Chrysalis Dreams

Holiday Plans and Such

2010-11-24T08:07:00.001-06:00

White wing dove for dinner and the family gathered around my grandmother’s table. Mom busy in the kitchen. My sister and me checking in frequently to see what Mom and Grandmom had finished making and helping set the table. Stealing black olives from the tray of nibbles that sat on the table every year. That was a common theme for Thanksgiving when I was a kid. My uncle would be there and later his wife and kid too. It was a fun time. Even more so than the trip I and my sis would make with Grandmom and Granddad to the white wing hunting grounds in September so that Granddaddy could fill his game bag. Sis and I were the bird retrievers. Then we’d go back home to sit outside around a huge galvanized wash tub to pluck the feathers from Granddad’s catch.

Those days are gone and I’m solo so my Thanksgiving meal is often with friends and sometimes alone. This year I’ve been invited by friends Charlie and Nancy to join them and their daughter for a somewhat different type of Thanksgiving meal. We are having duck. The only time I've can remember eating duck was a Chinese dish which I think was Moo Goo Guy Pan. After reading the description on the menu I’d ordered it because I’d never had duck before. Visions of films showing how ducks were raised by folk who lived on ships and were sent into the water to eat and catch fish and then called back onboard with the ducks walking up a plank to the deck come to mind.

Being a good guest by my mother’s standards means that I bring something to the table or go over early to help with the preparation. I’ve offered to do both and will head to the store today to see if I can find some tiny “C” sized red potatoes to sauté. If the results are the same as the last dinner party I served them at there will be no leftovers.

John Knox Village where my parents live has been decorated for the past week and everyone is looking forward to the fantastic meal that will be served in the dining hall. Dad will be turning 88 on Thanksgiving so I’ll call later to talk, wish him, “Happy Birthday,” and chat with Mom. She’s been doing some better lately. There have been days where she was pretty alert and involved in all the activities that go on in the care center. Those are offset by days where she isn’t alert and involved, but even those are showing some improvement. Best of all is that I’m no longer getting one word answers from her when we talk on the phone. My sister continues to Skype with Mom regularly and that’s a real blessing since she won’t be able to come to TX for a while. I hope to go down sometime in December, but haven’t set a date yet as I’ve got church obligations and the guest rooms will be full on Christmas weekend. It may be New Years weekend like last year. The college I’m attending online decided to give us all a break for the last couple of weeks of the year so that may be my best time to go.

I’m looking forward to reading all about everyone else’s Thanksgiving meals and plans and have already started with San’s So till next time…

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Update by Request

2010-11-06T07:36:00.001-05:00

Our beloved David, came by and asked about Mom. When I first got back I needed to space myself from what I’d experienced. Now I’m doing better, so this is what the news on Mom is.

Mom is working past her second stroke. She’s in a wonderful place called John Knox Village (JKV) where she and Dad have lived for quite a few years. The care center at JKV is really good and I couldn’t ask for better, more attentive nurses than they have (One of them caught the stroke while it was happening! Great nurse!). Dad sees Mom everyday and keeps us updated on how she is doing.

While she was in the hospital a cardiologist examined Mom and recommended a pacemaker because her heart was slow and irregular. That was done and hopefully Mom will continue to improve.

Post stroke, she has been kind of non communicative and wants to sleep a lot. Her doctor tells us that is normal and that she will come out of it over the next couple of months. Dad’s latest letter seemed to indicate that she is becoming more aware of her surroundings and seems to be interacting with others again.

While visiting, my meals were delivered to the care center, so I was able to join Mom for every meal. It was good being with her. I plan/hope to go back in December to see her again. We celebrated her birthday the Saturday I was there by gathering, giving her gifts, and using one of them (My sis sent a net book.) to Skype with my sister and her husband in FL. Mom really smiled seeing Jill and Bud.

Part of me says this post is done and part keeps saying, “You need to address both sides of the experience.” It hurts to think that Mom won’t be with me forever. Trying to come to terms with the idea is a changing experience. I keep reminding myself that Mom is a believer and will join Grandmom and Granddad in heaven. Local friends as well as distance ones have been very supportive and I’m so grateful for their love and understanding. While this is not something I’d want anyone else to go through I guess it’s unavoidable that some of my friends have and they are SO empathic with me that it makes me want to be like them. “God, help me grow through this and become more like Mom and my wonderful, caring friends.”

Peace! & Hope!

Call Me Inspired

2010-10-15T12:47:00.003-05:00

There is great news in blogland today. David McMahon of Authorblog is back! This was so exciting that it made me want to blog something too. That’s something I’ve not done in quite a while. I’m sorry that I was away for so long and I’ve no idea if I’ll be able to keep up steady and regular posts, but since I’ll be following David’s blog with near religious regularity I’ll surely be more inspired to write something too.

My last post talked about my mother’s stroke. She has spent quite a while in the nursing home wing of John Knox Village, the retirement community where she and Dad live. Right now she’s in the hospital, having had another stoke last Sunday. This one has affected her left side. We are taking things day by day. This is scary! It doesn’t matter how adult you are or together your life is, the thought of losing your mother is enough to bring you to tears. Attending the healing service at church this past Wednesday helped. So did telling my friends and church. Lots of praying is going on. I’m blessed to have Sandi as a friend. She and I had a chat about how to handle this and it really helped.

On the work side of life, I finished the 2010 Census job back in September. It was a lovely experience and one I’ll always remember with fondness. It seems to have given me a desire to work on mission oriented jobs, so when a friend of mine told me about a training program to create a workforce to convert the nations medical records from a pen and paper system into a modern database I jumped at the chance to help out. I’ve been accepted into the training program and will take 6 months of online classes. Onsite Tech Support is the job I’m aiming for since that’s where my work experience and education fit best. I’ve also kept my relationship with Pearson Education and will be scoring for them from time to time.

Mom’s birthday is the 23rd of October and if I don’t need to hurry down there before then I’ll be going to the Rio Grande Valley to see her and celebrate that day with her. She’ll be 87. It was going to be a festive gathering of her family, but my sister found reason to go down this past week so I may be the only daughter in attendance that weekend. That’s okay. I’ll spend lots of nice uninterrupted, unhurried quality time with Mom. We’ll visit with her friends, play games with Dad and others, and just chat. I couldn’t ask for a better way to spend a weekend!

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

A Rough 6 Weeks

2010-06-22T07:11:00.001-05:00

On May 14th Mom had a stroke. It happened during the night and she woke confused, disoriented, and weak. Dad took her to the emergency room where they ran a bunch of tests. The result showed that she’d lost some cognitive functions and a bit of peripheral vision. They moved her to the full care section of the retirement community my folks live in. My sister and I’ve been down to see her and will go again sometime next month.

It’s somewhat reassuring that Mom & Dad live in a really good place where the care is excellent. She’s getting at least 3 different types of therapy (cognitive, occupational, and physical) to try to get her eligible for assisted living. It’s going to be a few weeks before we know if she will be able to do it, but she is making progress. Last report was that she is stronger now and her memory functions are improving. There’s a list of things she has to be able to do before she can qualify for assisted living and Mom’s ticking them off as she accomplishes them.

One of the hardest things for me is the feeling of disconnect I’m experiencing. For several years now I’ve started my morning by working a jigsaw puzzle and emailing it to Mom with a short note about how things are going in my life. Now that’s stopped because there’s no computer in her room at the care center. I call but they have to go get her from where she is to bring her to the phone. If she makes it to assisted living there will be a phone in her room instead of at the nurse’s station.

On the life in San Antonio side, I’m finding work more stressful these days. It isn’t as much fun and since the Census is heading into the last stages everyone is polishing up their resumes. I recently went to a sneak peek movie screening and saw Despicable Me which comes out in July. It’s a really good kids flick with a heart warming ending. It’s funny too. My face just kept smiling bigger and bigger all through the movie. I’ve been dong some minor repair things around the apartment. My vacuum cleaner has a new belt and the bathroom has a new showerhead. The stray kitten living on my porch had gotten pregnant but the baby didn’t survive. However, that little girl is letting me pet her now and sometimes seems to want petting more than the food. I’m not sure she’ll let me pick her up yet. And, in honor of my friend Susan, with a nod to Jeremy who took me to the yarn store, I’ve started learning how to knit. I bought some yarn, needles, and an instruction book and cast on 50 stitches which was way too many for the length of my bamboo needles. Never the less, progress is being made. I’ve pretty much gotten the hang of the knit stitch and am now practicing the purl stitch. Jenny and I took a lesson at the yarn store this past Saturday and I learned how to hold the yarn in my left hand which is much faster, but I need to practice more because I don’t think my stitches are as even with that method. If I get good enough to actually knit a real item of clothing I’ll be delighted and probably never give this up.

Hope you all have a good 4th of July! Peace! Hope! & Joy!

In the Quiet Places

2010-03-09T07:25:00.002-06:00

Added in a couple of items to the Tiny Lifestyle Changes today. One I’ve been doing for a while and it is working well for me. The other is a suggestion made by my associate rector, Matt, and it’s the kind of thing that would work for me if I did it regularly so I’m going to make the attempt to do that too.
The one that I’m already doing is from my pastoral counselor. He suggested that to handle stress and anxiety, since it was keeping me awake at night, I should turn over to God the things that were bothering me most. He suggested a journal, but I’m just doing it in prayer. I’ve been negligent of my prayer life, so this is a good way to get back in the habit of talking to God. When I was a new believer I used to fall asleep reading his word. I sort of miss that comfort and I hope this tiny step will lead me back to that, or at least to more consideration in the quiet of the evening when I’m lying there trying to shut down my day.
Last Sunday Matt gave a really good sermon that included 2 midrash. That may not be spelled correctly and it’s not the plural form. He told us during the sermon but I didn’t get that bit down. One of the midrash talked about the space between the lines of text in the Torah being the place where the true meaning was to be found. Then he talked about the name of God as it is in Hebrew YHVH, which is never spoken, and what the sound might be if we did try to pronounce it. Without the vowels that Christians have added in it sounds sort of like breathy sounds that one hears. The PH sound, the H sound, maybe some of the S, those where you are exhaling strongly. I kind of laughed when he first did that and tried to say it without the vowels. It sounded like a bit from Harry Potter. Then as his lesson continued I came to think, the breath sound might represent the breath of life that God gives us or that energy which was sent forth from God when he made the world. If that’s what we find in the quiet spaces maybe it’s a good idea that I go back and reread my priests’ sermons so that I can reflect on their teachings and gain what is between the lines of text. And that’s the second item I added into Tiny Lifestyle Changes.
Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Reflection – Did I see the light?

2010-02-20T09:35:00.001-06:00

If you’ve read my blog a lot in the past you know I like to think back on things and see what effect they’ve had on my life. This is a skill I learned late in life. It was something I had to do for some college classes and believe I’m much the better for having gained it. The process was called reflection.

Reflection has given me lots of awareness on how things affect others too. When I was a child I didn’t spend time analyzing other people’s actions or emotions until it affected me and then it was usually a frenzy of trying to look at why they did or said whatever it was that had hurt me so badly. That’s not socially helpful, but it let me express my angst till I’d owned it and come to a better understanding of the situation. Thankfully I’ve grown some since those anxious teenage years. These days I try to understand the other person’s needs or behaviors based on what I know of them and not how I feel. It helps a bunch because I’ve come to love harmony in my life, a gift from Mom, and hopefully that longing for peace and harmony makes me more of a peacemaker than an irritant to any situation I run into.

This morning I was reading an article from WebMD that talked about a study researching the effects of darkness on people’s behavior. It said that when the room is darkened, not lightless but dim light, or people wore sunglasses they might behave in a less ethical manner. I found that very interesting and suddenly I was imagining what I might say to a child who wanted to wear sunglasses all the time because he, “thought it made him look cool” because another kid he knew wore them and he thought that kid was cool. I guess our teachers were right; you shouldn’t wear sunglasses all the time. Since the eyes are windows to our heart and mind, if someone feels you can’t see what he’s thinking or feeling he feels anonymous and can thus act in ways that might not be right but won’t be attributed to him because of that self perceived anonymity.

I think I can understand how a kid might want to be anonymous if he’s constantly being corrected for things he does. We probably all experience times like that as adults too. But knowing this means it’s important to look people in the eyes to really know them, that it can’t be done by just hearing their words without knowing the emotions behind them, or maybe the experiences that have generated their response to a situation. That’s not always easy to know even when you do look someone in the eye, but it gives you the opportunity to ask them for more so that they can express themselves and feel heard. I think that’s called active listening today and we all know how much we want to be heard when we are struggling.

I want to go back to that darkness article and think up some more ways that it can affect us so I guess I’ll find a friend I can discuss that with, or maybe my counselor since he’s good at role play too. If you read the article on darkness and come up with any insights I hope you’ll share them.

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Man, I’m really happy today!

2010-02-11T07:29:00.001-06:00

It’s true! I’m almost giddy I’m so happy. This isn’t because of anything that’s happened. No major event triggered this. I think it’s the result of some small changes I made in my routine recently that have just triggered a good feeling within my spirit.

The changes I made were very small. I’ve been dealing with depression ever since my marriage broke up in ‘99. I have a good counselor and maybe a very smart psychiatrist who prescribes my medication. So for the past 3 days I’ve been on a very small dose of Bupropion. Just 100 mg a day, extended release. This dose is small enough to not cause that edgy feeling that this drug is known for but it helps lift my spirits. I think it is taking effect. But I don’t think that alone has triggered this surfeit of happiness.

The next change I made was last night’s routine. It was cold in the apartment so I took out time in the middle of the evening to draw and take a warm bath. I washed my hair and when I was through I put on comfy clothes and went to bed at my usual time, hair still wet but combed. When I woke up this morning I had more time in my routine to do stuff I wanted to do instead of feeling the need to get ready for work. My hair was dry and fluffy, call that wash and sleep. LOL More time gives you a relaxed feeling about your day so that’s going to become a more regular change I think. Bath at night and ready faster in the morning. Plus I think I slept better for that. Good sleep gives me a much better mood.

Then I elected to dress comfortably for work. I work in a business casual environment and some of my coworkers wear suits. I would have loved jeans today but it’s not jeans day so I pulled out an old pair of loose fitting pants that still looked good and topped them with one of those thin flannel shirts that gives you lots of room to move. Added a belt and I”m ready for for anything and can move comfortably without care to whether I’m sitting like a proper lady and feeling cuddled in that flannel. I think that finished the mood lift.

So clean, rested, comfortable, and ready to face the day. I attribute some of this to the Happiness Project. And I’m going to continue to read that blog because I keep finding good suggestions in it that lift my mood. Hope your day goes as good as I anticipate mine will.

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Two Cat Nights

2010-02-02T06:29:00.001-06:00

Even though they’d been sniffing noses through the screen door and seemed interested in being friends, when I adopted Hooboo, rescuing him from his “stray porch kitty” status, he and Hyram developed an instant competition. They fought, Hyram stole Hooboo’s food, Hooboo would steal the wrap around my ankles time, and they’d rarely share a bed together. Hyram actually kept watch for Hooboo’s arrival and left when he entered the room. That is until recently. I don’t know what changed but for the past two nights I’ve had both cats on the bed. Sunday night it was one on either side of me. Last night they were actually sharing the comforter and less than a foot apart. Dare I hope that I’ve now got a cat family?

In other news I’m fighting a cold and it’s taking its usual course. Following a nurse friend’s advice I was trying to “let it run through me” and avoiding decongestants until the need for sleep precluded that and I gave in. Prayers for health are appreciated.

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Firefox & Blogger or Being Careful with Add-ons

2010-01-30T12:31:00.001-06:00

Recently I updated to the latest (greatest?) version of Firefox, that being version 3.6. It immediately disabled IE Tab and one or two other extensions a.k.a. add-ons. Oops! I’d been using IE Tab to see my blog because I thought there had been a problem with Firefox and Blogger. I’d been losing the right hand column of my blog in Firefox and IE Tab was my current workaround.

Then last night I opened and read Sandi’s blog and heard her playlist which she has on the right side (same as I do) and wondered why I could hear her blog and not mine. So I started researching. The first thing I did was email Terry to see if he had any advice. He took a look, with 4 different browsers no less, and had no problems with my blog so he suggested I clear the cache. That’s Blogger’s usual advice too so I tried it but it didn’t help. Then I got a clever idea. Why not try disabling add-ons to see if any of them were the problem.

Wow, what I discovered would make almost 2 posts. First off I had way too many Java Consoles installed. Apparently when you update Java it doesn’t overwrite the old console but just adds a new one on. I’m down to just the latest Java Console and the Java Quick Start add-on. That works fine so no problem there.

Then I disabled everything else and restarted the browser. My blog showed fully and the playlist I’d been missing played beautifully. So I started enabling add-ons one at a time and found the culprit. It was Ad Block Plus. That’s a sweet add-on and I’m going to miss it because I hate ads being stuck willy nilly all over the pages I’m viewing and this baby took care of that. But lately it seems to be messing with Java and Flash content so I guess I’m better off without.

Then I googled “Firefox add-ons that cause problems with blogger” and got this fantastic page by Mozilla. It lists the extensions that cause problems, what they mess up, and gives a workaround. How helpful of them to put that up. It was even dated as recent as December 10, 2009 so it’s very current. Yes, Adblock and Adblock Plus were on the list. It also told me why my browser sometimes gave a message of Firefox is still running when I’d shut it down and then tried to restart it. That little snafu was thanks to Cooliris which is another neat add-on but I can do without too. So that’s gone now too.

Now my add-on list is much pared down and I’m happy with the way the browser is working again. I hope that link helps if you are having any problems with Firefox.

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

A Season of Bloglessness?

2010-01-29T05:50:00.001-06:00

It’s raining this morning, and in addition to the loving behavior of my younger cat Hooboo making bread on my shoulder before settling down on top of me to await my arousal, I woke to thinking about blogging. It’s been more than a month since I wrote anything and I apologize to all of you who’ve been checking in from time to time.

I titled this the “Season of Bloglessness” because I’m not the only one who hasn’t been blogging lately. My friend Susan just posted after an absence of over two weeks and my good friend Sandi has been absent from blog land for almost as long. I’ll let you read Susan’s blog to find out what she’s been up to.

Sandi on the other hand is very busy with a no longer empty nest. Her son Wallace has moved back in. I’ll let Sandi tell you the story but you need to know that her life is doing all kinds of adjusting right now, so if you read her blog please take the time to drop by and give her support. I know she means to get back to blogging sometime soon but her computer is in what is now Wallace’s bedroom.

My job is going well. I love what I’m doing and the people I’m working with. Thank you for being so faithful. I’ll try to write again soon with pictures of the Christmas Poinsettias I was gifted with. Blessings for now.

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Census Takers

2009-12-13T16:03:00.001-06:00

Life got rather busy a few weeks ago. I mentioned in an earlier post that the Census had called and asked me to work for them again. The job kept getting postponed for a couple of weeks and that frustrated me some at the time. But the work finally started and it is still as much fun as it was earlier this year. The slow spell of the summer is over and we are gearing up to hire a lot of folk for the upcoming census taking. If you want a temporary job that pays fairly well and helps your government put resources where they are needed most then click here. One of the nice things I like about this job is there is so much to learn about the project. I’m a perpetual student and excel in learning environments. This one has a lot to teach me.

The fact that we do a Census every 10 years is dictated by law. I believe it’s written into the Constitution. There is a deadline for it. The Census totals need to be on President Obama’s desk on a specific date in the middle of next December. The goal is to do a better job of counting every person in the country than they did in past decades. We are aiming for 100%! That 100 percent isn’t just those of us who live in houses or apartments. It includes trailer parks too. That I could have figured out. But for some reason I hadn’t figured on them counting campground dwellers, boat owners who live in them on the water, and people in care facilities like hospitals, retirement communities, and jails. And then there are the people who live in shelters, under bridges and overpasses, and in boxes. Yep, we plan on counting them too. That thought brings to mind an old black and white movie image of hoboes around a campfire. I wonder if they will search railroad cars for people.

That’s the main news on my front. I’m busy and feeling good about it. Yay! Other news is that my list of friends on Facebook has grown. A bit of that is thanks to Classmates.com. I’m reconnected with a few folks in my high school graduating class. That’s kind of neat and I’ll probably try to go to a reunion when they hold it. On a more interactive front an old college chum got in touch with me the same way. I'd not heard from Harry in something close to 30 years but we were great friends when we attended the same college. He’s doing well and is in town for the holidays to see his Mum. We are meeting for lunch tomorrow. I wonder what we will talk about.

My Dad sent me a box full of pictures from the family collection. He is scanning them into his computer and was just going to toss them so I asked if I could have them instead. Yeah, I love a digital image and can look at one for hours if it’s really good. But just like books, a real photograph printed on paper is somehow more tangible and generates strong memories and emotions. Guess I”m just an old fashioned girl when it comes to some things.

I guess the last bit of news is that tonight I’m attending a Celtic Christmas Concert at my church. The music I’ll hear is going to be performed by Jeff Johnson, Brian Dunning, and Wendy Goodwin. I hope to come away with a CD or two of their music. If you want to listen to some clips of their stuff the website is here. I’ll try to write about the concert and my impressions later this week.

Peace, Hope & Joy!

Counterpoint to the Evening

2009-11-13T06:25:00.001-06:00

Wednesday evening is practice night for my church choir, of which I’ve been a member for about a year. These days we are gearing up for the annual Lessons & Carols service. It’s exciting because there are always lots of new numbers to sing and it is the choir showcase service. We are also thinking ahead to Christmas Eve service which also has lots of music in it. Our choir director asked if any of us would be interested in doing some group numbers, not exactly solos but still out front and I said count me in. So this Christmas I may be part of a trio singing a medley of carols.

When choir practice was over we had a birthday celebration for anyone who’s birthday is in November and those we’d missed earlier in the year. This is renewing an old tradition among our group that fell into disuse and I think we are all happy to have it back again. Everybody should have their special day. The members who volunteered to sponsor this month’s celebration brought wine, desserts, and some nice crackers, chips, and dips. It was all good. Then we left for the evening.

Outside our sanctuary door there’s a motion activated security light. It’s dark earlier these days so I was glad that it came on as I headed out to my car. But apparently someone in the world wasn’t so happy. As I passed the tree on the corner of the building I heard a sound I’d never heard before. It was a sort of hooting. I stopped and listened and it happened again and again. It was an owl protesting about light disturbing his peace. In all my life I can’t remember ever having heard an owl before, but I recognized it immediately. Perhaps there’s no other bird that sounds like that. Maybe it’s so distinctive that once you’ve been told what an owl sounds like you can’t mistake that sound for any other bird. The moment made me feel very good. To know that nature was out there and active, that a bird I tend to think of as a wilderness creature was on our church grounds, made me aware of how special our sanctuary and grounds are. Whenever I’m on our campus I feel blessed. There’s this feeling that just seems to fill the grounds up, not just the sanctuary. We call ourselves reconcilers and I think that sound served to remind me that we reconcile ourselves to nature too.

The Happiness Project had an interesting post the other day about de-cluttering. It was rules to not follow. In it Gretchen gave Eleven Myths of De-cluttering along with how we should not follow those old beliefs and why. I was surprised to find these out and have to admit that I’m guilty of believing and practicing many of them. Maybe I can try out these new methods and get better results. What do you think? Are you guilty of any of these?

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Happiness is a Playful Cat

2009-11-10T11:24:00.001-06:00

Stray Porch Kitty, these days affectionately called Hooboo, made his presence felt this morning. When he thinks it’s time to get up, usually just before the alarm goes off, he gets up on the bed and either makes bread on my shoulder (thank goodness for comforters) or lays down on top of me and settles in to wait for signs of wakefulness. Today it went a little beyond that. If you read Sandi's blog you’ll remember that just this weekend she talked about her cats and how Sonny gets up on the bed, plays with Mac, and then snuggles under the covers to play “bat nose” with her. This morning it seemed that Hooboo has developed his own version of that game. From his settled perch upon my upper body his little paw reached down to tentatively pat my cheek and then my nose. Yes there was one tiny claw sticking out. He was very gentle until I reached up to pet him. Then the game became attack the hand which drove me back under the covers. LOL He didn’t hurt me but I was very glad for fast reflexes. And doubly grateful for a loving cat who likes to be close to me in the early morning hours. What a fun way to start the day.

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Blending Two Projects

2009-11-09T20:03:00.007-06:00

For the last 10 days my good friend Sandi has been taking part in the Month of Giving Thanks challenge. She’s found something to be grateful for every day and it has kept her writing. I find this a happy circumstance because I love reading her blog.

For the past few months I’ve been following The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin on my Google reader. That blog is the interesting result of Gretchen taking a year and trying out every “make yourself happier” method she could discover and it has attracted many readers and generated a book. It’s provided me with some tiny mood enhancers which might seem small and insignificant but if anything helps you feel better then I say, “Way to go!”

I considered joining Sandi in her Thanksgiving project. I have a lot to be grateful for. And reading her daily posts has helped me remember that. But being grateful has doesn't always bring me joy. And reflecting on that, plus this evening’s conversation with my counselor, has generated this post

Being grateful, especially when you are enjoying what you are grateful for, is wonderful! But sometimes it can serve to emphasize a need you have. When that happens no matter how grateful you are for the help you got, whether from friends or any other source, you hear this inner voice saying, “You’re needy!” Boom there goes your happiness and sometimes the relief for having had your needs met. That’s a horrid way to feel about yourself. And it’s silly! There’s nothing wrong with having needs! Everyone does. We need air. We need food. We need shelter. We need friends and moments in our lives when everything feels like it is going right. And sometimes, when things in your life go horribly wrong you need lots of other kinds of help. That doesn’t make you a horrid person or a weak one. But I’m sure you’re smart enough to know that fighting those internal messages is more than difficult. It’s a monumental task and takes strength, insight, and perseverance. Not to mention a lot of self retraining.

So this evening when talking to my counselor, I declared that I didn’t like certain things in my life and I wanted to feel happier. I’d like to make sweeping changes in my life and have everything be back on track the way it was before certain catastrophic events occurred in my life. However, that’s not very realistic of me. I’m not a sweeping change person. I’m a one step at a time girl who doesn’t multitask well. So for the next few posts and maybe many posts to come I’m going to be talking about things that make me grateful and things that make me happy.

I believe the Thanksgiving was initiated nicely in my first paragraph. I’m so grateful that I have a wonderful friend like Sandi. She plays scrabble with me almost everyday and shares her life with me. We keep tabs on what we’re watching on TV (in my case on the internet) and what our plans are for the week. We pray for one another and show due concern when needful. And we are so much alike that Sandi has declared me a sister. If I could move the entire state of South Carolina and fit inside of Texas, right next to San Antonio, I’d gladly do so because that would mean that I could visit Sandi as easily as I drive to church. Someday, Sandi and I are going to meet face to face. When that happens it’s going to be one of the most wonderful trips I’ve ever taken!

Now for happiness. The things I’ve been gathering from The Happiness Project that help brighten my mood are 1) make your bed and 2) put on your shoes. That sounds silly doesn’t it? But doing those two things actually helps me feel prepared to face other things. If there is anything I can take from that it’s the understanding that happiness isn’t superficial, or momentary. It’s an entire many layers deep feeling that is affected by your lifestyle and the choices you make which lead to feeling ready to face anything that might come your way. I can find changes caused by those two tiny actions when I look over the past week. When I grumbled about not having work when I’d expected to, my blogging friend Jinsky told me that I should use the time to enjoy something nice, like a really good book. I’d like to confess that it wasn’t a book that I enjoyed. It was cooking.

When I was younger I was a decent cook. After those life changing events it felt like I’d forgotten how to cook. That’s almost impossible if you learned, as I did, from a loving grandmother. But somehow things became difficult and appeared insurmountable. That really bothered me. Not this week, though! I found myself making breakfast again. Not cereal but scrambled eggs which meant there were pans to clean afterwards. The next thing was breaking out the broiler. I’ve been buying my major groceries through Angel Foods for 2 months now and I’ve got way too much stuff in my freezer. So the other night I decided it was time to use some of the steaks. I got the broiling pan, cleaned it, and reorganized the oven drawer in the process. Then I thawed 3 steaks and broiled them after I found the cookbook that reminded me for how long. They were delicious thanks to Kevin (old navy friend) who taught me to use a hint of garlic powder and celery seasoning when cooking beef. Yum!

About the work thing, I’m still hired but they called on Friday morning and said, Come on Monday,” and then called Friday afternoon and said, “Oops! We’re sorry but everyone has to wait another week.” That’s week 2 of a job with no work. So I’m praying that it doesn’t happen again. At least I’ve got time to do some other things, like play scrabble with Sandi. I’m sure I’ll find other things to do to fill the time but right now I’ve no idea what. But it will be interesting to find out.

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

From Joy to a Dangling Feeling

2009-11-02T11:36:00.001-06:00

Last Monday the Census called to ask me to go back to work for them. Of course I said yes! I really liked the job and the people I worked with earlier this year.

The man who called asked me to start last Friday for training. So bright and early that morning I was up and out the door. The day was wonderful! It felt like a home coming! There were lots of familiar faces, catching up on what we’d been up to, finding out what was going to happen next, and nodding with one another that this or that was no surprise.

We were told to come back today and that there would be continued training. So today I got up and happily headed out the door to continue learning what would be expected of me. Everyone was excited and happy when we met at the office door, waiting till it was unlocked and the alarm was disarmed to go in and get started. That feeling didn’t last long. We were barely inside the door when the supervisor asked us to listen to her before we got started. It turns out our bosses jumped the gun and had started us working a bit too early. We were being asked to turn around and go home. What?!!!

The supervisor assured us we were still hired. She said we would be called later this week and told where to report next Monday. She handed us all time sheets and asked us to fill them out for today and we got log half an hour of time and mileage if we’re working for a different office. So the day isn’t a total loss. It just feels unsettling.

I’m giving up a different temporary job to take this Census one because this one is going to give me steady work, probably through summer of next year. I’m really excited about that! But not having work when I expected to just bothers me and I feel like I don’t know what to do with myself. So I’m trying to figure out what I can do to fill in the time. Handle paperwork I guess. Run a few errands. But I really don’t want to do much spending till I’ve got money coming in.

One thing is puzzling me. Every time I’ve worked a temporary job before, if I showed up for work I was given a minimum of 4 hours of time. If there was nothing to do I found a way to stay busy. This 30 minute thing has me wondering if they should have had us all fill the time sheets out for 4 hours instead of the 30 minutes. I don’t know if that’s a labor requirement set in stone by some law or just a standard policy which can be ignored by the hiring agency. Like I said, kind of unsettling. So I’m trying to figure out if I should be grateful for what we were given or if I should say something. If you know something about that kind of situation I’d really appreciate hearing what you have to say. In the meantime, thank God for work!

Peace!

A Quiet Day this Saturday

2009-10-15T10:57:00.002-05:00

Once a year my church holds a day of rest and reflection. We call it our Quiet Day. This will be my first year to attend. In some ways I’m looking forward to it. What will the day be like? We have gentle yoga planned. Are there other activities? In other ways I’m a bit nervous. I find peace in solitude, will there be too many people for that? Presumably I’ll spend time quietly talking to God, or maybe just waiting. Will I find answers to my questions? Or will I fidget too much, as I’m wont to do, to find peace?

Today my friend San has a new post up that gives me food for thought. It’s about a view on life that has one turning around and viewing life from the opposite direction. It also covers the inner and outer voices. That gave me so much to think about that I’m hoping I’ll be able to focus on it’s meanings on Saturday. The post, you can read it here, made me think about seeing things from that different perspective. Can it really be that simple? Can I mentally turn my chair around and see my life differently? On Saturday?

The key concept of my hope derives from something I’ve done once unsuccessfully and my priest did recently very successfully. What we both attempted was wandering in the wilderness. My priest went on sabbatical. During that time he went on a solo hiking trip, after a meditative and prayerful retreat, to spend time with God in the wilderness. My last attempt at walking with God in the wilderness was a couple of years ago and even with all the markers on the trail I focused on the wrong things, didn’t plan carefully enough, and had wrong info which, if corrected, would have given me a lifeline. The result for my priest was that he came back refreshed, renewed, and changed from his experiences. My results were different. I got lost and in the process lost faith in myself. Not in God though. I give him all the credit for me not ending up in an emergency room after getting lost on a walk that had plenty of signs if I’d known how to read them.

In some ways that analogy also applies to my life and career choices. Good intentions aren’t enough. You have to have skills in reading signs, and plan with forethought and self awareness when you choose the paths you take. So when I asked my priest last Sunday if he would teach a class on how to find our way in the wilderness I was being more than hopeful. It occurs to me that perhaps learning how to walk in the wilderness physically would also help me walk it metaphorically.

Since I’m seeming to place so much hope on this idea I plan on encouraging my priest again to teach this class. Folk in my church love going hiking and for the past 2 years we’ve had a trip to a beautiful camping place in our state, Big Bend. There are a lot of places around our city where we can go hiking. We even have access to several places that can be reached on day trips, done with 2 hours of driving each way. I’m not ignorant of the fact that it takes more than locale to teach one how to survive in the wilderness. I just hope that I can generalize the skills of successful navigation to the rest of my life. And that by going into the wilderness with God I’ll tune out the distractions of life, as I did in my youth, and focus on what is real and true. Maybe that will make a difference.

Puzzle Share

2009-10-03T05:54:00.003-05:00

From the first glimpse of its colors this puzzle asked to be worked. They were just so beautiful, those greens, blues, and purples asking to be blended into a form of flowering beauty. I didn't even notice the time flowing by as I worked it. The playlist was sending the beautiful voice of Barbara Streisand through the air to my ears with the sweet flowing melody of The Summer Knows. That only seemed to enhance the beauty of the flower the puzzle pieces were becoming. So I suggest you enjoy some wonderful song that sings to you of beauty as you work this one. Enjoy!

He Stretched His Arms Out Upon the Cross

2009-09-13T14:24:00.006-05:00

Today’s service was a visual example of the meaning of the action of Christ upon the cross.

It was Community Speaks Sunday and, as is our custom, we had a guest speaker, Kay Briggs, who is author of the book The Magic Seashells. The Magic Seashells is Kay’s story about her recovery and healing from sexual abuse she received as a child. Hers is a beautiful message about how she tried to live out her life in the perfect appearance so often demanded by our society, keeping her experiences and troubles a secret, until she learned that to heal from the hurt done to her as a child she had to embrace the darkness of her experience and find God’s love within it.

We also blessed and said goodbye to a member who is on a journey away from us. He is headed off to prison for the crime of downloading child pornography and will serve several years in the state facility. He knew better than to do what he did. He feels bad about it and asked over a year ago for forgiveness and we gave it with a lovely service of prayer and laying on of hands in blessing in the hopes that his journey will find him healed at the end. We all knew his day to leave would come. We just didn’t know it was going to be today.

I worry about this man because I know that what he did has made him an outcast to some of our church, society at large, and will also do the same to him in prison. From my ex who is a jailor, “inmates all have children and they hate child abusers so any inmate that they learn has hurt children has to be locked away in administrative detention to save their life from the other inmates who will beat them up and try to kill them.” So he may end up in solitary for the next few years just to live. Even if he doesn’t enter solitary confinement he certainly can’t make friends with anyone and reveal his offense. It’s a long and lonely road he has ahead of him.

Kay’s message was a blessing to me and I know that it wasn’t easy what she did, learning to accept herself and be open about her experiences. Kay may have had her own prison of sorts trying to live out the lie of perfection. I’ve known other people who experienced child abuse and it’s a lonely misfit life they live until they find healing for that hurt.

After we prayed for him, our departing member, I sat there and thought about what that meant, the welcoming of a victim of child abuse and prayerfully blessing an enabler of it. It seemed such a dichotomy. So radical. So extreme! From victim to criminal, Christ’s forgiving love was exemplified by the actions of our priest and the community. That is such a huge stretch that it boggles the mind. Is there nothing that God can’t or won’t forgive, fix, or heal? Apparently not. So I think that for the next few days, or perhaps weeks, I’ll be thinking about how wide Christ’s arms stretched when he laid them down upon that cross for us all. It’s a humbling thought.

May the love of God enfold each and everyone of you today and everyday! Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Affordable Dining

2009-09-12T11:20:00.006-05:00

My church has a pretty good outreach program. We work with all kinds of ministries trying to reach out to our neighborhood and community at large. The newest program we’ve just started sponsoring is Angel Food Ministries. This is a service that provides food for less than you might pay at your local supermarket. There are various packages of food stuffs you can buy through this service. Most of this is not prepared. You do your own cooking. For those who are on food stamps, having a hard time with the budget, or just want to stretch your resources you can order one or two of the food packages which most closely meets your needs and pay for them when you order. Then on delivery day, about two weeks after the order deadline, you go to the local host site and pick up your order.

This will be the first month we’ve been a host site and I’m ordering. After looking at the monthly menu I chose the signature package and am considering the senior convenience package as well. What the signature package has is several pounds of meat, some frozen vegetables, sacks of potatoes and onions, fruit juice, eggs, and shelf stable milk. The contents are sufficient to feed a family of 4 for a week. Being single I’m pretty sure I can stretch that to at least 2 weeks maybe more. The senior convenience box has 10 frozen dinners and desserts. Those two boxes of food will run me less than I usually spend at the store when I shop for 2 weeks. The reason I’m only considering, rather than determined to buy, the convenience box is that I tend to be a bit lazy. Having food I don’t need to cook would probably mean that the microwave dinners would be used first and the food that requires cooking would be used last. I think the selling point on that will be how large the frozen dinners are. So I’ll ask. Another strong contender for purchase on my part is the produce box. But if I buy that I’d have more potatoes than I could use in a couple of months and some fruit that might go to waste. Guess I don’t need to tell you that waste would eradicate the savings in this.

The food looks appealing in the pictures on the website and there are recipes to suggest ways of using the food. The members who suggested this ministry checked it out and assured us that it is quality food. I explored the website a bit further and there’s a nice online magazine that has recipes and articles on how the service has helped. It has some spiritual articles too. San Antonio, being a major city, has quite a few host sites. If you don’t live in a large city you can probably drive to a nearby site either in your town or another one nearby. This service is popular with churches. So I’d like to encourage you to check out the website. Just go here. There’s a nice user friendly menu of additional pages with more info on the upper right of the home page. I’ll let you know how this experiment in affordable dining turns out.

Puzzle Share and Bits of News

2009-09-05T08:02:00.004-05:00

It's been a slow week. The highlight of it has been playing tons of Scrabble with Sandi. I think we broke our record number of games yesterday by playing 2 in the morning and 5 that evening for a grand total of 7 games. By the end of the last game we were so beat mentally that we had to stop. LOL I think we both wonder what our endurance level can be and maybe we are gearing up to find out. I think it would be interesting to have an all day Scrabble marathon. Not that I could sit still that long but with planned breaks it might be possible. That probably means I might find a Scrabble competition interesting. So I guess I'll add that to the future things to do wish list.

Lately I've been working on planning a liturgy. It's part of my verger training and I'm helping our Associate Rector plan the All Saints service. We both feel we need to put an action in the service that makes the remembering significant to all. We also want to focus on remembering and, in doing so, celebrate the lives, rather than focus on the death, of those who've been saints in our lives and in our faith community.

In study to prepare for this planning, Matt asked me to read a chapter or two in a couple of books. The Book of Sacramental Basics by Tad Guzie really struck me as meaningful. I like the way Guzie breaks things down, moves from one point to the next in clear stages, and has vivid explanations or examples to illustrate each of his points. The man was a gifted teacher. I only read one chapter in the book and am thinking I need to find a copy for my own library as it will surely give me more food for thought. The other book I read in was Beyond Smell & Bells by Mark Galli. It's good but I liked the Guzie book better.

In a week I start another scoring project at Pearson. It will last from 2 to 3 weeks and it will feel nice to be busy again. My friend Jenny will be scoring on it too. Yay, company for lunch! The weather is cooling off and the daytime temperatures are down into the 90's. Yesterday we had rain and there is hope for some more today and possibly tomorrow.

Today's puzzle was so beautiful that I just had to share it. I find it very delicate and I love the contrast of pale yellow against the blue of the lavender flowers. Enjoy!

New Artist – New Song on Playlist

2009-09-04T08:45:00.001-05:00

A fellow blogger, Alt of Bones of the Sky blog, has put up a video of a young man, Joe Pug, who is just starting his music career. I found the performance riveting! The lyrics to Hymn 101 are intense and thought provoking! I kept listening to it over and over. When I realized this I added it to the playlist. If you’d like to, you can find him on YouTube or there is a website for him here. To see and hear the video on Alt’s blog go here. Enjoy!

Where I'd Like to be Next Spring

2009-08-17T12:11:00.011-05:00

For awhile now I’ve wanted to get over to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, so when my friend Jenny called and suggested we get out of the house this is where I suggested we go. Jenny liked this idea, so on Saturday we each left our respective homes and headed down to the gardens with the goal of arriving before the morning heat came full on. We didn’t quite make it but the time waiting for her to catch up with me was spent familiarizing myself with the macro controls on my camera, a Canon Powershot A570 is.

What the manual told me was that I had a setting for foliage under the Special Circumstances mode and that if I pressed the control that looked like a tulip I’d get macro mode which would allow me to get within 2 inches of anything I cared to shoot. I was delighted to discover that macro mode was available on foliage mode, it isn’t in some modes, so my camera pretty much stayed on foliage settings the entire morning.

That’s the entrance to the gardens, taken while I was sitting there waiting for Jenny to arrive. The gardens are wheelchair accessible and we are looking at the ramp to the main entry way. Then I turned around and saw this gorgeous bougainvillea.

After Jenny got there, we paid for entrance and headed out into the gardens where I promptly found something to photograph, and discovered I had to change batteries. I gritted my teeth because I knew I should have switched them out and recharged the old ones before we left. Fortunately I always carry a charged set in the case. The problem this created was a possible limit on the number of images I could take while exploring the park. I recently read that doing preview mode on a digital camera quickly uses up your batteries so I decided I’d avoid that as much as possible. And off we headed to the rose garden.

The garden had tons of roses in all colors, but the one that caught my eye was this one. This is a trumpeter rose. I was enchanted by the variety of shades it showed on the same bush. You might think I’d be taking pictures right and left as I wandered, and if I’d been sure of my resources I would have. But since I didn’t know how long the batteries would last I took the best shot I could in each of the gardens and left it at that.

You could tell the gardens had been feeling the heat. San Antonio is on stage 2 water restrictions because of drought so we can only hand water if we want to do it daily. Watering by sprinkler is only allowed once a week. So there were volunteers throughout the gardens with hoses in their hands.

Because it was so hot and dry the prettiest sections of the gardens were the parts with plants native to Texas. And since it’s heading into autumn the butterflies are starting their migration although that probably won’t be in full swing till September. Even so, there were plenty of them fluttering around the garden and I tried to catch one. Those darn butterflies are fast and difficult to catch with their wings open. So I took exactly 2 shots and decided to give up thinking I’d been unsuccessful. When I got home and uploaded the pictures I found that while I’d been focusing on one butterfly, another had snuck into the shot and it was showing open wings. So here you go!

I guess that guy in the bottom of the shot wanted his 15 minutes of fame. LOL These look a bit like monarchs but their colors aren’t as bright as I remember monarchs being so I’m thinking it must be a different variety or perhaps a close cousin. A few steps further along, I came across this plant.

I really liked the laciness of the leaves and the airiness of this pretty flower. If I ever learn the name of it that will go on my list of plants for future gardens.

By this time the garden was heating up and I wanted to head for the cooler parts of the gardens. Those included a walk around a small lake on the property and a stroll through the climate controlled gardens kept inside buildings. On the way there we strolled through the area that the gardens use to hold summer concerts. And just at the entrance to the lawn there is the beautiful wisteria arbor. I took the following picture of the entrance to it.

It’s amazing how green this is as late in summer as we are and with hundred degree heat almost daily. But when I owned a house one of the plants in the garden was a Texas Wisteria so I think this might be covered with that variety. Then I went over and sat down on that bench on the right and took this next shot.

Isn’t that circular framing fascinating with those vines hanging off of it. This is where I intend to be next spring when the wisteria blooms. Wisteria is a beautiful bluish lavender bloom that has a very short season and I’m so looking forward to when those circles of vines will be strewn with gorgeous flowers.

After we sat there and rested for a bit we hit the lake and fed the ducks.

There are benches through out the gardens and I was sitting on one when I took this. None of the duck shots I took turned out well so I’m storing them for later study to see how I can improve my technique. From here we headed to the climate controlled gardens because it was no 11:30 AM and I wanted to see the air conditioned gardens I remembered from my last visit. Sure enough they didn’t disappoint!

These caught my eye because they were up above me where the man made waterfalls were coming from. They are gorgeous but I’ve no idea what they are called. If you know a name for them please leave it for me in a comment. One thing you’ll be able to tell from the pictures I’ve taken here is that red is my favorite color.

There’s a pathway through this garden. It’s very necessary because the place looks sort of like what I imagine a jungle or rain forest might look like. Plants are everywhere and very close together, pile one on top of another. There were several varieties of orchids, most of which were up high but there was one that was hanging down and had placed itself conveniently against a light colored background. Jenny spotted that one so it is thanks to her that I have this shot.

The intensity of color here has me wondering how hard orchids are to raise.

Before we left this cool and enjoyable area I noticed one more really intense red bloom. Jenny told me a funny story about her 3 year old granddaughter’s interpretation of what the stamen was. Seems the child thought the flower was “using the bathroom.” LOL Weird stamen or not, this color is intense.

Notice the white flower behind it? I know that if I had a faster shutter speed I’d have had a better chance of getting that flower in focus which was what I had hoped would happen. But I’m not that good with the elaborate controls my camera gives me. A smart photographer and blogger once said, take your camera out and use one control at a time till you get really good with it. I think that is what I need to do. Even though the white bloom is blurry I still like the color contrast.

The next few climate controlled gardens were desert, bromeliad, and the fern glade. These were not as physically comfortable as the previous garden so we didn’t stay long. It was in one of them that I learned what a tea plant looked like. I’d never seen one and the sign in front of it informed me that there is only one type of tea plant and that what you purchase. Whether it is black, green, or orange pekoe is all a matter of processing. The tea plant isn’t in bloom. I don’t know if it DOES bloom. But here is what provides our wonderful morning refreshment if you’re a tea drinker.

After this I headed to the water gardens because 1) they are beautiful and 2) Sandi has one and I wanted to share some of the flowers I knew would be there with her. So here are the water lily pictures. I took four of them, one of them a close up of the blooms that weren’t open but I hoped would be soon.

There’s a stepping stone pathway across the water garden and that’s where I stood to take this one. The next two I had to walk around the edge of the pond trying to stay off the lawn as much as possible because there wasn’t a designed trail but merely a place free from most grass that I think was created by visitors who wanted to get closer to the flowers just like I did.

Here’s flower number two. I shared this one with Sandi by email but I’d taken more than one shot of it and this one seems to show the flowers better although the other one has a better placement. It’s below. What’s your feeling about that?

For this one there was very little that I could do to avoid the obvious pond controls in the shot. However, I liked the bloom because it is on a much taller stem than these others have been.

It was a very awkward angle that I took this from. I stood at the very edge of the water and then just put the camera in my hand and held it out as far as I could towards the plant and got this next one for my efforts.

I couldn’t begin to tell you what made such a difference but my arm is about two and a half feet in length and I zoomed in as much as possible with a small prayer as I snapped the photo.

Now it was 12:30PM, the temperature was about 100 degrees, and we were both hungry and tired. So we discussed where to go for lunch on the walk back to the garden entrance. We decided to eat at the Carriage House, which is the garden restaurant, because I said if I had to drive anywhere I’d drive home.

On the way towards lunch I got two more shots. The first was this native plant, which once again I don’t know the name of. But purples and lavenders are my second favorite color so here’s a pretty shot of something I see a lot in the xeriscape gardens around here.

We even have some in the church garden.

I was feeling all sentimental when I took this last picture. It is of a plant my grandmother had in her garden when I was a child, although not this color. Which is why I took it!

Grandmother’s pomegranates were red in color. Just like the ones we are all pretty familiar with. I didn’t know that these lovely fruit came in orange and perhaps other colors. I also loved the bright red flowers that were growing next to and below it on the other side of the wall. What a nice image to close out my trip to the gardens with!

I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip with me. I also hope I get the chance to go again soon. I know I’ll be there next spring. Got to see that wisteria in bloom. Blessings!

Dibs of This and Dabs of That

2009-08-10T08:21:00.002-05:00

Sunday was a lovely day! It is has been my favorite day of the week since I started attending both morning services. For most of the time I’ve been at Church of Reconciliation I was a regular at early service (8:00 AM). Then I joined the choir and my attendance switched to late service (10:30 AM) because the early service is a contemplative service and doesn’t usually have music. When I conferred with my priest about my function as a verger in training he suggested that since I was the verger with the most early service experience that should be my area of focus. This was just great with me because there were friends I’d made at early service that I missed when I attended late service. So these days I head to church early, aiming to be there by 7:30 AM, so that I can be helpful if anyone needs assistance and step in to take over a role if the person who was assigned to it is absent and no substitute was arranged for. This is the function of a verger, to help things run smoothly.

The past few Sunday’s our newest member of altar guild has been arriving early and setting up when I got there. This gentleman is very nice and helpful. He says he’s still in training so that is why he has been doing the setup every Sunday. That fits in with my feelings about pre-service setup. There have been enough changes to the way we do things now, thanks to our wonderful associate rector, that I need to practice and remind myself how things go and what is different between the two services.

On Sunday I also ran into my verger/instructor who cleared a few misconceptions up about the way things were supposed to go in my training. The verger trainee who is most fully trained was there too and they are both going to send me necessary documents so that I can complete the sheaf of pages necessary for Robert, our rector, to read and sign off on when he returns from Sabbatical at the beginning of October. At that time we all want to be ready so that he can do an induction ceremony during one of the services.

Not long ago I finished my taxes which I’d filed an extension on when I was looking for some paperwork. I never found the paperwork but it wasn’t critical to the return so once I got the desk cleared off, for the umpteenth time, I did them online using the Turbo Tax free online software and efiled for free too. My refund hit my account in 2 weeks and on Saturday I went grocery shopping at WalMart. It was a lovely time and I over loaded the cart with good things. I’ve taken to using the store brands since they cost less money. My goal when buying groceries is to have each meal cost as close to one dollar as possible. I think I did a pretty good job of that and my pantry and freezer are over stocked with good things to eat again. Plus some snacks. I plead guilty on the snack thing as I bought a package of Oreo type cookies but they were store brand ($2) and I put them in the freezer and am only having them in 3 cookie increments. That's what the package says is a serving size and I’m sticking to it. I also got some of those mini cups of ice cream so that I can have a dessert which is portion controlled. Yay for Blue Bell who puts these things in bags of 12. That will last me several weeks before I run out.

The book I’m reading lately is Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. It’s non fiction which has traditionally been hard for me to keep on reading after an initial endeavor. But this book is speaking to me in ways that have a lot to do with my need for understanding the concept of soul and its growth plus Moore uses mythology to illustrate his points and his story telling is like someone explaining a parable. It was the explaining of a parable that brought my belief in God to completion and I think this is working the same way. Instead of reading fast I find myself reading a paragraph, sometimes just a sentence, at a time and enjoying the meaning I’m discovering there. As a child I read all of Bullfinch’s Mythology and also Edith Wharton’s book on the subject so it delights me to find this excellent story teller using the story of The Odyssey and the story of Persephone's abduction to illustrate loss, searching, and journeys of discovery.

A couple of weeks ago I held a de-flea day. I went to the vet and got some Frontline Plus for my boys, a couple of pills that get rid of all the fleas on them in 30 minutes, without hurting the cats, and a huge can of carpet spray that kills fleas in just a few minutes and has a residual effect. After coming home and using all of the above my desk is now my own again for the most part. The boys still like to be close to me but they no longer feel they need to leave the floor to be comfortable and free of biting pests. I got this done early enough that Hyrum's ruff is saved for the summer. In the past the dermatitis he gets from flea bites generates enough scratching and grooming measures that it is thinned out by the time he feels comfortable. That might be cooler for him but it looks awful. His ruff and thick coat are a couple of his most attractive features and it takes a long time, almost a year, for that gorgeous fur collar to grow back in. So I’m very happy with this turn of events.

On the scrabble playing front, Sandi and I’ve are still using Pogo.com to play scrabble online, but we are now using their National Scrabble Association (NSA) game rooms and rules. This makes the game more challenging and fun. By NSA rules we each get 30 minutes at the beginning of the game. Your clock counts down from whatever is left on it when it is your turn to play. If you are slow and end up using all of your 30 minutes before the game is over you lose 10 points for each minute or part of as you and your opponent strive to complete the game. That drastically changes the scoring and speeds things up a bit. I discovered that I need to memorize the 2 Letter Word chart for the game. Apparently, serious scrabble players memorize quite a few charts and word lists. Or at least that is my impression. So I went online and found a table of 2 letter words and also some lists of 3 letter words. It’s the uncommon ones that you have to work on. Those are often the ones that get you the most parts. I’m not very good at playing by NSA rules yet. I get stuck in one word mode too frequently, looking for some place to play it. I also need to practice my word on word building skills. You can make much bigger scores by running a word right alongside of another word already played than you can by branching off perpendicular to that word and using up valuable open space on the board. While researching this I discovered that there is a NSA Scrabble club in town. Going to a meeting might be something nice to do and if they have training sessions there I might gain some added skills that would be of good use. Right now my rating is dropping and I’m at a loss as to how to bring it back up. Sandi’s is on the rise and she has achieved intermediate level according to Pogo.com.

That's it on the personal news front. I hope you all have a good week and don’t expire in the horrid heat we’ve been experiencing down here in south Texas. If you’ve gotten any rain of late please send it my way. Cheers!

Eating to Live

2009-08-03T09:20:00.005-05:00

“Eat to Live” that’s what my Mom brought me up to do. If you are asking yourself what that is, it’s making making healthy food choices when you eat. Have I always done this? No!

During the course of my marriage my ex taught me how to “live to eat.” The results of that was that I, who had NEVER needed to diet (In fact, at 5’8”and 117 lbs., I needed to put on weight.), gained so many pounds that before my marriage ended I’d gotten up to 197. It didn’t help that I was going into menopause at the time we got married or that I had a job that kept me up all night and asleep all day. My ex was a sedentary couch potato who was a better, if not healthier, cook than I was. He eventually developed Type II Diabetes, although not while we were together. I consider myself lucky to have avoided that dreaded disease.

Eating healthy doesn’t mean you have to diet. It doesn’t mean you have to avoid your favorite foods either. It does mean you should make the effort to eat them in moderation and as often as possible make healthier choices if your favorites aren’t good for you. If you don’t believe me on the healthy choices thing just ask Sandi. That post, her last post in December of 2008, is about how her making one bad choice almost landed her in the hospital. Making healthy choices doesn’t have to be hard. It does mean you need to know what healthy choices are, exhibit a little self control from time to time (This gets easier with practice!), and provide yourself with options at the dinner table so you don’t suffer feelings of deprivation.

I do my choosing by portion control, picking low sodium foods, and trying to avoid fat. I’m not perfect at this by any stretch of the imagination. Breads and crackers are my downfall. Get a package of cinnamon graham crackers around me and watch the pounds pile on. But I try my best not to keep the things I know will cause a weight gain in my pantry. And yes, that includes cinnamon grahams.

I wean myself off of bad choices if I learn I’m making them. I did this with milk in my marriage. He wanted whole milk. I discovered you could bake with 2% milk so I suggested this. We agreed it would be better and the change in fat wasn’t significant taste wise, so after 3 or 4 weeks of drinking that we were adapted to a lower fat milk. Then I suggested low fat or 1% because I needed the extra calcium in my diet and it was a better choice. For some reason when you reduce fat in milk the amount of calcium you get is increased. He agreed again so it was another step down. Then a few months later we went down to skim milk. This worked really well till his sister came for a visit. When she called our skim milk “chalk water” he immediately wanted to go back up to a higher fat content version. We did for a while and then went back down again. LOL You can probably guess from all of the above that eating healthy was a constant battle during our marriage. He was doing most of the cooking and would always be adding a little extra this or that into the food to “make it taste better.” As soon as our marriage ended the weight started dropping off and I went down to 145, a healthy weight for me.

I’m 155 pounds these days and I know I could easily drop the extra 10 pounds if I would exercise regularly. I still retain some of that couch potato habit I gained during my marriage, although it’s actually more of a desk chair habit as I spend most of my time at the computer these days. I’m working on the exercise thing. For some reason I find self control with exercise harder than with food. Oh well, resolutions are as easy to make as they are to break and all I have to do to get back on track is make a new one and I’ll work at it for a few days which is better than none at all. But enough about me.

The reason I started this now pretty long post (It wasn’t intended to be that, honest!), was to share a website that shows you how to make those healthy food choices by providing you with the info you need to make them. It’s Eat This, Not That! a page sponsored by Women’s Health magazine and also Men’s Health. They cover a full range of food choices and places where you might need to make them like eating out or the convenience store aisle. I’ve been following them through Yahoo, and then Google reader. I’ve found reason to share their articles with friends and family. You might find some of their info handy in the grocery store or at your favorite fast food restaurant. Their Best & Worst articles cover everything from gender health to sex. And there are lots of better choices for kids mentioned too. I hope you’ll make the time to check them out. Maybe it will help you make different choices the next time you hit the grocery store. Bon appétit!

This is More Dangerous Than it Looks

2009-07-24T08:08:00.003-05:00

Hyram has decided to return to his favorite roost, my desk top. There he is in all his glory, toy at hand. It’s fun to have him so close and affectionate. But this perch location has its drawbacks. See that tail sticking out to the left? It’s a mouse movement destroyer. Its also a really good broom. It has been known to knock the mouse entirely off the desk. Anything on the surface of the desk that gets in the way of that tail goes elsewhere. Notice the phone beside the corner of the monitor? He must have been on the desk last night while I was sleeping because this morning I had to crawl under the desk to retrieve the phone from behind the desk where his tail had knocked it. Sometimes I distress Hyram by insisting that he orient himself in the opposite direction. That usually saves my workspace from too much disturbance but it isn’t perfect. I guess in a perfect world I’d have a desk that had a shelf just for him and his tail could drape down from the height showing off all its glory. Sorry you can’t see the entire tail. It’s very brush like and really magnificent. As is my boy! Cheers!

An Ink Saving Font

2009-07-22T05:06:00.002-05:00

My favorite tech blogger on Yahoo is Christopher Null. Yesterday he wrote a post about saving ink with the font you use. You can read it here. The font suggested is Century Gothic. I changed my text message font to check it out. Usually I use Arial if I don’t want formal print but this one looks nice if a bit taller and lighter. Now I’m going to change the default font on my printer and screen to match. I’m also wondering if a font that uses less ink also uses fewer bites in the text file size? If it does wouldn’t that mean that it takes less time to transmit? Saving bandwidth and speedier transmissions of documents might be a nice extra. What font do you use?

A DIY Beauty Bath

2009-07-19T07:11:00.002-05:00

Back in the 70s I acquired a book about natural beauty treatments. This was the era of communes and going natural. They call it green and Do It Yourself (DIY) today. I wish I still had that book. It was useful and interesting to read. I didn’t put a lot of the natural methods into frequent use but I tried several of them at the time. The one I remember the best was for a beauty bath. I used for years and recently revived part of it.

It seems that back in the days of Cleopatra she liked to take beauty baths. Being rich she would indulge in a milk bath. She had the milk of asses poured into her sunken tub. I imagine it was the size of a small swimming pool or so the movies showed us. That may be the fancy of some film genius but most of us don’t have tubs that large. The book told me you could recreate this effect by pouring 1 or 2 cups (maybe 3) of powdered milk into your bath. I guess the more water you put in the more powdered milk you use. The milk is soothing and softens the skin. It doesn’t leave you smelling strange and I rather liked the results.

The other part of my remembered beauty bath included the use of salt. Sea Salt was recommended but you could use regular table salt if that was too pricey. So that’s what I would do. You pour a small pile of salt into the palm of your hand. Then you drip a few drops of water on to the dry pile to make it into a paste like consistency. You have to be careful here because too many drops of water and you’ve got salt water which won’t help with the next step. After you’ve dampened the salt, take a little of it and scrub your skin with it. This exfoliates the skin and does not hurt your ph balance. Warning though, if you have any open sores it will sting a bit. After scrubbing to your hearts content rinse and you’ve got inexpensive exfoliated skin that is much smoother.

I did these two things in the same bath. The results were skin that felt like velvet afterwards. I mentioned it to a guy once and upon stroking the skin along my arm he was impressed. The part I’ve revived for the time being is the salt portion. This is so inexpensive that almost anyone can do it. I even used it on my face and am pleased to say that this morning my facial skin feels smoother than it usually does after a nights sleep. So if you want to try this feel free. It doesn’t cost much for salt although powdered milk may seem a little dear. Considering the price of commercial bath exfoliating scrubs and softening soaks I think it’s worthy substitute. Hope you’ll let me know if you try it.

Playing around with Windows Live Writer

2009-07-10T12:32:00.003-05:00

This is my first experiment with Windows Live Writer and blogging. Terry of Paradise Discovered highly encourages, even dares (um…challenges?), his friends to use it. Since he’s a smart guy I figured it was worth a shot. I did have it on my system and just hadn’t gotten around to messing with it. Looks like he’s right. It does indeed have a lot of really cool controls. They remind me of MSWord controls. I’ll have to recommend it to my favorite writing friend Susan of Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good. She likes to use MSWord to compose stuff, even letters which makes for some interesting translations when your email browser doesn’t have a rich text option to view with.

Wow! Hit the return key and you get a double space. Hit it twice, like I just did, and you find yourself backing up a line or two. :-)

When I started up Windows Live Writer it gave me the option to add my blog to my Windows Life page, a thing I’d been ignoring as to date I’ve only really used Windows Life Messenger to talk to a couple of friends. Wish I could add all my friends to that one. Yeah, Windows is kind of self loving and doesn’t always play nice with other software but there are worse OS’s out there. I used to keep Yahoo Messenger up and running so I probably need to try to add that one in or get a few of my old contacts to switch or connect through whatever medium they have which might allow that. Looks like the world is getting smaller and smaller as we connect in new and exciting ways.

Darn double enter habit has got to go! LOL

I also added my Facebook page and my Stumble Upon page to the Windows Live Page. Now all it needs to make it perfect is to be able to add the games I play on Pogo there. Wouldn’t that be fun! Go to Windows Live and play Scrabble or Pinochle with my buddies?

So, Terry, if you’re reading this, Thanks for the good suggestion. Is there a way to make this product pop up every time I click on the new post button? Or do I have to remember to put this on my quick launch bar? I’ll play with the picture thing next I guess. Let’s see how this thing posts.

But before I go I’d like to ask Terry to check out 7Stacks and see if he can figure out how to make that little Widows desktop utility to work. I sure couldn’t because it didn’t have any help files. It seems to think it is intuitive, but if you’ve never used stacks like Macs or Windows 7 has then you just might be as clueless as I am about how to create them. Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers!

That Community Feeling

2009-07-10T07:15:00.005-05:00

I've been meaning to write this post for a few days now. Don't know why it's taken me so long. Maybe I needed to spend more time mulling over what I experienced.

Last Saturday, July 4th, I was scheduled as officiant for the Morning Prayer (MP). I like doing this because: 1) it's quiet and peaceful, 2) it's a great way to start your day, and 3) it allows me to spend private time in the sanctuary. Because we hold MP at 6:45 AM we don't usually have any visitors even though the service we read has room for giving thanks for them. Typically it's just whoever is officiating alone, reading through the service, and saying prayers for the sick and needy on our list of those in need. But, due to a mix up, last Saturday was different. I showed up a little late, oops! And there was someone already in the sanctuary.

Being a few minutes late isn't a huge deal because MP is almost always done by just the Lay Eucharistic Minister (LEM). Many years ago the decision was made to do it early to avoid conflict with work schedules and rush hour traffic. So we do our praying for the congregation alone and faithfully, and without the need to robe up and make it a full fledged service.

The person already in there was another LEM, Ron, who, like myself, is also a verger. He told me he'd promised to take someone's place. I'm pretty sure it was my day so maybe he was given the wrong date somehow because I know he isn't casual about such things. Oh well, the intent was met no matter the date.

When I saw Ron there I was surprised, of course, but also rather pleased. Ron and I've co-officiated at Healing Eucharists (HE) before and found we work well together. Not wanting to disturb the prayer he might already be saying I quietly walked around and sat down next to him. We decided to share the service and he handed me a Book of Common Prayer (BoCP) open to the point he was at.

We sat there together like old friends, taking turns on the different parts of the service. I read a scripture and he read another. We did the Psalm together alternating by whole verse. We did the same with the other responsive parts. It was a nice and comfortable way to practice something I'm occasionally required to do for the congregation when the priest isn't available to perform the HE. This was much better. It had that warm friendly feel. That's what church community is, right? Friends getting together to worship? And that's a change I've noticed in the services I officiate at since I entered verger training. They are more comfortable. They feel friendlier, I'm more relaxed, I feel comfortable with modifying things a bit if the spirit moves me, and I've gotten compliments on the results. I guess I'm starting to fit the role of LEM and Verger better. And I really like it.

When I found my faith it was during the 80's movement and personal relationships with Jesus were all the rage. The church I became a believer in was nondenominational charismatic and I became quite use to the feeling of the Holy Spirit's presence during the service and in my life. Services and sermons were more casual and heart felt. While there was a structure, there was nothing very ritualized about them. That's been a real problem for me since I returned to my Episcopal roots. I don't find the spirit in the high toned ritualized words that we say every Sunday. My emotions used to be moved at every service. Not here in the Episcopal ritual. If I didn't know God meant me to be at this specific church I'd probably change because that's what I did when the bible got boring, I changed versions to read it in one that was different and thus more interesting. But I won't change churches now. I've been learning about service at Church of Reconciliation Episcopal and growing into the understanding of what it means to be part of a community.

It's become a source of comfort to realize that I am part of a community. Sitting there beside Ron I felt like I'd come home! And it was VERY spiritual! A few years ago our church viewed some videos on Everyday Spirituality. We learned about spirituality of place, activity, and ritual! That's what I found in that MP service. I wish I could feel it everyday of my life. I wish I could have it at every service.

We've started to make a lot of changes at Reconciliation. They are often small but none of them are without meaning. Because life often presents itself as change I think this has made me more interested in our worship services. The ritual and the dance of its participants has changed. That makes it interesting and a new source of study. Instead of coming to the table we "set the table" during the service. That's much more involved and involving. Actions seem to have more meaning and thus more significance. If this is finding the sacred in the ordinary, a phrase given to me by JS, then I've been doing a mental disconnect because I never thought of Sunday services as ordinary till they became routine.

These days when I sit in church I sit with a community, a community of singers a.k.a the choir. Our practice nights are my social night. Sunday morning breakfast is also a time for community. I eat at Brown Hall (fellowship hall) and often have others to spend time with sharing our interests, weeks activities, and getting to know them better. It's a change in me that keeps me there, no longer going early to pre-service warm up to get organized but instead, chatting till I'm rushing to get to the warm up on time. I know there are things missing from my community interactions. Saturday's experience showed me that. But they will happen in time as I heal, grow into fullness of understanding and connectedness, and am ready to present myself and my world to the body in joy, knowing that they will be one with me in our shared love of what we've built.

A Clean Sweep

2009-07-07T06:34:00.005-05:00

Rain was freshening the air and relieving the summer heat somewhat when I awoke. These are my favorite types of days. Everything gets renewed, including my energy and mood. It felt like a busy day before I'd even left the security of the covers. So I thought I'd get a couple of necessary paperwork things done. Instead of heading to the desk for work I found myself involved in a flow of productivity that included getting creative with my wardrobe, making the bed (sort of), and then moving on to other cleaning type activities. Am I procrastinating? Probably, as I'm loathe to tackle those two paperwork items. On the other hand I'm getting a lot accomplished in the house and personal care area. :-)

The morning medicine routine has an extra pill which I should have been taking but hadn't in a while. Resolving to take it as religiously as possible (minimum goal is 60% for effectiveness) I dug into the nearly outdated package and took my Fosamax for the week. That was after I piled everything that needed washing in a heap on the bedroom floor and cleared everything movable off the desk surface. Those items too are now sitting on the floor as I impatiently wait for the 30 minutes to pass so that I can once again consume things other than water (required for Fosamax).

Ah! The timer just buzzed! Cuppa chai here I come. :-) A timer on the wrist watch is one of the most useful features I've ever encountered. Watches are often over burdened with cool and overpriced features these days. I've avoided those with data banks and haven't been able to afford one with more than three alarms. Yes I use all three. My watch also has a compass, hydration reminder, calendar/event reminder, and a lovely 10 year battery. The stopwatch is a waste of good digital space if you aren't an athlete. I SO wish the companies would get smart and remove it from most of them. The alarms I use to get me up and moving out to the various places I need to be: work, morning prayer, and doctor appointments. The timer tells me when I can eat again, resume watching something from Megavideo (when the 72 minute screen pops up), and when I should take another stay focused pill. I wear a Timex Expedition. The only things I'd like it to have that it doesn't are more alarms and a solar battery.

So back to clean sweeping. Yesterday I got two of the four shelves in my linen closet cleaned. Yes I did clean sweeps there too. Took everything off, wiped the surface with cleaner and cleaned the containers of clutter. Got rid of quite a lot of that in the process, clutter that is. Dust begone! I'm hoping to avoid a visit from the bug man that every apartment complex has on call. The place smells fresher now and I can actually find all the things in my closet once again. At some point I'm going to have to go by a dollar store and get some more containers to continue this ordering of my life but that's okay. An ordered life is friendly and flows smoothly. You know where things are and can happily put them back without struggle. Today I'll get the laundry done (and up off the floor). I'll strip and make the bed in the process. What better time to do sheets? And I'll tackle those piles of paper on the floor beside my desk. Then I think I've got a fridge that is overdue for a cleaning and a dining table to clear. Oh, speaking of the fridge, in the midst of cleaning the linen closet I somehow managed to clean the top of it too. My cleaning moves from small task to small task as they catch my attention. I get the goal accomplished. It just doesn't follow a specific task list order.

May your day be as productive as mine is turning out to be! Peace!

It's a Wonderful Life (100 Ways)

2009-06-13T15:44:00.014-05:00

Taking the cue from my buddies San and Paschal, I'm presenting the really, really long meme that seems to be starting among my contingent of blogging buddies. San has declared this post long enough to see us through her vacation so that we won't miss her. Paschal has compared it to an overly long commencement speech by a past presidential wonder. I'm gonna tell you that when I copied and pasted all the bits into a word document, to delete the comments prior to inserting my own, it ran for 3 pages. That was without the comments. So yeah, this is a really long post. It's supposed to reflect your life and some of the many possible things you might have done in it. My life is no where near as exciting or colorful as San's or Paschal's but it is a life I've had some good moments in. So here we go!

Directions: copy and paste the 100 items into your blog and bold the ones you've done. Then add in any pertinent comments you care to to make it more interesting than a long list of events. Throw in pictures if you've got them and voila! It's a Wonderful Life! (100 ways)

1. Started my own blog - I did this about 3 years ago by accident. I was trying to comment on a friend's blog, Susan Palwick, and wanted to register so she would know who I was. I didn't realize that you didn't need to make a blog to register. Silly me for not paying attention. And suddenly there I was with a blog, an empty one, in cyberspace. Oops! Couldn't let it stay that way and there you are.
2. Slept under the stars - On the ocean thanks to parents who bought a sail boat and in the San Juan Wilderness when they took me backpacking at age 16.
3. Played in a band - If family music nights count then yes but I don't actually think of the trio of my Dad, my sister, and me making music in our living room for our own enjoyment as a band experience. It did teach me how to keep rhythm and time with other players.
4. Visited Hawaii - Someday! And I want to swim under a water fall and watch a whale while I'm there.
5. Watched a meteor shower - Well we tried as kids in our back yard, again with the parents, but I never could catch them in my vision. Did see a meteor crater once on vacation. It was huge.
6. Given more than I can afford to charity - Not really, although when I was a newbie Christian I would tithe according to the directions of the Holy Spirit. I'm not kidding. I'd start to write what I thought was good and then wait for a moment. If the spirit suggested a bit more I'd do it even if it made me a tad nervous about the budget. My philosophy for this is, "the Lord loveth a cheerful giver" so whatever the spirit and I came up with I managed to feel proud of.

7. Been to Disneyland/world - When I was there in the summer of '74 the Epcot Center had just been started. The dome was up but only half covered so it looked a lot like an incomplete golf ball from where I stood. I was on my one day of liberty from basic training (a.k.a. boot camp) at Orlando, FL and my friends and I had bunches of fun on the rides. Our favorite was the Haunted Mansion with ghosts that seemed to dance in the air as we rode through the room on a fantastic cart.
8. Climbed a mountain - well not with ropes and spikes but hiking through the San Juan Wilderness of Colorado as a teenager took us up some pretty good heights so maybe.
9. Held a praying mantis - I'm with San on this one, why would I want to hold a bug? They are pretty but I just don't like the ticklish feel of their feet on my hands.
10. Sung a solo - Sure! Lots of times in the shower. Actually I guess you could call my college drama department tryout for the musical a solo. I sang Hut Sut Ralson on the Rillerah. :-) Which you can hear in an from an earlier post, here.
11. Bungee jumped - No! Not only no but H_ _ l no! But! My nephew has and from the 3rd highest cliff in the world. Whoa!
12. Visited Paris - No but I want to! I want to see it by night. Even modern Paris with all the cars racing down the roads and the noise has to be a beautiful city.
13. Watched lightning at sea - I might have but I don't actually remember any lightening. Yes, I've been to sea, but my dad who was the captain of our sailboat worked really hard to avoid any storms and that would seem to take care of the lightening wouldn't it.
14. Taught myself an art from scratch - Not really taught myself. I've always been one who liked the classroom instruction and the chance to ask questions that came along with it.
15. Adopted a child - Nope, not even a cabbage patch kid.
16. Had food poisoning - This is my idea of what stomach flu has to be. And there were definitely times in the Navy when I was so sick they had to give me a shot to get me to stop throwing up. Since at least one of those episodes came after a picnic where I had my first taste of mesquite barbecue I think this has to be a Yes!
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty - That sounds so romantic but I'd want to get to the town first and that's on my dream vacation list.
18. Grown my own vegetables - We grew some when I was a kid, I distinctly remember squash. And my grandmother had a garden where we grew all kinds of good things to eat.
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France - Throwing myself straight into the fantasy of The Da Vinci Code, I'm all there! How wonderful and mysterious!
20. Slept on an overnight train - Yet another addition to the dream vacation list.
21. Had a pillow fight - Can you tell me of a girl's slumber party that didn't include a pillow fight?

22. Hitchhiked - The whole family did! We got off the narrow gauge railroad at Silverton and were walking up the road when along came this guy in a jeep. He offered us a ride and we took it. Sure saved a lot of tired feet that day!
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill - Now there's all kinds of ill besides physical, but I've taken a day off when I was just too sad to be there. That was the evening of 9/11. Those news videos did it to me. I just couldn't feel good and went home.
24. Built a snow fort - I've never even seen enough snow to need a snow fort. And I've only ever gotten to make one snow ball. That was the winter I was in Millington, TN. It snowed about 2 inches worth. First and only time I ever got to play with snow.
25. Held a lamb - Not held but petted at the children's zoo. And a friend had a Lamb Chop puppet that I got to play with.
26. Gone skinny dipping - In the ocean, in a friend's pool, and in a hot tub.
27. Run in a Marathon - Nah, my sister is the family's champion runner. She runs in half marathons lots of different places around the states.
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice - Italy is also on the dream vacation list (dvl) and Venice surely has to be one of the places to go see.
29. Seen a total eclipse - Maybe not total but a fair percent of it. This would have been a long time back when I still lived in Corpus and the guy who worked the microfiche machine showed me how to use several layers of microfilm to create a safe media to look at the sun through. I'm pretty sure the most of the sun got covered up but I don't remember the date. I've seen a lunar eclipses too.

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset - Yes, both, and from land and sea. Just haven't done it lately and I guess I need to make time to do that.
31. Hit a home run - Hah! I'm lucky if the ball doesn't hit Me!
32. Been on a cruise - If by cruise you mean on your family's sailboat through the Bahamas, YES! As much as I love good food, dancing, and companionship, nothing beats going on your own boat.
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person - another addition to the dvl and I want to see if from the Canadian side please.
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors - No, but I'd love to have seen where my granddad grew was born and grew up. It's always been a wonder to me why no one in my family but me seems interested in our past much.
35. Seen an Amish community - not in person. I did see that movie with Harrison Ford in it, The Witness.
36. Taught myself a new language - Sure, I taught myself just enough basic to be able to set up a formula in it to create production statistics. We were looking for the line of best fit.
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied - this is an ongoing fantasy. Win the lottery, marry wealth, this is one where I know I'm not that different.
38. Seen the leaning tower of Pisa - No, never seen this one.
39. Gone rock climbing - this one is pretty close to mountain climbing. Well, yes, I've done this once. It wasn't terribly difficult because there was a path up the rock. It's called the Enchanted Rock and just about anyone wearing shoes with a good grip can walk up it. The trick is getting down safely.
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David - I will, by golly! Someday I will!
41. Sung karaoke - Exactly once! And it was after spending a couple of evenings at the club with my ex and a girlfriend getting all hyped by the fun atmosphere. Joann and I went up and sung a number together. I don't remember what we sang but this would have been in the 90's so something popular then no doubt.
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt - DVL! DVL! But I've seen plenty of videos of it happening!
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant - Actually this was the other way around. I was bought lunch by a stranger. It was really nice of her. We were sitting through the wait for jury duty together.
44. Visited Africa - photographic safari's are right at the top of the dream vacation list but I've been there by webcam at Pete's Pond. See link on the right hand side bar.
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight - Yes and with 3 friends bounding along with tons of energy it wasn't as romantic as you might think. But I do remember the moonlight on the waves when I was a child and my mom, sister, and I spent the night at a cabana at Padre Island.
46. Been transported in an ambulance - For a sprained ankle which happened when I fell down some steps at the doctor's
47. Had my portrait painted - Not painted but drawn, certainly. When I attended college after the Navy one way of adding to the cash flow was modeling for the art classes. I even bought a one of the sketches from the college art show.
48. Gone deep sea fishing - Yes! My father-in-law took us on a fishing boat. I didn't catch anything. Heck, almost no one did that trip. But I learned how to handle sea sickness with medication.
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person - no and I guess this goes on that dvl too.
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris - another one for the dvl. Are there restaurants up there? I like dining with a view.
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling - Sort of. Was taking a scuba class, got the gear, and then got claustrophobic when I tried to be under water. Didn't finish the class.
52. Kissed in the rain - Yes!
53. Played in the mud - Dad built my sister and me a sandbox so we had tons of mud to play with and got really good at making mud pies.
54. Gone to a drive-in theater - This was where we saw most of the movies as a family when I was little. I can still remember seeing Cinderella dance on the screen. There was a playground at the base of the screen next to the concession stand so sis and I always went there to play on the slide that was shaped like an elephant and the seesaw and swings. It was the Wes-Mer Drive-In Theater and sat right between Mercedes and Weslaco on Hwy 83 in Texas. I don't know if it's there any more.
55. Been in a movie - Sure! My dad used to make movies of us all the time. What!? You mean with actors and such? Heck, we were natural hams. LOL
56. Visited the Great Wall of China - Dvl again!
57. Started a business - The Cat Spy Company. My sis and I were in this venture together. Our mission was to discover where Sammy, our family cat, went on his outdoor forays. We weren't very good spies so I guess it's a good thing I never tried to join the CIA or any of those other agencies. ;-)
58. Taken a martial arts class - Took a several lesson self defense class with a friend when I lived in Corpus Christi. The man who taught the class taught us martial arts methods of defense. You should have seen how embarrassed my friend got when he grabbed her foot and showed her exactly where she should kick her opponent by placing it in that spot on his own anatomy.
59. Visited Russia - Dvl again! I'd love to see the cathedrals at and palaces in Moscow.
60. Served at a soup kitchen - This is a real blessing to the folks who do it and surely those who receive their efforts. Maybe someday.
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies - Yes and eaten plenty of them too. Wasn't much of a sales girl but the neighborhood was always pretty decent towards us.
62. Gone whale watching - See #5. Dvl!
63. Got flowers for no reason - Yes, my ex had his romantic moments. Got teddy bears more often though.
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma - Yes and I was so proud when I did. When I was in my 2o's I weighed too little to be able to give blood, but in my 30's a shoulder injury and it's treatment, which included muscle relaxers, generated a weight gain which never completely disappeared and I was about 127 pounds when the bank I worked at held a blood drive.
65. Gone sky diving - Never! Never! Never!
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp - No but I think I'd cry if I did. Because I have a German heritage I do want to visit Germany someday but I've got real concerns about seeing places where so much pain and horror occurred.
67. Bounced a check - Yes, repeatedly, and got all the bounced check fees back too. See when I worked at the bank I had reason to take a signer, my ex roommate, off my account. To do this you have to close your account and open a new one. The bank didn't switch my direct deposit over and the incoming paychecks kept reopening my old account instead of the filling the new one. It took them a lot of paperwork, and several weeks to get that straightened out. One clerk got so frustrated that she yelled at me for the inconvenience and loss of all those fees.
68. Flown in a helicopter - Did I tell you I want to explore the world? Well this is one of those things that I see as part of that exploration.
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy up until my late 20s - Not sure how far into childhood you have to be to qualify for this but I've still got the huge Teddy Bear I got when I was a teenager in high school. I bought it for myself with my saved allowance and named the bear Socorro because I was a lonely teen at the time. So make that into my late 50's.
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial - Visiting DC, all the monuments, the White House, and the Smithsonian is definitely on the DVL.
71. Eaten caviar - Yes and it was salty. That's all that I can say about it as a food. But since it is fish roe and I've fished with salmon eggs I think it must be an acquired taste if you're not a fish yourself. It definitely makes good bait.
72. Pieced a quilt - A church friend was teaching me how when I lived in Corpus. I never got far enough to actually get a lot of squares done. But I know the concept.
73. Stood in Times Square - NY City is definitely on the DVL!
74. Toured the Everglades - No but I think my parents may have. They used to sail around Florida to get to the Bahamas every year and one time they even sailed the inter coastal waterways and canals.
75. Been fired from a job - I guess that even though I see a clear distinction between being fired and being laid off they are ultimately the same thing. And while I've never been fired for wrong doing, I have been laid off once or twice.
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London - Right up there along with seeing a Shakespearian play in London and spending the night in a castle. DVL baby!
77. Broken a bone - I can truly sympathize with San on her broken toe. I've broken one too. It was when I was in the Navy. Slammed the toe into the door on the way out of my petty officer's office in a hurry. I've also broken the tibia, fibula, and the ankle. Those last 3 happened all at the same time in 2004. Was headed off to the library, stepped off the apartment steps and the ground wasn't where I expected it to be. Foot stuck between the ground and the step. I fell forward and rolled 360 at the same time violently twisting my lower right leg. I heard and felt it snap mid air. God was looking after me that day! Clean break, neighbor saw it happen, had phone w/ me to call for help, and a DD-214 that got me free medical care.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle - When I was stationed in Millington, TN one of my friends was a guy who used to be a member of the Hells Angels in CA. He and his girlfriend took me on rides lots of times. I like bikes to ride on, just don't want to have to drive one.
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person - Once again this one is on the DVL. I'd like to raft down the river in it.
80. Published a book - No, although my co workers have accused me of it. Seems I can't write just a note. I have to write a paragraph, chapter, or short story.
81. Visited the Vatican - Online! You can actually tour their works of art and see many of the wonders the Vatican holds. As for real live visit, DVL!

82. Bought a brand new car - Very first car! Volkwagon Rabbit the year after they came out.
83. Walked in Jerusalem - Again to the DVL! But I've done the modern day version of a pilgrimage by walking my church's labyrinth. Try one if you can find one near you. It's a great way to pray.
84. Had my picture in the newspaper - This was on TV instead of the newspaper. I was taking dance lessons and the group that I was with performed on a public stage for a festival that was going on in town. So of course they filmed us all. We did what is called formation dancing and it was ballroom.
85. Read the entire Bible - Took me 3 years. See, I have a really short attention span and the bible, while interesting, can have some troublesome spots. I started reading it in King James because I like the poetry of that language. New Testament went just fine but when I hit Exodus there came a snag. About half way through you start hearing about all the instructions from God about how to build the temple and how the people were to live. Well that's interesting but in the King James version you get it 3 times. God tells Moses, Moses tells Israel, and then they do it. And in King James they use the exact same words for each of those parts. That got boring pretty quickly. So I changed versions of the bible to finish that book. And from then on when ever I hit a snag like long lists of names or the story just wasn't written by a dynamic writer, I'd change versions again. Before I was done I had 5 different versions of The Word.
86. Visited the White House - See #70 for addition of this to the DVL.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating - Caught a fish when I was a kid and we were on vacation. Dad had gotten me my first rod and reel and my mom and grandmother taught me how to scale it, and then fillet it. I think I actually ate it. It was a small trout. And I caught it with a salmon egg as bait. If I remember correctly this was on the Guadalupe at the Casa Bonita Lodges which also had a great Tarzan rope to swing from into the water. I also learned how to row a boat that summer.
88. Had chickenpox - Yes! At Christmas! So did my sister! And I got measles when I was attending San Marcos Academy for high school. We had a school wide epidemic of that one year. I didn't even feel sick when they stuck me in the infirmary.
89. Saved someone’s life - well if the gift of blood counts then perhaps. I'll never know what happened to that pint of blood I gave.
90. Sat on a jury - No, never got to do this. While I'd love to do my civic duty I think I'd actually be a bad choice for a jury.

91. Met someone famous - Before he was famous actually. I went to college with this guy! That's Christopher Rich! He's probably best known for playing the ex on Reba. Everyone who went to school with him is proud to be able to claim they knew him when. And we all knew he was going places. He had presence when he wasn't even trying! I liked him in The Charmings. Wish that series had lasted as long as Reba has.
92. Joined a book club - The mail kind where you have to send in cards. Actually I've belonged to several of these and one for many years.
93. Lost a loved one - Lost all four of my grandparents, two aunts and one uncle, and my best friend. Thank goodness my sister and parents are still living.
94. Had a baby - No, wanted children but never got the chance to have any. When I found out I could no longer have children because I was going through the change of life I took my diversity day. I felt really down and told my boss that womanhood was as much a culture as anything else.
95. Seen the Alamo in person - Well yes! Both the building and the movie. That's almost funny. Folk who live in a place don't visit the tourist spots as often as the visitors do and I live in San Antonio.
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake - No but I swam in a really salty pond once. It had formed after a hurricane hit the coast and was so salty that you couldn't sink. Really! Walk in and by the time the water hit your hips you were floating. It stung like the dickens too because of all the salt. God help you if you'd shaved your legs that day.
97. Been involved in a law suit - Small Claims Court, I was in college and my roommate drank her share of the bills away. My dad made me sue. Good thing I guess cause it forced her to tell her parents and she went on a no drinking program.
98. Owned a cell phone - Yes and if I can bring myself to give up my land line it will be my only phone.
99. Been stung by a bee - This was a wasp and not a bee. And it stung me twice. It had flown under my shirt on a hot summer day and in trying to get it out I think I killed it but it had done it's damage by that time anyway. Ouch!
100. Ridden an elephant - Yes at the San Diego Zoo. I was visiting friends in CA and we went there and their two boys and I wanted to get on and so we waited to do this. It was awesome!

The Cat was the Hat

2009-06-08T10:13:00.006-05:00

When I get up and feed the cats Hyram likes to eat his straight through and then snack on anything he can steal from Hooboo's bowl. Hooboo likes to eat a bit, go outside, then come back in and finish whatever I've managed to save from Hyram.

Shortly after I let Hooboo out today I heard this cat calling almost non stop. I didn't think it was Hooboo but I went to the patio door to check. It didn't stop and I didn't see Hooboo so I went outside to see if I could figure out where it came from, wondering if my cat was begging at another door. The cry seemed to come from another building and didn't sound frantic, just "please let me in." Then I heard this rustling off to my right. I looked over to see what it was and was astounded. My cat is resourceful with a capital "R".

Living in an apartment complex there aren't that many climbable trees. And cats like to get high up. So Hooboo usually sits on the porch wall. There's a hedge type bush off to the right and another to the left of my patio. The left one is really close (next to the stairs) and I've seen plenty of trash in it but never a cat. I barely notice the one on the right. It's more of an a/c screen. But today Hooboo was in it. Yep, he'd gone up inside the limbs and made his way to the top. That's what I'd heard. My cat pushing his way through dense hedge leaves to gain a new vantage point. It was really funny! All you saw was his head and a little of his neck. Green square bush with orange cat head on top. LOL

I ran to get the camera but by the time I'd gotten back Hooboo had seen what he wanted to see and climbed down to go find the other cat. Darn! So sorry that I can't give you the picture but I hope your imaginations serve. Aren't cats amazing?

Delightedly Happy Update

2009-06-04T10:11:00.004-05:00

Yay! Pearson called and I've got 2 weeks of work starting the 15th of June. I've scored this type of test before and apparently they like that. Doing the "happy dance"!

A Word That Amazed

2009-06-04T07:41:00.007-05:00

Still reading the A's in the dictionary, not going very fast either, and yesterday I read abamp which said: an abampere. That was it. No explanations or roots, no nothing other than that it was a noun. But the next word was abampere. Ahah! It said: A centimeter-gram-second (Okay, so which is it?) electromagnetic unit of current, equal to the current that produces two dynes per centimeter of length on each (each?) of two infinitely (infinite? as in sideways 8 infinite?) long straight parallel wires one centimeter apart. It is equal to 10 amperes. [AB- (absolute) + AMPERE]

Whoa! Now I'm not a total electronic idiot. I took Basic Electronics & Electricity (BE&E) along with a host of other electronics driven courses when I was in "A" school in the Navy. At one point they talked about holes moving and not electrons. It was an engineer's argument, not an electricians, and I didn't even have a clue as to how to interpret the, no doubt significant, differences between which item moved in order to create current. I'm wondering now if I missed out on a great joke. But the level of measuring and precision in this floors me. I have a very general understanding of what an electromagnetic field is. You wind a bunch of wire in a coil shape, turn on the juice, and voila, electromagnet. Make it strong enough, by putting the coil around a core of magnetizable metal, and you can pick up car engines and other heavy things. Wikipedia link here. I could be missing all kinds of things in that definition. Is a wire in a coil, which to me means curved, straight or not? Why declare them of infinite length if you are going to define the measurement in a specific length of it? I guess this is one of those cases where I know just enough to be amazed and not enough to have a real understanding of how this works and why it is used. If there are any engineers out there who want to educate me on this I'd be glad to read anything you care to share in a comment.

Now abampere has too many letters to be very useful in Scrabble, but not abamp. :-) Or ampere.

Progress on the apartment is continuing apace. I've gotten some furniture rearranged to increase comfort and traffic flow in the living area. Three loads of laundry done last night. Lots of old magazines and catalogs are now trash. I'm planning on boxing up books I've read and also the winter clothes. And I'm going to get rid of the old 2 sizes to large clothes in the closet. I hope to never get that large again and could really use the closet space.

On the Internet TV side, I've watched Wolverine: Origins and most of Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I've also discovered ReGenesis and Mental. ReGenesis is 3 seasons old and like CSI only medical research instead of criminal. Kind of cool. Mental is brand new on Fox and only has 2 episodes out. Enjoy!

How I Spent My Morning

2009-06-01T11:36:00.004-05:00

Last week the Census office here in town downsized while they gear up for the next phase. That phase won't happen till possibly October. So they needed to get rid of a lot of people. We had done a fantastic job of doing the address canvasing. That's where they just go through neighborhoods and note down all the addresses so that we don't skip anyone. We did this in such a fantastic way that we are "victims of our own success." So the address canvassers all got laid off and so did a lot of the office clerks, me included. Friday was my last day. That's the bad news. I don't like bad news! So I'm going to try to maintain a positive outlook. This will be easier if I bring up the good points first.

Because I got laid off for "lack of work" I'm upgraded to "experienced" and eligible for recall, so when they open the other offices around town (probably in September) I should be among the first to get called back to work. This may take anywhere from 3 to 4 months, possibly more (God forbid). I'm also eligible for unemployment, or at least I hope so because I didn't work a whole lot last year. I'll have to go to the Texas Workforce Commission to see how that affects things. If I'm eligible for anything based on last years earnings it may be smaller but anything will help. I'm also able to rewrite the resume to include all the skills I gained from my office clerk position. I ended up pretty much in charge of personnel files, their creation and maintenance. That should help me find a job somewhere. Or perhaps do temp work since I'm a quick study.

So that's the good side of things. Other nice things that happened as a result of this is that I learned of several folks generous spirit. When I mentioned it at church one of my fellow verger trainees told me that if I needed food he and his wife had gift and reward cards at the local store that I could have. That was so sweet of Ron. I feel really blessed by the concern and friendship he exhibited in that offer. Sandi told me that my cats would never go hungry. :-) That was a relief and made me laugh. The office manager, my assistant manager, and my supervisor all gave me promises of references. So I can go into the job search with some really great folk that know and like me saying I'd make a great employee.

So now I have some time to spare. My goals are to find work, take care of me, and use the experiences I've had over the past 4 months to renew my own personal view and enrich my life. God gave me 4 months in an awesome office full of caring and wonderfully fun loving folk to help me grow. It would be a shame to waste that. I've got the phone numbers of several work friends. Some of them are in the same boat I'm in so we can be a support to each other. I was even able to hook one of them up with a fellow church member who needed someone with his unique skills for a possible job. That really lifted my spirits.

I've spent the morning doing productive things around the apartment. The cat box is cleaned. The trash has been taken out. I've started clearing off the desk and found several important documents in the various piles of mail I had stacked upon it's surface. I wrote a nice long email to my friend JS and we are talking about goals and routines. It's a good friend who can help you by being a goal buddy.

I'm also trying to start several small self enrichment projects. These are tentative but I'm hoping to make them fun and useful as well as spiritually renewing. Among the ideas I've had for these projects are: increase my vocabulary, spend more time communing with God, get outside at least once a day, and pick up my guitar again. There are others that will no doubt crop up as I talk about things. JS suggested exercise. My good friend Susan would suggest that too. She is a strong proponent of exercise as a way to manage depression. I figure if I get out for a little bit every day (probably early when the morning is still cool) I'll find myself walking and enjoying it. That's exercise although it isn't very strenuous.

So far this morning I been outside twice and read a little bit of the dictionary. Outside was gorgeous. There was a nice cool breeze, the birds were singing, and the trees are green. One of my neighbors drove past and we smiled at each other. What did I learn from the dictionary? Well, besides the fact that the letter "A" is in a lot of abbreviations and is a word in it's own right, it is also the first letter of aardvark, aardwolf, and abaca (I'm skipping names of people). I knew there were aardvarks. I didn't know there was an aardwolf. Apparently he eats termites and insect larvae. The abaca is a plant that is from the Philippines and the dictionary classifies it with hemp. So there you go, a new animal, a new plant, and a possibly useful word for scrabble if you have 3 A's.

Since I have more time I'll try to blog more regularly. I'll keep you posted on the job search and how I'm doing with the tightening of the purse strings. I'll also let you know how I'm going with the self enrichment projects. And if I find a job. Till the next post, "Have a good day!"

For Paschal

2009-05-16T15:55:00.003-05:00

My friend Paschal loves music! So much that he catalogs his memory by his experiencing different performances and listening to songs as he travels and explores the world on his own unique path.

This past week I was looking for something to watch to unwind at 10:00 PM. All the favorite shows were caught up on, including American Idol, so I watched an old episode of America's Got Talent. The two videos that follow are by the duo I think should have won the competition. They are awesome and take old classical styling to a new level by making it their own with modern beats and rhythms. So enthralled was I with these musicians that I did a first, I downloaded the album. I just couldn't wait to get this one.

Paschal, hoping you love this as much as I do and enjoy seeing a couple of guys who spent 7 years playing in the New York subways making it big. Here are: Nuttin' But Stringz!

This first video is part of their performance at Duke University and serves to introduce them a bit.

This second video is what convinced me to buy the album. Enjoy!

Butterflies are Free and So Are My Evenings!

2009-05-16T07:33:00.005-05:00

Thank you so much for your patience with me not posting for 3 weeks. That job took a lot out of me! Now, thankfully, it is finished. Yay! My evenings are my own again!

So are my lunches. Before I started the evening job I could take an hour lunch on days I didn't have evening obligations, like choir practice. When you take an hour lunch you have time to spare. You aren't left with that rushing to eat and then get back to work feeling. Instead you can sit and work a sudoku or read a chapter or two. You can go outside and enjoy the day. Or you can sit and chat with other people at the lunch table and make friends. That's so soothing!

My boys were glad to see me when I got home yesterday. Hyram told me that waiting till 10:00 PM for his supper was not good for his digestion. Hooboo said my absence took away from his night time socializing. They both got spoiled last night. Hyram got extra treats, Hooboo went in and out several times, and I kept the sliding glass door open so that they could sniff the night air and feel at peace. My reward for this was to wake and find both cats on either side of me in bed this morning.

So what are my plans with this new found freedom? Well, I intend to get the desk cleaned off and do some better house keeping than I've had time for. I also plan on treating myself to a morning matinee today. It's been a while since I've gone to a movie and there's the new Star Trek movie out. That's just today though.

Another thing I hope for is renewed time to play scrabble with Sandi online. This is one of my favorite evening activities. We chat up a storm when playing and are often so busy chatting that we made a rule that we wouldn't extend each other's time so that we would get playing done too. (g)

Reading is also a goal. Sandi sent me a bunch of books to read and a work friend lent me another so there are about 7 books on my bed waiting for me to either start or finish them. Do you read more than one book at a time? I seem to lately. Right now I'm working on "Hide and Seek" by James Patterson and "Birsinger" by Christopher Paolini. There's also the short story "A Tiny Feast" by Chris Adrian which I printed off of "The New Yorker" website. My friend Susan gave me the link to that one.

Other things I hope to do with the evenings that are mine again are: update my resume, catch up on Internet TV watching, make it to Wednesday evening choir practices again, and more frequent blogging. Somewhere in there I need to finish my taxes. I was so rushed this tax season that I just filed for an extension and now I have time to look for a couple of documents. Plus I've got some pictures I want to share with you, but that will be another post. Enjoy the puzzle!

A Job and a Half

2009-04-27T22:08:00.003-05:00

Life is exhausting these days. Every workday I get up, drive across town to my Census job, put in 8 hours there, race across town to my second job (scoring tests at Pearson), put in 4 hours there, and then I hurry myself home (before I collapse) and unwind for about one hour before going to bed. This schedule has made me so tired that I spent 12 hours in bed on Saturday night.

Don't get me wrong, I like what I'm doing at Pearson. I'm just not as young as I was the last time I worked a string of 12 hour shifts. But scoring tests is fun and I feel like I might be making a difference in a child's education. The pay isn't bad either. It's temporary work. This project is till mid May, so about 4 weeks.

When I originally agreed to take a night shift at Pearson I was told 2 weeks. That changed on the first day of training. For a while I thought about only doing the 2 weeks I'd agreed to, we have that option, but then I heard from HR at the Census job that we may be down sizing the office where I work in a month. So when I told Sandi not to let me talk myself out of the 4 weeks of extra pay, I guess God was listening in. Four weeks working 12 hours sounds pretty good right now. It also means that I'll have possible day projects to fall back on if the Census job lays me off for a bit.

Because all my weekday evenings are filled I've missed 1 choir practice and will miss several more. That bums me out because I like having something social and vocal to do once a week. The choir director just added in several new pieces to our notebooks. I don't know when they are going to be performed and we move through them really quick. Hope I have several weeks to practice on them but probably not.

Sunday I did the bare minimum at church. Usually I go early to see if I'm needed for anything at the early service, have breakfast in the fellowship hall, make choir practice prior to service, and then church and home, after a short stop in to coffee hour. This time I cut the early service out. I've also asked for a sub for this Wednesday night when I'm on the schedule to be Lay Minister at the Healing Eucharist. No can do when income calls. I wish it were the other way around as I get much more from church, but I really think God has put this job in my life for a reason, so maybe it's time to learn a bit of time management.

When my friend, JS, sent me a blank time schedule out of some book she was reading it had something called "sharpening the saw" on it. She explained that was for rest or training. What ever it took to get you back on track and working better than the long hours had dragged you down to. Sunday could have been such a day and to a certain extent it was, but not as much as I wanted it to be. When I entered the sanctuary for choir practice I looked out the back windows. There were two guys walking around the labyrinth towards the gardens. That was when I noticed that they were in full bloom. Suddenly I no longer wanted to be inside. Instead I yearned to be outside getting down close and personal with those flowers. Sigh! I elected to be responsible and stayed inside for choir. Then I went home to call Mom and do the house keeping chores. What a loss! I won't have time to go back there till this weekend. I'm going to have to remember to pack my camera in whatever I use to haul a journal and purse around in because I definitely want to capture those blossoms. Last year I took some pics of the garden at the back of the church. I think it has expanded and someone has planted different flowers this year. If I'm supposed to learn something from all this more than busy time, maybe one of the things I need to learn is how to take those moments when they happen and also keep a fast and furious pace when necessary. That makes me look forward with joy and also the feeling of being challenged. All prayers gratefully accepted.

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

3rd Sandi Update

2009-04-20T06:41:00.002-05:00

Sandi went home this weekend. She was supposed to spend the time resting and had her family arrive to give her comfort and support on Sunday. If I know Sandi, she over estimated the amount of energy she was going to have...which might explain why she hasn't put up a post about being gone for so long. Her doctor told her to rest for 3 weeks, no gardening. You gotta know that's gonna be hard for her to follow. I'm working two jobs this week and the next so I'm going to be hard pressed to read blogs much less write a post. But if I don't hear from her shortly I'm going to call between jobs or on a break and find out how things are going.

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Sandi Update #2

2009-04-13T19:22:00.004-05:00

Don't get me wrong, I'll never wish anyone ill! Certainly not a hospital stay! But Sandi ending up in the hospital has me calling her every day and I feel so good about the way our friendship is growing through this that I've labeled it a blessing! And I've missed our internet chatter so I'm doubly glad for the reason to call and talk.

I just got off the phone with her. Her doctor wants to keep her till the end of the week. It seems that when she walked in to the ER under her own power she was in critical condition from that infection and they didn't know how she was able to stand, much less walk. So now that the infection is healing they want to hold onto her till her white blood count, and I presume energy, returns to a more normal state. When she told me what her doctor had said I told her she had a new nickname, "Tankette!" She laughed!

The book I sent her, "The Whole Truth" by Baldacci, will hopefully keep her a bit busy, but if she reads as fast as I do when I'm bored and in bed the whole day probably not. Feel free to leave messages and comments if you know her or even think you might want to. I'll deliver them. Or you can leave one on her blog, Holding Patterns. There's a link to it on my left sidebar. She said to tell you all how much she appreciates the prayers and messages of care she's received so far.

Hope everyone had a good holy week! Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Puzzle Share

2009-04-10T06:54:00.002-05:00

Today's puzzle made me think of David's pictures over at Authorblog. I loved the color and the way the glass stems aligned up to make an interesting pattern. Hope you have fun with this one. Enjoy!

Sandi Update

2009-04-09T17:37:00.002-05:00

Just got off the phone with Sandi! She's doing fine and ate her first meal since Monday. The surgery went much better than even the doctors expected. They didn't have to cut anything much and successfully inserted a tube which is draining the infection. She says she will probably be home Monday and will post as soon as she can after her return. I think there is supposed to be a post on her blog, put there by her son, which gives some news too. She's got a great family! She said, "Thanks for all the prayers!"

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Sandi is on Hiatus

2009-04-08T17:32:00.002-05:00

For those of you who are also readers of Sandi McBride at Holding Patterns, I want to announce that Sandi is in the hospital. I spoke to her this evening. She has diverticulitis and they are doing surgery tomorrow morning. She asks you to please forgive her not being around and also please pray for healing. I'll call her tomorrow when I get home from work to get an update and will try to let you know how things are going.

Peace! Hope! & Prayers ascending!

Work Mishap

2009-04-08T06:34:00.003-05:00

Monday started out good. I got two people to train on a certain function and found out that my Census job would last into 2010. Yay! I love the thought of long term work at this job.

Monday afternoon ended rather badly. A filing cabinet fell over onto me and bruised my right forearm and left knee. In many ways I was blessed when it happened. Two folk were with me, saw it happening and jumped under it to stop its fall. Then the HR manager jumped in as well to get it since all the 4 drawers were trying to fall down and were absolutely full of files. It took 3 or 4 people to stop that cabinet from hitting the ground, one of them was me since it landed on me first. It took 3 strong men to get it back upright from its over 45 degrees tilt towards being face down on the ground. And in the process they shoved it too far back so it took off that black rubber wall base trip that lines many offices. But get it upright they did, Thank God!

Then came the process of checking me out. My right wrist and forearm were dinged by the corner of a drawer and also scraped. That is ugly looking but not very bad. The knee which stopped a heavy drawer though is rather badly bruised and somewhat swollen. Every one was asking me if I was okay, including the HR manager. I said I thought so but wasn't sure. I was very shook up. HR Mgr asked me if I wanted to go to the doctor and I said I didn't know but wanted to fill out an incident report. He got me some paperwork to start on and called Dallas for advice. They said send me to my doctor or the ER. My Doc would have taken several days so the ER at the nearby VA hospital it was.

They asked me if I could drive. My leg could have handled it but when the Office Supervisor cracked a joke to make me laugh I lost control of my emotions and laughed and cried at the same time right on his shoulder. Ouch! I felt totally unprofessional but really grateful for his grabbing me and hugging me cause I needed that comfort. Then he made me laugh again and I had the same reaction so I got hugged twice. Based on that lack of emotional control I asked if someone could drive me in my car and another person followed in theirs to drive that employee back since it wasn't the end of the work day. What a great bunch of people!

When I got to Audey Murphy VA Hospital we used valet parking and they handed me my backpack. One of the gentlemen wanted me in a wheel chair but I said I could walk in. So I did and they headed back to work. This was about 3:30. That's a mere 40 minutes after the accident. I was "triaged" by the nurses and set at a fairly high priority based on my knee and possibly my blood pressure which had shot up due to stress, adrenolyn and anxiety. Even then I sat in the VA waiting area for 3 hours before being seen and sent home.

When I did get seen the doctor didn't have me unrobe, he just prodded my knee some through my slacks and asked where it hurt. He offered to x-ray my patella. I asked if I'd be able to walk if the knee cap was broken and he didn't offer again. He did say that if I wanted to come back and get it x-rayed later I could. His prescription was Motrin or Aleeve twice a day at a higher than usual dose. He also gave me an ace bandage for support and a return to work chit after asking me if I did lots of climbing. And that was it. I went to the front, got my car key, located my car, and drove myself home.

A good hot soak in the bath that night plus 2 Aleeve helped me relax. I took a pillow to bed to support the knee with and hit the sack about 8:30. When I woke up that morning I felt much better. I took myself to work and also the Aleeve and a cane just incase I felt the need of knee support later in the day. Everyone at work was asking me how I was and I'm really grateful for all the concern shown. One person told me that in the middle of the accident I cried out, "Don't worry about me, get the cabinet!" Everyone laughed and said that was dedication. I blushed, cause I didn't even remember saying that but it sounds just like me so I'm pretty sure I did. Heck, we had 4 drawers falling out with all their files, why wouldn't I have been concerned?

Today I'm going to work again. I'm doing better than yesterday when I felt a little tired and wanted to basically take things easy. Last night on the way home I stopped by Walgreens and bought an elastic knee brace and am wearing that today so I think I'm doing the right things. When I opened my door last night there was a Fedex envelope that had been slid under my door which has paperwork to fill out for my claim. I get mileage to the hospital, the hours I left work and maybe the extra time I spent in the waiting room. I'll get help filling that out at work today. On my way home tonight I want to get some lotion with arnica in it because that will accelerate the healing of the ugly bruise on my knee. Now I'm getting ready for work. Have a good day everyone!

Crying Purse, Smiling Car

2009-04-04T12:07:00.005-05:00

Because I needed to get a safety inspection done for my car, and it also was time for an oil change, I scheduled a service appointment for this morning. Yes, you now have to make an appointment to get your car repaired. That amazed me the first time they asked me to do it but, in retrospect, it makes sense. No more waiting for hours and your car is ready when you want it. Plus, you set it by your schedule so you don't get as frustrated with things.

I'd requested 9 AM but they set me at 8:30. That's okay, first in first out! My dealership uses a web page to schedule these things and it has a comments area, so I asked for what I needed and included a request for a "tune up". This car maintenance procedure apparently no longer exists. When I described the problem, "It vibrates when sitting in traffic while in gear with my foot on the brake," they said they'd look into it. Turns out I needed more than a typical tune up. If such a procedure exists for a fuel injection engine, my dealership charges about $150 for it. That wasn't what I ended up paying. My car had a bigger problem. It had a gasket leak on the oil tank. This leak had dripped oil right onto a spark plug which had now been sitting in oil and not firing. So they needed to replace the gasket, the tubes for the spark plugs, and of course the spark plugs. There was also some carbon buildup on the throttle body and my air filter was nasty. So in addition to the oil change and safety inspection charge they added another $450. Ouch!

That's actually better than I'd expected. When they mention gaskets and cars I immediately think of head gaskets and replacing those pretty much rebuilds an engine. Thank goodness they didn't need to do that. It's happened to me twice over the life of times I've owned cars and I never want it to happen again. So I'm breathing a tentative, "Whew." And I think they actually took off the oil change price because the bill was about that much less than the near $600 I'd been told.

My car now drives very nicely. No vibrations and it picks up speed much, much better. Thank you Universal Toyota! For all the bad rep that dealerships get, Universal is really a good one. I base this opinion on 3 things:1) when I bought the car they actually listened to me; 2) when I took it back for a check oil light the day I bought it they went beyond the usual level of investigation on the car and I ended up with a better than purchase loaner and a new short block free of charge; 3) a couple of years later when a check engine light kept coming on within a week of being investigated and repaired, they completed the last 3 investigations free of charge and did a $500+ dollar repair gratis too. Yeah, I could have gotten a cheaper oil change at Wal-Mart, but I wouldn't have gotten the level of service this dealership gives to its customers. So, if you live in the San Antonio area and need work on your Toyota I highly recommend them.

Puzzle Share

2009-04-03T06:54:00.006-05:00

The puzzle I worked this morning, and forwarded to my folks, is rather lovely. I enjoyed working it and thought you might too. Don't want to sound like I'm bragging but so many of you share your times with me that I guess maybe you want to know mine. Please don't rate yourselves against me, I do this kind of puzzle daily and I'm not the fastest person at it. Someone out there did it in 1.27 minutes. It took me over twice that, 3.57. Hope you do as well or better. Hey, if you beat my time tell me! I'll celebrate with you. Enjoy!

Reasons to Smile

2009-03-28T16:46:00.010-05:00

Whenever I meet with my Cursillo Reunion group and we talk about study I always direct my talk away from books and instead say, "I'm studying people." It's true! I do study folk. That's how I learn my best lessons in life. How to face disappointments, be kind to others, see things from new perspectives, and be a better servant are just a few of the skills I'm learning from others. All of that's important in life and I'm blessed that I've got friends who accept being studied and seem to consider me just as valuable as they are to me. Friends have been stepping up to the plate a lot lately.

The new friends I'm making at my Census job are turning out to be fine examples of how to act in an office. Many of them have been managers or people in responsible positions and all are team players. We all work together towards a common goal, teach each other what we learn, and cover each other when closing out our day and getting ready for the next. So what am I learning from them? Besides the afore mentioned, I'm also learning how to take things in stride, how to coordinate things, and how to get good advice when needed. More subtle skills include tact, faith, and belief in a common goal.

One of my work friends, a very nice fellow named Kevin, has taken my poor job search skills and done his best to improve them with some well place instructions. He sat down with me over lunch one day, looked at my USA Jobs resume, and told me how to improve it to get a better shot at being hired by our government when I go looking for a new job. He pointed me towards OPM.gov which has handbooks for all the jobs listed on in the "job families/series" on USAJobs.gov and told me to match my job experience descriptions to the key words used to describe the skills used for the job I was trying for. That kind of advice was amazingly helpful! When I went to the site I had a general idea and instructions to do a "series search". I actually searched for those terms and learned about job families. Then I checked out the areas I had knowledge and experience in. I found 2 different jobs I can have a decent chance at by rewriting my resume, so that's my plan! I hadn't realized how varied resumes could be. That's something else I've picked up on this job. Apparently civilian ones are a page or two in length max, but the government job ones are several more pages with detailed descriptions of tasks you've mastered and experiences you've had. Whew! I always had a problem with writing short descriptions. Writing detailed ones should be a piece of cake. Oh! And they extended me at work so I'm employed by the Census for another 2 months! Yay!

Today I was headed to Target to buy a new watch and also Home Depot to get a new lamp. Instead I took a side trip to my friend Jerry's house, partly because he was on the way and could give me advice on whether I should buy a new lamp or fix the old one and also, because I hadn't seen him in a while and missed his company. Jerry and his family took me to their hearts long ago and have become my best resources for many things. If I need a house sitter or cat feeder I call them. If I'm going to the hospital for a procedure they are the ones to sit in the waiting room and drive me home afterward. They are also my emergency contacts and have permission to speak in my behalf if medical issues arise. It makes lots of sense. Jerry's an experienced OR nurse, knows my other friends with medical expertise, and would be able to ask questions that I wouldn't know to think of. They keep 10 cats and have taken care of mine by staying for several hours just to play with them when I've had occasion to travel.

When I stepped into Jerry's place he was relaxing with a book. I described my lamp problem and asked if I could fix it. He asked Susan if she needed him and got permission to go with me to my place where he proceeded to take the lamp apart. Discovering that the socket had gone bad, we drove to Target, followed by Home Depot to get the needed part to fix the lamp. While out running around we managed to get my watch replaced and a couple of very necessary belts of decent quality purchased. (My wardrobe is taking wear and tear now that I'm working 5 days a week.) Once back home the lamp got fixed, the windshield fluid in the car was topped off, bottles were recycled, and I had new CFL bulbs for most of the lights and a new R type bulb for the lamp. Then he played with the cats, or at least Hyram. Hooboo doesn't really trust anyone but me yet. A little later, I drove Jerry back to his place and borrowed a few books and a new computer game. I've promised to return tomorrow so that I can help them organize their myriad books. They need this badly because they are the best lending library I know and finding what they want to lend me is a whole house search project at present.

Earlier this morning, I popped over to my friend San's blog and then visited her friend Bob T Bear Esq. who was having a 500th post celebration. That was fun and I hope to share some of the jokes from his site with my friends at work. San has meant a lot to me as a friend because she started by making herself at home in my blog. She'd never met me, started reading and stayed and read and kept coming back till I think she has read every post I've ever written. In the process we became friends and I started learning how to love abstract art. I'd always been very much a realist and fantasy art lover till I met San. Now I'm seeing things in her work that I'd never have expected to. It's like visions just pop up for me when I look at something she's painted. Wow!

One of the things I shared with Jerry while he was watching Hyram eat was the start of my writing portfolio. David had a hand in that. In fact, I think it wouldn't have been started without his support. I also ran the articles I pulled from this blog past another new work friend. She said they were good too, but pointed out that if I wanted to be a technical writer I needed to write some technical articles. That makes sense. So I have to figure out a good "How To" article to put in there. Or describe a process that I'm familiar with that uses technology. She suggested blogging. I'm not so sure about that but there has to be something I can talk about and describe step by step. So I guess that somewhere in and around my rewriting my resume I need to write a couple more articles.

Well I don't think this article is turning out as I'd intended. It's become a ramble whose whole point seems to be that you can't survive without friends and that I've got some really great ones. But when Jerry and I were driving around we talked about disappointments in life. People often disappoint each other. Sometimes they hurt you very badly in the process. One can lose faith in other people if you hurt them often or badly enough. I've seen several examples of this during my life. The result seems to be that they lose faith in establishments, authorities, and powers too...including God. When Jerry and I are together we can seem like opposite sides of the coin. He's gloom and doom and I'm joy and light, but it wasn't always this way and I remember fondly the man who could convincingly make believe he was Merlin. So I talked about the need to forgive or just let things go. Granted, I'm not always good at that, but eventually I have to come around to that because I am, at heart, an optimist. I want a rosy tinted outlook and I'll move heaven and earth to get it. I wish I could gift that view to all my friends and anyone in need of a better feel about life because I think that without it I would have been a very unhappy teenager and possibly become a statistic of the worst sort. When I was just a kid my mother and I coined the label "Pollyannas" for ourselves signifying that we wanted to find something to be happy about in any situation, just like Pollyanna did in that Disney movie. So help me, it stuck! And I've never once looked back. In fact I resent any effort to teach me better. Life has a way of doing that despite our best efforts, so I can't claim that I'm totally unscathed, but I know things are getting better when I can share the smile that in my 20's earned me the nickname "Sunshine" and find time to appreciate the goodness of those around me. Thank goodness for friends! So yeah, let's smile! Just like the song!

Volunteering Fun!

2009-03-18T06:15:00.007-05:00

For over a week now I've been meaning to get back here and post something new, but I got sick two weeks ago and while I'm back at work I haven't quite recovered fully. I apologize for the delay and, "Thank you!" to all who've asked if everything was well in my life.

Weekend before last I did my ever first volunteering. It was at a gaming convention here in San Antonio, the ChimaeraCon. Not a huge convention, but popular among its attendees. And it's growing. I had a blast! I'm not much of a gamer, but I loved being around people who love Science Fiction and are enthusiastic about playing games. Their enthusiasm for this is contagious and they have all spent enough time with their passion that they are very expert when you have questions. The people I met there share the same love of books and interaction with fantasy that I have.

My job was registration. I spent most of Saturday behind the counter. They turned me loose briefly to wander the floor and see all the fun stuff that had been set up and games that were happening. I also got time off to go to the food court (we were at Crossroad Mall) and get lunch. But most of the day I was watching folk come in, receiving their money and giving them badges to wander and enjoy the activities that had been planned. You'd think with a barrier between you and others you'd not get sick, right? Wrong, by the end of the day I was coughing and sweating with a fever. This was really disappointing because my volunteering got me into the convention free and I'd planned on coming back Sunday afternoon just to have fun. Now I couldn't do that.

When the planning for this convention started I'd expected bunches of compute games, and there was plenty of that. But there was also lots of board games. We had Game Masters running D&D games and other card or miniature based games. There was jousting. We had MechCorps there with 3 huge pods that you could sit in and fight an opponent from using cool technology. And there were several local guest stars. I met two of them. One was The Defuser, the winner of "So You Want to be a Superhero" from Texas and the other was his nemesis, Lord Vile.

There's a really neat video that the San Antonio Express created when they came and interviewed lots of folk there. I can't embed it, but here's the link. Go and watch, it's really very good. One of our volunteers has put up a really great MySpace page about ChimaeraCon. It isn't the official page which is now on hold till next year but you can get a good feel for the event and its history. Here's the link to that.

Even with me getting sick I had so much fun that I plan to volunteer again next year. This year I was shy and not ready to be fully involved in a large roll because I didn't know any of the ins and outs of running a convention. Now I do and I'll be ready to take on a larger role next time around. Thanks to everyone who took time to train me, explain things, and show me the way! You all were awesome!

An added benefit to having attended, actually one that was part of my reasoning for being there, is that I learned about other places in San Antonio to connect with folk who love SciFi and Fantasy as much as I do. And there are other conventions coming up to attend among them San Japan 2 in August. I've never been to any of these things before and plan on attending as many as I can. Life is looking a lot more fun for the future.

Beautiful Image

2009-02-24T05:55:00.002-06:00

When I saw this puzzle my first reaction was, "This is the type of morning I like to go walking in." And it is. I've been fortunate enough to see and even photograph beautiful scenes like this. It was long ago when I was in college during the '70s, but the first black and white photo I ever took was of just such a misty morning and the trees that circled the campus center. It was taken with an Argus that was a gift from my uncle. I loved that camera, it made me a better photographer than I am without it's semi automatic settings and through the lens light metering. Got me an A for the photography course too. :-) So here's the puzzle that I enjoyed this morning. Hope you enjoy it too.

Working for the Census

2009-02-22T14:12:00.007-06:00

I'm modifying this post at the suggestion of my HR director. It's good advice. He suggested that I simply direct folk to the census website. That's much more practical as I'm not the Census Bureau and don't want to say anything that might cause someone to think I am. Most of the article is still in tact. What has been deleted is the stuff that you can find on the Census website.

It's been almost a month since I started working for the Federal Government and the 2010 Census. The hours are good. The pay is decent, steady, and on time. The work crew is friendly and feels like a team. I couldn't have asked for better. The only things that are a downer to this job are: 1) it is designed to be temporary; 2) you don't get benefits. That's okay, I'm delighted to have work of any length and the skills I'm gaining will help the resume look better for the next job search. The lack of benefits I can handle through other resources like the VA and my bank.

I got hired just before Martin Luther King Day. The first thing that happened, after I'd been through the 1.5 days of training, was that I monitored the phones. That meant I was helping people apply for the job by scheduling them to take the mandatory employment test. For a first experience in customer service it was great! People really want jobs. Anything I told them about the process was important to them and they were very grateful. One guy even said so to my boss. I found that I was pretty good at phone work. It wouldn't be my dream job or even a favorite chore, but that I come across as friendly, caring, and helpful is a good thing to know about myself. That will definitely go on my resume.

Then I went and worked the data entry section. There we key in all the stuff from the applications, and if something is missing or confusing we may call to clear it up. That's an area where you have to be very discrete. Nothing that you learn about someone can be shared or even left where someone else could see it on your desk. This too is good experience because you learn how to handle sensitive issues and information.

While working data entry, I revamped some of my Excel skills and now create a report from other types of data (not personal) that I get to enter. I've signed up for "finger printing" and "advanced copier" training. These will all be handy at some point in my life and the training is free. Yay! More skills! Even better is the knowledge that I'll get cross trained in every position in the office. This cross training is vital to census operations running smoothly. It's even better for my resume.

This past week I put some budding coordination skills to work. I'd helped coordinate an event at my church once. On Friday at work, we held a "Jason's Deli" day and I was the mover and shaker on that. I'd driven past the deli along Loop 410, saw the sign, and was suddenly really hungry for a muffaletta. So I asked around to see if anyone was interested. Then I got the permission, requested a menu, and started taking orders. It went over well and I'll hold another in about a month. Folk were grateful and several who didn't participate will probably be ordering the next time. They kept sniffing and commenting on how good the food smelled as they walked past. LOL

One of the nice things about working for the Census is the job is flexible if that is what you need. I know that lots of us hold down more than one job, take care of kids, or go to school. If you need part time work you can do that, instead of full time, and flex your hours around your life. Everyone who's commented on my post, "Suddenly It's Raining Jobs," has said that this was the better choice. I couldn't agree more. And I want others to have the same opportunity that I had.

We have a website. Click here. Or if you need to write it down and give it to a friend the web address is www.census.gov. When you have reached the website, click on "Become a census taker". That's where you can read all about the job, the requirements, the nature of the work, and find the forms to fill out and where to call to apply. There is even a practice test. You will turn in your application at the same place you take the employment test.

Right now, the 2010 Census is happening in the U.S.A., and we are at the very beginning of a year and a half long project of conducting it. If you live in another country, I'm pretty sure that your country does the same sort of thing. I just don't know the census cycle over there, but you probably do. Census work is important because it helps your government put money and resources where they are needed based on population and area income. So, if you need a job, apply for a census one. It's worth the time it takes to apply in skills and income, and it will help your government put that economic stimulus package to work where it is needed the most. By applying you become a part of the biggest job creation project going on at the moment. Good luck!

The San Antonio Contingent is Quizzing Again

2009-02-20T21:11:00.000-06:00

JS posted her results from the latest quiz. For new readers, who don't know about these quizzes, they are fun, silly, and very much tongue in cheek. JS and I often get the same score. God did a great job when he made her my best friend. (G) We treat them like games or mimis and if you like taking silly quizzes there's a link to all of them labeled "quiz" in my tag cloud. Here are my results. Hope you'll join us in the fun.

You Belong in Dublin

Friendly and down to earth, you want to enjoy Europe without snobbery or pretensions.

You're the perfect person to go wild on a pub crawl... or enjoy a quiet bike ride through the old part of town.

What European City Do You Belong In?

Enjoy!

One by One

2009-02-18T06:28:00.002-06:00

This past weekend, I'd intended to post a new story about working for the Census. Good intentions got waylaid by this amazing wave of you all visiting my blog, thanks to Blogger putting me on the Blogs of Note list. You came, you looked around, you decided to comment, or follow. And you're still coming! For a humble blogger who had only 8 followers when she went to work on Friday, and now has over 300, this has been an awesome experience. Thank you!

What I'm trying to do with all of this is answer each and every comment to the best of my ability. Since my comments are all moderated I have to read them, delete the duplicates, and of course get rid of the spam. Don't worry, just because you put a link in your comment doesn't mean that I delete it. Lots of you are leaving me links to your blogs and I love going there and seeing what you've done. Right now there are just SO many that I'm way behind, but I'll catch up one by one.

Many of you have just started your blogs. That's where I was 3 years ago. I'd actually created my blog by mistake. I wanted to leave a comment on a friend's blog and registered to do so. Suddenly there was this blog hanging out there with nothing on it. Couldn't let that happen, so I figured out what to write for a first post, and have been blogging ever since.

So far, comments have been left from many different countries, among them Brazil, Portugal, Myanmar, Romania, Australia, and a few that don't translate into a country I can determine. I took Spanish in school, but am not very good at it. I catch about one word in ten. That helps with Spanish and Portuguese, but doesn't get me much farther than knowing whether you left a compliment or not. Talking to friends across the work table I've learned that the characters I mistook to be Greek are actually Romanian. That gave me an interesting bit of history as I didn't know the history of the Romanian language or that they apparently got their alphabet from the Greeks. Being a lover of history and words, this is fascinating to me. And I want to thank all of you from other countries who speak the English language. You are awesome. America doesn't do it's part as a member of the global community when it fails to teach its students a second language well. We do get a couple of years of training, but, as those of you fluent in more than one know, that's no where near enough. It isn't even enough for the second language learners in our public schools. I hope someday that will be corrected, but I don't know that it will happen soon.

To any new comers, if I fail to comment immediately it's because I'm still catching up. There were over 3000 visitors this weekend. However, eventually, I'll reply and pay you a return visit if you've got a blog that I can visit. And forward we go, one by one.

I Did What?!!!

2009-02-13T18:03:00.003-06:00

The first thing I noticed, when I got home from work and logged on, was that the number of folk following my blog had almost tripled. I was wondering who some of these folk were. Then I read my email and discovered that I'd been nominated for blogger's "blogs of note." I raced to check this out! Not only did I make this noted list, but so did our wonderful David's authorblog! Wow! What a treat to come home to! To all the well wishers, a hearty, "Thank you!" I've no idea what I did to get this honor but I'm delighted beyond words.

Puzzle Share

2009-01-31T08:43:00.003-06:00

JigZone had another really beautiful puzzle today, full of blues, greens, and a very pretty flutterby. It's been a while since I last shared a puzzle so here's today's for you to enjoy.

More Quiz Fun!

2009-01-23T17:39:00.003-06:00

You’re Origen!

You do nothing by half-measures. If you’re going to read the Bible, you want to read it in the original languages. If you’re going to teach, you’re going to reach as many souls as possible, through a proliferation of lectures and books. If you’re a guy and you’re going to fight for purity … well, you’d better hide the kitchen shears.

Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

JSD located this test which is designed to tell you which church father you most resemble. True to more than half of the tests that JS and I take, my results are similar to hers. See above. Now if I could just figure out how to remove all the extra spacing above and below it I'd be really happy. In the meantime, the Gandhi Twins live on in the form of Origen Twins.

Suddenly It's Raining Jobs

2009-01-16T16:36:00.004-06:00

Today's interview with Radio Shack seemed to go well. The hiring manager informed me that all potential employees are interviewed twice and, since the hours I wanted to work are day time, he said he'd call the manager of another store near me and ask her to call and set up a second interview as I would probably meet her needs better. I left feeling hopeful.

Went home, chatted briefly with Sandi, and then, while I was working at the computer, the Census Bureau called. I was offered a position working as an administrative clerk and the training is to start on Tuesday next week. Yay! I'm working! The Census job pays better than the sales one would have. I'd have loved the technology of Radio Shack, but more money and serving your government is even better. While talking to Lou, the hiring manager, I learned that the job may go for much longer than the 5 to 10 weeks being advertised. The training is paid. No overtime. Office dress is business casual. There will be about 30 to 40 people in the office. I'm to bring my own lunch and they don't have a refrigerator so I guess it will be peanut butter sandwiches till I get more creative.

After that good news I called my folks to share. No sooner had I gotten off the phone with Mom when Jenny, whom I met working at Pearson, called. She told me to call a certain person at Pearson because they were now taking on people and I could set myself up for work on evening shifts later when the projects start. That would be nice as it is something I'm familiar and good at. I called and left a message with my phone number and the information they asked for. Hopefully I'll hear back sometime next week.

Considering the state of the economy and the skyrocketing unemployment rate, I feel blessed. Thank God for friends who pray and a Lord and Saviour who has the grace to listen!

Shared Letter to a Friend

2009-01-15T08:57:00.006-06:00

Wrote the following in response to a reply from JS this morning. I'd shared the current Rose is Rose comic with her. Rose is Rose is created by Pat Brady and distributed by United Features Syndicate.

:-) You're welcome!

When I was a kid, I would sometimes stay overnight at the grandparent's house. They didn't have a fireplace either. We'd sleep under lots of covers, sometimes with hot water bottles at the bottom for our feet. In the morning, Grandmother would get up and hurry to light the large gas heater in the living room. When it was lit we'd all rush in there with our clothes to change in front of it. This stove was just wide enough for two to stand in front of comfortably. There would be 4 of us, so it was turned up high to spread the heat for this activity. There were no carpets in the dining room we had to pass through, so the wood floors were very cold on little feet. Sometimes we held our clothes in front of the heater to warm them up before putting them on. Even so this was a fun time for my sister and me because we started our mornings with two folk we loved better than just about anyone in the world and the morning chatter was fun. Then we'd help Grandmother make breakfast. :)

Sometimes I envy you all the wonderful family time you have. You are so blessed! Thank God! Please keep sharing the wonderful stories of your family times. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Friday I have a job interview. Tuesday I walked the 281/Henderson Pass shopping center and looked for help wanted signs in the windows. I brought home 2 paper applications and 2 cards that gave websites to apply on. Two hours after putting in the Radio Shack application online I got a call from the manager of the store in Rolling Oaks Mall and he wanted to set up an appointment time. So I'm to be there at 2:00. Please keep me in your prayers. If I get the job I'll be trained on all their products and will gladly work any hours they have as long as it doesn't interfere with my much needed church activities. The pay for a starting sales associate isn't much. About $7/hr plus occasional incentives for sales made, but they have benefits for full time employees and of course discounts on products. Even it I don't get full time work it will be some money coming in and I know you understand the importance of that. It would also go a long way towards making me feel useful again. Plus it would be working with the public which is something I need some experience with. I am both excited and nervous.

Did I tell you I took the Census employment exam? I did well on it. My raw score was 95 and with my 5 points veteran preference I should be getting a call from them the beginning of February when they start hiring. All jobs for that project last 5 to 10 weeks and pay 11.75/hr. I could work that job around the sales job and be bringing in some decent money for a little while. Prayers for that too would be appreciated. I'd rather work in the office than in the field. I'm directionally impaired and finding my way from place to place is very dicey. I'd do much better handling all the filing and data entry that is required for this huge project. Plus it is a government job and that looks good on the resume. So will the sales experience.

Sorry this is so long in the middle of your busy day.

Love you bunches and wish you were here to give me a comforting hug!

TV on the Web

2009-01-11T15:32:00.013-06:00

A few months ago my TV died and, taking my cue from Susan's example (she and her husband only watch series on DVD), I decided not to purchase a new one. Sure I missed some of the shows I watched regularly, but there were other things I could do with the time. And I haven't come to regret my decision yet.

DVD watching is something else I missed, but that was more easily remedied than the lack of television programming. After all, I have a computer with a DVD drive and a decent screen. Windows Media player will handle DVDs just fine. So on holidays I pull out one of my favorites and sit back in my reasonably comfortable desk chair to enjoy it. I've even had a neighbor in to watch one with me while we shared pizza.

Knowing that I was a regular watcher of some of her favorite shows, Sandi decided to come to my rescue and suggested I look for TV shows on the web. It seemed reasonable. I'd heard that there were full episodes online, so I started doing some research and, sure enough, you can indeed watch TV on the web, free and totally lacking any kind of advertisement. Finding the shows you like to watch, however, is a bit dicey as not all broadcasting corporations make their hottest shows available on their websites. Plus you have to do some research to find good pages, which can take a bit of time as you do trial and error on each page you discover. There are some pluses, but more about those in a bit.

My research started with four USA broadcasting corporations: ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. ABC readily puts full episodes on its website and you can keep up to date on their fare easily. That's great, except I don't watch much of what they offer. They were the first major US broadcasting corporation to do it though, so kudos to them. CBS I watch regularly and I was eager to catch up on Ghost Whisperer. Oops, seems CBS doesn't put the latest episodes of its premier shows on it's website, although that may change as recently they've started putting up a very few of their more popular series in HD. Mostly though it's small clips, not enough to call it TV. They do have a chat and watch page, CBS social room. There they let you watch a show with other people, chat, and answer trivia questions at the same time. Sometimes there are current episodes of popular shows, but you can only watch what they are offering that night. NBC is better than CBS and may be as good as ABC. They have HD episodes online too. And a page that is classy looking and easy to navigate. Then I got around to Fox. With Fox on Demand, they may be better then NBC and CBS. The shows are current, but I don't watch many of their shows either. If you want to see what the major networks offer, the links I've provided are direct to their video pages. Still no Ghost Whisperer though, so I kept looking. Three weeks ago, I came across a blog, Free Online Episodes, that had taken the time to address the problem of staying up to date your your favorite series and gave you several urls to watch most of the favorite popular shows. It was a good place to start.

For the next week or so I hung out on that blog and would click through to some of my favorite shows. Not all of the links worked, but usually there was one that did. Like any good blog, they update things as necessary. Their latest offering, posted Jan. 11th, has links to Knight Rider. But still, no Ghost Whisperer. And that was Sandi's big thing. She really wanted me up to date on that, for which I'm grateful. Her support and encouragement were unending. In the mean time, I kept doing searches using the keywords "full episodes" and finally came across a really great website, Surf the Channel.

From Surf the Channel's website you can find most of the shows you know and tons that you don't know. New episodes are put up daily. You can search by genre, title, or cagetory. There's both TV and movies. Many of the links are to Asian web pages so there will be subtitles in the language of that area. You can also find lots of links to Megavideo which is another website offering lots of free online TV and lots of current movies. Megavideo lets you watch for 72 minutes and then asks you to join or wait 54 minutes before watching again. I haven't signed up for their paid service because I don't mind waiting to finish the episode I was interrupted in the middle of. There's tons of other stuff to watch. Since discovering Surf the Channel (StC), I've found episodes of Sanctuary, an exciting SciFi offering that started as HD webisodes, and in addition to seeing all 8 of those I've caught up on most of the rest of the season. There seems to be a 1 to 4 week delay in an episode being broadcast before it shows up on the web. I've also caught up on NCIS and of course, Ghost Whisperer.

When there isn't a new episode to watch among my favorites, I explore the other offerings StC has. So far I've discovered Fallen, a 3 episode miniseries which presents us with a war between angels and nephilim, half breeds bearing both angel powers and human souls. There is also The Tudors, a wonderful series put on by Showtime which takes place in the early years of King Henry's reign complete with court intrigue, lots of mistresses and dalliances, and all the political intensity of the era. I haven't had cable or satellite in several years so I've got a lot of catching up to do and I'm delighted with what I'm finding. That's one of the biggest perks of watching TV online. Another great perk of internet TV is that with no advertising going on the show finishes in about 42 minutes for an hour long show. Yay, you've got time to do other things, like watch more shows than you could fit into an evening of TV watching.

Recently Sandi sent me another link, this one was FanCast which seems to be closely linked with Hulu, which is known for all it's free episodes. What Hulu offers is mostly older TV shows that are no longer broadcast and haven't been in reruns for awhile, but it does stay abreast of a few of the popular shows. You can catch up on Monk there. And it has just about every new movie trailer you could ask for. FanCast is different. They have links to quite a few of the popular shows although their offerings aren't quite as rich and varied as StC. Still, what you don't find on StC you can usually find on FanCast. Plus you don't have subtitles and the screen to watch is larger on your browser than many of the StC places.

Sometime soon, I plan on putting most of those online TV websites among the links on my sidebar. In the meantime, I hope you find the links I've provided useful and discover some new series that you'd didn't have access to before. Enjoy!

Tarot Personae

2009-01-05T19:09:00.005-06:00

The start of 2009 is a fine time to grab a new quiz and enjoy silly self analysis. Taking my cue from Paschal, I found myself really liking this one's results. They seemed surprisingly accurate and, for a change, I didn't have any desire to take it twice. Enjoy!

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

New Year Resolutions & Good Wishes

2008-12-31T07:38:00.008-06:00

Many of my friends make New Year's resolutions and are quite successful at keeping them. I'm not all that self disciplined, so past resolutions were often forgotten by the time the excitement of the New Year ended. This year I'm hoping to change that. My best bud, JS, has made two resolutions that are inspiring, and I find myself wanting to make one too. It's been a few years since I partook in this tradition and I think I'm going to go about it in a different way. Instead of making a brand new change to initiate, I'm going to take a change that is starting to occur naturally and make a resolution to continue it through the year. On reflection, I think this is the method JS used to choose her two, so perhaps it's a better method because I always admire her careful and considerate actions.

For the past few weeks I've been feeling tense. This is especially noticeable in my shoulders and I find myself rotating them, my neck, and even grinding my teeth, none of which is good for you and often looks really weird. To try to alleviate this I've been getting down on the floor and doing 10 push ups, 10 leg raises, and 10 crunches. It seems to be helping, plus just doing it makes me feel better. I know that if I keep this up I'll be healthier and do more for my looks, self esteem, and general mood. Yay!

So this year my New Year Resolution is to continue to do those things and perhaps add in something else during the week that contributes to physical fitness. Thanks JS!

Happy New Year all! May it be the best you've ever had. May all your hopes and wishes for it come to pass. And may you be successful in keeping your resolutions.

A Season for Miracles

2008-12-23T11:59:00.012-06:00

Sunday's service and scripture readings reminded me that it is the season for miracles. The readings and sermon took us back to the night when Mary said, "Yes!" to an angel and became the mother of Christ. That bit about miracles always gives me a sense of wonder. Perhaps that's because miracles are so unexplainable or often answers to desperate needs. Whatever the reason, when we are the recipient of one we are as delighted as a child opening presents on Christmas day.

I happen to believe in miracles. Not just because the scriptures tell us they happened or the fact that a virgin gave birth to the son of God, but because I've been the recipient of a couple. They happened many years ago when I was just into my 30s and only recently come to believe fully. In an earlier post I told of how I came to believe and how I feel that was a miracle. I probably didn't call it such, the word miracle often engenders words of scorn from those who don't believe. But feeling the Holy Spirit pouring into you and establishing that connection with God surely classifies as one.

The church I came to full faith in was a small nondenominational church, Calvary Chapel of Corpus Christi. There were only about 40 members and 30 or so were regular attendees. With two services a week, a weekly bible study, and fellowship night on Friday's we became like family. And like any good family we enjoyed doing things together. During my time with that church we took 2 trips.

The first was a church retreat to Garner State Park. We weren't part of a huge network of congregations, so our church leaders called the park and reserved a group of campsites for us to use. Just about everyone left work early that day and got up there by late afternoon, but not me. I needed to finish my shift. My car was already packed with clothes and any supplies I had deemed important. So at 4:00PM I got into my car and headed out of town.

It's about a 6 hour trip to Garner, so by the time I got in it was dark and the park office had long since closed. Not having been foresighted enough to contact the group leaders, I didn't have any idea where the campsites were and driving around the camp in the dark seemed a bad idea. I checked the camp bulletin board and learned that if I parked my car near the office I could pay my camping fee in the morning when they opened. It was already after 10:00 PM and that seemed the most reasonable option. But as I set my car seen into recline to sleep the night there other vehicles started coming in and camping near where I was camped. They didn't all look like nice cars and some of the folk getting out of them looked less than reputable. I was getting sort of scared.

Just as I started to think about moving my car, up drove the truck of one of my church family and the owner and his son got out. I got out of my car and greeted them joyfully and with much relief. They knew the campsite number, had been there since just after night fell, and had been trying to find the campsite for a really long time. Over 4 and 1/2 hours in fact. They'd come to check the park map one more time before calling it quits. I got into their truck and we headed for one more trip around the circuit. And just after we started on the dirt road there it was! The very first campsite on the right! We pulled in, grabbed the camping gear and set up the tent at almost midnight. They let me share their tent so I had a safe place to spend the night.

Come morning we all talked about that night and looked at the camp roads again. They weren't difficult to navigate. Nor were the signs hidden from view but right there along the edge of the road. No reason we could come up with explained away the fact that they hadn't found the campsite location for over 4.5 hours. And I think that was the miracle. The site was so easy to find and I was so lost that we decided that God had "blinded" them to the location until they had reunited with me. I had one more wondrous experience while we were there that weekend. On Sunday morning just as we started service there in the sky was my first double rainbow.

The second trip was to the San Antonio Zoo. Corpus Christi isn't that far from San Antonio so we made a day trip of it. We left town really early in caravan style and got up there shortly after the park opened.

We had tons of fun wandering around looking at the different animals. Many of the church family had children, so the mothers and kids tended to stay grouped together as we went through the park. Steve Phillips and I were discussing prayer languages and speaking in tongues. Steve had experienced this but I hadn't and was curious. So on a pretty bridge overlooking a waterway, we stopped to talk about it.

We were so engrossed in our conversation that we didn't realize that the others had gone on without us. They hadn't noticed us stopping either, so they didn't tell us where they were headed for next. So, when our conversation finished, there Steve and I were looking around confusedly and checking our map to see if there was anything that looked likely. We didn't have a clue. Being mindful of the reason we were there, we did what any good Christian would do in such a situation; we started praying. Suddenly I got this immense urge to move, and in a specific direction. I didn't know where I was going, only that I had to go and which way. I grabbed Steve and hauled him off with me, explaining what I was feeling along the way.

So sure was I of my direction that we were moving really fast, not even checking the park map. As we raced across what was seemed like half the park Steve decided to check out a side building, but I didn't wait for him. He quickly decided to rejoin me and caught up with me just as I was headed through a pair of gates. Once through the gates we found ourselves in the Children's Petting Zoo and there they were. We were so happy to find them that it was a very joyous reunion. If Steve and I had tried to logic our way through that situation we might have eventually come up with the Children's area, but young singles are often clueless about what would motivate marrieds with kids. So heaven only knows if we would have ever come up with the right location. We could have wandered around for hours trying to find them.

Now when I think of a virgin giving birth to the one person who could reconcile our accounts with God, bringing us back into full communion with him, I tend to believe the stories we tell every Christmas. The rest of the world seems to want to believe in miracles too. Why else would we work so hard to help the needy or give desperately sick children and their parents the gift of joy and hope. So this year when you see the stars in the sky, and on top of your tree, I hope you'll join me in letting the wonder of the season fill your heart and believe.

Running Like Mad, then Screeching to a Halt

2008-12-16T08:11:00.012-06:00

Most of last week seemed to be spent at church. Preparations were underway for a huge weekend of activities and momentous events. We were gearing up for the ordination of our Assistant Rector and the celebration of our 40th Anniversary as a church. Volunteering for the liturgy planning committee for the 40th Anniversary festivities got me the job of coordinating a fellowship walk to be held on Saturday and a streamers in the garden activity to be done after the celebration service. This was my first time being involved in something like this. It was exciting! It was also stress filled! I gained a lot of awareness of how things work around the church and how much work goes into some things. For all the help I got I'm very thankful!

The idea of streamers came during a planning meeting and it's purpose was to let people share what they found of value and happiness by being a part of our church. They would write a word or phrase on a brightly colored paper ornament and hang it in our prayer garden. Our Sexton, Esther, helped me set up the streamers in the garden activity. We picked out colors of paper, decided on 3 shapes (circle, rectangle, and star), chose decorating materials, and then saw to the printing of some of them. Our Parish Coordinator, Priscilla, got the rest printed. Esther also gathered the ribbons needed for hanging them; our other sexton, Eduardo, hung string between trees so that we had somewhere to hang them (we'd just trimmed the garden trees losing all the lower branches in the process). But the work of assembling them still needed doing. So, on Friday, the wonderful folk of the bulletin folding crew and I, cut out the ornaments, punched holes in them, and attached ribbons. I showed up at the start of bulletin folding and helped with that too. On Sunday the garden was very festive looking with colored paper ornaments fluttering throughout.

Friday afternoon's folding and ornament set up finished at 4:15 PM. Since I am in the choir I needed to be back at 6:00 PM, so I raced home, cleaned up, dressed in celebratory fashion, and headed back to church. The service was at 7:00. We robed for this event and looked pretty good in our red and gold. Extra choir members from other churches who wanted to share in honoring Matt arrived. With the extra voices we sounded better than ever. We sang a huge Handel number, Zadock the Priest, which had lots of vocal challenges to it.

The whole service was so exciting our attention hung on every moment. Matt's best friend from college gave the sermon and it was wonderful. He kidded Matt, and made good points about being a good priest in the process. The point of the sermon was that Matt was called to extra ordinary measures in his service. The camaraderie exhibited by them gave the whole service a warm friendly feel. The attendees got to step out of the normal role of congregation as we were invited forward to join with the priests as they placed their hands on Matt while the Bishop was ordaining and blessing him. When the service was ending Matt's first official function was to say the blessing. Then we went to Brown Hall for a really great reception. When I got home about 10:00 I had no problem falling asleep even though I was keyed up from all the excitement.

Saturday morning I was scheduled to celebrate Morning Prayer, so I got to the church about 6:45 AM. This is a wonderful way to start your day! You get scheduled time alone with God in the place where you worship him and do things that really focus you on Him. I'm thinking I'd like to do that more often.

After Daily Office was finished, I went home and made my sack lunch for the 10:30 events. A Fellowship Walk, picnic lunch, and Remembrance Altar build that had been Paschal's ideas were the events for the day. Those of us who showed up had a good time walking to St. Mary's Hall, which was where we held services before we had any structures on the 5 acres we bought to build our sanctuary on. Janet came along and told us all she could remember of the early days. Our church was started back in the 60's, a decade filled with turbulence, but our founding members had a vision of the future that included everyone that wanted a church home. So we deemed ourselves "reconcilers to the world" and became the Episcopal Church of Reconciliation.

Here we are on the Fellowship Walk, strolling down Starcrest. The day was nice and the company was the best!

This is the sign at the back gate of St. Mary's Hall's campus. We'd hoped to go inside and look around, but that would have needed more planning and coordination than we did.

When we got back we started right in on the altar build. That was a lot of fun, and we now have a lovely arrangement of memories on tables in our South Narthex. There are pictures of past priests and members, things from the children's classrooms, and too many symbols to list. I've only been at the church for 6 years and the only thing personal I'd thought to put on the altar was my Book of Common Prayer which I'd received when I was received into the church in 2003. I didn't because when I looked there were already two very appropriately historical versions already on it. Thinking about what I love about this place I realized that most of all I value the fellowship I've found there, so I went to the kitchen and borrowed a coffee cup and spoon to add to the altar.

Here's the Remembrance Altar in all it's glory. The painting on the side was done by Gordon West, a long time member of our church, for our first rector. The one behind the alter is the work of Tina Karagulian, wife to Paschal.

We ate our picnic lunches in the church library and enjoyed getting acquainted with Tina's family, playing a game with Paschal and Tina's son, and hearing more stories about the church and our newest priest. Both before and after these events I noticed lots of activity in Brown Hall. The dinner/reception committee and many volunteers were setting the tables and making the hall ready for Sunday's dinner. It was absolutely amazing! I headed home mid afternoon, and relaxed as much as I could, knowing that I needed to be back at church early for the choir practice and any additional setup needed for the streamers activity.

Here's what all the activity in Brown Hall created for us, a lovely dining room complete with banners hanging above us, to show off the trappings of our sanctuary through the seasons. We were set to handle 250 people.

This closeup of the place settings may give you an idea of the lengths gone to for this service and dinner. Those table runners were made at the church by a member who brought in her sewing machine for the day. By the time we sat down to eat, pine cones had been added, fresh rosemary stems for fragrance and remembrance, and the candles were all lit.

When I walked into the church on Sunday morning I noticed our rector, Robert, sitting on a bench in his street clothes, reading over the service for the day. It sounded like he was rehearsing. That seemed comforting somehow, and I found myself enjoying the idea that he practices like that before every service. I beat the choir director to church, heck, I beat most people in getting there. I had time to look around, find a cup of coffee, and get a hug or two from friends. Hugs seem to help me relax. You put your arms around someone warm and comforting, squeeze them together thus tightening the muscles, and when you let go, your muscles relax further than they had been pre-hug. I grabbed as many as I could.

The service went off beautifully! One of our members, James, had made a multimedia presentation that was awesome! In it, while playing old songs from the 60's, the times were remembered, the mission of our church, and it's history as it has grown. At one point the choir sang, "I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry". The visuals finished with pictures of all the priests who'd been our rectors and the young priests they had helped get through seminary and become full priests at our church. One of our concerns when setting up the service was that we wanted the children to be involved. So Robert held a children's sermon. He got them to think about our beginnings as a church and how the founders were thinking of their future. He finished it by asking them to hug the founders in thanks and then stand beside them as he blessed them all. The sermon was by Sam Todd who was our second rector. In it he tied our first service celebrated on our new campus with the Christmas season (it had been on Dec. 24th, 1968) and our name, Reconciliation, with the advent of Christ and how he came into the world to reconcile us to God.

When the service was finished we all processed into the garden and remembered those of our members who had passed on but been remembered for their help in building up our community. Then we did the ornament activity and went in to eat a very nicely catered lunch. The whole meal was set before us by members who had volunteered to act as servers. We had 250 people in attendance and it was a three course meal so this was a lot of love being given out. While we were enjoying the wonderful food, Robert was up on the stage honoring those who helped accomplish all of this. He received a surprise or two himself, as the community had put together some things on its own. One of our members had gotten the artists among us to put together an album, to be added to through the years, of some of their works. There were some beautiful examples of art in it, including a full page of calligraphy complete with illumination. Our body had also commissioned a new hanging for the church in Robert's honor to be hung behind the altar. There was much symbolism in it. It was a cloth replication of a work of art by an artist he greatly admires. The painting it was based on is called "Finger 2". It's green, navy, and purple swirls looked like finger prints. The symbolism in the finger print is that through action and ministry we've all left our mark. Robert has certainly left his mark on our church and we are so blessed to have him as our rector. He's taking a 6 month sabbatical this year, but will come back refreshed and ready to take up the reins again and help us grow even more. And during his absence, our newest priest will be taking the reins in his very creative and capable hands.

After dinner was eaten, everyone who noticed how hard all the servers had worked stuck around and helped clean up. We cleared tables, stacked chairs, gathered in table cloths, and sorted out ornaments that had been used. When I got home just after 2:00 PM I felt a sense of contentment, but also the fading of the high energy that had been needed for the week. When I'd dropped everything and plopped into my chair, I called Mom and gave her a fairly full report. It's amazing that all of that only took 15 minutes to tell. That evening I talked to JSD and retold her as much as I could remember. Guess I needed the retelling to finish winding down.

Now the feeling of controlled chaos is over. The next week is started. The tension is not quite out of my shoulders, but I'm no longer running back and forth to church and calling or emailing people. After all of the activity high, it is sort of a letdown and I look forward to the next spurt, probably in preparation for the Christmas eve services. The picture at the beginning of this post is of the Fellowship walkers being goofy with our new church sign. Guess no one will ever call us serious now.

Jury Duty

2008-12-11T15:15:00.015-06:00

This is the Bexar County Courthouse, a historical building still in use in Downtown San Antonio, TX.

If you live in the USA, every so often you get called for jury duty. Monday was my day to serve. I'd already postponed it once because of work so I didn't think I should try again. Mind you, this day happened right after a very busy weekend where I traveled away overnight, attended a dinner at my rector's home, and even managed to make an offering for the table. So this added a lot of stress.

The jury summons isn't the easiest of documents to read, but it's clear enough in its instructions. It tells you when to get there, 8:00AM, and to not be late. It tells you where parking can be found. Then it tells you that parking is expensive and hard to find even if you do drive into downtown San Antonio. Last time I was on jury duty I drove my car and parked in the parking tower across the street. This time I didn't want to deal with the heavy traffic and I hadn't been downtown in quite a few years so I was no longer familiar with its streets. The city in its wisdom sent a bus pass along with the summons so I elected to use it.

I've ridden buses before but not in San Antonio. To accomplish the mission of getting to court on time I had to research the route. Of course, I didn't do this till Saturday and the bus offices are closed on weekends. I had to use the website. It had a handy utility that allowed you to plan your route. By using it I was able to discover that I needed to take bus route 17 and that I was to meet it at the Randolph Park & Ride. Then I looked up the bus schedule for that route and the location of the Park & Ride. Even with a map the website didn't have an address for the Park & Ride so I had to google it. Then with directions in hand I decided to take the 7:00 AM bus which would get me there before 7:30. It was an express bus so the ride only took 18 minutes inbound. The outbound trip was more like 25 minutes.

I'm the kind of person who gets incredibly nervous on streets and areas I'm not familiar with. That's because I can get incredibly lost. My cell phone has functioned as a navigation aid in getting to work more than once when detours rerouted me. So, I got driving directions from Yahoo. I carefully printed out the route, the schedule, even a map of the downtown bus stops. I stuck this all with my summons and the bus pass and into my purse they went. I set my clock for 5:00 AM so that I could get up and be fully awake when I tried to find a new place in the dark. My body protested both going to sleep and getting up. For sleep I took a pill and for waking I trusted the sounds of Credence Clearwater Revival blasting from my CD radio.

Jury duty is boring. You sit in a huge room with a lot of other people. Knowing this I brought several books to read, some sudoku, and a bottle of water. I also packed a couple of pop tarts figuring that I didn't want to pay for lunch at downtown tourist prices. The Park & Ride was not as hard to find as I'd feared. The bus was already there when showed up. The driver told me he would tell me when to get off. So I sat down near the front and off we went.

When I got off the bus the Justice Center was across the park from where I was so I had about half a block to walk. Once there the doors were manned by security guards with metal detectors and scanners for your bags. These security measures were put in place back in the '90s because someone brought a gun into a courtroom and shot someone with it.

The jury room is in the basement and once there we had to line up in the hall where they took our filled out surveys which had been a part of the summons. Then we walked single file into a room with over 400 chairs. I found a seat near the front and was happy with that. The lady next to me turned out to be a grandmother who had a daughter that was close to giving birth. She also had other grand kids to babysit but she was there anyway. We had nice chats all morning long, interrupted occasionally by periods of intense listening while they read off a list of names. Those people who were called would then be taken to a courtroom by an officer and there serve their duty. Or not.

By noon I hadn't been called so the grandmother and I decided to go to lunch outside. The woman on the other side of her got invited too and we discussed where to go. They elected to do Bill Miller's which is a barbecue chain. I said that was fine and had intended to just eat my Poptarts. The new lady decided that wasn't good and bought me lunch. We took our food to go and went out to sit in the park. There was one table left that I could see and we made a beeline for it.

When we sat down it turned out there was a band warming up in the corner across from us. They played in a Latin style and the music was pretty good. So was the food and the company. Once the eating was done I took out my camera and took some pictures.

This is a picture of the band as they were playing. Occasionally someone from the listeners would get up and dance around in front of them to the music.

These are my dining companions. The lady in pink is the grandmother and the professionally dressed lady was the one who bought me lunch.

From where we were sitting you could see a good bit of the surrounding area. The park is in the midst of the oldest part of Downtown and is taken care of zealously by the City Parks Division. This building was pretty far away but the tower is famous for its gargoyles which you might be able to see. They are those little projections off the side at each level. There's a stature up on tome too but I don't think it shows in this view.

There used to be huge trees filling the whole park. Recently they discovered that all the trees were diseased and most had to be cut down. The city put in these fountains which are nice looking and there are some decorative tiles placed throughout the park. What was missing was all the grass and squirrels that inhabited the ancient live oak trees.

It being Christmas season the city is putting on the ritz. The Riverwalk is bright with lights through all the trees and this was the tree that had been placed and decorated for the park. It looks like they hired a decorator to do it. Behind it you can see the front of one of the oldest churches in town. I think it is Anglican but I may be wrong. San Antonio started as a Mission community so there are several churches in the downtown area.

Update: Paschal tells me this is a Roman Catholic church and is the San Fernando Cathedral.

Here's an unimpeded view of the church architecture. These were taken while strolling and I wasn't in the best of positions to get pictures of the entire building at once. So I took the next shot.

Here you can see the height of the church and a better view of its architecture. I'm not sure but I think it is Gothic style of some sort.

I wanted to show you the spires on the courthouse. I think they are rather interesting in their different styles. The building is so old that there have been some carefully done renovations on it recently. But old as it is, San Antonio still loves it and it is in full use.

Here's a better view of the entire courthouse. It's pretty big. The Justice Center which is right next to it is even bigger and while pretty enough for modern buildings, no where near as interesting.

My name was called for a panel at 1:45. This was the biggest panel they called and the request was for 50 people. The judge told us she only needed to call 32 but knowing how things can run she called for 50 and they were glad they had. It was a felony case. That's about all I can tell you right now. I was not selected for the jury for which I was grateful. They let us go at 4:45 and we raced down to the jury room to get our passes and make sure that everything was in place to show we had served our day.

I went outside to locate the bus stop. It turned out to be about a block away. The bus returning was not as full as the morning bus had been but the conversation was more lively. The ladies who rode this one were used to taking it home together. One of them was knitting and quite accomplished at it. She was making a tank top for herself. The whole ride was pleasanter for her friendly conversation.

When we reached the Park & Ride a nice gentleman told me the best way out of the lot which was very helpful because the traffic at 5:30 was intense. I made it home safely and except for a dirty car was none the worse for wear. The cats were glad to see me and were eager to eat. I managed to stay up and even played a game of Scrabble with Sandi.

The 7 Unusual Things About Me Tag

2008-12-03T21:09:00.005-06:00

As I told San when she tagged me for this, I've spent more time trying to fit in and be usual than unusual. So this is going to be a bit awkward as I dredge through years of personal history to find 7 things. Some of them may not be that unusual.

1) For the 3 months after I was born I would not allow myself to be put down. If my Mother, Grandmother, or Grandfather tried I screamed until someone picked me up again. During this period Dad went off to fight in the Korean War. Can you imagine the round the clock shifts of parenting this took to keep me calm? Guess it was a good thing I was born in the upstair bedroom of Grandmother's house. There were loving arms ready to help Mom survive her post natal stressor, me.

2) Because I was cross eyed as a child I never developed depth perception. Not even after corrective surgery in 5th & 6th grades. My eyes work independantly of one another and my brain ignores the one not pointed directly at the object I'm looking at. So it goes off to look to the side. That affects peripheral vision too. I have less than the normal range. This makes many things more difficult. I'm terrible at most sports, especially those involving balls moving towards me. But for marksmanship it works out pretty well as you only use one eye to sight along a rifle barrel.

3) When I was in elementary school, this would have been in 5th grade, I became a human ball. I was so slender and light that the other kids would gather around me, pick me up, and throw me from one group to another. Or toss me in the air and watch me land. I got pretty good at using my legs as springs to take up the shock.

4) When I went through bootcamp I was happy and at peace with my world for the first time. That sounds weird even to me. Bootcamp is supposed to be hard and often a miserable experience. Instead I knew exactly what was expected of me and that worked so well for me that I found myself mentally singing happy songs while marching in formation.

5) My voice has a much greater range than I can actually use when performing with the choir. It all depends on who I'm following and how relaxed I am. When following a soprano I can sing most of the way up to the top of second soprano. When following the altos I have the full range now, that wasn't the case as a teenager in high school. When I have a really strong tenor voice right beside me I can now follow him partway down into that range. I've even tackled some of the higher bass notes. I discovered I could do this while singing along with the choir director at Krueger Middle School. Even he was impressed.

6) I tried out for a broadway style musical in college by singing a Korean War Song. It was Hut Sut Ralston on the Rillarah. The director was amazed and I got a part in the chorus. Here's a video clip from the Fibber & Molly Magee show of a quartet singing it.

7) I know songs from 4 wars. That probably isn't that unusual for people my age but I think it is kind of interesting. My grandparents taught me WWI songs, including Good Morning Mr. Zip. My Dad taught my sister and me stuff from WWII and the Korean War. I grew up during the Vietnam War so all those popular numbers from Hello Vietnam were familiar. And now I guess I have to add songs from a 5th war to my musical repertoir, the War on Terrorism. Who doesn't know that song by Toby Keith, Couresy of the Red, White, & Blue.

A Really Beautiful Service

2008-12-01T12:22:00.006-06:00

Sunday, November 30th, was the traditional day for the start of the Advent Season and is honored at my church by holding a Lessons & Carols service. Even though there was no communion, it was a fairly complicated service with 7 different readings, 14 hymns and anthems, a flutist for some of them, and full recordings both video and sound. All in all things went really well.

The choir had been preparing for this service for weeks. Some of the pieces were pretty challenging, including 2 in different languages and one in old English. On Sunday morning we were handed copies of all the hymnal pieces to add into our notebooks.

We have a new choir director, Cindy, who did a really good job getting us ready for this. In addition to lots of practice on the more difficult sections of each anthem, she made practice CD's for the altos and basses so that we could make sure our parts were learned. I'm sure that hadn't been her original plan as many of our members are very experienced and some are professionally trained musicians. But I was new, nervous, and holding back when we'd come to a part in a number I didn't feel confident of. So she planned on making one for me. I mentioned my gratitude for her generosity to some of the other members thinking that they would agree and never expecting them to feel they needed one too. Oops! So I made copies of mine and Cindy made another set for the basses. Man, that really helped. I'd play it at home and sometimes find myself waking up with a melody in my head.

The choir wore robes for the first time in my experience. Ours are red with a white/gold stole. The robes had been borrowed by another church and not returned promptly so we had to get them back. Then, because there were several new members, we had to do a trying on and organizing so that each person had their own robe and knew where to find it. It all worked out well and the one really short, almost car coat length, robe turned out to be for our member who is on a scooter the entire service. Being physically challenged is no deterrent to joining our choir.

Saturday I was sitting at my computer practicing with the CD and up popped a slider from Facebook telling me that our Assistant Rector was headed to Lessons & Carols practice. "What practice," I cried? Then being unable to reach anyone in the know I got in my car and raced over to the church to be sure I wasn't missing an important session. Turns out it was for the readers. One of our Adult Education classes these past few months has been "Drama of the Word" taught by our Assistant Rector, Matt, and a new member, Sam Gilliam, who teaches drama at Trinity University. She is the second drama teacher we have now, the other one being Stacey Connelly. Looks like Reconciliation will have a lot of drama in its future. This really excites me because I studied drama in college and love getting involved in things like that.

When I got to the church it was obvious I wasn't needed for the rehearsal, but Altar Guild was also there setting things up. Since I am on that I decided to help. All things work to the good for those who love the Lord! We changed fair linens, put up the altar hangings, changed out candles, and replaced the wicks in the lighters. We even found where the steamer was so that we could get the folds out of the hangings. They'd been in the closet too long.

When Sunday morning came around we hurried to get our robes on, our music organized, and practiced getting up on the stage once. Suddenly it was time and we were in the middle of the performance. I wish you could have been there to see and hear what I was hearing from my chair in front of the altar. The readers were behind us taking different voices during the readings. The acoustics are awesome under the rotunda so the choir was clearly heard and I could hear and match my voice to my choir director's, she sings alto too. One of the readings had this echo affect where every one of the readers echoed each other in gathering succession with a phrase. It sounded like the angels in heaven crying out, praising God over and over again.

Robert told the congregation what "amen" meant and that he knew they wanted to say one, so the entire church said, "amen" and applauded the choir and readers. That was so nice and something I like about my church, they give you a lot of support and appreciation when you are involved in things.

After it was all over and I was headed down the hall, I overheard our choir director telling another member that she, "didn't know any local choirs, not even professional ones, that could do what we had just done." That made me laugh, because she had been telling us over and over again that this was all, "pretty basic stuff." Now that's a good choir director! After hearing that my confidence is up and I'm really looking forward to the 3 big services we have coming up: 1) Matt's Ordination, 2) our 40th Anniversary service, and 3) the Christmas one.

Post Script: I was hoping to start this post with a nice video of one of the songs we sang for Lessons & Carols. But the one I wanted to post had the greatest voices but a heart rending image of Christ carrying his cross. The painting is probably famous, but I just could not bring myself to post that image on this joyous season. So, with that warning, here are links to 7 of the songs we sang yesterday. None of these videos are of us. If I get access to one I'll try to fix that and post it instead. Until then I hope you enjoy these. And if you want to avoid the video with the Christ carrying his cross image during a season when we are celebrating his birth I totally understand. It's the second one. But the group that sings that one is Vocal Point of BYU and worth hearing. Your choice.

Hanacpachap cussicuinin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w08NPa1Om0&feature=related

E'en So Lord Jesus Quickly Come
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4rZEWlB4hQ

Every Valley (Not Handel's Messiah but same words)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_qzVb8LsAM

Prepare Thyself, Zion by JS Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNZVe16N28I

One Perfect Flower (this is just a clip of the solo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVo3ClM6UFE

Maria Walks Amid the Thorn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZS0h7DZT5M

Ave Maria by Franz Biebl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVBsNUXg_YM

Playlist Update

2008-11-26T16:41:00.003-06:00

After getting a coupon from AT&T for a free ringtone, I went looking for a new song for the playlist. It would be the same song I'd add to my phone, if I weren't concerned about the cost of going online on it to download it. Doesn't that mean you pay for downloading time? I'm not sure how much that would cost but I don't like the idea. My last LG phone came with lots of free songs. This one has none. Anyway, the new song is "Our Song" by Taylor Swift. I love country and she is contemporary country, but what I like about this song is the intensity of romance expressed in it. It's young, and very hot in tone but somewhere in the lyrics they got it right. It's at the very bottom if you want to hear it. I thought about adding Teardrops on My Guitar too but while I love the chorus the lyrics are a sort of sad and I didn't feel like doing sad songs today. Maybe another time. Enjoy!

Book Tag

2008-11-26T10:46:00.008-06:00

JSD, Paschal, and Alt have all done this so I guess it's my turn. Most of my books are ones I just couldn't bear to part with.

How this tag works:

(a) Fiction book
(b) Autobiography
(c) Non-fiction book
(d) A fourth book of your choice, from any genre

Explain why the books are essential reads, in 30 words or less. (For maximum fun, try for 30 words exactly).

Fiction: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
If I hadn't read this I doubt I'd have read the trilogy. An easy stepping stone to the rich tome which some find daunting. LoTR is richer after reading this.

Autobiography: Hate to say it but, I've read biographies but no autobiographies that I can recall.

Non-fiction: In The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
Most history books are dry. This one isn't. It makes a connection between classic literature and fact. This award winner is now an American History classic. Info and 1st chapter are here.

Any book of your choosing: The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, edited by William S. Baring-Gould
By the time I finished these two volumes I could guess the plot's finish. Pictures and notes in the margins make the stories richer and provide social context on Doyle's popularity.

As Paschal so neatly put it, Tag! You're it!

Update: Paschal suggested I break the rules and list a biography. Great idea! Thanks, Paschal! This turned me to the Public Library page for a search of topics. The related subjects clued me into a book I both like and am still in the process of reading. So here's my biography entry.

Biography: Sex With Kings : 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge by Eleanor Herman
Great behind the scenes stuff! What attracted me were mistresses' pictures and answering the question, "Why would someone want to be a mistress?" It has its own website, here.

Could You Survive in Poverty? - A Perspective Quiz

2008-11-23T05:46:00.006-06:00

When I was attending college I went through a workshop designed to give me a better understanding of the conditions people in poverty live under. It was based on the book "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Ruby Payne. Life has a way of teaching us some of the things necessary to survive hard times and they are never fun, especially when we have a family to worry about.

Historically, life has always been hard. There have been easier times, but I don't think the world will ever eradicate poverty. I used to see lots of emailed stories about how people were more blessed by simple things than by fancy stuff, things like a night spent lying with your family and friends on a blanket in your back yard observing the stars with your naked eye instead of sitting in front of a TV watching a DVD on a big screen TV or playing a video game on your x-box or computer. I don't see many of those examples in my emails now. Maybe people feel that we are all having to remember simpler lives with less wealth to provide us with entertainment.

Because income levels have an insular effect on society, even those who work with the poor can be immune to how lives really function at the generational poverty level. And, sadly, that is what many parts of our country and others have, life long poverty that you can't escape to give your child a better life. When you live like that your whole perspective changes. Things that you or I might find insupportable are just a fact of life to the poor. For instance, moving in less than a day because you can't make the rent at your present home. When I talked to the associate rector at my church he told me that this kind of workshop was also part of his education. But is education in this enough? My parents and grandparents lived during the great depression. I have lessons in economics they taught me from those times. My father has never paid even so much as a penny of interest on a credit card in his entire life. My church prides itself on being reconciling but we are a pretty affluent church, not wealthy, but no where near poor. Our rector is an ex NY lawyer and his wife is too. Their kid is going to college in Boston. Our whole church does a whole lot to help the poor, but even so, I wonder what any of us would do if we suddenly found ourselves poor?

The most telling thing in the entire workshop was a quiz which we were required to take. It was based on the skills you needed to survive at different levels of income. I've decided to share this quiz because many of us, myself included, need a reminder that just because we live at one level of income doesn't mean things won't change. I think many in our country are experiencing that and if this quiz helps any of you interact with your friends, who may be struggling, in a way that is more reconciling then that's a good thing. But if this quiz doesn't teach you anything, be forewarned, life may do it.

Could you survive in middle class?

Count the number of items you know how to do:
1. I know how to get my children into Little League, piano lessons, etc.
2. I know how to set a table properly.
3. I know which stores carry the clothing brands my family wears.
4. My children know the best name brands in clothing.
5. I know how to order in a nice restaurant.
6. I know how to use a credit card, checking account and savings account—and I understand an annuity. I understand term life insurance, disability insurance and 20/80 medical insurance as well as house, flood and replacement insurances.
7. I talk to my children about going to college.
8. I know how to get one of the best interest rates on my new car loan.
9. I understand the difference among the principal, interest, and escrow statements on my house payment.
10. I know how to help my children with their homework and do not hesitate to call the school if I need additional information.
11. I know how to decorate the house for the different holidays.
12. I know how to get a library card.
13. I know how to use most of the tools in the garage.
14. I repair items in my house almost immediately when they break—or know a repair service and call it.

Could you survive in poverty?

Count the number of items you know how to do:
1. I know which churches and sections of town have the best rummage sales.
2. I know which rummage sales have “bag sales” and when.
3. I know which grocery stores’ garbage bins can be accessed for thrown-away food.
4. I know how to get someone out of jail.
5. I know how to fight and defend myself physically.
6. I know how to get a gun, even if I have a police record.
7. I know how to keep my clothes from being stolen at the Laundromat.
8. I know what problems to look for in a used car.
9. I know how to live without a checking account.
10. I know how to live without electricity and a phone.
11. I know how to use a knife as scissors.
12. I can entertain a group of friends with my personality and my stories.
13. I know what to do when I don’t have money to pay the bills.
14. I know how to move in half a day.
15. I know how to get and use food stamps or an electronic card for benefits.
16. I know where the free medical clinics are.
17. I am very good at trading and bartering
18. I can get by without a car.

Could you survive in wealth?

Count the number of items you know how to do:
1. I can read a menu in French, English and another language.
2. I have several favorite restaurants in different countries of the world.
3. During the holidays, I know how to hire a decorator to identify the appropriate themes and items with which to decorate the house.
4. I know who my preferred financial advisor, legal service, designer, domestic-employment service, and hairdresser are.
5. I have at lest two residences that are staffed and maintained.
6. I know how to ensure confidentiality and loyalty from my domestic staff.
7. I have at least two or three “screens” that keep people whom I do to wish to see away from me.
8. I fly in my own plane or the company plane.
9. I know how to enroll my children in the preferred private schools
10. I know how to host the parties that “key” people attend.
11. I am on the boards of at least two charities.
12. I know the hidden rules of the Junior League.
13. I support or buy the work of a particular artist.
14. I know how to read a corporate financial statement and analyze my own financial statements.

When I took this test I scored all correct on middle class and could do 6 or 7 things in poverty. I attribute that to my post depression upbringing. I could only do one thing in wealth and that was because I lived on the Mexico border and used to dine over there. How did you score?

Puzzle Share

2008-11-07T07:34:00.003-06:00

It's been a while since I last shared a puzzle with you. This one was so nice and the colors shimmered with the sunlight shining through the glass bottles that I couldn't resist. It looks like stained glass doesn't it? That's a fascinating art form and you'd be surprised at how easy it is to do. If you are a methodical, step by step sort of person you can learn to make things in stained glass. Start up costs are a bit high, around $300, but the joy of making a beautiful stained glass keepsake box for about a third of the price of one in a store more than makes up for that. Hope you enjoy the puzzle.

Change.gov

2008-11-06T19:57:00.009-06:00

JSD commented on my last post and gave me a great web site to visit. It's Change.gov, the new website of our President-elect! I was impressed with the site. On Change.gov you can watch the entire acceptance speech, learn more about Obama & Biden's plans for the future of our country, keep up with the latest developments as he builds his administration, communicate by telling your story or vision, and even apply for a job.

Election Follow Up.

2008-11-05T07:10:00.006-06:00

Last night I watched the returns on the computer. BBC had a streaming broadcast and I sat through the whole thing watching as each set of states reported in. I felt blessed to live in a country where I could do that without having a TV or service to provide good viewing.

When the time came I watched McCain's concession speech. In it he proved himself a generous man and a good loser. I really liked it when he promised to work with Obama and Biden to help the country. I also liked the way he refused to let the crowd of disappointed supporters get angry and and ugly during his speech. That too is a sign of a sensible man with his heart in the right place, all campaign strategies aside. Then, because I was exhausted, I went to bed.

This morning, when I got up, I located a full version of Obama's acceptance speech. I sat there watching our President Elect talk about everybody under the sun. He didn't leave out a single soul in his acknowledgement of victory. He made everyone in the whole world a part of it. And he recognized each person's concerns as he talked about how we as a country, and a world, need to build things. When he started walking through the United States history and all our great events I started crying. When he started tying each generation and every person on the planet to our future I cried even harder. He tied all the hands in our country together and talked about the labor of building our future brick by brick. He didn't build us a pipe dream as he acknowledged the missteps and false starts that might happen and the fact that it would take more than a term to fix even the most crucial of our present problems.

What he sounded like to me was a "man of the people" and I hope that holds true. I'd like to see the resumption of fireside talks as we work to make things better for this country and the rest of the world. I also hope he will find ways to make himself more accessible to the American people. When the White House web page was first built it had a place where you could email the president and all the rest of his staff. Right now the only person you can email directly seems to be the vice president, although there is an interactive page where you can talk to the white house staff and that didn't include everybody. I guess if I want to say anything to Mr. Obama before he takes office I'll probably need to contact his campaign website.

Election Day!

2008-11-04T11:09:00.006-06:00

It had been my plan to vote early. That didn't happen because I'm the kind of person who wants all their ducks in order before going to the polls. So when I finally found a version of the ballot that included everything I needed to know it was the last day of early voting and I missed my chance at that making preparations to help a friend, who'd just had back surgery, by answering the door and handing out candy for her thus minimizing her need to get up and down.

So this morning I pulled up Google to locate my polling place. The main system that you could use to find out where to go by your registration info kept giving me an error message. So I had to search for the entire list of places and then find my precinct on it. That was good, because then I had an address and could get a map of how to get there. I'm directionally challenged and get lost at the drop of a hat, or the turn of a corner.

One kind of neat thing I found while locating the list of polling places was an interactive tutorial of how to use the electronic voting machines. So I tried it out. It was simple enough that anyone should have been able to do it, but having done that tutorial walk through before heading out made the actual voting at the polls much more user friendly. So that's a good thing.

There was a prediction of a record turnout and long lines at the polls, so I had water, reading material, and my list of choices before I headed out. Then on the way to the polls I got lost. I overshot the street I was to turn on by at least a mile before I realized it wasn't where I had thought it was going to be and turned around to head back and find it. Once I found it, I was kind of surprised at the lightness of the traffic. I turned into the school parking lot and didn't see tons of ads which had been prevalent at the early voting places, which in my case was the public library. There was also plenty of parking. I showed my card, went up a ramp and showed my card again at the check in tables. I was handed a colored Popsicle stick with my precinct number on it for the fellow who set up the booth for you. My polling location was covering 4 precincts. They had about 5 or 6 machines. No curtained alcoves as in olden days. And no stickers for your driver's license...that was only for early voters.

When it was my turn, and the wait was less than 5 minutes, I approached the machine, turned the page of my list to match what I saw and went through the whole ballot (11 pages) one item at a time. There was only one thing on the ballot that wasn't on my paper example and that was a county vote on whether to change term limits on our councilmen and mayors or to leave them to two 2 year terms. I wasn't really happy with either choice and didn't feel they had put a middle of the road choice in there but I did the best I could with that one. Then I reviewed my ballot, hit the flashing red vote button, and voila! I'd voted.

Voting seemed much more relaxed this time around. One of the ladies manning a table outside said she had volunteered for that location because her kids went to that school. I told her that was great because she could not only see her kids but she was setting them an outstanding example. Then I came home. On the way home I got a call on my cell phone which was from "Kids First" and they were offering 2 free DVD movies for me to watch and review. I think it is the family entertainment folk who are no doubt out in force today. I don't have kids but they said they'd send me two free movies anyways. Yay!

When I got home I called a friend to see if they would be watching the election results on TV tonight because I had thought I'd enjoy watching them with someone, but they weren't interested. So I'm going to find a channel online and keep track that way with frequent refreshes if necessary. I don't expect my vote to make a huge difference. I'm just one person in a country of millions. But I know that if I don't express my choice by voting I'll have lost the opportunity to add my voice to the millions of others who also voted and together we can make a difference.

Strawberry Bavarian

2008-10-30T09:07:00.004-05:00

Dinners for 6 to 8 is a fellowship method that my church is using to good success. You sign up for the program and are assigned to a group of folk numbering from 6 to 8 people. Your group then meets and plans 3 or 4 dinners to be held once a month at your homes. If you are single and live in a tiny place, as I do, you can co-host with someone.

We are in our 3rd season of this, I've signed up each time, and always had a good time. Usually when it is my turn to help provide the food I bring a fresh baked loaf of bread. That's minimal effort on my part because I have a great bread machine. This time I'm in a group where I know 3 of the folk in it already. Two of those are our rector, Robert, and his wife, Julie. The other person I know is Abbie who was my sponsor for my Cursillo and a really great person. Abbie and I were supposed to be co-hosting the first dinner this Sunday evening. That's not going to happen because right now she is in the hospital with an infection and blood pressure problems. We are all concerned and praying for her.

My contribution was going to be my usual loaf of bread and Abbie asked me to bring a dessert also. I thought I'd make Strawberry Bavarian. Mom tells me it is a spring dessert and I should do something more appropriate to the season, but I like this one for its lightness and I can make it low fat and almost sugar free. Who wants a heavy dessert after a full meal? Abbie is going to make ratatouille.

Mom was the one who taught me how to make this dessert. She used to serve it frequently, probably because I liked it so much. It was one of three of her desserts which were my all time favorites. The other two were Apple Brown Betty and Baked Bananas. If you've ever had these dishes you can probably tell that Mom is a pretty good cook. When I grew up and started feeding people as an adult this was one of my favorite dessert offerings. It was so simple that it usually turned out perfect and everyone seemed to like it.

The version of Strawberry Bavarian I learned had six ingredients:
1 pint of strawberries washed, hulled, and sliced,
1 envelope of unflavored gelatin,
1 cup of sugar,
1 tablespoon of lemon juice,
1 cup of whipping cream,
both cold and boiling water for the gelatin.

Pick the bowl you want to serve this in, or you can mold it if you wish. Wash, hull, and slice the strawberries and sprinkle sugar over them. Let them stand for 30 minutes to absorb the sugar. Prepare the gelatin according to the package directions, add in the lemon juice (this was optional according to Joy of Cooking) and pour it over the strawberries. Put this in the refrigerator to let it start to congeal. Whip the whipping cream to the point where it will hold peaks. When the gelatin is thickened but not set, fold the cream lightly into the strawberry gelatin mixture. Put it all back into the refrigerator to finish congealing. If you have some left over strawberry slices you can put those on top to decorate the dish. When set it is ready to serve. The cookbook said this makes 8 servings. I don't know how accurate that is as I always liked a really huge serving and so did everyone else. I never had any left overs.

Symbolism of a Heart in Action

2008-10-24T11:57:00.009-05:00

Every second Sunday my church holds a special service so that things are kept interesting and the congregation can participate more fully. Often the sermon is presented by a member of the body with music, images, and stories from their life's lessons. Last Sunday my church held an "Instructed Eucharist." Obviously this is one in which the congregation is instructed on something. In this case it was the Eucharist itself and what all different parts of it mean and how they work together. It was an exquisite service, full of symbolism and love for the meaning behind and in the things we use during it and what our actions represent. Even better it enabled the congregation to participate more closely in the Eucharist as we were gathered around the Lord's table during the meal's preparation.

The writer of this excellent teaching was our new Assistant Rector, Matt Wise. Last summer, he was our "summer seminarian" and the young man who gave me guitar lessons. He recently graduated from seminary and is now doing his internship as a deacon until he is officially ordained as a priest on December 13th. Matt has a real love of liturgy and is responsible for many of the changes that are occurring in ours. I think his heart thinks in visuals of what something means and how it can play out.

I walked in late, just after the service started, and sat down in my early service front pew. Matt was sitting right in front of me on a tall stool with his notes on a podium. That was kind of cool. I've always liked sitting at the front of the class near the teacher. I hadn't missed much because the words that caught my attention were at almost the very beginning of the running commentary that continued throughout the entire service. They were:

In some ways, our liturgy is a drama enacted each time we gather with the hopes of drawing us all closer to one another as we together encounter the presence of the risen Christ among us. To help us experience this co-union or communion, we use many symbols. Symbols are signs that participate in the reality that they represent. A symbol works on us at a visceral level and the symbols we use in the Eucharist follow a pattern and form a ritual. Rituals help us experience and express things that cannot be easily verbalized.

After that my attention was pretty much locked to the explanations, my curiosity peaked. Fascinated I followed through the entire service every word that was spoken by either Matt or our Rector, Robert. I'd like to share this sermon with you so I invite you to go here and read the entire service teaching. It has a lot of good things in it.

Addition to the Playlist

2008-10-20T07:40:00.005-05:00

All the singing and music doings at church seems to have put me in a perpetual music mode. This morning I found Ella and Louis singing Summertime. This version has the horns up front at the beginning, then Ella, then Louis. For all that Ella seems to be the lead singer here, Louis was far busier during this rendition. He plays the horn for the intro, sings his part, goes back to the horns, and then throws in some scat.

There were 3 different files to choose from and all of them were of this version. The first one had the horns way high on the squeal scale and I thought that sounded very realistic based on the times I've heard horns live. The second version was deeper in tone, richer but without the squeal. It just didn't quite feel like a live performance. The last one had that rich acoustic space feel to it. The horns were better than number two but it seems to have been recorded in surround because I'd have sworn I could hear the echo off the high auditorium ceiling. If you've got a play list on your blog go to the search page and type in Ella Fitzgerald and Summertime. Tell me what you think? I chose the last one for its richness but the first one's horns still are sitting in my memory.

While I'm at it I guess it might be nice to tell you that a while back I also added in Jabberwocky and Catch the Wind by Donovan, and Highwayman and Poncho & Lefty which showcase several country artists including Willie Nelson. Enjoy!

Busy Doings at Church

2008-10-18T16:36:00.009-05:00

Thursday of this week my verger training materials arrived. These consisted of a nice notebook with eight sections and a booklet depicting verger robes and virges. I'll probably have to get a robe at some point or the church will order one for me. The Verger Guild of the Episcopal Church (VGEC) provides you with a virge when you pass the test and are officially ready to be a verger. A virge is a staff with a finial on it. According to history it was sometimes used for battle but that was the business end of it. The pomp & circumstance end has a decorative and symbolic ornamentation that leads the way for the procession of the church on some of the more formal occasions. One uses it ceremonially to symbolically "clear the way." Are you wondering if you've ever seen a verger in action? Well, if you watched President Ford's funeral you saw one leading preachers and speakers to the podium.

While my church formally uses our verger in the processions at Easter and Advent he is usually active in the background at every service. I suspect that there are some churches where the verger takes part in every procession. I'm not sure but I think it might have to do with how "high church" your services are. Ours aren't that high, but they are getting more so. We just added in torch bearers to the entrance procession. The first two were very young and SO excited to be involved in a responsible activity. They did just beautifully despite their near wavering with excitement.

Anyway, back to the training materials. The moment I opened them I fired off a letter to Ted, our verger, and Robert, our rector, to let them know they'd arrived and asking when the first training session would be held. Then I sat down and read through the first 3 sections. Flipping through it in preparation for writing this post, I noticed there were some questions at certain points which no doubt require an answer. Between now and the first training I'll probably google for the answers, or go over and sit in the church library for a bit.

There is a reading list for training which we can read or read only sections. Robert and Ted had gotten together and have purchased a copy of the ones Ted said were the most used/useful. Robert emailed us all later that evening and those books are now in the church library. We'll have to take turns with them. Did I tell you that we are training four vergers? That seems a huge leap from one. Robert says there are all kinds of uses they envision for us. I hope so. I can already think of at least one service I want to be actively involved in next year.

As if that wasn't busy making enough, the choir, which I joined recently, is gearing up for several big services. There's our Lessons & Carols, All Saint's Day, the Ordination of our associate pastor, our 40th Anniversary celebration, and Advent. We've added in quite a few songs to our music notebooks recently including the glorious River Song from "O' Brother, Where Art Thou?" This past Wednesday we added in some numbers sung to us earlier this year by SAVAE at the concert they gave in our sanctuary. Those two songs are not in my native tongue so I'm really glad Cindy, our choir director, is starting us on them early. Now if only I had the lyrics printed out so that I could sing along with the songs on the CD I have of them. I couldn't find clips of the ones we are singing, but have a listen to SAVAE on the YouTube video below. They're singing Asi Andando.

We're also starting to hold planning meetings for our 40th Anniversary to be celebrated the week following Matt's ordination. December is going to be a busy month! The conundrum for me is the first planning meeting is being held during choir practice. I want to attend both and sadly am not endowed with the self replicating talents of Triplicate Girl. So I need to decide which is more important, practice with the choir and get socialization at the same time, or attend the meeting and be in on the planning from the start.

Dropping Gas Prices

2008-10-15T11:48:00.009-05:00

I just finished reading a news article on Reuters about how gas prices have taken a huge, record breaking, drop this past week. Good as this news is, it was interesting to note that average prices across most of the country still seems to be above $3/gal. See the excerpt below. For the whole article go here.

"In the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) weekly survey, gasoline was the most expensive on the West Coast $3.42 a gallon, down 15 cents. San Francisco had the highest city price at $3.60, down 12 cents.

The Gulf Coast had the lowest regional price at $2.99 a gallon, down 45 cents. Cleveland had the lowest city pump price, down 38 cents at $2.90.

The EIA also reported gasoline prices were down 29 cents at $3.46 in Chicago; down 12 cents at $3.44 in Los Angeles; down 30 cents at $3.38 in Miami; down 18 cents at $3.36 in Seattle; down 24 cents at $3.22 in Denver; down 24 cents at $3.16 in New York City; down 27 cents at $3.06 in Boston; and down 32 cents at $3.03 in Houston."

Some of those gas prices seem really high because unleaded at the Citgo across the corner from me is $2.71 a gallon. I'm guessing that the prices they took their averages from included those "we're on the corner of a highway and can charge an arm and a leg" prices of strategically located service stations. These averages were based on regular unleaded prices, not plus or premium, which are much higher. That reminds me of something my ex told me when we were engaged (he managed a gas station/store), "The difference between unleaded and premium is about $0.04/gal. to the retailer." When he told me this it was in '91 and gas prices were much lower. There was about a $0.20 difference for the customer at that time. Now, of course, it is higher and so is the difference.

My granddad owned and ran a Texaco service station for many years. It wasn't fancy, but the building was solidly built. And the pumps let you know how much you were spending with a nice ding every time the meter turned over another dollar. Back then you got about 3 gallons for a dollar. That the meters reminded you how much you were spending says something about the mindset of the country. People were careful with their money. I'm delighted to see gas prices dropping. I still wish we could go back to the days when the attitude was that folk were respected for their desire to economize, make their dollar go as far as it would, and retailers seemed more inclined to support this.

The Switchover Maze

2008-10-10T06:08:00.006-05:00

Times are hard right now and everyone I know is trying to cut back on expenses, including myself. Having both a land line and a cell phone seemed to be an area I could make some economies in so I decided to switch from Verizon, a most excellent company, to AT&T/Cingular who has a better savings in their roll over minutes. AT&T was so glad to get my business that they gave me a $25 credit, but the switchover didn't go as smoothly as it could have.

Before setting plans into action I had checked on the company's reputation. Comsumer's Report doesn't like AT&T very much. JS, on the other hand, did. She said she'd had no problems with them. So I talked to the Customer Service representative and was made a really nice offer which would make the switch over almost cost free. We're talking like less than a dollar. Woo hoo! And I'd have a camera and music phone to boot. So I placed the order. This was at the beginning of September.

The phone, a lovely plum LG CU515, was shipped to me on the 3rd of that month via UPS. UPS didn't deliver it. I waited and waited. I called the apartment office and had them search their package closet. No luck. The office closed at 5:30 but so did work. I didn't want to leave work early to stop by the office. I trusted the package would arrive. Maybe it was on back order. Nope! Eventually at the end of September I got a call from AT&T saying that my contract was about to be canceled for lack of activation, so I took time off from work and went to the apartment office. They still didn't have it but checked UPS for me and found that the package had been sent to Dallas instead. I called UPS. They looked on their records and had returned the package to sender because, "There was no apartment number on the label." Ouch! I'm pretty sure AT&T had my apartment number. It has been on my bill from them for the land line for several years now.

AT&T got my next call. They apologized, made lots of concessions, and set up a new delivery. It took a really long time to get that new delivery set up and I spent 45 minutes on the phone with them, middle of the day, anytime minutes. This was a really long lunch so when I got back to work I apologized to my boss. AT&T called again during the afternoon but I didn't pick up the call. Instead, I listened to the message and received the call again that evening in the midst of an Altar Guild dinner and meeting. The shipment had been canceled because they couldn't bill it to my account and needed a debit or credit card to charge the phone to. So they had to set it up all over again.

AT&T scheduled a call to me this past Monday to check and see if the phone had arrived. It hadn't. They were going to call back. They had shipped it via FedEx this time and FedEx tried to deliver it on Tuesday. I wasn't there. So they brought it on Wednesday. Last night, Thursday, AT&T called again to check and help me set up my phone by "porting" my number from Verizon to AT&T. The customer service rep left me with an automated phone system and I had no idea what was going on. So when I turned the phone on, as directed, and saw an error message about its smart chip I asked for a live person to talk to. That person helped me by having me reset the chip in place. Then we went together through the automated activation system and it worked. Then she had me place a test call to see if the phone would call out. Mom was glad to hear from me. Then the AT&T rep placed a call to my phone to make sure it worked. Whew!

The upshot of all of this is that I have a new phone but still have things to attend to. I need to see if the AT&T store can help me move my phone directory from the old phone to this one. That's a major headache if they can't because who wants to have to reenter all those numbers by hand? Then and only then will I call and give Verizon the bad news, although with the loss of a number I think the already know.

Walking a Measured Path

2008-10-09T18:23:00.007-05:00

When I was just into my 30's I was working at a bank and finding life kind of rough. It didn't meet my hopes or my expectations. Decisions in life that I'd made without thinking had brought me to a point where I was feeling kind of cold about life and what mine represented.

Then one day I met Tom Jones, no, not the singer. This guy was a young and rising officer at the bank. We found we enjoyed each others company and music brought us closer together. You see, we both played guitars. So our dates revolved around that.

I think my life's dissatisfaction must have been present in our conversations because one day Tom asked me if I believed in God. He managed to do this in a way that didn't sound like he was trying to save me or anything like that. I wish I could tell you his exact words, but what happened after was more memory worthy.

We were sitting at the table in his place and I'd been talking about all the things wrong in my life. I even managed to spill soup on myself in the midst of crying. Tom was understanding, lent me a clean shirt, but after that he gently suggested I read the bible. I asked him what that would do and his answer was something along the lines of "it will give you good advice on how to live." So I guess I started seeking through reading.

I actually did. I read the New Testament because that's where Tom said I should start. My impressions of the bible were no doubt strange and sometimes silly. The morning after reading about Jesus cursing the fig tree I declared he'd gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. Tom grinned when I said that but he also listened.

Eventually I read the whole New Testament, and at some point during that time Tom invited me to attend church with him and this lady he knew. That was where I got saved and the story of that evening was told back at the beginning of this blog in "Maintenance and Retro Learning". I'd never imagined that the receiving of a faith could be so real! Since that time I've walked through life knowing there was a God and he loved me beyond words and beyond reason, or at least from my perspective.

Looking back on those talks with Tom, I've come to realize that while I'd heard lots of proselytizing talks from friends or acquaintances, this one was real in a much more holy way and far less religious. I'd gone through the steps and stages that the bring people to Christ in a very natural way. All the salvation pamphlets list them. Seek and ye shall find. Confess your sins, repent and be forgiven. Believe and receive. Well I had sought, hadn't I? I was certainly unhappy till Tom helped me find that path. Confess my sins? I think that any believer is able to forgive sins in God's name. Tom heard me confess all my past sins at that dinner table. I'd cried over the things I'd done and wanted to be able to put them behind me. I'm sure that Tom forgave me, as did God. We stayed friends for many years. It was distance that separated us and I only hope that my friend is happy. When I went to church with him and Debra, his future girlfriend and my future best friend, I listened, believed, and received the Holy Spirit.

So who planned all of that? Not me. Not Tom. I think it was God. It just fit "the plan" too perfectly to be anything else. And that is how I came to believe, walking a measured path from dark into light. Thank God!

Killing Bugs!

2008-09-30T05:45:00.005-05:00

Ugly things, crawling in places where living creatures shouldn't be able to cling, moving faster than I can with a shoe in my hand! I hate bugs! Have since I was a kid. I'm scared of them too. One of the earliest home movies Dad took was one where my younger sister ferociously killed a bug with a raggedy Andy doll, and then taught me how to do it, with much bashing of the doll on the hapless corpse of the spider unfortunate enough to meet up with her. I think we were 2 and 4 at the time.

Being bigger than the bug doesn't help. When I was a little bit older I was in a downstairs half bath and out from behind the toilet crawls a tarantula. My feet came off the ground. I cried out for Mom to no effect. I was trapped in there until it crawled to the other side of the small room and I was able to leap from my feet upon the toilet seat perch to the step in front of the doorway and escape. I'm sure I then ran to tell mother, but somehow that image fades into vagueness while the crawling of the very large spider along the wall is as vivid today as it was when I experienced it.

Killing bugs is daunting. They seem to want to live really badly and are hardy enough that sometimes you have to kill them more than once. There are several cans of bug spray, of various strengths and for various species, in my cleaning cupboard. In a pinch a can of hair spray will do the trick. But the flying bugs are the worst. They not only avoid the spray with lightning speed, they fly right at you in the process making you run squealing for cover. It usually takes a few moments to gather ones courage when a bug has flown at you nearly ending up, Eek!, in your hair. Shudder! After your nerves are no longer in flight mode and you've gathered your courage together, along with a weapon bigger and nastier than the previous one, you creep out of the adjoining room to try again. No woman in her right mind wants bugs in her home.

So you can imagine my dismay to discover that roaches seem to like my boys' litter box. The youngest is often found in the early morning hours sitting intensely focused in front of it waiting for the roach to reappear. This morning it had escaped Hooboo to make its way into the bathtub. So there I was watching this ugly, medium sized, brown thing with legs I knew all too well from magnified pictures, scuttling around the bottom of my tub. Fortunately it didn't seem to be able to get up the sides. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for me (it didn't get out), Hooboo seemed to not want to get into the tub to chase it. When I tried to put him in there to take care of his bug destruction duties he jumped right back out and snuggled up to my ankle purring. So it was up to me and I didn't feel armed enough with a wad of paper in my hand. I went and got a shoe that 1) I didn't intend to wear today (Eew! Bug slime!), and 2) was way much bigger than the bug! Bam! Bam, bam! It took me two attempts to manage to smash the thing and I made sure the laces were gathered in to give it nothing to suddenly scurry up towards my descending hand. Finally, SPLAT! It was blessedly and thoroughly squashed! I was safe to gather it in some toilet paper and flush it into the sewer system. Whew! Now I just need to disinfect the bathtub and find something with a healthy residual effect to spray around the litter pan. I hate bugs!

Misc. Bits

2008-09-18T07:13:00.004-05:00

It's been nice to be busy this past week. Work is interesting and going well. I'm working a field test so details can't be shared but it is Math and the grades I'm on are 5 though 7. Each question is under development so they get created and then given to a sampling of students before they are put into an actual test. It takes a long time for test questions to be developed to the point of test inclusion. This is one of the reasons the education system doesn't have enough money to hire teachers. Tons of it is going to pay for the proof that they are doing their jobs, these high stakes tests.

This past weekend Hooboo managed to get himself into a fight and got his ear chomped through. There is a hole all the way through although it is healing. But over the three days before I realized it needed attention it developed an infection. When I looked at it on Tuesday it was weepy with stuff that turned scabby and was a little bit pink when I washed his ear out with ear cleaner. Uck! Yesterday evening I ran to the store and picked up hydrogen peroxide and some antibiotic ointment. With a treatment yesterday and again this morning it is looking better. The swelling is going down and the heat is gone. Whew! Thank goodness for kittens fast metabolisms.

Life has gotten really busy for me at church. Normally I'd think you couldn't do too much at church, but I may have been wrong. I added in choir as an activity about 3 weeks ago and while I love it I'm having to give up some of my adult education time. I'm already a Lay Minister and on Altar Guild, so the first Sunday I sang I was at both services since I was serving at the early service and singing at the late. This past Sunday I was singing at the late service and had altar guild duties afterward. Did I mention we are having a really good Sunday school class on spirituality and how to return to its center? I hate leaving early to warm up but I can't let the choir down. This Sunday two of those serving areas want me to help out by manning a table during our ministry fair which we are holding to try to increase the number of people contributing time to church service. I'm trying to decide if I want to attend early service to visit with my friend Kathy and keep in touch with what is going on there (because I'm also signed up for verger training and knowing how things are supposed to go is the main responsibility there). So when am I supposed to be at home and calling Mom? She sits by the phone waiting for those calls that I make with love every Sunday! And why did I pick up choir? Because it's fun and I wanted some socializing other than just on Sunday's. And I'm getting that! I get to sit next to Paschal's wife Tina most practices and Sunday's and when Betty comes back from traveling I will get to sit next to her too. Last night Marise, who I know but don't spend much time talking to, offered to sit next to me so that I'd have a strong singer to follow, I'm singing alto and haven't followed sheet music in over 30 years. I was delighted! It made things so much easier! And how nice of her! :)

An Alice in Wonderland Night

2008-09-06T08:34:00.018-05:00

First Fridays in the King Williams historical district of San Antonio are a wonderful mix of glorious architecture, live music, and art galleries open till late. Last night my friends Jean and Wilma took me to this street fair. We had a ball and intend to go again.

Dinner was at the Mad Hatter's Tearoom which, as it's name implies, is straight out of "Alice in Wonderland". The food is eclectic, very good, and reasonably priced. My choice was half a turkey sandwich with spinach, tomatoes, chipotle cream cheese, and pickled onion, accompanied by a cup of chicken florentine soup. Once seated I started looking around and brought out the camera. I asked my friends if people in the area were okay with people taking pictures all the time and upon being reassured started taking pictures of everything that caught my eye. And I could have taken more. This is just the bare bones of this fantastic place.

This picture, taken from the inside, shows the window sign and happy hour banner. There are fresh flowers on all the tables and you can tell from the cars parked outside that things are starting to get lively. Finding parking on this night is hard to do, but we were lucky to find one right in front of an old house where the driveway had been moved. I guess the lack of a curb had fooled some folk. Not our Wilma.

This is the hallway to their secondary room. I liked the way this row of windows provides light and a good view of everyone who was walking by outside. Before we finished eating there was a steady stream of folk walking past.

On the front left you see an amplifier being set up for live music later in the evening. The performers were coming in one by one while we dined. Our evening of wandering took in the main street and then came back for refreshments and to sit and listen to the group. The dessert Wilma and I shared was decadent. It looked like some kind of layered cheese cake concoction. There was creamy coconut filling at the top, a lovely cake like chocolate crust and when you bit into the cheese, ohmygosh, it was filled with those dark liqueur like cherries that made you think of cherry cordial candies.

Remember how in Wonderland, every cup at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party was different? And you picked your place to sit at by the type of cup you wanted? The same held true here. Some of these cups are quite nice. It had me wondering how long it took them to collect all these different ones. There was a very large selection of teas to choose from too. Trying some of them will be one of my goals the next time we visit.

Jean pointed out the sign for take out shown here. "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!" the rabbit cried. He kept looking at his pocket watch and running down the trail till he jumped down a rabbit hole. And Alice followed him down the hole. Not here...she got take out and left to wander the streets.

Jean also pointed out these shelves and this very large economy sized cup up at the cash register. She's got a great eye for detail. She is the one who took this picture, and I think she did a good job of it. My view was obstructed by flowers and the place was so crowded that handing her the camera was a better choice than getting up and moving around.

This is the performance area where the quartet was setting up. The pictures on the wall caught my eye and made for an interesting background when they were performing later. There were no for sale signs, so I think these belonged to the restaurant.

Stopping to wash our hands on the way out we encountered the waiting lounge, and the feelings of gracious comfort were extended there as well. The seating room was fitted with several chairs, a table or two, and lots of whimsy. Waiting my turn, I couldn't resist taking pictures of all the bits and pieces that make up the flavor of this place. It's absolutely amazing how much detail went into this lovely little restaurant.

Here's the Mad Hatter himself. I loved the way he's dressed and it is a very child attractive doll, as you can tell from the missing fingers on his left hand and the bandage on his foot. Because it has porcelain hands, I'm guessing this is an antique and hope it wasn't damaged beyond keeping its value.

There was a built in curio cabinet with some fragile items enclosed in wooden cubbyholes and protected by glass. These two cats are shaped teapots.

Above a set of bookshelves I saw this fantastic sight. That cup has to be bigger than my upper torso. "Will you have one lump or two," asked the Hatter?

"Two please," said Alice.

Here's what the well read tea lover would have in their library. Notice the title of the book on the right? All of us chuckled over that one. I'm delighted with the way this picture turned out. You can clearly read every title on the spines and I was thrilled to notice that a Harry Potter book was among the selections.

This other cup was above the curio cabinet in the corner. And there was another one just like it in the opposite corner.

As we were getting ready to head out the door this painting caught my eye. Thanks to some details of her work, which San graciously shared with me, my attention to detail in art has improved and I noticed that this was in 3D. My curiosity peaked I got closer. The colors are varied, dappled, and intense. I like the way the location of the eyes are defined by the the white surrounding the iris.

Trying to get a better defined image showing the three dimensional nature of this painting I took this angled shot. I'm don't think it caught the bas-relief effect of the facial features as I'd hoped, but it does show the window which opens your view to the next room, see that small chair top in the lower corner of the window, and from there out the window behind it into the outdoors. While the front of the restaurant looks business enough like, the layout seems to be more like a Victorian style house with lots of windows looking every which way and into different rooms.

Learning from San, I took a couple of details hoping to show you the amount of work and creativity that went into this painting. Here's the eye because that iris defined by a single curve of white struck me as a very creative way to do them.

And here is the mouth. From a distance the lips look pursed to me, but close up they look puckered. While the overall expression of the face doesn't make me think of romance, more a pensive, sly kind of look, the lips in close up give the image of a mouth getting ready for a kiss.

Then we left. And while I had my camera in my pocket, with every intent of taking tons of pictures, I was just too nervous about dropping it and we were doing almost non stop walking and looking in the middle of a crowd. So I didn't take any more photos. My plan is to try to do better the next time we go, because I fully intend to go back again!

Old Home Week

2008-08-28T12:51:00.003-05:00

For about a year I've been a member of Facebook. It wasn't until recently that I did much with it. I'm also on other social networking sites such as Classmate.com for all your past school chums, and Stumble Upon which is for social web surfing.

A couple of days ago an old friend from high school, Mike, sent me a note through Facebook and is now added to my friends. He has a MySpace page so that link has been added to my list of friends on the sidebar. Check his place out if you have the time. I found his writing interesting and moving.

Then I went over to get updates on my nephew's Facebook page and discovered that my niece recently joined. Now she and I are connected as friends. Wow, life changes fast doesn't it?

If that wasn't enough connecting, the prayer group I joined when I worked at Kruger sent out an "its a new semester" email. I popped back a note telling them how glad I was to see them in my inbox again. The group owner, Bob, emailed back. He's the choir director at Kruger and does a wonderful job teaching middle schoolers how to do outstanding vocal work. Turns out he blogs too so I've added that to my friends list also. You may notice it's titled in Spanish. He also teaches that.

Newsy Bits

2008-08-25T09:49:00.004-05:00

Church of Reconciliation Episcopal, my church for the past 6 years, is having their 40th birthday party in December. We held the organizational planning meeting yesterday. I'm on the liturgy committee. Celebrations will last almost a week and there's an air of excitement all around.

My poor kitties who've been fighting off flees, Hyram more so than Hooboo, are seeing the Vet on Wednesday morning. Before then I've got to get Hooboo his own carry case. He's smaller than Hyram so I guess it can be smaller than his.

There's a scoring job at Pearson lasting 2 weeks in September. I'm signed up for it and get trained for a half day tomorrow. Productive activity! Yay!

Last night I finished reading "The Joys of Love" by Madeleine L'Engle. It's a pretty good coming of age story. Overall the feel was less complicated than her other fictional writings. The writing seemed more straight forward and the ending while adequate was almost, but not quite, abrupt. I wonder why she didn't publish it. From what I read about it's publishing, it was kept by her for a long time and her granddaughters are responsible for its being published now. If you'd like to visit her website go here.

Scrabble Online or How to Survive Without TV

2008-08-20T19:51:00.005-05:00

Sandi and I are playing Scrabble online. This is FUN! We're using the Scrabulous website and playing by email. If the two games we've played are any indication, we are pretty evenly matched. But I gotta tell you, I really worked hard for my win!

Playing Scrabulous is free, easy, and addictive. Sandi and I played the first game slow, over a couple of days. The next one we pretty much sat by our computers waiting for the emails to come in. Being the antsy sort, I kept clicking on "refresh screen" to learn her next move. The only equipment I'll need, besides my computer and the internet, is possibly a Scrabble Dictionary. Merriam Webster is on my computer but I don't think that is considered official. It helps though. When Sandi spelled "xi" I had to look it up. That's when I learned you could use the spellings of Greek letters in play. Amazing! It's been years since I last played and we were pretty simple with the rules then, no proper nouns or foreign words. That was about it. Guess I need to reacquaint myself with the rules.

Sandi being good at this isn't surprising. Looking online for the above image, it's from Wikipedia, I learned that most of Britain is in love with the game. She probably played every other day when she lived there. Another thing I learned was that scrabble is available for cell phones. That sounds like fun!

Scrabble is helping me deal with not having a TV. Mine died Friday. I'm not ready to invest in a new one yet. So I'm looking for things to do to fill in the hours I used to spend watching "So You Think You Can Dance?" and "Numb3rs." This is doable. I've got a friend who only recently got satellite to watch. Before that she and her husband did other things. They did have a TV, but, not liking the selection of available shows...or the ads that go with them, they watched DVDs of series they'd heard good things about instead. The summer we landed on the moon my family went on a month long camping vacation. I survived that with no TV and I can survive this.

There are blessings to be had from going TV-less. They are electricity hogs. Yesterday I unplugged it, along with the DVD player, the digital converter, and the powered antenna. That should cut con$umption a bit. The activities I hope to fill the time with will, I think, make my life richer and more productive. I'll read more, listen to music, and practice my guitar. Maybe I'll get some yarn and try crocheting or knitting. I might even go outside for an evening walk. Cooking, cleaning, playing with GIMP and the photos I've taken, there's lots I can do. One thing I'd really like is to find myself spending more time with people. So I think I'll try to make one or two of the evening events at church.

Peace! Hope! & Joy! And with that Peace some Quiet!

New Tea Taste Test (Can you say that 5 times real fast?)

2008-08-13T13:06:00.012-05:00

Tea Embassy in Austin, TX had a page on rooibos (red bush) tea and its health benefits (If interested you'll need to scroll to the bottom to read all of it). Rooibos tea is an herbal tisane made from the red bush which grows in South Africa. They said it's becoming popular in the US. It's on the fair trade list, so if I bought one with the fair trade stamp I would be making a contribution to the economic welfare of another country. The page spoke authoritatively and persuasively, so I decided to try some.

There were several brands in the grocery store I went to (Sun Harvest), including one that was both organic and fair trade. That brand was the most expensive costing almost $6 USD for 15 teabags. Rooibos seems to come blended with stuff a lot, and in two different colors. There were both red and green varieties. Sun Harvest didn't have many blends, although Tea Embassy's web page has quite a few. One I did see was rooibos mixed with honeybush. Numi had a plain variety, and I wanted to know if I liked the basic herb, so that's what I bought. Numi's packaging attributed an "earthy vanilla" flavor to it. Tea Embassy said the tea was slightly sweet.

Well, I've just had my first cup and.....hmmm. Took a whiff and it smells like Camphor. A very tentative first sip didn't taste sweet, but, as had been promised, with its low tannin content it didn't taste bitter either. It tasted better than it smelled. Next I sweetened it and that was an improvement. What I got was a kind of minty vanilla taste. That's not bad, the mint was a surprise though, no mention of it on the box. There is a hint of earthiness that's hard to describe. Its a faint darkness that sits on your tongue, a little heavier than smoke but too light to be substance. Rooibos wasn't an instant hit, but it's intriguing and it's growing on me. Halfway through the cup I found I liked it better cooled.

If you've got experience with this tea and any of the variety of blends I'd like to hear your take on it. Which is the best blend? Should I have gotten the green variety?

Chrysalis Dreams

Holiday Plans and Such

Update by Request

Call Me Inspired

A Rough 6 Weeks

In the Quiet Places

Reflection – Did I see the light?

Man, I’m really happy today!

Two Cat Nights

Firefox & Blogger or Being Careful with Add-ons

A Season of Bloglessness?

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Census Takers

Counterpoint to the Evening

Happiness is a Playful Cat

Blending Two Projects

From Joy to a Dangling Feeling

A Quiet Day this Saturday

Puzzle Share

He Stretched His Arms Out Upon the Cross

Affordable Dining

Puzzle Share and Bits of News

New Artist – New Song on Playlist

Where I'd Like to be Next Spring

Dibs of This and Dabs of That

Eating to Live

This is More Dangerous Than it Looks

An Ink Saving Font

A DIY Beauty Bath

Playing around with Windows Live Writer

That Community Feeling

A Clean Sweep

It's a Wonderful Life (100 Ways)

The Cat was the Hat

Delightedly Happy Update

A Word That Amazed

How I Spent My Morning

For Paschal

Butterflies are Free and So Are My Evenings!

A Job and a Half

3rd Sandi Update

Sandi Update #2

Puzzle Share

Sandi Update

Sandi is on Hiatus

Work Mishap

Crying Purse, Smiling Car

Puzzle Share

Reasons to Smile

Volunteering Fun!

Tag Clouds and Tutors

Beautiful Image

Working for the Census

The San Antonio Contingent is Quizzing Again

One by One

I Did What?!!!

Puzzle Share

More Quiz Fun!

Suddenly It's Raining Jobs

Shared Letter to a Friend

TV on the Web

Tarot Personae

You are The Star

New Year Resolutions & Good Wishes

A Season for Miracles

Running Like Mad, then Screeching to a Halt

Jury Duty

The 7 Unusual Things About Me Tag

A Really Beautiful Service

Playlist Update

Book Tag

Could You Survive in Poverty? - A Perspective Quiz

Puzzle Share

Change.gov

Election Follow Up.

Election Day!

Strawberry Bavarian

Symbolism of a Heart in Action

Addition to the Playlist

Busy Doings at Church

Dropping Gas Prices