all better, even though you think it should be that easy. It's a miserable malady, and, as I have clearly proven in this paragraph, has psychological implications as well. It's kind of annoying when people think you don't like roller coasters because you're scared or a wimp or something. The thing is, the roller coaster ride itself is tons of fun...it's the following four hours of nausea that aren't usually worth it. :-)

HOWEVER!

All of that being said, I took Dramamine yesterday, which I don't recall ever doing before riding roller coasters, and I had a WONDERFUL DAY!!! Woohoo! There were a few twinges, especially in the evening when I hadn't eaten for a while, but otherwise I was good to go. And go I did! I rode the biggest ride three times! But I get ahead of myself.

The other nagging fear that plagued up to the trip was the memory of blacking out on a big roller coaster in NJ two years ago (Nitro, for those of you Six Flags NJ people "in the know"). I did...totally blacked out. Not as in losing consciousness, but as in having a head rush that made me blind for a while, as we were flying around a corner at 80mph. That was a little scary. It made me wonder if something similar or worse could happen if I got on a roller coaster again. So that made me worried as I headed into yesterday. But no serious mishaps, praise the Lord! I almost blacked out on one roller coaster, getting about two thirds of the way there, but then came out of it. Not bad...

So all in all, I had a wonderful time riding fast rides and waiting in line with great friends, without all the collateral damage and stress that I experienced the last time I went to Six Flags. However, I must admit to being terrified plenty while waiting in lines for dangerous rides. "I'm afraid!" was my mantra all day long, before pretty much every roller coaster, as I gazed dumbfounded at the horrible things it did and wondered how I could ever survive. But you just force yourself to do it, despite the unease, and then you have a blast.

We started out easy on some of the older, smaller roller coasters, like Cyclone and Flashback. The latter is the one I almost blacked out on...it pulls you way up an incline, drops you through ridiculous loops, then up another incline and then drops you through the same loops backwards. I believe it's a pretty traditional style of coaster. We also enjoyed a couple of water rides which helped to cool us off...grabbed lunch at ridiculous prices...then did bumper cars. Batman the Dark Knight was the wicked awesome coaster we did next, and then Mind Eraser, which is one where you're suspended from the track above you, and corkscrews at one point. Unfortunately, it started POURING rain just as we got to the front of the line for that one, but they still let us go. Quite the adventure! I would have enjoyed it more without the rain, because I had water in my contacts immediately, blurring them and threatening to wash them out, so had to close my eyes to keep them in. I did NOT want to try the rest of the day without contacts. I like roller coasters better when I can see, so that one was a little bit of a loss for me.

By then I was very wet, and leaving the ride in the rain completely drenched me, so some of us stood around in the pouring rain because we couldn't get any wetter than we already were. This meant squishy socks and sneakers the rest of the day. Oh, well. And then, almost as fast as it came, the rain was gone. I don't think it could have lasted more than 20 minutes.

We did another water ride, then headed for the biggest coaster in the park: Superman! It's comparable to Nitro at Six Flags NJ, dropping 221 feet, going 77 mph, featuring lots of huge camel humps in a row, diving into two tunnels (one of them shrouded in mist), and so forth. The first sign of sketchiness came when I got stopped to see if I was TOO TALL to ride it! They had a measuring stick with the minimum and MAXIMUM! I have never seen that before! How funny... I barely made it. Another inch or two and they might have kept me out. I decided to be careful not to sit up too straight or extend my arms. I'm not too keen on getting scalped or amputated on roller coasters.

The rain had cleared out the lines a lot, because the ride was shut down for a while. We didn't have to wait long at all. All I can say about that ride is OH...MY...WORD! What a RUSH!!! That first climb to the top of the world, and then the drop of 221 feet which ends, by the way, in an underground tunnel at the bottom...and the angle of the drop is something like 75 degrees. It's like free-falling from a skyscraper. And then you careen around at highway speeds. Amazing. And terrifying. And you hope you don't bump your head. :-) We got off that ride and got right back in line. It was that good. ("We" being the roller coaster lovers in the group, which is by no means everyone...some people didn't ride it at all.) So twice on Superman in a row. I didn't cling so desperately the second time, and got my hands up a bit. But there were times when I couldn't get my hands up or they were pushed down because the force was so strong.

Scream was next for some people--basically a tower you shoot up and then freefall from. I was too scared to try it, so I watched with a few others. Brandon was grinning fiendishly on this ride, and it was hilarious to watch. We rode Batman again after that, since we'd pretty much done everything we wanted to at least once. KJ was coaxed to try it, and as we got strapped in and waited to take off, Andrea and I talked to her a lot to convince her she hadn't made a mistake. She ended up loving it in the end. Then some of us die-hards sprinted off to do Superman one last time before the park closed, this time in the dark! Woo-oo-oo! It was wicked fun again. What a rush again! And then on our way out of the park, I went with the flow and tried Scream after all. It wasn't bad...kind of fun, actually, even though the ride was a little abbreviated by that time since the park was closing. The initial shot up into the air wasn't as bad as it looked from the ground, and the drop was nowhere near as extreme as on Superman, so it was mild in comparison by that time of day.

And then we left. I knew there was a Dairy Queen close by, it being the one where I gorged myself on two blizzards for lunch one day on the way home from school, so I directed the caravan to it. But alas, it was closed for the night! Stinkers. We settled for McD's instead, and since I had been relishing the thought of a Blizzard all day, I got a McFlurry. As I said, the diet was in remission. It was nowhere near as good as a Blizzard, but oh well. I couldn't exactly break in to DQ and demand what I wanted (blueberry cheesequake blizzard...)

We arrived home about midnight, tired and glutted with daring feats of adventure. Clyde and I went to work today for six hours, starting at ten. I figured that working a partial day today would earn income to pay for yesterday. And so it did.

The end

P.S. I am about to join Little Jerry in the ranks of those who are incommunicado. The fam is going on vacation in Nova Scotia and PEI starting tomorrow, and the prospects of internet access are dubious at best. You'll have to read blog archives if you're desperate.

"Reverend Mother, I have sinned"

2006-08-07T00:37:00.000-04:00

Forgot to mention that on the way home from sailing, we stopped for ICE CREAM! Oh, my word, such evil indulgence! Mr. S was treating, and everyone was coaxing and tempting me and saying things like, "What's the Sabbath for if not to break your diet?", so yes, I had a small. I shiver to think of the damage it did. Irreparable damage, probably. Okay, this isn't the first time I've shirked on my diet, but I have been extremely good (!!!) even within my few departures from discipline, so an ice cream cone sure was a significant infraction. But chocolate ice cream with peanut butter chunks in it has hardly ever tasted so good...

(I followed up with a small encore from the family freezer tonight. I knew it was a slippery slope! Next stop: Decadent depravity!)

Smooth sailing

2006-08-07T00:04:00.000-04:00

Saturday I had the time of my life cruising along the New Hampshire and Maine coast in Uncle Earl's sailboat. Woohoo! I really love sailing, though I haven't done too much of it and really know next to nothing about how things work. Even so, it holds an idealized place in my heart. I say idealized because all sailing isn't fun and games. I know deep down in my heart that I enjoy sailing, but I'm not always quick to leap at the prospect in case it isn't as fun as I think it should be. Know that feeling?

The last major boat excursion I took was sailing through the night with Uncle Earl from Cape Cod to Portsmouth a couple years back, and the experience had many aspects which made it far from ideal. First of all there was the hurricane we hit about half-an-hour into our voyage. Okay, so it was a rain squall, but when you're out on the water in a boat, pelting rain and wind feels dangerous, especially when it pops up completely unexpectedly and the only other person on the boat is scrambling around trying to get sails down and you're manning the rudder, wondering with a little bit of fright what you would do if he fell off. Jump in after him? Sail fearlessly out into the Atlantic and hope he finds his way home? Try to turn around when you have no idea how? When it was over, we were soaked.

That adventure also featured no sleep, as I practically froze onto the rudder while the night winds lashed at me. I will quickly admit, however, that sailing by moonlight is AMAZING, and that is part of the experience I will never give up. I seem to recall seeing more than one shooting star, too, but maybe that is my idealized view of sailing coming out again.

The worst part of the trip was the steady slamming of the boat. We were headed into sizable swells, and instead of rolling up one side and down the other, most of the time we rode up one and slammed (!!!) down into the trough....then up the next one and slammed (!!!) down into the trough. Over and over all night long, exposed to the elements, slamming! Remember how I said I didn't sleep? And I was cold? It was wearing, to say the least. We arrived in Gloucester harbor the next morning, picked up Wendell as a reinforcement, and from there the sailing was pretty much ideal on up to Portsmouth. But I, for one, was almost too worn out to enjoy the second day. I did enjoy it, but in a sort of foggy, exhausted way.

But yesterday, the sail was ideal from beginning to end! I was invited to go Friday night, and debated whether to wager my Sabbath morning rest against the prospects of a good sail (realizing that my view of sailing is highly idealized), but in the end my ideals won out. Uncle Earl said it was going to be just us and Mr. Sontag, but when I arrived at "the cousins" house, I found that several of "the cousins" were coming, and Katie, who was their guest. Suddenly the day got a whole lot better as it turned into sailing AND socializing!

The weather was stunning--brilliant blue sky, with only a few clouds on the horizon. And with so many people on the boat who knew what they were doing, I could basically sit back and enjoy the ride. I had to undo ropes a couple of times, and do them up again, but mostly I ate rice cakes and took pictures and talked to Aaron and Ryan and Mr. Sontag and, okay, some to the girls, too. The wind was just right to go up the coast, and we cruised past the lighthouse on Cape Neddick, and back down in just a few hours. We kept a pretty good clip of 6-8 mph (or was it knots?), and even heeled over at quite an angle a few times. That heeled-over feeling is pretty cool! I think I was scared the first few times a couple years ago--somehow a boat tipped over on its side while underway just doesn't feel safe--but there was no panic from me this time. It was all sun and ocean and coastline and lobster traps...and the best part of sailing: no sounds of an engine or machinery anywhere around! Just wind and waves and the boat plowing the water as the sails flutter or whip or whatever. Ahhh! That was the life. I pretty much could have stayed there the rest of my life.

For a while there, once our course was set, Uncle Earl went below to nap and Mr. S was napping in the cockpit, and the rest of us were on the bow, and we were on auto-pilot, so no one was at the wheel! It was funny to look back and see us apparently unmanned. Aaron had the auto-pilot trigger, though, so he could direct us away from lobster traps.

Ryan and I got pretty soaked when we sat on the bow with our legs over the side and we plunged into a wave. Ryan also mastered the art of eating a saltine cracker upwind of me so that when he took a bite, the created crumbs would fly into my face and hair. The punk... Can't wait to get my pictures back, though that will probably have to wait until after family vacation. Such a gorgeous, gorgeous, and yes, ideal day! It proved to me that sailing can be the ideal pastime, as I have often thought but haven't often experienced. I can't wait for the next time!

A fraternal note of apology

2006-08-04T23:02:00.000-04:00

Another post from the Attic Archives.

I found this handwritten note amongst my belongings. I have no recollection of the incident it references; I can only guess it had to do with a bike. It makes me laugh and feel just a little bit guilty for sibling tyranny all at the same time. But my conclusion is that everyone ought to have younger siblings, to fear you, love you, revere you, admire you, follow you around everywhere and want to try or do everything you do (though that part is pretty annoying for a few years), allow himself to be concussed by you (this particular note came from a sibling to whom I allegedly gave three concussions), and all the other things younger siblings do so well.

Here's the note:

"Craig--I am very sorry. One time out of two after you left I crashed into one of the trees, but not headon. The reason I am writing a note and not telling you is I know you will be mad and I am sorry.

Your ugly brother -- C___"

I love that finishing touch. It's so reminiscent of human nature to feel so badly about something that you try to insult yourself as much as possible as a sort of penance. And it works wonders because if you're of a merciful personality like mine, such words make you feel terrible that they feel terrible and it's hard to hold a grudge against someone so piteous. You should all try it the next time you crash something of mine into a tree.

And he is definitely not ugly.

The Osgood File

2006-08-02T22:47:00.000-04:00

I forgot to report yesterday about the Osgood File I heard on the radio during the afternoon. For those of you not familiar with it, the Osgood File is a brief report by an independent reporter (Charles Osgood, usually, but some days a replacement) on some interesting tidbit that has to do with current events or topics of interest. It's a little bit like Paul Harvey, except limited to one subject and thus a little more developed than Harvey's two sentence news clips. I believe there's one Osgood File every day, and radio stations that feature it can decide when during their broadcast day they want to include it. WKBK does it late in the afternoon.

Yesterday's Osgood File was presented "in light of the current Israel-Lebanon conflict," and centered around an interview with a Christian man from a Last Days organization who stated that he knew from Scripture why Israel is always surrounded by conflict. Now, I couldn't tell whether this man was totally off-base, or whether the Osgood people only excerpted parts of the interview to skew his position and make him look bad. I mean, I support the general premise that the Bible has a lot of clear things to say about Israel's role in the Last Days (this is what seemed a novel idea to the Osgood people, I think), but the short report did an excellent job of muddling things up a lot, and making such a position look pretty stupid.

Consider...

The Osgood interviewer asked the Christian man about his belief that he knows why Israel is always in conflict. The man responded that the Bible is very clear, and the reason Israel is in conflict is because they are being punished by God. The interviewer wanted to know if he thought God would use terrorists to punish Israel. I think the man said yes (my memory is very selective in some of this). Of course, then he was asked if he knew what they were being punished for. This man said it was because they had been commanded to possess the land of Israel, and they had never done it. He, for some reason, brought up the fact that they had been commanded to kill every non-Israelite man, woman, and child when they first came to Canaan, and they hadn't done it.

So then the interviewer asks, "So do you believe, that in order to achieve this goal to avoid punishment that Israel needs to perform ethnic cleansing within its borders?"

OH MY WORD!!! I don't even remember what the guy answered--I was too busy being outraged at how ridiculous this whole conversation was! And this wasn't even some crackpot local liberal show! This was a national (I think) news feature. How ridiculous that we got from the Biblical guide for Israel and the last days, something I love and affirm, to the need to perform ethnic cleansing to appease God's wrath. Definitely not a shining moment for the worldview of Bible-believing Christians. Again, I'm not sure if our Christian representative was a complete crackpot or just portrayed in the worst light possible.

After the interview clips were over, the Osgood man continued to share more he'd gathered from the interview, mainly that this man believed when the rapture comes, it will mostly take away people from red states, leaving them underpopulated and the U.S. economy in shambles. The Osgood man concluded by saying, when that happens, at least the people who live in the blue states will finally be able to elect the president they want.

Um, hello? I found this all rather lame. My gut response was that, once the tribulation is upon us, the last thing the blue states will be worrying about is scoring a political victory in the White House. Then again, maybe not. The antichrist has to come to power SOMEHOW! Why not at the hand of Democrats?

Now I'm being as crazy as the Osgood File...

On the radio today

2006-08-01T23:55:00.000-04:00

To pass the time, I once again listened to talk radio at work today. This included the local liberal talk show that brought us the discussion a couple weeks ago about Christians being in the same boat as radical Islamo-fascists. Back for an encore!

I don't remember what introduced the subject, but a caller called in and stressed to the liberal (Libertarian, but extremely liberal) host that it is necessary that we establish societal norms for what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior, or else our society will dissolve into chaos and havoc. (I'm summarizing his views and putting words in his mouth.) His point was that a large percentage of Americans hold traditional conservative views on acceptable behavior, and we can't allow the fringe minority to be the ones controlling the definitions of right and wrong. Basically, he was arguing for some sort of absolutism over relativism. (Again, I'm putting words in his mouth.) A major point he brought up was the institution of marriage, saying if we redefine its traditional meaning, who knows where it could lead. His examples included a man marrying his daughter or someone marrying their pet.

The host (who was not rude and belligerent--unusual for liberal hosts), did attack that argument pretty strongly by saying the "Domino theory" had been disproven over and over during the past forty years. For a long time, he said, people have been claiming certain moral lapses will lead to other moral lapses, and he insisted the slippery slope mentality wasn't true and every time that theory had been used, it had been disproven. Specifically, I guess people used to say marijuana was a "gateway drug," and if people smoked it they'd end up doing far worse things. He maintained that the Domino theory is false (marijuana smokers don't necessarily slide down the slippery slope to something worse), and so you can't apply it to marriage and thus argue that marriage could eventually become acceptable between people and their pets because the first domino of traditional man-woman marriage fell.

First of all, I'm realizing now that I disagree with him about the Domino theory. This isn't the point of my post, but think about how the theory of evolution, and taking prayer and Bible out of schools, and such things led to small moral lapses which have snowballed and gathered steam until we have a complete mess on our hands. I suspect back when people were arguing those issues that the people who predicted extremely dire results down the road based on that first step weren't even close to guessing how depraved American society (particularly the youth) would become.

Moving on...

Later in the show, the host brought up a completely different topic: a Florida man who is suing the NFL and the Tampa Bay Bucs for conducting pat-down searches at their stadiums prior to games. The host wasn't too keen on the whole pat-down thing, mostly because he thought it was discrimination to pat down people at certain types of events and not at others, and because he believed there must be a reason for suspicion before such a search can be conducted. Maybe so. Anyway, then he got going on this whole concept of a pat-down search, and wondering WHAT COULD BE NEXT? If they're allowed to do that at sporting events, maybe they'd want to start searching people other places...maybe you'd even get searched going into a grocery store. (Horror of horrors!) He got a little bit whipped up about the terrible things that could happen someday if pat-down searches were thought to be normal.

Folks, I wish I could say I was smart enough to spot his hypocrisy. But I was completely oblivious. I was just listening along when a male caller rang him up, and very deftly pointed out that he was invoking the "Domino Theory" in his own pet subject. The lights started flashing in my head, and I was filled with a very smug feeling of "Cha-CHING! GOTCHA!" It was extremely satisfying. Here he had just blasted this theory when it was applied to the decay of marriage, and then turned around and used it to get people concerned about pat-down searches. "Where could it lead?" was his exact philosophy. Slippery slope and all that. Such blatant hypocrisy! He back-pedaled and defended himself by saying, "Surely you don't think what I was doing is as extreme as saying people could marry their pets someday!" Now that is a pitiful ploy. Try to distract people from your fallacies by throwing out some extreme comparision so that unthinking people will immediately concur that you're okay. Of course it's not as "bad"--that's not the point! The point is you just broke your own rules! Loser...

The caller proceeded to question the host about a completely different subject (I spaced out because I didn't know where he was going with it), and then, suddenly, I realized he was pointing out how the host adhered to the Domino theory in another area. Way to go caller!

And so listening to this liberal was definitely worth it today. Almost like having toast for lunch. :-)

[Disclaimer: My point isn't that I disagree with the host completely on the pat-down issue. Unwarranted searching of individuals does seem to challenge personal liberty a bit, though I think if it's private businesses and corporations doing it to protect their own property and customers, it's probably okay. My point is that he's a hypocrite.]

Picture of the day: a large and in charge instrument

2006-07-31T21:48:00.000-04:00

Here is another in my series of black and white instrument pictures, for which many of the subjects were borrowed from the Kingdom Band room, courtesy of Mr. Page.

Hmmm...I'm pretty sure this is a tuba, though I don't remember borrowing a tuba which is weird. But it looks like a tuba, so we'll say that's what it is, whether I borrowed one or not. This is the really, really low "oompa" instrument you hear in marching bands.

My most memorable tuba experience is when Mr. Page played "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" at a Lyceum hosted by Aunt Sharon when I was in Bible School. It was pretty sweet!

A budding writer

2006-07-30T13:29:00.000-04:00

(who should have been nipped in the bud.)

I wrote the following story on October 1, 1992. I was just beginning sixth grade. It is truly awful. I found it amongst my attic treasures and it cracks me up, regardless of its questionable plot. The assignment, I think, was to write a short story in which I used the words populated, destined, lament, compose, and gallantly. At least, that is what I surmise since those words are underlined in the story and the entire plot seems to revolve around them. Remember those sorts of assignments?

It is written on lined school paper, in cursive, and it's all one paragraph. It has a few red marks from my mom's correction pen, too.

"Once there was a boy named Tim. Tim's father ran a pet store in a city. One day, a huge shipment of mice came in. There were about 25 of them. Tim named them all. He took special liking to four of the mice. The only problem was they weren't selling so they were over populated. They were so over populated that is [sic] was obvious some were destined to die. And four did--the very four Tim loved. He was very sad. One day his mother couldn't find him anywhere. She looked everywhere. Finally she went to the mice graves and found him there lamenting. "Tim," she said, "compose yourself!" Then Tim realized how foolish he was being. He was sad, but he didn't need to lament like this. He composed himself quickly, picked himself up carefully, and strode gallantly back to the pet shop, his mother beside him."

Wow! I never suspected when I wrote this masterpiece that it would be published on a world-renowned blog! If only I had retained the ability to be so succinct, if with slightly better content. It's a pity.

Currently craving...

2006-07-29T17:47:00.000-04:00

...a bagel from Bonker's Bagels in the Old City! Mmm...slathered with olive cream cheese, and slices of cucumber and other vegetables. I would bask in the brilliant Jerusalem sunshine, devouring my feast, while stealing surreptitious glances at the old Jewish man "keeping shop" across the way, fast asleep in a chair in his shop doorway, his long beard sunk in "meditation" on his chest. I would eat and savor and be very happy.

I've been craving one of those bagels off and on throughout this week!

Anyone coming with me?

Future Kingdom Archives

2006-07-29T10:07:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday, my friends, I FINALLY finished a project I started in May! My possessions in the attic have finally been cleaned out! I sorted the chaff from the wheat, threw away two huge black trash bags of junk, and organized and neatened what was left into a much smaller space. This has been on my To Do list for two months, and I've worked on it a couple of times since I started, but Sunday was the day to push it through. I also neatened up Chad's junk (don't worry, bro, I didn't throw anything away, though I sure wanted to...), so one end of the attic is fairly sparkling and you can see a wide expanse of floor! Woohoo!

As I mentioned when I started moving this mountain, I found some hilarious treasures amongst my papers and promised to share them. These range from past correspondence, to school papers, to Bible School years. Yes, my friends, they practically belong in the Kingdom Archives, so valuable is their historical significance! Someday they will probably be there. But for now, they are neatly organized, for the most part, in a file box, with my Bible School assignments and handouts, those play scripts I told you about (and others I'd forgotten), and more. Altogether it is a veritable treasure trove of the past, from which my archivist's heart can bring forth treasures for my blog.

Prepare for the first treasure...

The Bible School Guys' Sickness Chart!

Oh my word, I forgot all about that. I was so Gestapo-esque back then! Let's just say, my first year of Bible School I became suspicious that certain people got "sick" way more often than normal people get sick. It was this nagging thing in the back of my mind, but whenever said people got sick, I couldn't really remember the last time they got sick, so I couldn't prove anything to myself.

So my SECOND year, I undertook a sickness chart to trace the behavior of certain people to see if they indeed got sick too often, if there were any patterns to their sickness, or if there might have been other factors which influenced them to get sick. What a punk I was! I found this in my multitude of papers, and I found it pretty funny. Um, so I hope it's not too awful to share this publicly. I must state that everyone in Bible School that year turned out pretty well, regardless of how often they got sick. This is not a reflection on their present character at all! It's just history...and we all know how valuable history is!

I also am of the opinion that one of these people had (has!) the most awful luck when it comes to health and hurting himself. Three guesses who that might be (o thou of the split-grape finger!)

The chart has three columns: When, Who, and How Long. Not sure if I can reproduce that format here, but I'll try to make it clear. I also added other notes sometimes, and have added some present day comments in brackets. At the top it says "Sickness Chart, Bible School 2000-2001," later I wrote in "Slackness, Absence, Laziness" after Sickness, and added "Guys." I didn't keep track of the girls. I never could have kept up with all their Slackness, Absence, and Laziness, though their sickness was pretty rare. ("All the girls retired to their rooms for naps this afternoon during work time, as they did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before...")

Sickness (Slackness, Absence, Laziness) Chart, Bible School (Guys) 2000-2001

9/19/00--Curly--Till Lunch--Stomachache attributed to pizza...Had big argument with Moe night before over capital punishment [lol]

9/20/00--Moe--through 9 o'clock hour, till class; missed work time, too. Cold finally took him down. [the only person to arise from sickness to come to class, then get sick again]

9/24/00--Larry--just through class to church

10/2/00--Larry--Unsure if he was sick, but he missed/skipped most of the day [I think this is when he ruined our awesome "Three Worthies" skit in which he was supposed to play Gretchen with a blond wig; I wonder if the sickness was his way of chickening out when he realized he'd be playing Gretchen in the Sanctuary in front of all the ministers]

10/8/00--Larry--Sick through church and lunch until sports with FOCUS group [sports have amazing restorative powers!]

10/9/00--Curly--Sprained ankle, missed 9 o'clock hour, class, work; 10/10, missed class

10/9/00--Larry--Went to bed sick after 9 o'clock hour

10/11/00--Shemp--bad headache; missed dinner and half of midweek meeting [this was legitimate, of course!!! I think I remember that headache...one of the moan-in-your-room-with-the-lights-off ones; it stands out as probably the worst of my, I mean Shemp's, Bible School career]

10/30/00--Curly--Sick until dinner

10/30/00--Larry--Not physically sick; having hard time most of the day.

11/1/00--Larry--Bad back; several days, missed much stuff

11/5/00--Larry--Slept ? through Communion

11/8/00--Larry--Slept through class--up for work

11/9/00--Larry--Slept through 9 o'clock hour--"I didn't get the two hours of extra sleep everyone else did." [I THINK, if my memory serves me correctly, breakfast and morning work were called off, but he didn't know it (maybe it was announced the morning before?). He got up, then got mad when he found out, went back to bed, and stayed there longer than anyone.]

11/12/00--Larry--I'm pretty sure he slept all the way through prayer meeting.

11/13/00--Curly--Sick from staying up so late working on his assignments.

11/13/00--Larry--Not sick, I think, went back to bed partway through morning work.

And that's the end of the list. I guess it lasted for two months! Kudos to, um, "Abbott" for staying off the sick list! I could almost say kudos to "Costello," too, except the only reason he's not there is because the list didn't last into the winter months. During the winter he was sick with sinus issues practically every other week. But kudos to him for staying well through the fall.

So what do you think, is this chart Archive-bound?

A fact almost forgotten

2006-07-27T22:12:00.000-04:00

I learned a bit of interesting Dublin geography on my tour last Saturday that I forgot to include in my report! Our guide told us the second town meeting house was built very close to the watershed line that runs through Dublin. I didn't know we had a watershed line! As it happens, every drop of water that falls on one side of the line flows into the Merrimack River system and eventually into Massachusetts Bay. Every drop that falls on the other side flows into the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. Cool! We have, here in Dublin, our very own Continental Divide! Except it's more like the New England Divide... So I say once again, Dublin is "a good town to live in" (Bria, you could NEVER write catchy town mottos, much as I know you want to).

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking--"small minds, small pleasures." Go soak your head...and wonder while you're at it in what major body of water that soaking agent would have eventually found a home.

Happy Birthday Achmed, Mohamed, and Sayeed! (or is it...?)

2006-07-26T19:06:00.000-04:00

I've noticed something really weird while working at the bank this summer, the most recent incident being yesterday, and hence today's post.

A new area of training for me this year was in the Compliance department, where I have been helping off and on whenever they need me due to vacation schedules. This department checks all the incoming forms and paperwork before it is forwarded to the CIS department which sets up and maintenances the accounts on our system. Our purpose is to be sure the bank branch has "complied" with federal regulations for verifying a customer's identity before we process their account. We're not supposed to set up accounts for people who don't prove to us that they are legitimate, whether they are an individual, a business, a trust, etc. Guess this protects us from fraud, and also doesn't give illegals or terrorists the option of having bank accounts. Well, unless they have forged documents, which all of them do. :-( Individuals have to show a driver's license, passport, or other forms of ID. Businesses have to include documents to prove they exist. The branch is responsible for viewing these, and we double-check the information they copied onto the form to be sure they did as they should. I only work on the easiest stuff, reviewing accounts for individuals.

I pretty much hate working in Compliance. It drives me crazy. Basically, I get a huge stack of paper every day, and I have to stare blankly at every form to be sure the Social Security number is nine digits long, the DOB looks fine and isn't in the future, they showed a Driver's License that hadn't expired, and they have a physical address. Those are the forms I like.

Then there are existing customers for whom you don't have to check any of the information because they already have an account with us. I hate those because I have to compare their old account number with the new one to be sure the teller didn't use the same one, and check it against the SSN, too, since sometimes they use that incorrectly. Those forms SHOULD be a breeze (Kimberly loves the forms I hate and vice versa), but my perfectionism in determining the numbers are different usually leaves me in a muddled mess of numbers, feeling like I should have finished that form long ago but here I am still checking and rechecking numbers. Single account owners are easy. Joint accounts, or those with three or four owners are especially annoying.

Kimberly loved Compliance and was good at it. I hate it and am bad at it. I wonder if it is a girl/guy thing, because Nate H. also worked in Compliance, and also hated it. Everyone else in the department is female and seems happy with their job. I want to type or DO something, not just stare blankly at paper for hours on end, trying to go fast and never succeeding. Let me work in the Image Dept. and I can fly through documents like you wouldn't believe and have fun with it.

But I digress. Well, I don't know if it technically qualifies as digressing since I haven't even come to my main subject yet.

While reviewing these forms, something has caught my eye on several occasions. I've been really curious to realize that a disporportionate number of people with Middle Eastern names list their birthday as being January 1. I mean, enough of them to really look strange. I think one day I had three Middle Easterners in the same batch who were all born on January 1. Yesterday I had another one, and I've had a few others over the course of the summer. I notice because 1/1 is an interesting day to be born. Not many people are, except, it seems people from the Middle East.

Why do you think that is? Anyone have a theory? I've wondered if they're lying about it to avoid detection in some way (not to racially profile or anything!), but it seems like they'd choose something more random than New Year's Day. Besides, I wouldn't think a birthday would make such a difference in finding a terrorist. I've wondered if they're telling the truth and for some reason it's an honor to be born on January 1, so many women induce labor over there to assure their children are blessed. My other wonderment is whether some Middle Easterners don't know what their birthday is in the solar calendar (don't they use the lunar calendar for religious reasons and stuff?), so it's accepted practice for them to say January 1 because they don't know. I like that theory because it feels smarter than the others. :-)

Any other ideas on why Middle Easterners might say they're birthday is January 1? Again, it's not like tons and tons of them, but compared to how many Middle Eastern names I get and how many January 1 birthdays I get, the ratio is pretty high. Weird.

Is mispronunciation your forte?

2006-07-25T21:02:00.000-04:00

Just to be annoying, or perhaps as part of my stated purpose of having an ameliorative influence on society through blogging, I am going to share with you another lesson in language and its proper usage. Remember the nauseous vs. nauseated discussion? Today's edition of Write Better, Speak Better is a lesson I learned from Kendra about ten years ago when we were driving through Phoenix and she was, I dunno, reading the dictionary or something. (It's funny how those peripheral details stick in your mind...driving through Phoenix, I mean, not reading the dictionary). The basics of the lesson were learned then. An abnormal abundance of egregious infractions recently prompted me to search out the rest of the story and bring you the following.

Before continuing, I'll hasten to say I know the root issue here is the question I've posed before: should we seek to use language in a true-to-origin form, or should we see it as communication which constantly evolves and comes to mean whatever people want it to mean or, in this case, be pronounced however people want it to be pronounced? Like questions about the Constitution: original intent, or adaptability? I can't answer that question for language (for the Constitution I hope it's clear!) I lean towards the former, but see benefits of the latter. Since people are alive, their language should follow suit. However, I react strongly against depriving words of their proper meanings and pronunciations just because humanity democratically yet unofficially decides to do so. It doesn't do credit to either the words or the humanity.

In any case, I like to point out the discrepancies between what you should be saying and what you do say. Like when meanings get reversed from their original because people are stupid (like in nauseaus vs. nauseated where the dictionaries CHANGED to accomodate lack of education), or when pronunciations are tampered with by the same people.

Okay, here's my lesson.

When you have a strong point, something you do especially well, you can say that area is your "forte." However, that should NOT be a two-syllable word!!! The proper pronunciation of this word is "fort." It comes from the FRENCH word "fort" (surprise, surprise! you thought it came from Italian and could thus justify your bad pronunciation!). That other word you're thinking of, yup, the Italian one, is also forte, but is indeed two syllables, as in "FOR-tay". Rather than a strong point, it means "in a loud, forceful manner." Both come originally from the Latin, fortis. However, they took divergent paths in French and Italian, then were adopted into English with two different meanings and two different pronuncations, as outlined above.

Nowadays, however, they have been merged into the same word with two different meanings. Most everyone currently says "FOR-tay," using the Italian pronunciation for the French meaning as well as for the Italian meaning. No one says "fort" anymore. The clear distinction between the pronunciation of the two has become blurred, unlike the distinct meanings, which remain intact. People would look askance at you if you pronounced it correctly and quickly admonish you. Popular usage, no matter how out of line with proper usage, holds sway, and becomes "correct."

Is it bad that people pronounce the word for "a strong point" the same way they pronounce an Italian word with a completely different meaning? I don't think so. Words that come from foreign tongues are sketchy anyway. Do we pronounced them as Americans or as alien-wannabes? I never know. I'm sure there are many sides to the argument and you could look to different sources to prove I'm wrong, and probably some of you badly want to because you can't stand people like me who bring up things like this. :-) I suspect you'll find the older dictionaries support me and the newer, "adaptable" ones don't. Dictionary.com has this to say:

"Usage Note: The word forte, coming from French fort, should properly be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort. Common usage [evil, evil "common usage" which defies absolutism and gives all power to the people!], however, prefers the two-syllable pronunciation, ("FOR-tay"), which has been influenced possibly by the music term forte borrowed from Italian. In a recent survey a strong majority of the Usage Panel [idiots, every one of them!], 74 percent, preferred the two-syllable pronunciation. The result is a delicate situation; speakers who are aware of the origin of the word may wish to continue to pronounce it as one syllable but at an increasing risk of puzzling their listeners."

So now you know. If you feel like challenging the flow and adhering to original intent, you can tuck this away and "puzzle" your listeners when the time comes. If you really don't care and you just want to fit in with the world (who needs "salt" or "light," anyway?), you can continue in your old ways and ignore this illumination.

I think this sort of knowledge tends to affect me by making me avoid the word altogether. :-) It bugs me to pronounce the word incorrectly, but I don't want to look weird to everyone and not be understood when I intone it with educated precision. So I find an alternative to express my thoughts.

In closing,

"Being annoying is my fort(e)! But it's quite likely mispronuncation is your FOR-tay!"

Picture of the day: Piercing the Darkness

2006-07-24T17:46:00.000-04:00

Taken inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, at the foot of Golgotha, near the spot where "God so loved."

Remembering...

...today, on this birthday of a friend, the band of brothers who carried the light of God to Israel, seeking to pierce the darkness there, and succeeded!

Rejoicing...

...that one of those lights, with faithfulness to the heavenly vision, now shines more gloriously in heaven than the small, flickering candles of those of us left of earth.

Anticipating...

...the day when my light, and the light of each one of us, will no longer be battling darkness, but will be enveloped by the eternal light of Jehovah in heaven, as Andrew's is now!

Happy Birthday, Andrewd.

It happened in church today...

2006-07-23T15:54:00.000-04:00

Dad: "Today we're going to look at three short Psalms. In fact, the first one is the shortest Psalm. It's even the shortest chapter in the whole Bible. Philip, do you know which one it is? [he doesn't] Does anyone know which one it is?"

Mrs. Priest: "Jesus wept."

Hahaha.

Mr. Reed's object lesson was about diapers. This week, he said, was the first time in 20+ years that no one in their family has needed a diaper change. Can you imagine? I mean, some families have a 20-year span in their kids, but to have them all so close together that they never have a diaper-changing break in over 20 years is something else. Whew! He ran a number of calculations, like how many diapers they'd used (ca. 39,000), how much money they spent (ca. $9,000), how much Ellen should have been paid for the time she spent (ca. $31,000), how much the children would have to pay monthly with six percent interest to pay them back (something like $295 monthly for 240 months). The point was God doesn't keep track of all that stuff for us. He just does what's best for us, what will help us realize our potential, and doesn't expect us to pay him back.

Rather an unusual object lesson if you ask me. :-)

Good ole Fairwood Church.

Dublin--a good town to live in!

2006-07-22T23:15:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay, I know that is technically the slogan of our easterly neighbor, Peterborough. The much embattled slogan, I might add, at least where Melo is concerned. He used to jeer at it a lot in our Bible School days, having thought it stupid from the first time he passed the brown Peterborough welcome sign.

Well, Dublin IS a good town to live in. Today was Dublin Day! When I was a wee thing, back before I grew tall and got fat, the only memorable thing about Dublin Day was that the Friendly Farm was free. It made quite an impression, but there wasn't much of a shindig. But now it's like a mini-carnival in Yankee Field, just up from the post office by Pap's Oriental Rugs. They put up tents and there are booths and face painting and lemonade and a cookout and a barbershop quartet and a rock climbing station and a slide and an inflatable jumping booth for kids and a petting zoo (courtesy of the Friendly Farm) and antique cars and and a DUNK TANK and stuff. At least that's what was there this year.

Another year they had Civil War re-enactors, and I think there's usually a 5K road race, and a Raft Race at the Lake Club. Basically, people create their own rafts out of whatever and race (at turtle speed) in Dublin Lake to see who wins. The crowning of Miss Dublin is another event held on Dublin Day, and it basically consists of randomly choosing the name of one of the 5-8-year-old girls who wants the title. Overall, it's really not a bad event for a town with a population of 1500, and it even draws citizens from neighboring towns. Ah, the joys of living in a tiny New England hamlet!

I'm not sure what made Dublin Day what it currently is, but dad thinks it had to do with our 250th anniversary four years ago (for which we produced an astounding parade), and some sort of committee which decided we needed to do more as a community. Ah, yes, we are such good communists on Dublin Day.

Today was drizzly and foggy. Alas. But my main reason for getting out for Dublin Day this year was to take the historical bus tour of the town. I learned so much about my beloved little village, and now you'll get to learn it, too! Bits of trivia, anyway.

Did you know the population of Dublin around the Civil War was 1,100 people? We haven't grown much in the last 150 years! The town was required to send about 10 percent of their population away to war, so 115 men represented Dublin, 25 of whom were killed in the war. Three of those died the same day in the Battle of Bull Run. The monument which stands next to the elementary school in town was erected in 1870 to commemorate our soldiers.

The general store used to be in the building next to Yankee Magazine, and the red building across the way is where the telegraph was (starting in 1847, I think) and then the telephone (1897). Electricity came to town in 1900. Just up from the library was a fancy hotel that boasted all amenities for its guests, including electricity and, it is believed, running water. Since it was downhill from the lake, it's quite possible they rigged it up with water tanks on the roof to facilitate toilets and stuff. Anyway, I was interested even if you're bored.

We saw the green, up on the hill in the vicinity of Dublin School, where the town's Revolutionary War troops mustered, across from the site of the second Meeting House (the present location being the third). Then down to the cemetery where the first Meeting House was, and we saw where the ice houses stood which held ice cut from the lake and served the whole town all year. Apparently the first center of town was sort of in Cemetery Cove, and it's been moving downhill ever since. The shed still standing by the cemetery was the "hearse house" where a wagon and sleigh were kept for transporting bodies to the cemetery. I'm not sure I realized there are Revolutionary era graves in our cemetery, and Civil War graves, and so on.

The Old Harrisville Road which rises sharply from Cemetery Cove was the first road to Harrisville, where the train station was, so tourists and summer visitors to Dublin arrived by train in Harrisville then came on over on that road.

Next around to some of the amazing houses. Did you know they were built mostly by people from St. Louis who wanted to get out of the city? I didn't realize they came from so far away! The huge white one on the northwest corner of the lake was the first, built in 1899, and several of those along West Lake Road followed in the same year, built by relatives and friends of the same family from St. Louis.

You know that brick house at the corner of Lake Rd and Old Marlborough Rd behind the stone wall? Well, the mill that's in there was possibly the first mill in town. We got to go inside the wall and check out the old mill building and the pond and stuff. I had no idea it looks like it does! I've been inside around the grounds there before to take pictures of the house, and met the elderly female owner who was gardening, but I didn't go down by the mill to see the huge gaping hole beneath it where the water flows and the mill wheel would have been. It was so cool! And the father of the present owner was enormously instrumental in starting the United Nations. There was a conference for world peace at his house shortly after WWII. The white porch attached to the house is (probably/possibly) the oldest standing structure in town and used to be a cabin.

Bored yet?

Not me!

Around the southern end of the lake was an area called the Latin Quarter, mostly because I think the eccentric artist who lived on the point of land behind those huge stone pillars was responsible for bringing back lots of Italian art for some lady. I'm not sure about the details there, but I guess this man was pretty spontaneous and took a boat up the Nile once instead of going to Italy as planned and fell in love with Egyptian antiquities and did something to champion them or bring them back or something. I guess there were a lot of artists who resided around Dublin and the tour guide talked about the Dublin Art Colony.

On Snow Hill Road we passed a house rented by the German Ambassador during some summer of WWII, and I believe they later found evidence on the third floor that spying had been going on. Then a house used by a British ambassador, I think. And I learned that a famous daring geologist used to live on Snow Hill Road. He had some harrowing near-death experiences, and expeditions in places like Mexico and Afghanistan. His last name? Pompelli!!! So NOW I know why the Pompelli Trail up the mountain is called that!

The mansion where the Petrone's live was built by a man who later became the Secretary of the Treasury under President Taft. In fact, he had a HUGE party at his house which President Taft and the governor of New Hampshire attended. Tons of fancy invitations were sent out, and something like eleven butlers were borrowed from other local homes for the event. The British ambassador (??) also came, and chose that occasion to, as was the custom, formally announce the death of Edward VII, even though it had happened several years before. Guess he hadn't had the chance to announce it yet. Here, in our very own town!

Many of you probably know that Mark Twain summered in Dublin. The tour guide shared a quoted he penned about our illustrious town:

"Dublin is the place I have been longing for but didn't know until now that it existed."

He might have even said it was the place he'd been longing for all his life, but I can't remember for sure so don't want to risk stretching the truth. We didn't go by where Twain lived on our tour route. We didn't go to Fairwood, either, which is a terrible shame since it is more beautiful than most of what we saw on the tour, and because Admiral Byrd stayed there and he is surely as famous as anyone else we learned about.

Guess who else stayed in Dublin? Abdul Baha, the son of the father who founded the Bahai faith. (I know there's an apostrophe in Bahai somewhere but I have no idea where.) The tour guide pointed out their headquarters are in Haifa, and she hoped they were all right today (Yup, been there, done that). He spent a very short amount of time here, but the Bahai faith is currently renovating the Dublin Inn (or tavern) in which Abdul stayed, near the current general store, making it a place of devotion or commemoration for Bahai. I guess they already have yearly services in town because he stayed here. Okay, all I really want them to do is make some stunning hanging gardens like they did in Haifa and maybe it'll be worth having the blemish of a false religion on our town.

That pretty much summed up our tour. I sure am glad I live in a great town like Dublin! I wandered around the activities a little after that, then explored Hedge House where I've never been before. It's Dublin's own little gift/antique shop, so checking it out as I've meant to do for a while was a good addition to a day of celebrating Dublinness. Fritha got me a starfish there once that I love, so I wanted to see want else they have that I might like. They carry mostly glass, and since I have a little collection of cobalt blue glass, it was fun to find they indeed have some stuff I'd like to get someday--like elephants and pigs--and lots of other pretty collectables.

Ah, yes...Dublin--a good town to live in!

Another week slides astern

2006-07-21T22:10:00.000-04:00

And so I worked at the bank one more week. No riveting stories of drinking black coffee to pull you to the edge of your seat, though. But I did come across the last name Loin and cringed for the sake of those who bore it. Was that a thrilling story or what? Aren't you enthralled?

Overall, the week flowed quickly by, and there were some different projects that gave me a change of pace, so it was a more pleasant week than some. I got to sit in the same desk all week due to someone on vacation, so got to leave my portable plug plugged in.

I also discovered my radio! "Duh, Craig, listening to the radio is what people DO at the bank." I used to do that quite a bit in years past, when I had a radio and didn't have to move around everywhere, but in more recent years, I just listened to music on my portable CD player. That kind of became my habit, and I forgot there were other options. Well, there weren't really other options, due to a lack of radio (or so I thought). I've been languishing a little because, despite my vast array of CDs, I've listened to most of them at the bank before, and had made it through many of them already this summer. Consequently, I was a bit bored of music and scraping the bottom of the barrel, as it were, ready to start borrowing CDs from Clyde because I just wasn't in the mood for mine anymore.

But then there were TWO Red Sox day games on this week!!! One on Wednesday and one on Thursday! Suddenly, it occurred to me that my new portable CD player that I got for Christmas also has a radio! Why didn't I think of that before??? I tried it out and it worked GREAT! I listened to lots of Red Sox baseball and boy did that brighten my day. There's something beautifully classic about baseball on the radio, where you can hear the murmur and cheers of the crowd behind the announcers...it feels like I'm absorbing baseball the way it has been enjoyed for decades, unlike TV which is all new and sleek and colored and they've added many features to tell you what the stats are and stuff.

I wondered, however, if Joe and Jerry ever get annoyed at each other for saying whatever they say. I mean, there were lots of times when Joe would say something and Jerry would contradict him. Does that make Joe mad? Or one of them would just same something a little bit lame, and then there would be a pause...and I'd wonder if the other guy was thinking, "Now THAT was stupid! Why did he say that? I'm just going to keep quiet and let the whole stupid subject die down and then start up with something new." It must take a horrendous amount of restraint not to let loose and get into a good old-fashioned discussion telling them you think you're right or what he said was ridiculous or pure speculation. But wait! Everything you say at work is broadcast on the radio! Just imagine if all your conversations with coworkers were on NPR (especially you, Claire!) Methinks that would put a damper on any true human interaction. Anyway, getting in touch with the Sox was a beautiful thing, but it really became a springboard for realizing I could listen to the radio and not get bored nearly as fast as with music because the radio is always different.

Well, okay, not always...I got pretty vexed today with the WKBK weatherman who gave the same weather report over and over predicting possible thunderstorms over Saturday and always ended with "We hope you have a good weekend, weather or not!" It was so STUPID and made NO SENSE!!! A good weekend, "weather or not?" What does that even mean? Or is it "whether or not?" Of course there's going to be weather, even if it's not nice weather. Oh, it irked me something awful. I just wanted him to say, "Have a good weekend, whether or not the weather is nice," or "Have a good weekend regardless of the weather," but no, he had to say, "Have a good weekend, weather or not." Der, der, der.

When you have friends who share their peeves with you, a natural response is to start noticing the same things and get peeved by them, too. And so it happened yesterday with a peeve I picked up from Andrea. Have you ever noticed how people use the word "literally!" when it can't possibly make sense or be true? I mean, it pops up all the time as an expression following a metaphor. People use a metaphor and then say "literally!" when of course, the metaphor absolutely CANNOT be meant or taken literally.

Examples:

"He was, like, twelve feet tall! Literally!"

"I ate so much I was about to explode! Literally!"

I'm sure you can think of some great ones, much better than these off-the-cuff examples, at least I know Andrea can (be my guest in the comments.)

Yesterday on the radio one of the news reporters said something like this, "Conflicts between [some planning board] and [someone else] came to a head yesterday, literally!"

Ahem. Excuse me, but I doubt the conflict between said parties literally turned into a head, or in any way literally "came to a head." You can't possibly mean that expression literally, not in this situation. For all that the expression "came to a head" can mean, I'm sure it didn't literally happen the other day in this planning board. Honestly, what do they teach these reporters in reporting school?

This morning I listened for a while to a nauseatingly liberal local talk show hosted by some Keene person. No, it wasn't Dan Mitchell--it was someone after him. He was discussing a lot of religion-related issues with a guest. They were both clearly anti-religion, and they agreed between themselves that people who base their beliefs on the Bible have no morals and are morally lazy. I was like, "HUH??? Where did you come up with that?" Then I understood them a little better in that they meant people who use the Bible as the basis for all their beliefs often avoid thinking about or discussing the issues. I don't think that's as evil as they think it is, but I do agree that educated faith is usually more effective than blind faith, for all involved. In other words, I accept my morals because they're biblical, but also because my eyes are open to the world around me and I can defend them to non-believers with arguments other than, "That's what the Bible says!" Not that I'm smart enough to be able to do that, but I definitely believe that's the goal. I disagree with these men that morals are the result of logic, however. Morals cannot be created by the human mind, or they are subjective. I like something a little more absolute in my morals, thank you very much (along with cream and lots of sugar...)

Then they got wondering why the Christian Right (they were adamant that really the problem was with "evangelicals," not all Christians) has such power and influence over public policy in our country. In their minds the Christian Right has "disproportionate power" over the U.S. government. They believed if all the apathetic liberals woke up, we'd have a different country, where the miniscule Christian presence was counterbalanced by other views. I really think they have no clue about how large the Evangelical community really is. I mean, imagine if all the apathetic Christians woke up? We'd be "right back at ya!" and their liberals wouldn't have the upper hand after all. Also, they seem to think the Evangelicals are so powerful because of their money and funding. Ha! Right!

What really got to me was when they talked about how the Christian Right was so successful because they were really quite fanatical, and even though the left-wing fanatics get all the press, the right-wingers are just as bad. Then the guest gave the knock-down blow: "I really don't see much difference between these conservative radicals and Muslim extremists!"

HELLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That has to be the STUPIDEST thing EVER said by anyone on WKBK!!!!!!! Maybe in the world!

Now, if they were talking about abortion doctor shooters, I can maybe twist my mind really far to see his point of view. But they made no mention of THAT kind of extremist. They were clearly talking about the Evangelical Christian community that bases their morals on the Bible and tries to influence public policy and VOTES and opposes things like cloning and government funding for stem cell research (what started their anti-religion discussion in the first place, I believe) and that sort of stuff. And, clearly folks, there is no difference between those people and Muslim extremists.

Okay, just maybe we don't go around blowing ourselves up in crowds of innocent people. (Even abortion shooters usually target a single person they see as guilty of crimes against humanity.) Maybe we try to love people and get them saved instead of KILLING them because they don't believe as we do. Maybe we believe women are people too. Maybe we don't hijack planes and defy the free world by murdering thousands of people as we become moving time bombs.

No difference between evangelical Christians and fanatical Muslim extremists??? I am incensed! That dude is so dumb. If I hadn't been at work I might have called in and taken him to task for that statement. I am pretty disappointed at the low grade radio going on at WKBK right about then. Maybe someday I'll find the energy to call and complain.

Throughout the rest of the day, Israel vs. Lebanon was all the buzz, especially on Rush and Howie Carr. When news reports played from Haifa, with air raid sirens moaning and the reporter describing injuries of people hit by rockets, well, that hit pretty close to home and I was muchly unhappy. It felt so real since I've been there and love it there and can picture it...I've spent a couple of nights in Haifa, and taken a few pictures there...and suddenly it's a war zone. But I was encouraged to hear most people calling into those shows supporting Israel in all they're doing to wipe out Hezbollah for good. In fact, Howie Carr's daily poll question was "What should Israel do? A. Agree to a cease-fire, or B. Kick Hezbollah's butt?" Last I heard, something like 90% of the poll participants voted for B, including Howie Carr. That was good to hear, at least. I definitely vote for B. And it's about time.

And yet the thought of Israel at war doesn't make me happy...not at all! All those soldiers we saw over there; maybe even the ones who stopped me and made me show my passport, or the Peisch kid we met who was supposed to join up before long--those men and women might be invading Lebanon soon. They and the entire region really need our prayers!

On an entirely different note, we had a little birthday celebration for Katie last night in Peterborough, going to the place I went with my composition professor (I got iced chai again) and then to a Monadnock Music concert at the beautiful stone church with the rose window. Going inside that church was a first for me, and I've always wanted to go there after driving by it for years. The music was French madrigals by Du Fay and Italian madrigals by Maurenzio (um, I think it was him), sung by 4 or 5 people. Pretty amazing stuff!

Now, on this Sabbath, Fairwood lies pretty much deserted around me. My family is here...the seniors at Fairview...Katie and Rachel...a few Hansens...and THAT'S ALL! No one else is in all of Fairwood! It is sooo deserted. Sometimes I wonder if people who don't live at Fairwood have any notion of what it's like here as a ghostown. It seems like I can remember being in the Main House barefoot playing the piano till very late at night during the summer because no one's here and no one cares. It's a different world...

"Good Sabbath, Tevye" and the rest of you, too.

Picture of the day: Marie at the Med

2006-07-19T18:54:00.000-04:00

Marie P...out on a limb of faith, bringing in the sheaves in a far-off country. You go girl!

Or maybe just collecting shells in Ashkelon. We took a day trip to Beersheva, Yad Mordechai, and ended up at the Mediterranean, where the water was warm, the jellyfish plentyful, and the beach volleyball delightful, except I thought I broke my toe during one fiendish dive into the sun-kissed sand. But no--it was only temporarily injured.

Anyone out there remember that day?

Just be thankful

2006-07-14T18:13:00.000-04:00

No matter what you have to gripe about today, just be thankful that your name is not the one I saw on a signature card at the bank today:

Manley Dolley.

That's just wrong.

(Excuse me, Mr. Dolley, if you happen to be reading this...you can keep griping because, well, unlike the rest of us, you have absolutely nothing to be thankful for.)

Quick!

2006-07-13T00:32:00.000-04:00

Everyone go visit Marie's blog and flood her with comments of encouragement! She's in Thailand and trying to adjust and feeling lonely. So give her words of aff and remember to pray for her!

Not for the faint of stomach

2006-07-12T23:56:00.000-04:00

For mid-week meeting tonight we were watching a seminar where the speaker compared meditating on Scripture to "chewing the cud." He proceeded to explain the expression "chewing the cud" as the function of cows who bring up their meals multiple times from their many stomaches to chew some more. Along the way he said something alone these lines, "It's like they decide that meal was so good, they bring it back for an encore!"

And then I began to wonder--

Why don't we ever talk about "chewing the cheesewhiz"?

The alliteration greatly improves the expression, don't you think?

In a nearby cubicle...

2006-07-12T18:09:00.000-04:00

...sits Gollum.

There's a lady at the bank who reminds me of Gollum.

Truly!

I know that sounds incredibly demeaning, and I suppose it is. She's not hideously ugly, as one might expect of one who is compared to Gollum, she just has certain features which call to mind that unfortunate creature. Her head sticks out in front of her shoulders...protrudes, as it were. And her eyes are quite round with sort-of bags under them. And her face, well, she just reminds me of Gollum! I can't exactly explain why. And yes, she annoys me a bit.

When it dawned on me last week or the week before I just wanted to laugh a lot! It was so funny to realize such an uncanny resemblance between myth and a real human being. And I think it made me feel a bit better about not liking her. Don't worry, she has plenty of hair, and she smiles and wears make-up, and has a normal voice and doesn't call things "precious." But other than that, she's Gollum to a T. Yesiree. In my mind, anyway.

The only reason I can say this is because it's completely anonymous. I mean, you don't know this woman, so it's not like I'm publicly declaring Brad is the spitting image of Peter Jackson and thus insulting someone we know. (Brad's a safe one to pick on since he's probably not reading this...unless he's still procrastinating from putting away his paperwork.) Of course, Brad looks nothing like Peter Jackson, but you get the idea. However, I sort of wish this whole lady-at-the-bank-who-looks-like-Gollum thing weren't anonymous, because I wonder if anyone else could see it as I do. I mean, I wonder if you guys would think she looks like Gollum. Yeah, now I can hear you all clamoring for me to post a picture of her. Right. Not gonna happen. But I wonder if you could pick her out of a line-up of bank women as the Gollum look-alike. Also not going to happen, but it's fun to think about.

Before I realized she was Gollum, this lady came to work one day with flaming red hair. It was pretty disturbing. She's probably in her 50s at least, and has normal brown hair. I didn't know what was up. It was definitely not her, and I felt sorry for her that she thought it was. But it was gone within a couple of days and I caught wind that it was an accident. Phew. Gollum should not have flaming red hair!

For lunch today, Diane, Katie, Rachel, and Andrea came in and met Clyde, KJ, and moi at Pizza Hut for the lunch buffet! We have coupons from the Keene coupon book for buy one get one free at the buffet, and they expire soon, so we used up three of them. Woohoo! It was wicked fun and helped the day go much faster. Yes, I know you're wondering about my diet. Well, that was my one solid meal of the day and I'll be drinking a shake and eating fruits and vegetables for dinner today instead of for lunch. And oh, yes, one mustn't forget the rice cake! True sustenance indeed.

Today I processed a signature card for a guy who ran a funeral home. The name of the funeral home was his full name with "Funeral Home" at the end. You'll never guess his last name. Um, yeah, it was Deady. I was pretty amused! The _____ _. Deady Funeral Home. Guess he was destined for his profession. I showed my coworker Ellie, and she recalled a funeral home sig. card from her past. The name? "A Place to Die For."

Ouch.

Did you miss me?

2006-07-09T23:09:00.000-04:00

Wow! A whole post-less week! I've reached a new low.

Life has continued to roll on. The last couple days of the Family Convention were great, though without the high level of bloggability as the first two, methinks. No games where Andrea and Diane drank from baby bottles and such kind of stuff. I ran the children's track in the late morning Monday, then went to work and completely missed every field day event. My little sister, however, won the 50-yd dash, 100-yd dash, long jump, and mile for high school girls! Sorry to have missed it.

The major feat of the day was Davey running the Fairwood mile backwards! As one kid told me regarding preparations at the corner of the lake, "We wondered why he had a pillow and helmet when he got out of the van." Ah, yes...Dave.

Independence Day featured a softball game (I napped most of it away), and parade! I thought the parade was one of the best ever, with the Stars and Stripes Forever blaring all over Fairwood from an amplifier, and bubbles everywhere, and firecracker things supplied by Paul, and quite an array of costumes! But then, maybe every Fairwood parade seems like the best ever. Aunt Sharon sure was styling with her brown sweater bedecked with "precious stones." After the parade, the music kept playing and we blew more bubbles and a bevy of people whistled along with the music. I, of course, joined in heartily with my own tootie warbling of rounded lips and air. Okay, I was lip-whistling, but I sure sounded great to people not in the know.

Then we had water balloons on the front lawn, and I got majorly wet, partly because I felt obligated when Andrew and Alicia threw water balloons at me to catch them and squeeze them to get all wet instead of letting them bounce off like they did at first. Not obligated, really...I enjoyed it. Paul then gathered us into a clump to play the grand game of catching the huge fat water balloons he threw at us for money. Yes, grand entertainment for all, as we struggled to earn fifty cents while he got to gleefully toss bloated water balloons at us and watch us try to get hit by them.

Back to the bank on Wed., where I just about went to sleep in the morning. I was so exhausted! Well, yes, I'll confess I stayed up late the night before watching the first three episodes of LOST. I'm so irresponsible. But I sure am enjoying it! Clyde and I are through thirteen episodes already, and haven't had it a week yet (DJ's DVDs)! None of this larking about and taking your sweet time. If you're going to commit to a season of something, might as well do marathons and have done with it. So, anyway, I was drooping badly, and knew I needed COFFEE! But I am still on my diet/exercise obsession thing, and my version of coffee, as I've said a hundred times before, is three parts sugar to one part coffee. What to do? Okay, folks, it was really bad, I mean, I was practically dozing off at my computer.

So I drank a cup of coffee BLACK! Yuck! It was pretty disgusting! Untreated coffee should have a poison symbol on it. But I survived and sort of enjoyed the adventure, and boy, did it wake me up! Woohoo!

One day I ran across the name Fatpiu. Yay--so exciting!!!

I got pretty annoyed in the department I was working in (as a temp. I sit at the desk of someone who is one vacation, so I'm a peripatetic date entry clerk), because they talk to tellers and customer service reps in the branches a lot, and the girl next to me was incessantly complaining about how stupid they were. She'd get off the phone and start ranting about how sick she was of talking to stupid people and they needed to go back to training or they were lying to her or whatever. I got tired of hearing it and just wished she could try to be patient and helpful to these people who don't know what they're doing. I mean, what good does it do to whine about how stupid they are? Seems like they (this is a problem throughout the department) could do their job with a little less spite and criticism.

Friday there was a huge hullabaloo because SOMEONE parked in one of our handicapped spaces in front of the bank. OOOOOOOO!!!! EVIL!!! I couldn't believe it became such a huge deal. It was a red PT Cruiser and apparently they were at the movies. Some normal workers got worked up about it first, and then management got all into it, and they called the POLICE! Then they watched him come and do nothing and got furious about it, and called the police back. Sharon was on the warpath about it, I think. Lucky for me, I happened to be out asking a supervisor a question when the second officer showed up, so I had a front-row seat for everything that transpired. He explained that, to be in compliance with state law, the handicapped space has to have both a posted sign AND spray paint on the pavement to qualify. Since ours had no sign, he couldn't enforce it. He said it's a problem at Walmart because they only have one sign for two spaces, and that's not compliant with the law, so they can't enforce it there, either. The long and short of it was, if the bank wants the power to have people ticketed, we have to comply with the law.

The officer was hilarious, too...he and Sharon got talking about the hooligans who come to the theater and break all the lights above the walkway and kiss the bank windows with excessive lipstick and such. He made a crack about doing that himself right then...his great line was something like, "I left my lipstick home because I'm on duty." Sharon decided to resolve the situation by leaving a "love-note" on the PT Cruiser's windshield. Yes, that was her very own expression. Um, as the girl next to me said, not so sure I'd want to get a "love-note" from Sharon!

I learned shortly after that one girl who uses a wheel-chair at the bank usually parks in that spot and couldn't because of this intruder. Suddenly it made more sense why people were up in arms about it. However, this girl is not totally wheel-chair bound...I mean, I think she's rather mobile and doubt it was a huge deal to her to park a few spaces down, but I'm all for respecting her special privileges. Hm, suddenly I'm reminded of The Office when what's-his-name cooked his foot in his George Foreman grill and brought in the wheel-chair guy to straighten out everyone's insensitivity. :-)

The other significant event of last week was the advent of addiction to "24" for Andrea and Katie. When I heard Andrea would be home for the summer, I thought of course we should introduce her to 24 while she was footloose and fancy-free, and it's finally happening. We're a few episodes into Season 1. Katie's already seen it, but none of the later seasons, so we all have a few marathons to look forward to. Oh, I love that show. And it's fun to try to watch it through the eyes of a first-timer, while knowing all the twists and turns yourself. While I've really enjoyed LOST, 24 is still tops for me. LOST is drama; 24 is action. That pretty much sums it up.

Last night we went to some sweet fireworks at ConVal to celebrate the Fourth and some anniversary for Peterborough or their fire department. Pretty cool display by Atlas Fireworks, but it lasted about 15 minutes, and we sat in the parking lot for 40 min. waiting to get out.

And that's all.

Taste of the action from the home front

2006-07-02T21:37:00.000-04:00

For those of you wondering what wonderful things have been going on during the family convention, your moment has come, for I am about to tell you. :-) A fun time has been had by all. You probably know the FamCon is abbreviated this year from 5.5 days to 4 days. The crowds are also significantly abbreviated. Oh, there's still plenty of people here, but some of the regulars with a good number of kids didn't make it this year (like the Knowles, and all the Turners, and the Morgans from FL and KS). But the Reeds, Adamses, and Holschers are here in full force, so there's no lack of young 'uns. (chuckle)

Which reminds me of a funny story. I lead the children's track, and we were doing introductions last night, so I was introducing Caleb and Ruth to the group and saying, with astonishment, that there were EIGHT CHILDREN in their family! Isaac R. piped up from a couple chairs down, "Only eight! We have nine!" It was pretty funny. Only a Reed could say, "Only eight!"

The first meeting was at 8pm on Friday night, just short of sundown. The Girls Week girls did a wonderful job of "Aunt Jan-ifying" the Fellowship Room, so we welcomed the Sabbath with plants and trees and lamp-light and white Christmas tree lights and Uncle Tim sitting in a glider rocker up front. It was a peaceful and glorious opening to the time...perfect atmosphere! Uncle T talked about heaven, using the catch-line, "There is a PLACE!" meaning heaven. He dwelt on the fellowship and the people we will see there, and the worship in which we will be unified. It's hard to recreate the basking pleasure of that meeting, but I'm sure you've experienced something similar, so remember that and you'll probably be close. Brownies and ice cream followed.

Sabbath breakfast was at 9am. It was billed as a leisurely breakfast hour--I don't know because I didn't go. In orientation meeting at 10:30 my dad introduced the theme of the convention, which is Heart Fellowship. This is a theme the Fairwood Church has taken on over last winter and spring by forming small "heart groups" of same-aged people for sharing and fellowship in place of midweek meeting. You can read more about it in the Friday e-mail. We also did the usual Paul and Laura routine of schedules, announcements, guidelines, off-limits places, introducing and embarrassing new people, etc.

Saturday afternoon held no scheduled activities. The goal was for families to choose from a number of options provided for them, but not staffed for them. These included croquet, badminton, a mountain climb, swimming, canoeing, fishing, dinner prep, a video, or whatever people wanted. I enjoyed a great game of croquet with the three Randalls, Jeff and Fritha, Wesley, and Amy T. Bob R totally cleaned up...he's the only person who ever became poison (even though I sent him over the hill), and slew us one by one with stunning accuracy. Diane went over the hill about four times. There was a great deal of sending involved. I got put over the hill once, and three people in a row tried later on in the game but could never send me far enough.

I popped into the movie after that, which was the Gospel of John in the fellowship room. Well, the funny thing about that was the TV-G was on, and the DVD remote was lost, so it was impossible to turn it off. Can you imagine watching the Gospel of John, word for word from the Bible, with every sentence containing "God" or "Jesus" muted out? No closed-captioning, either. I searched for the remote a lot, but it was fruitless. Kind of funny, if you think about it. I was amazed at the handful of people who had the fortitude to watch it for a long time.

After a smashing dinner of taco salad, we had separate meetings for youth, children, and adults. The "track time" this year is limited to one meeting each day. Other than that, all the activities are for the whole family, including the sports time in the evening. It's kind of nice that way...not so fragmented, and much easier to staff! We had an excellent time in the children's track. Awesome crew of kids. Uncle T had the meeting (usually a half-hour talked sandwiched between all our fun and games), talking about Jesus being our rock. He took the kids outside to the slide for an object lesson.

First, he put little dots of sand on the slide representing each child, and told them that's them trying to do the right thing by themselves. But when the waves come (here Clyde dumped water from the top of the slide), we get washed away. So then we grow up to be thirty, and now we're small rocks, still trying to do the right thing on our own. And still, when the water comes (another draught), we're still washed away. Then we become bigger rocks...and still can't hold our own (more water, more washing away).

But now! Jesus is a huge rock (Peter R. brought one from the stone wall), and He'll never be washed away by the water. So if we as little rocks get close to him, and hide from the water, then...(here comes more water)...um, whoops! All the rocks which were supposed to be hiding behind Jesus to be able to do the right thing still got washed away.

Timothy L. piped up, "I guess we NEVER get to do it!"

It was pretty comical. Here, let's sear into their minds that they will always FAIL!!! No, not really. Uncle T did a good job of salvaging the object lesson. At least the big rock didn't get washed off. That would have been hard to fix!

Today, after youth, children's, and preschool sessions during 9 o'clock hour, we had church, and THEN an afternoon of Multi-Generational Activities! This was managed by the Browns and was wicked fun. There were a number of stations set up, some for competition, some for fun, and you could mill around and do what you like. Melissa did face painting (Strongsad on Fritha was my particular favorite), then there was cupcake decorating (fancy! with, like, 12 colors of frosting and all Diane's decorating tools), Boggle, vocal range competition, consecutive free throw competition, badminton bumping the birdie as many times as you could competition, a scavenger hunt, simple rocket making, bubbles, half-court and three-pointer competitions, and then the Touchy-Feely competition.

The Touchy-Feely thing was ga-ross! But it was fun! On the round table in the corner of the kitchen were nine bowls with substances in them. However, they were all ingeniously covered by a blanket. You had to reach in and guess what they each were without looking, smelling, or tasting. It certainly didn't help that Paul geared us up for it by talking about Roadkill Cafe and body parts and stuff. Think about that, and then go groping around feeling...stewed tomatoes, chickpeas, raw chicken breast, tapioca pudding, olives, liver, slimy spaghetti, a chunk of suet, and cooked chicken. Yuck! I got partway through toward the end of the afternoon, and then got pretty grossed out thinking of those gross things that had been handled by 50 people already! Ew! I didn't finish. I believe Alouette won that one.

We piled in the fellowship room at 4pm to figure out who won each thing and to award prizes. "Prizes" is a pretty loose term. Paul's idea of prizes included baby food, beef boullion cubes, and octapus in garlic sauce...and lots of candy. There were age and gender categories for most competitions. Andrea made 14 consecutive freethrows, so won by a long shot in her ladies' category! Kayla won for the girls with 4. The men's best was 18 by Bobby from NY. I won the badminton thing with 42 in a row. (woohoo!) Bria won Boggle with 106 words. I think I was first in my category with 85, so I got a prize anyway. So that was all fun and good and jolly. There were lots more prizes but I don't remember them all. My mom and Alouette went to town finding how many words they could make out of the word "Fellowship." Mom got 106 and A got 107, so they both were rewarded.

Dinner was homemade pizza with caesar salad!

Mr. Reed ran the evening fellowship time, which was hilarious for those watching, and probably humiliating for those participating. They were all competitions between "families," consisting of two "parents" and four "children." However, most of the "families" were patched together from unrelated volunteers. He always got all the volunteers up on stage before he told them what they had to do...which made most people extremely reluctant to volunteer. The first one was an M&M eating contest. Each team got a huge bag of M&Ms, and they had to see who could eat their's the fastest, but each person could only eat one color (six people per team, six colors). We all groaned as we watched those poor victims gorge on chocolate as fast as they could. Alas, Gerry was the "father" on one team, and had to eat lots of sugar fast.

The next game was the BEST!!! Two "families" had to race to see who could feed their four children the fastest. The "kids" had to wear bibs and each had a specification for how developed they were as eaters. The "youngest" had to drink from a bottle, and wasn't old enough to hold ite. The next youngest had to drink from a bottle, too, but was old enough to hold it. The third child had to be spoon-fed baby food, and the fourth child had to eat a jar of baby food with no utensils. Bob and Sue were one set of parents, and Bob and Caroline were another. Oh, I laughed SO HARD seeing Sue bottle feed Andrea! Eyes wide, bright-red face, laughing alot as she tried to drink a bottle of milk as fast as she could. It was SO FUNNY!!! And right next to her was Caroline holding Diane's bottle for her! Hahahahahaha!!! I got some other laughs watching Lisa A being spoon-fed some concoction by her dad, and Nathan and Walker H. eating bottles of baby food with their fingers. Ah, yes, it was great to watch. So glad I wasn't up there, though!

There was another game of hanging up the laundry as fast as possible, and one of those guiding blindfolded people through obstacles games. Ah, twas all grand fun.

Tonight there was a soccer game on the ballfield with probably upwards of twenty people on each team, ranging from third graders all the way up to the Lackies and Roxie. It was like a huge mob out there and you couldn't kick the ball far before someone was in the way. But at least they had fun.

That brings us up to date! Hope you've enjoyed "being" at the Family Convention! MAYBE more coming later on...though I'm missing Field Day due to work. But Tuesday I have OFF! Hooray!

Pause to reflect

2006-06-30T17:25:00.000-04:00

I saw the following bumper sticker in the bank parking lot today, and it has caused me to stop and ponder:

"Fat people are harder to kidnap."

In light of that piercing truth, I'm wondering if I should call off the diet. I really don't want to be kidnapped.

The second thought is this: do you suppose that bumper sticker is on the car of a fat person or on the car of a kidnapper? I mean, are they trying to make themselves feel better, or are they stating a simple fact they learned from trying once, unsuccessfully, to kidnap a fat person?

I'll leave that up to you to decide.

The unpost

2006-06-29T23:14:00.000-04:00

I was late to work today. Most unfortunate. I couldn't find my car keys, which I always leave in plain sight in my car. I had to dash back inside to check pants pockets and counters and stuff, then retreat to the car where I muddied my hands fishing for my Hide-a-Key, then trying to get it open. As I inserted it into the ignition, I found the true keys in the side pocket of the door with my gas book. Ridiculous. How stupid of me to put them where I wouldn't find them.

Then there was construction near Rocky Brook Motel that added 10 minutes to the commute. Traffic was down to one lane and they were alternating which lane got to go. What made me angry about this was they were giving equal treatment to lanes going both directions. Coming out of Marlborough with me were probably 60 cars all late for work (it took me three stops before I got through), while the Keene direction had like eight cars backed up when I passed them. Shouldn't they have been letting four times as many cars go through from Marlborough as they did from Keene? Who runs these operations!

It just occurred to me that some of you who haven't been to Fairwood recently might not know that Rocky Brook is putting in a miniature golf course, and they've built a whole new large building for their ice cream operation. Should open sometime this summer. It'll be the closest entertainment to Fairwood when it's complete.

I'm extolling the usefulness of a blog this evening. Let me tell you why. My writing ideas usually find a place on my blog sooner or later, so then when I have to write a Times of Restoration article, instead of fishing blankly in my memory for that good idea I had last year sometime (and failing to come up with it) I can adapt a ready-made blog post instead. If you pay close attention to the September/October issue, you might recognize some sentences and an overall theme from this website. I changed the tone and fleshed it out a bit, but the skeleton is the same.

I found out yesterday one of my supervisors has a daughter who is a PETA freak. She wanted to protest the fishing derby...and lots more. It cracked me up. My supervisor is nothing like that--she's a blunt, strong, smoking woman. How did she end up with a vegetarian daughter who gets mad at her when she cracks an egg open? It got a big kick out of hearing my supervisor talk about it.

That's all the unworthy blog material I can dredge up to talk about now.

TGTF!

The next Louis Pasteur...me!

2006-06-26T22:35:00.000-04:00

If I were a great chemist, I would invent a shot that, when administered to puppies, would keep them puppies for a long time. Because, you know, puppies are cute, but who likes them when they're grown up? Think excessive drool, shedding, barking, and eating you out of house and home... Puppies do a little bit of that, but dogs do a whole lot more.

My inventive inspiration came while playing with pups in RI, and it's practically become my all-absorbing purpose. Well, okay, maybe not quite. Lindsay mentioned kittens, too, and I declare that my shot would also work magic on kittens. Everyone loves kittens to pieces, but adult cats are even worse that dogs. Not because they drool and bark (duh) but because they turn snobbish. So we need a shot to keep both breeds from growing up so we can enjoy them in all their cuteness for a little while longer. Um, how about for years?

It's not simply a matter of size. Miniature dogs are nothing like puppies. It's really all about demeanor and dependence. Small dogs don't waddle around and squeal and suck on your fingers...they run frenetically and bark and eat dogfood, just like big dogs. But puppies! Puppies display lots of endearing behavior. If only we could arrest the bloom of youth and keep them young and cute. Then, of course, I would invent the antidote which would let them grow up after all. It might be cruel to keep them babies all their lives. But most of their lives would be good.

If I did this, we would next face ethical dilemmas about whether we should try it out on humans. Half the world would want babies to stay babies (the cooing, cheek-pinching half) and the other half would be injecting the antidote before the pregnancy was over, hoping the kid would grow up and move out by their first birthday. The third half would just be whining about the role such a drug might play in global warming.

Then Congress would get into it and start making laws. If I were a scientist AND a politician, I would invent this shot, then introduce a bill on the Senate floor proposing the shot as the answer to our Social Security problem. After all, if the government carefully monitors who's allowed to leave baby stage and start growing up, they could keep all the generations equal. The number of retirees would equal the number of workers, and the system wouldn't crash. Not that I particularly care for Social Security, or government control over who gets to grow up when, for that matter. But as the crooked politician I surely would be, that would be a great way to make sure my patented drug made me a billionaire.

It is clear I chose the wrong profession. Music schmusic. I should have been a chemist.

What am I saying? I CAN be a chemist!!! I'm pretty sure we have some vinegar and baking soda somewhere...

Pay day... (!!!)

2006-06-23T23:53:00.000-04:00

...when you begin to wonder whether all the drudgery might have been worth it.

(today! hooray!)

Even when they messed up your raise and you didn't get it (it should be coming, though).

The Diet: Day Four

2006-06-22T19:32:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't you know, today we had a corporate visit from TD Banknorth HQ, and to honor the occasion the visiting bosses (the legendary Mary) brought TEN BOXES of Dunkin Donuts and laid them out in the cafeteria for us employees to enjoy!

That could have spelled doom.

But FEAR NOT! I stared those donuts down and didn't sample even a single crumb. It sure was hard though when I was eating lunch at a large table on which three donut boxes rested, and a coworker was opening them one by one to see which lump of lard she wanted.

Haha! I find it very funny that I'm sharing dieting stories on my blog. Me! Of all people! When the woman who shares my cubicle heard I was on a diet (I had to tell her...she was telling me about the donuts in the caf!), she pretty much snorted that I didn't need to diet at my age. Little does she know.

Speaking of corporate visits, did I ever tell the one when Joe came around? Pardon me if I'm repeating myself. Today's visit reminded me of it. Joe is the boss of Mary, who is the boss of Sharon, who is the boss at my workplace. He works at corporate headquarters (with Mary), and I think he's just one tier below the president of the bank. He comes to visit the ops center once a year around Christmas time to meet all the employees and give them Lindt truffles.

Long before Joe's annual visit my first year at the bank, I gained a reputation for singing silly songs to my coworkers. There were four of them in the room where I worked, so I regaled them with "Tom the Toad" and "Go to Sleep, Little Creep" (to the tune of Brahms' Lullaby) and another classic I can't remember right now. It was fun amusing them in our little, tucked-away room where no one else could hear. Or so I thought. Apparently one day a couple of supervisors heard something going on and snuck in to listen. As they were hidden behind the cubicle walls, I was none the wiser as I gurgled melodiously.

Then, one day, the boss of the bank, Sharon, and one of these supervisors came striding in and perched on a desk across from me.

Sharon began with, "Chuck and I are having a bad day."

I was like, "Um, okay...where is this leading? What trouble am I in now?"

Then she continued with something like, "And we were told that if we came in here you would make it better by singing to us." She was serious about it, too.

GULP! That was a shocker! "Uh, really? Uh, okay, uh, what do you want me to sing?"

I think I may have sung them all three of my silly songs. My coworkers were no help at all, as they would suggest another they'd heard me sing just as I finished one hoping it would be my last. "Now sing them the little creep song!" It was rather embarrassing, but Sharon and Chuck enjoyed it a lot. I think they really thought it made their day better.

So then, the next time Mary came to visit, Sharon brought her to listen to my silly songs. I had met Mary already, but still it was odd having one head honcho bring her head honcho to hear me sing the stupidest songs ever. I kind of enjoyed it though. Mary laughed and I was affirmed.

On a later visit, Mary told me that she was going to have me sing to Joe, her boss, when he came around Christmas time. Now that seemed to be carrying it a bit far. Sharon, also, was gung-ho about the idea. I told her I was a little hesitant because I didn't know him and didn't know whether he would enjoy the songs or not. She ASSURED me he had an excellent sense of humor, and would love the experience of having me sing my silly songs.

Um, okay. I just had to trust her.

The day finally came, and folks, Joe is definitely not the sort of guy I would describe as having an excellent sense of humor. He was very much a bank CEO--serious, busy, and successful. But I really had no choice in the matter. Sharon and Mary were determined. So they escorted him very firmly and very mysteriously to the cubby across from mine. "Now Joe, come here...come right back here...sit right here in this chair [I think he was getting suspicious why they were so official and trying to make him sit down in just the right spot] yes, Joe, go ahead and sit right here."

So Joe sat down in that very chair to hear me sing...

And the CHAIR BROKE!!!!! RIGHT OUT FROM UNDER HIM!!!!!

It was so funny, except he was humiliated in front of all of us so it wouldn't have been the greatest idea to start laughing at him. He might have been seriously injured, too. Sharon and Mary were astonished, and of course, he thought they had been guiding him to sit in that chair as a practical joke, knowing it would break. It was all quite a fiasco! And then, on top of all that, after things settled down, they still insisted I sing to him.

I was so embarrassed. It seemed like he wouldn't be up for such frivolity. He endured me singing whatever song it was. Then they wanted to know if he would like to hear another, and he pretty much said, "No, one is plenty for one day." And they left.

And yes, I was mortified, because I never would have dreamed of singing to a big wig. But they forced me to. And he didn't like it. I was a failure. Boohoo.

By the way, the my car alarm still works, much to KJ's chagrin. She set it off today. Serves her right for trying to get into my car before I got out of work.

On the way home from work today, I was a bit disturbed to hear an Avacore radio commercial in which a 72-year-old man assures all listeners that he now has a fuller head of hair at age 72 than he did at age 18. Somehow that just grosses me out.

And then there was the commercial which started out like an online dating service, then somehow, they were assuring you that the way to find a mate is to log on to freecreditreport.com and get your credit report. Huh? There is definitely a disconnect for me between your credit report and true love. I guess they said by knowing your credit score you could buy a home and thereby become irresistable. Definitely devoid of logic was that commercial. I wonder how many uncritical listeners are logging on to freecreditreport.com tonight searching for true love?

The ostrich extracts his head

2006-06-21T22:12:00.000-04:00

First, let me declare with a heart brimming with sincerity that I think Dublin, NH, is the most beautiful place in the world. Okay, I can think of some places that are more stunning, but Dublin is just about perfect in every other way. I've been out jogging and walking the last two evenings around Dublin Lake from just before sunset, through sunset, till late dusk, and boy am I in love with this place. I set out past the golf course with it miles of lush green grass as the very late sun bathed it in gold, and hark! The mourning doves began to coo! There was a delicious evening coolness everywhere, and the lake, when I got there, was perfectly still as the sun set. I walked/jogged down West Lake Road and back to the corner, then down East Lake Road to the corner and back, then home to Fairwood. As dusk set in, I saw a bat skimming the lake, then many more darting in the sky above the road. Ahhh! Peace, serenity, nature...

I know some are quick to point out the mosquitoes. Well, I didn't notice any because I was moving fast enough to avoid them. Only slow, lazy people are tortured by mosquitoes, so better think twice before complaining about them. (J-slash-K...I have some great bites already myself). But I also would like to mention that every place has its negative side at some time of year. Some places have poisonous snakes. Some are humid. Some have too much rain. In Pennsylvania you get to smell manure in season. New Hamshire has mosquitoes. So what? Deal with it. The beauty of a lake and wetlands (the swamps in the fall are absolutely amazing!!!) are pretty much worth it. Go someplace where there are no mosquitoes and you probably sacrifice the beauty of lakes and fall foliage in the swamps.

All of this gushing is a result of my new exercise regimen, which was brought on by pulling my head out of the sand on Sunday night. There I confronted the truth:

I am fat.

Truly!

If you've been around me long enough, you've probably heard me moan about how fat I am. Some of you are even gracious enough to contradict me. But no. I've been in college too long. Sedentary lifestyle, studying, composing...then working at the bank--all the time eating. Recipe for disaster.

When I was young, I never had to think about such things. No matter what I ate it didn't matter. But now it does. I get fat. I'm a little jealous of those people who never have to give a second thought to what they eat or how much they exercise. Such people are skinny because of metabolism, not because of discipline. There is no virtue involved.

Unfortunately, it is only acceptable in our culture to get fat AFTER you're married. I'm not married, so therefore I do not have permission to get fat yet. Rats. Better whip myself into shape. For months I've been ignoring the problem. Sunday I weighed myself for the first time in a long time, and in a painfully blinding flash of light that assaulted my bulging eyes and gaping chin, my head popped out of the sand in horror. Okay, time to do something. (The weekend in RI where I ate nothing but chocolate didn't help things any.)

So I'm dieting and exercising. Hooray. What misery. But at least I get to discover the beauties of Dublin on the side! Good thing I blogged about it today, because who knows but that tomorrow I'll give up and decide to be fat forever.

And, another note...as I jogged home from the lake in what was close to darkness, suddenly, what should pop into my head but "those of whom we don't speak" roaming in the woods close at hand!!!! Ay-yay-yay!!! What a terrifying image! How is it that things we know don't exist in real life can scare us? Imagining clawed monsters coming after me wasn't such a happy thought. Then, as I passed the Cloughs, I thought I heard a sheep bleat in the woods. Um, okay. Yeah, somehow it came into my head that it was one of the meat offerings come back to life. Now that was random.

When Culture Calls

2006-06-19T20:10:00.000-04:00

I intended to do some heavy-duty exercising outside this evening, but alas, it raineth, and raineth hard. So instead I'll be a fat slob and blog.

Yesterday brought a delightful outing of serious cultural value. You may remember me talking about my favorite composition professor from Hartt, with whom I studied over the last two summers, and during my last semester of school. Of all the professors I've studied with privately, he seems the best equipped to draw quality work out of me, challenge me, relate to me, etc. He's also just plain personable, and down to earth, and a lot of fun to chat with. He had this way of diagnosing problems in my pieces and making suggestions that refined and improved and made me much happier. I loved my lessons with him immensely.

Said professor has just completed a four-week residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough. Most of you probably know the name MacDowell only as associated with the dam and the picnics and recreational times you've had there. You may have been vaguely aware of the artists' colony around the corner, but not really known what an artists' colony was or what significance it might have. I am here to tell you that the MacDowell Colony is a seriously big deal in the world of artists, writers, and composers. I didn't realize this until I went to music school, but then I got it from all sides. Composition professors mentioned it with much appreciation and respect, and during auditions (both undergrad and grad) whenever I said I was from Dublin, NH, a frequent question seemed to be whether I knew about the MacDowell Colony or lived near it.

MacDowell is definitely not the only artists' colony around--there are several scattered across the country. But according to this professor of mine, it is the best one in the States, and therefore a sort of Mecca, a place of arrival and achievement toward which professional creators strive. To be accepted as a fellow at MacDowell is a prestigious honor and adds clout to the resume. And here I grew up 10 miles away with scarcely a clue of the significance!

The purpose of an artists' colony is to provide a place of retreat for creative types so they can have concentrated, focused time to work on their projects. Maybe this sounds strange to you, but I can totally relate to the desire to get out of the daily pace of life and dig in to what I love to do. It's difficult to carve out the time to compose amidst the distractions and cares of life that crowd in so quickly. An artists' colony is almost like a convent for artists (without any of the austerity or deprivation!) where you can withdraw to get stuff done without hindrance. It's also a community where artists from all disciplines interact and exchange ideas.

MacDowell is perhaps the largest colony in the USA, with spaces for almost 35 artists (called "fellows") at a time. Interested professionals apply through a competitive process and are selected to come to the colony for anywhere from two to eight weeks. During that time, each one is assigned their own private studio. The studios are charming little buildings scattered across the hundreds of acres of woodland at MacDowell. They are secluded and private so artists really can get away and concentrate. Some of the studios are "live-ins" meaning they have a bedroom and probably a kitchenette. The rest of the artists stay in rooms at a central location and walk or bike (usually--driving is also possible) to their studios during the day. Breakfast and dinner are provided for all in a common room, and lunch is delivered to each studio every day. Fellows don't pay anything, nor are they paid anything. They just come and create. Now that is cool!

The studios can be viewed here. Many of them are specifically designed for a particular artistic discipline. Some of them are equipped with complete darkrooms for photographers. Some have Steinway grand pianos. Those for visual artists have "ample wall space, natural northern light, and full-spectrum lighting." Even those which are not live-ins have beds, to allow for "civilized afternoon napping" (I think that's what my prof called it). A network of dirt roads connects them all.

My professor contacted me last week, and we arranged to go out to coffee together in Peterborough before he went back to CT. Yesterday I met him at the entrance to the Colony, and from there we went to 12 Pines in Peterborough to socialize. He told me to get what I wanted (iced chai! extremely yummy, far more so than I expected!), and we sat outside sipping and chatting. It was soooo fun! What I loved so much about it was that here my professor was acting more like my friend and mentor than a condescending purveyor of knowledge! Again, I have to say it was very cool. We talked about music stuff, like my school plans, and Monadnock Music, and applying for grants from the State of NH, and the colony, but also about normal stuff like our families and Peterborough and climbing Mt. Monadnock. After finishing, we strolled along the park-like area on the river there before heading back to MacDowell.

And THEN he took me around the Colony! He took me to his studio, in fact! I was so excited to be on the inside of such a significant establishment. It reminded me of a campground as we drove along narrow dirt roads in the woods. His studio, a small stone cottage about 90 years old, exuded history and an aura of artistic creativity, and it also had decent acoustics to warm up the Steinway piano which sat inside. A fireplace dominated one wall (many of them have them...the colony is in session during the winter, after all), and breathed a sort of acrid smokey smell into the room.

Another interesting quirk of each studio is that, hanging on the wall are a series of wooden tablets (known as "tombstones") onto which every artist that has used that studio carves or writes his name and the dates he was there. I believe Thornton Wilder worked in that very studio, and some other notables...or people I've never heard of that would be notable if I ran in the right circles (American poets, for instance). A couple of my other professors at Hartt had also used that same studio. We spent a while examining the tablets covered with names and deciphering ones we recognized.

Next we drove around a little, catching glimpses of other studios, until we came to the original studio, the log cabin built for Edward MacDowell by his wife, Marion, so he could retreat from their nearby home and create. It was locked, but we peered in the windows and noted the enormous stone protrusion which marked the location of the fireplace. Edward MacDowell was a composer, for those who don't know, though his music isn't particularly famous. The one piece of his I know and have played on the piano is "To a Wild Rose," and as we approached the studio on foot, I prided myself in my excellent sense of humor by wondering aloud to my professor if a wild rose grew near it. Yes, he got the joke without even explaining.

This pretty much concluded the afternoon visit. Back at the central house I drew him up a map so he could find Fairwood and enjoy our excellent view of the mountain on his way back to CT today. The few glimpses of Monadnock that can be found around MacDowell are usually hindered by trees, and the peak appears far away and unimpressive. I told him about the history of the Main House as a summer home for Admiral Byrd, and he sounded really interested in seeing the location and all.

After two and a quarter hours of visiting, we parted ways...me feeling far more cultured and aware than I was before, and realizing I'd just had an extremely blog-worthy experience. And there you have it.

Someday maybe I'll be the one giving you tours of my MacDowell studio, and we'll drive into Peterborough and drink iced chai and I'll tell you about the music I'm writing during my summer fellowship! Now wouldn't that be fun?

The First Laugh

2006-06-18T00:15:00.000-04:00

In honor of Matt Stamps, I post the following Map for Mexicans. I ran across it accidentally on the blog of a man I don't even know while searching for the second laugh (see below). He was quite the patriot. It made me laugh SO MUCH. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

Don't think I'm intolerant or anything, but...

And that's pretty much all there is to it.

The Second Laugh

2006-06-18T00:12:00.000-04:00

I read a version of this joke in the Reader's Digest and thought it was hilarious, so I did a web search to find it and voila. Maybe you already caught it when it first came out...

After his death, Osama bin Laden tried to enter heaven, but he was greeted at the gate by George Washington, who pummeled him across the face and yelled at him, "How dare you try to destroy the nation I helped conceive!"

Patrick Henry approached and punched Osama in the nose and shouted,"You wanted to end our liberties but you failed."

James Madison entered, kicked Osama in the stomach and said,"This is why I allowed our government to provide for the common defense!"

Thomas Jefferson came in and proceeded to beat Osama many times with a long cane and said, "It was evil men like you that provided me the inspiration to pen the Declaration of Independence!".

These beatings and thrashings continued as John Rudolph, James Monroe and 66 other early Americans came in and unleashed their anger on the Muslim terrorist leader.

As Osama lay bleeding and writhing in unbearable pain an Angel appeared. Bin Laden wept in pain and said to the Angel, "This is not what you promised me."

The Angel replied, "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you in heaven. What did you think I said?"

:-)

Thought-You-Saiders Disease

2006-06-17T11:37:00.000-04:00

[I wrote this post up a LONG time ago and left it in my draft box for a rainy day. Then I blogged a little bit about it in another post, so if you experience deja vu reading this, that's why. Now I updated it and am publishing it for your enjoyment.]

How many of you ever read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books? Weren't they fabulous? For the deprived among you, let me explain that she's a little old lady who has cures for all the awful diseases that afflict children: The Tattletale disease, the Answer-Backers Disease, the Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Takers Disease, the Never-Want-To-Go-To-Bedders Disease, the Won't-Pick-Up-Toys Disease and a host of other clever ones that I can't remember right now.

One that I have never been cured from is the Thought-You-Saiders disease. This is the one where a child seems to have cotton in their ears, and over and over throughout the day they respond to their parents' directions with, "Oh, I thought you said..." and rattle off something completely outlandish that possibly resembles the original, but has no close meaning, dissolve into laughter, make themselves completely obnoxious and hopefully avoid doing whatever their parents said in the first place. I deal with this all the time, except hopefully only the first half of the description and not the obnoxious part. Maybe you haven't noticed, but if you're around me enough, you will. It's a malady I can't get rid of, but neither do I want to be rid of it, necessarily, because it makes me laugh so hard over and over again. And other people, too.

I distinctly remember this scenario happening with Andrew a plethora of times the year we were in Bible School. (It's happened with many other people, especially family members like Kayla, who also has the disease, but the interchange was pretty familiar with ADM.) We would be talking, or maybe it would be a group conversation, or quite often we would just be listening to other people talking, and suddenly I would hear something all twisted up. But I must explain that it doesn't get twisted up in a nonsensical way, as in gibberish that I can't comprehend. Instead, my brain automatically distinguishes clear words and forms a clear sentence which makes no sense in the context. Sometimes I would hear remarkable, fantastic, unbelievable things! They were so funny!!! I'm kicking myself that I didn't keep a log of them. Invariably I would just freeze with a blank look on my face. Andrew would then look at me with an expectant "what's-going-on?" expression. I would either say, "Wait a minute, WHAT?" and have him repeat himself or relay what Marie or whoever had said, or if I waited long enough, sometimes I could figure out what was actually said. Then I would always say, "OH!!! I thought you said..." or "I thought she said..." and we would have a good laugh over it.

I'm very sad I can't give you any great examples from those bygone days. But I can relate some other examples that reminded me of this malady. Almost as soon as I walked in the door to work at the bank one day, I saw a girl there with a couple of her friends. As I walked by, she joyously, glowingly announced to one of them, "I'm breaking up!" This was welcomed with much joy by the other women. I kept walking, muchly confused. "Huh??? She's breaking up? What's that all about?" Throughout the day she seemed to be jubilant, and seemed to be receiving congratulations and much support from her coworkers as something big seemed to be happening in her life. I kept thinking about her breaking up. It seemed so strange that she'd been waiting just inside the door to announce to everyone who came in that she was breaking up. I decided her boyfriend must be a really LOUSY guy for the ENTIRE BANK to be celebrating his departure. Um, okay, so it was really weird.

Then, somehow, by filtering through other conversations later in the day, I realized what she had really said when I walked in the door: "I'm PREGNANT!"

"OH!!!!! I thought you said..."

It strikes again.

Another example: when a large group of us singles were out a while back, we were waiting to be seated in the restaurant when someone said to me something like, "Let's talk to Katie." I was like, "Um, okay..." Katie was standing right next to us, and didn't seem to be in serious need of talking to. All seemed pretty weird...till it sunk in and I realized the comment was really "It's intoxicating in here" (there was lots of loud music, which is what made it intoxicating, and also rather hard to hear).

"OH!!!!! I thought you said..."

There were some grand ones from our trip to Florida, though I can't remember them all. We were driving along on our way somewhere, and Andrea started talking all about her buffer, which she had just pulled out and was using before we arrived in society. I couldn't really place what a buffer was, so I asked her about it. "Oh," she replied, "it makes your nose all shiny!" Then she went on to explain how she'd bought hers in the mall, I think, but at a party at her Aunt Laurie's house they were much cheaper and people made fun of other people who buy them at the mall. I puzzled a little over why someone would so desperately want their nose to be shiny. "Hmm, must be a girl thing..."

Somehow it leaked out as she continued talking that a buffer makes your NAILS shiny!

"OH!!!!! I thought you said..."

I need a pill from Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.

A wee snapshot

2006-06-17T11:34:00.000-04:00

I'm currently at Chad's, online with my own laptop! Hooray! I never go online with my computer! I borrowed my dad's wireless card for the day and this is really fun. Now I can go download fun music and stuff. I got an itunes gift card for graduation so I'm going to look for some tunes. And maybe find some webshots and stuff. I feel a little like Andrea with her new computer, except I'm rediscovering my 3-year-old one.

Okay, so I could hardly handle it at the bank the other day when I ran across someone named Bilbert. BILBERT??? I started laughing and continued for a little while. I mean really, Bilbert... I also found someone named Eudoxia. Yeah. Eudoxia. Then there was the chic Perfecto. The real killer was Phonesack. My one joy of working at the bank emerges yet again. The Phonesack person was a foreign name, something southeast Asian, I think, so surely they didn't know the oddity of that name in English.

Ew. I was just browsing itunes and discovered there's a new Broadway musical called Masada on the way. Sounds sketchy to me, though in a few years I may well be a convert. The story line just sounds a bit sappy, though. A musical about Masada? It's set in the Warsaw ghetto. Go figure. One of those plays within a plays kind of things. But the fact that Mary Poppins is coming to Broadway this fall is extraordinarily wonderful and I'm anticipating it a lot, as well as the Broadway rerun of Les Mis which starts this fall. Seeing a show on tour isn't quite as good as the whole New York City experience. It's fun to have stuff like that to look forward to.

Lastly, before I conclude this rather odd, rambling post, I'd like to provide the following link to the Kinkade Code. Isaac linked this on his blog and I listened to it this morning--very funny! I know some of my readers probably wouldn't discover it on his blog, so I thought I'd pass along the portal of humor. All the credit goes to him, though!

Picture of the day: abstract...

2006-06-17T11:18:00.000-04:00

The real picture is better...this scanned with way too much shadow. But you can still get an idea of "up-close-and- personal" with a harp.

"Live free or die"

2006-06-14T23:22:00.000-04:00

Here in the mighty Granite State, we pride ourselves on our motto, "Live free or die." It is bold. It is sweeping. It drips with the wine of liberty. Whatever.

Truly, it is reflected in state demeanor, as we have a reputation for being a little saucy with regard to our independence. We are, after all, the home of the nation's first presidential primary, and we never allow anyone to forget it. All the president wannabes have to come crawling to us for approval before they consider their candidacy legitimate. New Hampshire also has no state sales tax, and no state income tax--two clear signs that we New Hampshirites would rather die than be shackled to the whims of the government. For years the state seatbelt laws only applied to children under 12 years of age, another tribute to our philosophy. We are free, responsible adults, so why should the legislature tell us who has to wear seatbelts? We'd rather be free from seatbelts and die in car accidents than sacrifice our dignity to save our skins.

"Click it or....don't click it...whichever you want!"

New Hampshire, live free or die!

(We do have speed limits, however, which seems a sad contradiction.)

We also have a really weird law which I have issues with. At the bank, I have been vaguely aware that we're supposed to take half-hour lunch breaks if we work more than five hours a day. I think I sort of knew it might be a law, but most of last summer I ignored it and took 15 minutes instead. I only need 15 minutes to eat lunch. What am I supposed to do for the rest of the time? I basked in my ignorance.

This summer, when I wanted to get out early last week, I inquired about taking a shorter lunch (something I'd already done the day before). I was informed by my supervisor that I couldn't because it is against New Hampshire state law.

Hello? So much for living free! Guess it's time to die.

I've been reacting to that law ever since. How can the state require me to stop working for 30 minutes when I only want to stop for 15? And why would they wish to do so? I can understand if it were a union thing and I were part of the union. That would be my own stinking fault for joining a group that would force me to do stuff I'd rather not. Or I can understand if the law was to require businesses to allow their employees to take half-hour lunch breaks if they wished to. But no. The law is imposed on employees, not employers. Therefore, the state is FORCING me to take a 30-minute lunch break. This is completely absurd! I can think of no reason the state should have a hand in this, except for the protection of the employee from bad businesses--but when the employee doesn't desire that protection, should he be enslaved to it? I should look up the law and get the details, but I have wicked low-speed internet so it would take an age.

Fortunately I can now do my Bible reading during lunch break, amidst the hum of copiers and the chatter in the cubicle farm and the click of keyboards. But I fume a little when I think of the injustice and the utter lack of FREEDOM that I, a NH-bred resident, am experiencing.

Yes, I could break this law quite easily and not be prosecuted for it. In fact, I have reminded myself many times that speed limits and stop signs are also state laws and are broken by everyone every day. The two people I carpool with are, I believe, a little scandalized that I did something "against the law" by taking shorter lunch breaks in the past, or at least are determined they won't do something so illegal themselves. And yet one of them confessed to blatant disregard for stop signs and the other speeds almost as badly as I do. Is that any worse than taking a 15-minute lunch break, contrary to the laws of the state? You tell me. I was just living free.

In other news from the bank...

...there's a reason for the stereotype of office people drinking coffee. I needed plenty of caffeine today just to stay awake. I was in pretty bad shape--bored, sleepy, dazed...as I flipped through page after endless page of drudgery.

One of my co-workers purchased my recital CD and asked me this week, after listening to it, what I'm doing working at the bank. Yeah, good question (not to be negative or anything).

Um, what else? I had a battle with a stapler last week! It all started when I ran out of staples. I had to run to the supply room to get more. ("YESSSSSS!!!!!! A trip to the supply room means waking up for two seconds!") I loaded in the staples and tried to shut it when "Kafloowy!" the spring sprang and flung chunks of staples everywhere. I gathered up those I could find and loaded it again. "Kaflung!" Again the spring ejected the staples. I began to expect I had the wrong size staples. Sure enough...so I found the right size and loaded them. This time the gadget closed properly.

When I went to use it back at my desk, I found one of the larger staples was jammed in the opening. This is where the battle really got heated! I tried various objects to pry it loose, but it was stuck as stuck can be. So blah, blah, blah...I wrestled with it a good while and finally got the staple out. Then I returned to flipping through papers. Scintillating good fun, what? And one of my supervisors keeps trying to tell me I need to come back on board there full-time. Ha!

Clearly you can see I'm having tremendous impact on the world as I pursue my bank job.

(eyes glaze over...head lolls to the size...keyboard clicking stops...reams of paper float gently to the floor...zzzzzzz)

BUT!!!!!

I got a $.50/hr raise last week!

HALLELUJAH!!!!!

Spongebob in Israel

2006-06-10T16:00:00.000-04:00

I've had this post on my mental blogging list for a long time, ever since Liane's series of robot pictures triggered it. It took so long because I had to carve out time to scan the pictures and get them posted. Then DJ posted something similar recently, and I felt like I had been scooped. But no, I still must give you this series because you deserve to see them if you never have. Alas, for those of you with slow internet connections, this will probably be more like "The post that took half my life to load" than "Spongebob in Israel." Part of the reason I'm doing it now is because I'm using high-speed in RI.

While I was in Israel, partway through the adventure Lindsay and Jed sent me a present via Andrea--an inflatable Spongebob! How unique! I was loved and appreciated. What to do with it? The idea sprang forth to "get" Lindsay her own unique present from Israel, and have so much fun in the process! I took him along on my adventures and took pictures of him touring Israel in all the signature situations to make a booklet for her. It was quite adventuresome. Sometimes I had to be very surreptitious to avoid the appearance of sacrilege (like popping him into a sculpture depicting the Annunciation), and sometimes I had to wait a little while so strangers would leave. Of course, creativity was also necessary. All kept me occupied and entertained (along with my quest for pix of VW bugs), and I had many willing helpers. Andrew, Melissa, Fritha, and Lisa Noss helped me lots when it came to holding him and posing with him and giving me ideas and helping me have fun with it instead of making me feel stupid. Lisa Adams laughed a lot, but left most of the dirty work to us foolish ones. It became sort of a group effort. By the end of the UHL course, though, during which 80% of the pix were taken, I was sick of the game and ready to put him away for a while. I only took a couple more after that.

But it sure is fun now having all those pictures! When I got the reprints done for Lindsay, the photo developing lady who gave them back to me wryly commented, "Looks like Spongebob has seen more of the world than I have!" Haha. So funny and probably true! Enjoy your tour of The Land.

Here's one of the first! Spongebob in an olive tree in Nazareth Village!

Spongebob with a water buffalo at the Hula Nature Reserve.

SB with a cutout of a Canaanite warrior.

Spongebob sitting on an olive press.

SB sitting in papyrus...the northernmost stand of papyrus in the world, I think.

SB drinking from Gideon's spring.

Spongebob floating in the springs of Banias.

Spongebob im degel Israeli on the back veranda of our house.

SB in an idol's niche at the Grotto of Pan.

SB in Jericho with Sammy the Camel.

Spongebob in the Med with Wes.

SB peering from the bus with friends (from left, FKD, MSB, ADM).

SB drinking from Gideon's spring again. (thanks, Androod)

Spongebob at the Church of the Annunciation with vewy scewy people.

Spongebob dipping in the Sea of Galilee with ADM, CKS, and MSB.

Spongebob (aka Zaccheus) climbing a sycamore tree in Jericho.

Spongebob on a pillar at the Grotto of Pan.

Spongebob, fly on the wall at the annunciation (Gabriel on the right, Mary on the left)

Spongebob in the observation tower of the Hula Nature Reserve with ADM, FKD, MSB, and LSN.

Spongebob, encore with Sammy.

And that's all! Hope you enjoyed your tour with our seasoned traveler!

Vartha's Mineyard

2006-06-10T10:17:00.000-04:00

Guys, Andrea's computer is soooo sweet! I'm using it now to post. So shiny and sleek and the keyboard feels crisp and new. Hooray! I can definitely validate her post about its glory.

Moving along, for those of you who don't know, I'm obsessed with spoonerisms. Along with solfege, it's my second language. I spoonerize probably every day. Songs receive spooneristic treatment from me on a regular basis. What's the fun of singing the real words when you could contort them into funness? I think when singing alone, I sing in spoonerism more often than not. Just ask Clyde or Kayla.

Thus, when we took a short family vacation to an island off Cape Cod, I was able to inform my family all about it by unlocking its secret through the code of spoonerism. "They try to disguise the true nature of the island by making it sound all pleasant and vacationy with a name like 'Martha's Vineyard,' but really, Vartha's Mineyard is a warzone. Whose Vartha, you may ask? Well, you should all be familiar with Varth Dader. Now do you know who it is? Yes, Vartha has his own island with mines all over it, and thus it is called Vartha's Mineyard. Watch your step as we tour. We're heading into danger!"

We stayed in Falmouth, MA on the southern end of the cape for three nights. The first day I was late getting to the car from the hotel, and my mom informed me my dad had taken the opportunity to go dumpster diving. Ah, yes. From my early years my dad has been king dumpster diver. On vacations, dad would drop mom off at the front of the grocery store, then, with all of us kids in the car, circle around to the back and to "wait for her" while dumpster-picking while we all had to sit in the car and suffer mortification at everyone who saw us. Back then, I wasn't too mortified. Kendra would keep up a pretty steady stream of, "Oh, I'm sooo embarrassed...this is so embarrassing..." while we waited.

Clearly, he hasn't reformed. And yet, why should I be embarrassed? A lot of people appreciate collecting junk. Most people just put price tags on it, advertise in the newspaper, and call it a yard sale. Other people delight in perusing it and buying it. So why shouldn't my dad look for treasures in the dumpster for free? My mom didn't really agree with that assessment. I guess I don't either, being pretty much a yardsale fan myself.

Our first day we drove along the southern shore of the Cape. We spent a while frolicking on Chatham Beach, where my mom joined the children in hitting the volleyball. On the way home, we stopped at a consignment store, and I continued a trend. Over spring break (I forgot to blog about this) when we went lighthouse searching, we stopped at a consignment shop in Camden, Maine, where I picked up a pair of outlandish, bright orange beach shorts. I was wicked excited about getting them to wear in Florida, and I looked forward to it for a long time. You can see me wearing them in a couple of Kim's pictures linked on her blog. So this time, I found a pair of HOT PINK shorts! So I got them for $2 and can't wait to shock all of you by wearing them at some crucial moment. Oh, boy, they are so not me! I wore them the last day of vacation around shops in Falmouth and got a look or two.

Martha's Vineyard was nice, but not out of this world. Pretty much New England on an island. The seaside villages were quaint and ultra-New England. It wasn't crowded, and we were able to enjoy a stretch of beach all to ourselves for a while. We also saw the bridge next to the ocean where Jaws was filmed. Sound familiar to anyone? I never sar it so it didn't mean much to me.

The highlight of Vartha's Mineyard (funny, we never did stumble on any mines) was the cottages of Oak Bluffs. An evangelical campmeeting association started there in the 1830s, and after meeting for a while, they progressed from tents to individual family cottages all circled around the center green where the preaching was done. There's probably 200 cottages there now, built around the 1860s, and walking through them was like discovering another world of almost fairy-tale charm. As I walked around, I realized I didn't know there was something so beautifully different so close to home! I think of going to Europe to find neat architecture and a different world, but here in New England is a little piece of someplace unique! (not that I've given up Europe, because there's no comparison, I'm sure). The cottages are commonly described as "gingerbread houses" because they feature ornate woodcarving around the eaves and porches, and they are painted bright colors like yellow and green and salmon and lilac and periwinkle. Extremely, wickedly cool. Me and the younger sibs took lots of pix, so you can peruse our albums or maybe I'll post a few of the better ones online. I didn't feel like most of the pictures really captured the charming beauty of being surrounded by these cottages, but oh well. You can visit if you want to experience it.

Our last day, dad packed the car, and I ended up sitting in the back seat. Mom wanted me to get her something out of a bag in the back, and there I noticed a huge mat of some sort all rolled up sitting on top of the luggage and making access to luggage difficult. I was like, "What's this?" The response I got from dad was, well, mysterious, a revealing. He said, "Only I know what that is." And then it was clear that he had been dumpster-diving when he was "packing the car."

Then we came home and I started working at the bank. More on that later (maybe).

Deep Thought

2006-06-06T17:30:00.000-04:00

Why is it that when a person has an Irish father and a Swedish mother he identifies himself as half-Irish and half-Swedish, and when people identify their racial background they are specific as to which percentage of their blood hails from which derivation, yet we never hear a man proclaim, "Well, I'm only half male...my mother was a woman." Doesn't that qualify as inconsistency?

(I'm weird.)

Resident R.O.U.S.

2006-06-04T23:54:00.000-04:00

First of all, I've very thankful that I'm finished being thankful. That is, I just conquered my list of thank-you notes for graduation well-wishers. Whew! Now, I love being thankful, and I love expressing my thankfulness, but when there's so much to be thankful for all at once, it gets kind of wearing. There're only so many ways you can say thank you, right? You can rest easy that I never resorted to a form letter, but I confess there are a couple of form-like sentences that crept into a few of them. But now they are all written, awaiting stamps and delivery. Hooray!

Secondly, we have a Rodent of Unusual Size dwelling in our home. It's produced a bit of trepidation because we don't know what it is. But we hear it. Oh, yes, we hear it! And it sounds like its size is definitely unusual! Unusually LARGE, alas. I'm the only person who caught a glimpse of it, and it was a giant compared to any rodents I've spied living in our house before (of which I have seen many). But I couldn't identify the species.

About three weeks ago, I was standing in our basement talking to Kayla, when I heard a noise above us that sounded almost loud enough to be someone walking across the kitchen floor directly overhead. But it was different from the usual creaky-floor sound. It was a shallower sound...then I realized it was something scurrying across the drop-ceiling of our basement. I followed the sound with my eyes, as my conversation with Kayla froze in that expectant, listening poised consternation, and then I saw the lower half of a large rodent flip down by the heating vent then vanish again into the ceiling. Um, not so cool! When I say "large rodent" I don't mean like a monster. But it was sort of a hamster-esque, small guinea pig sort of size, at least according to my glimpse. The good news is, I don't THINK it had a long scaly tail. I thought it was a short furry tail. Hopefully that rules out a rat. It could have been a mouse, I suppose, of which we have many, but if so, it was the largest I have seen in our house. Woohooohooohooo! (insert scary music here)

But now the creature inhabits the space between our living room ceiling and our bedroom floors. Tonight on several occasions, we could hear it skittering and scraping across the living room ceiling, and it didn't sound like any pygmy. It sounded pretty substantial. Like, big. Maybe dangerous. We'd be sitting in the living room (I was writing thank-you notes, K folding laundry, C marking pictures), when suddenly we'd hear it on the move, and we'd all get quiet and look at each other with raised eyebrows and dread (my younger siblings and I, this was). Once we went so far as to call our dad to the scene. He was like, "What?" so we told him our fears and his grand dad-who-saves-the-world response was "What am I supposed to do about it?" Then he left, and we kept hearing the ROUS in the ceiling above us.

Not cool, definitely not at all cool.

It's probably harmless and tiny and our imaginations of evil are blowing it out of proportion. But it's the not knowing what it is that really gets you. It sounds so big. And scary. Probably has large fangs. And red, beady eyes. Does it come into our bedrooms as we sleep at night???

We need a great big TRAP and we need it fast!

(Or Derrick with a bread knife might do...)

Those pictures I mentioned finding

2006-06-03T19:45:00.000-04:00

Here are the Wizard of Oz pix I found on an old roll of film while cleaning! Ha-ha, how funny! A happy-memory blast from the past. I'm realizing most of you never saw Chad and me in this setting, since few of my peers came to see the show which we performed six times four years ago. This is what we looked like. Sorry the pictures scanned pretty dark. Aunt June gave me one of the best compliments when she raved on multiple occasions about how convincingly I portrayed having no bones. Thanks to kneepads hidden beneath my costume, I was able to fall often. I could never do that in my current old, decrepit state!

A Thespian Society

2006-06-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

Tip of the day: If you're going to clean late at night in your attic, tell your mom where you are, or leave a note or something, lest she wait up for you with the lights on, worrying why you aren't home.

I didn't follow that tip, so when I descended from our attic late at night, I felt rather sheepish to find my worried mother reading in the living room. Um, sorry! Since I wasn't going anywhere I didn't really think of telling anyone where I'd be.

I went into my attic cleaning job with grim determination to throw lots of stuff away. So far, I am succeeding. But I am finding plenty of keepers, too! Like stories I wrote in junior high. A number of discoveries will provide fodder for future posts. But some of the best discoveries were the plays from the past.

Maybe all children go through the stage where they passionately desire to star in plays, but I think something in the air or water at Fairwood made it especially strong here. Or maybe it was just me and one particular friend. Andrea and I had the play bug, and we were pretty active to grace the stage, far more so than the other kids at Fairwood. Usually we had to sort of drag them along (or maybe I was the one doing all the dragging!). There were several plays we attempted and almost pulled off in our journey of making Fairwood a truly Thespian society.

One, in fact, we DID pull off. We performed it in the Rec. Room, with our own stage and curtains which we created from sheets draped and tied across the indoor clotheslines. I think maybe we created the stage first, and that inspired us to make up a play to make use of it. Clyde and KJ played supporting roles, I believe. The plot was, of course, elaborately imaginative without a single cliche to be found anywhere. It was about some poor girl who turned out to be a princess, or maybe it was about some orphaned children who ended up finding their parents who explained about some horrid kidnapping which took place when the children were infants. Or maybe it was both? We found our parents and just happened to be rich instead of poor. I think KJ was our mother, because, of course, we, as the orphaned children, had to be the stars of the show, not KJ, so she was our mother, despite being 4-5 years younger than we. I remember for one scene we were supposed to overhear a significant conversation, and with our limited cast resources, but with our unlimited brainpower, we recorded the conversation on a tape and turned it on at the proper moment to "overhear". We were stage geniuses!!! We might have had as many as 15 attendees at our grand opening, and I think we charged some modest sum, like a quarter, to start us on our professional careers. The costumes were peerless--it was like one big game of dress-up and make-believe.

I found in the attic the script for Snow Treasure, a favorite book of Andrea's which we intended to stage. There were four main characters, children (Rosie, Timmy, Andrea, and myself) and we were going to have our sleds and cover the stage with paper for snow (which we could pick up and crunch into "snowballs" when necessary). That was a grand scheme which never quite made it to rehearsal. But we sure put a lot into writing that script! I think we even used a computer--an old clunker where the writing was green on a plain black screen.

Slightly more successful was Thirteen Ways to Sink a Sub. That play almost made it! We had most of the Fairwood children involved in that one (Andrea was the driving force and director of that play...I think I was in charge of staging and props or something), and we rehearsed it a lot in the church fellowship room. It was sooo funny! About kids making a substitute teacher miserable. Marie, you ought to find and read the book! Many hours of fun were had by all as we prepared the play. But I think Jenny, who was a crucial character, got all grumpy about it and it fell apart. Alas for divas.

When the Bible School did Amazing Grace about 15 years ago, Andrea and I sat in on almost every rehearsal, until we could quote practically the entire thing. Oh, we were so enthralled by it. It was one of the greatest plays in Bible School history, traveling out-of-state and playing to packed audiences.

Less known is the sequel, Amazing Love, which I began writing the next year, and wouldn't you know, it starred me! Hahahahaha! Seriously! I am laughing out loud at my own ridiculous conceit! But it was my dream to be in a Bible School play, and what was more natural than an eleven-year-old boy showing up in a concentration camp with a bunch of soldiers and somehow becoming a martyr so they all could live? (You can see the originality of my plot was astounding...pretty much Amazing Grace rehashed with a child as the star). But I had vision for that play, and it was going to be incredible, and the Bible School was going to be my supporting cast.

Around that time I was scheming how the Bible School could put on Les Mis, the Broadway musical, too. Trust me, I didn't know enough about it back then to realize it wasn't exactly appropriate for a Bible School play. But I was assigning roles and thought myself very smart. (Gretchen was Eponine...hahahahahahaha!!!)

Oh, them were the days, when life only consisted of what the next play would be. A few years later, okay, when we were grown up, Andrea and I got to perform in Bible School as Pilate and Claudia in a dramatic scene that we both loved. Finally, a culmination of all those acting attempts!

Also in my cleaning (but not of the attic) I found some rolls of undeveloped film! How exciting! I also had a roll in my old point-and-shoot camera which I haven't used for over three years. "What pictures might be stored in there?" I wondered. Since I couldn't wonder long, I took them to Walmart one-hour developing, and found some treasures, including my pictures from The Wizard of Oz when I played the scarecrow four years ago--my most recent Thespian excursion! Also some other pix from that year I took off between Bible School and college. It was a great adventure to discover that film and look through those pictures...like windows into a previous world.

Which is pretty much what cleaning out junk has been like right along. More stories about unearthing the past are forthcoming!