off to get dressed for a wedding now...

1. A birthday present for my baby sister, who'll be 24 on Tuesday. (Mom has already received and loved her bouquet of fruit.) Current plan is a gift card to Bed, Bath, & Beyond as she's trying to save up for her own [well, shared with the boyfriend] apartment.

2. A cutesy way to say "God." I'm working on a letter that was signed "Que Diosito la bendiga." ("May {cutesy-name-for-God} bless you.") C'mon, folks who talk like this, I know you're out there.

There's something painless for you to do that could save others a lot of pain in the future.  </exhortation to good works>

Mom's coming up to rip me out of my home for a month tomorrow.  Joy.  I agreed to this (because she's paying me a chunk of change to do it), so I should just suck it up at this point, but I'm still annoyed.

My plan for the last couple of hours has been to grab some Pho and return some library books.  I've just kind of been staring into space.  Finally heard the Kingston Trio sing "Tom Dooley" thanks to Youtube.  Check.  Moving on.

We were going to leave for vacation tonight.  

The gods had other plans.  I have a job interview on Monday that I have a good chance of getting.  So now we can't leave on our vacation until Monday afternoon.  That was one of the reasons I was so depressed last night I think.

Sweetie's work had a power outage.  Sweetie had trouble getting the main server up.  Finally got it up but is babysitting it to make sure it stays up.  If it goes down again, vacation might not happen.

We need to be back by next Sunday because Sweetie has to hang his photos at the Gilpin County Arts Association gallery and that's the last day he can do that...

There is a major Democratic meeting on the night of our anniversary.  Luckily, sweetie is choosing to bow out of that.

The Muslims have a word.  I think it's Inshallah.  I read about it in a book.  That describes my life right now.

Shekah

3 to go

Hymn lyrics from the view of Schleiermacher, which I've made needlessly complex by trying to go into depth and confusing the heck out of myself about his theology.  Interesting guy.

8-10 pages on Wesley's view of Baptism (or Lord's Supper or both) which I haven't really started reading for.

and 700 words on "Thy Kingdom Come" for Systematic.  That at least isn't due until Wed and ties into my work on my upcoming sermon. (I preach 4 times the 24/25th as kind of a goodbye event at the Church I work at - REALLY hope I know where I'm going by then - would make it easier - but I likely won't... s'okay)

Last night I took a break and went with the family to the first ever Wichita Wingnuts game - the Wingnuts (supposedly named for the hardware, not the local GOP...) are our new Indy League (American Association - same league as the St. Paul Saints.)   5800 in the crowd - far exceeding our old AA team - although a LOT of those were freebies.  Great night at the ballpark and some pretty good ball being played.  Fun.

now back to PAPERZ!!!!!

This weekend felt like  long time coming, I have been flirting with a cold, all in my chest,  the last couple days; it is all around me at work and it feels like my body is trying to decide whether to get sick or not. This means lots of oil of oregano and echinacea are in my immediate future, along with lots of sleep. Perhaps after a good night's sleep I will feel completely myself again.

Lots of errands to run tomorrow. Not sure if I should do as planned and make a floral arrangement to give my mom with her Mother's Day present, she already has a dozen roses that my niece gave her. I am thinking it might be better if I wait on the flowers. Lots of good and not so good things happening, life is sweet, happy weekend, everyone!

I am hoping like hell the cable will be a good diversion for Bear part of it.

Went and did plasma, and plan to lie down for an hour or so after I post this. My brother loves the cake I made, and wants a dark chocolate amaretto cake for his birthday. (grin)It's pretty good, but I want to play with proportions to get it a little moister. (I have Cookwise, so I can do this.)

Hopefully tomorrow will be dry, and we can go get fishing licenses, sort out our poles and find the minnow bucket, and go fishing at Our Favorite Spot. That's always happy-making. As it is, I suspect Bear will be grumpy and damp when he comes home, as it has been raining in a drippy manner off and on since about three pm and is being grey and cold. We may take my brother along, though he doesn't intend to fish. He likes the kind of fishing where you kill a case of beer and shoot a lot of bull and get your nose sunburned but don't actually catch anything. (giggle)

And now I nap.  

at 10 pm last night to ask if I could stay with their 4 year old this morning while they took the 7 year old to the dentist to have a tooth pulled. So suddenly I had to be up and out by 8 am this morning--and to add insult to injury, these friends don't drink coffee, so my caffeine intake was restricted to tea.

Although it didn't actually rain much today, it's been another gray day, and I'm finding I have a very hard time mood-wise when I can't see the sun. So very little actually got accomplished today.

I think dinner will be a salad and a grilled cheese (with homemade whole wheat bread) and beer. Possibly lots of beer.

Happy 60 Birthday Israel.  Gotta love this painter.

I mentioned yesterday that I called the elections office to verify when my poll-worker training class is. Good thing I did. It's tomorrow morning. Could somebody explain to me why I would voluntarily sign up for a 3 hour long class on a Saturday morning when I had plenty of other options???

Doug.

Got assailed with phone calls today from various people.  The account rep for UPS.  The account rep for Pitney Bowes.  A would-be account rep for DHL.  Gah.

Plus people agonizing over trivial things.  Then our database went down.  Ugh.

It's raining and actually fairly cool outside, but I've got the AC on just to keep it dry.

Wondering what the weekend will bring...

making me cranky lately.  I've been having this dream - it's one of what I called my sunlit nightmares when I had them a whole lot more often.  They start out perfectly normal and then get really bizarre.

In this one, I'm at my sister's house for some family event.  

For some reason, she has just told me that the guy everybody thought I was madly in love with when we were in junior high and high school together had a huge yen for her for a while.  And I laugh.  So far, exactly what would happen in the unlikely event she said something like that (he liked her even less than me at the time - he and I at least are friends now).

This is where the nightmarish stuff starts, since I sincerely cannot see my sister going for my throat in real life.  But in the dream, she does.

One of the reasons life in L.A. didn't worry me is the self-defense course I took more than once - that happens when you know the organizers.  Anyway, I get her off me and the family is standing around trying to decide if they should call the cops. At least other than my nephew who is part of the crowd.

My mother asks what happened and I tell her, and she says well his mother certainly liked my sister, since she had commented on what a lovely girl she was after having been introduced to her at a dance.  

This next is the true nightmare part for me, because I know for a fact that the only one of her daughters that was ever introduced to his mother was me, and that only because he and I were working on something together at the time and she insisted.  I have thought for years (it certainly explains some weird conversations I remember having with my mother when I was in high school) that when I was growing up, every time someone complimented "her daughter", she assumed it was my sister, and every time someone complained about "her daughter", she thought it was me.  I give her my friend's phone number and email address and suggest that she ask him who his mother would have been talking about, but I know she isn't going to.

And that's where the dream ends.  None of these nightmares ever actually came true, but I wouldn't remember it if it wasn't important.  Yes, I'm going to be working with this, but if anybody has some suggestions, I would love to hear them.

TGIF!!!

I just found out that I have to make hors d'ouevres or appetizers for a last minute bridal shower tomorrow.

The bride to be is my future sis-in-law.  Last week they decided to get married next week, so we are scrambling to help make it happen for them.

12 ladies, probably all dieting, going to a brunch.  Most of them I've never met, part of the bride's family.  So it is important that this be "the perfect" thing and I'm having a hard time deciding what to make.  (My suggestion of bringing brownies was swiftly shot down :-P  )

I need to come up with an appetizer they can have with their wine.  Preferably involving fruit or veggies.  Something I can prepare ahead of time, and don't have to cook on-site.

Anyone have any suggestions for me?  

Where's KEN???

This weekend is all planting.  A little time here maybe, even painting, but: planting left overs from an Asian Pacific coast collection of maples that are rescued to here.  Oh and carrying water!  

For your pleasure Brillig, language from a postcard dated 'June 9 2006 Lhasa'.  

"This was yesterday's visit, the (Jkokang) the most holy temple in Tibet and a sea of pilgrims, monks bustling about lugging huge sacks of butter for the lamps and the commercial activity of the Barkhor market rages outside.  Today the Potala Palace which looks exactly as we see in all the photographs.  Lhasa a curious mixture of religious activity and modernity with monks using mobiles and a cappuccino bar next to the hotel.  My group all American and Canadian -20, which rather too many.  Air wonderfully clear and dry here compared to Beijing's polluted chaos."

Now I go fish feed!

I had a frustrating day at work, continuing to thrash on a problem on which I'm not making any progress, because I don't understand what's going on, and I haven't yet had the courage to admit the extent of my lack of understanding and ask for help, because it's stuff I think I should know. :sigh: And it was a gray rainy day as well.

On the plus side... I left work early to go talk to a theologian to follow up some points on a talk she gave about a month ago, on sacrifice. That was great! She treated me like a junior colleague, talked through some ideas I had & said she thought I was onto something, asked if I was going to write it up... :) And also was generally encouraging and interested in what I'm taking, what I've written papers on, and so on.

She asked me to send her my exegesis paper on Elijah, and I decided to revise it before I do that -- this is the paper that was originally 10 pages long and then I had to really mutilate it to get it down to the 5 that the prof wanted. So I've got a pretty good draft without proper footnotes, and a hacked-up version with proper footnotes, to combine.

I also am going to write up what we talked about but I have to think about it some more first. We may get together again to explore it further. And I do want to bring some of the material in to my therapist's on Monday, because it's about will and desire and impulse -- a lot of where I'm coming from on this is coming out of work I've done with her -- so I guess I will definitely try to at least get something written down over the weekend.

Other than that, the plan for hte weekend was originally to madly houseclean; but then the roses bloomed, so I figured I'd spend the weekend on the back porch. However, it is apparently going to be chilly and wet all weekend, so it looks like we're back to plan A. I'm also singing at my church's Pentecost Vigil service tomorrow night, which will be nice; and then hiding out as usual from the horrible hallmark holiday on Sunday.

Looks like skimming that Balthasar material will have to wait till next weekend. Heh.

Up early to get my shit together for the rest of the day... because when I leave mid-morning, I'm making a ridiculously long drive to let my older son get a kitten (bringing the house total to two... hopefully the little fiends will savage each other instead of my hands and ankles (kittens, not kids--they already do that)).  We scurry back, dump the big kid and kitten, I dress, grab the heap of cookies being made now and for the next few hours and into the morning, I'm sure... and I head out to the memorial service for a guy who served on the ministerial search committee with me.  I'm on tap to help set up (if I can get there in time to be useful) and to clear and clean up.  There's something eluding me that is going on in the late afternoon, too.

Sunday is a service that Madame is involved with, and it's Mother's Day, and she's leaving town.  Busy.  

And then there are going to be two deranged ankle-savagers racing around and figuring out who's going to be boss, and then I'll be chivvying my sons to go to bed at a reasonable time...

Wine, for me, for now...