Category: Church

And the web swings wide

I am breakfasting with Paul – oatmeal – and drinking coffee.  I know I’m being a slug so I’m encouraging Paul to get me exercising so we went for a constitutional this morning.  Margot thought about coming along for the first little bit but she’s even lazier than I am.

I have been watching the world, and I am not happy with the signs.  I do not trust the future; I’m uneasy in the present and the past is gnawing at me.  Many different waves are coming at me and I am reminded of Loppe’s comment to Gelis, “Buoyancy, mademoiselle, is always an asset.”

I am hoping my mother will get some mileage out of the Henry Thomas Wake diaries – there’s somebody in England who runs a lovely blog who’s interested in them.

The homily is stalled on the notion that if you can’t connect cognitive bias to a story (without stories how shall the people live?) the homily itself will be lifeless and unmemorable.

The hymns, fortunately, are picked out and off to the accompanist, thank you Marnie!

I borrowed Mike’s 12 string Aria electric, and now I’m in the market for an amp.

Tom is working on my subwoofer for the car.  I may have to buy a new one, and it’s my own fault for letting groceries slosh around in front of the unprotected cone.

Now it’s time to get a real start on the day.  I like this getting up and going for a walk.  I do feel very awake.

Paul fixed up my bike so I could give it to Katie and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of her.  She’s been working almost every day though.

I am having SEVERE “the Wire” deficiency.  I love that show, and we can’t get more of it from Zip until we start returning things.

Jeff and I watched the Departed.  That is also a very good watch. Leo diCaprio was so visceral….

More comments about family and internet and church

I got to see Katie’s apartment yesterday!  We can tell she’s a real New West Girl, she can see the bridge from one window.  She doesn’t think she’ll be cold this winter, but the scarred single pane windows (they haven’t been painted since Tommy Douglas was alive, if appearances are anything to go by) and her remoteness from the furnace lead me to believe otherwise.

Despite the 101 bus going right by her place and despite how close she is to the Skytrain tracks, it’s a quiet house.  She lives there with Mona and a couple of other people in a house sharing arrangement.  Mona’s about my age.  She lives on the ground floor, Katie lives in the attic and some guy lives in the basement.

Daxus is currently living with a married couple who just had their first child – at home.  Katie doesn’t believe this living arrangement is likely to last but I’m sort of hoping it does.

Paul returned safely from Ontario.  He and I and Keith and Jeff supped upon a variety of things including the two cobs of corn I harvested from the garden.  They were tiny but perfect.  Now that I know corn will grow nicely in that location I will plant more next year, and earlier, too.

The quinoa harvest has started; it was either that or let them rot on their stalks.  The first batch is hulled, but by god they are still very bitter with the saponin layer, and most of the grains are much smaller than the commercial variety.  I will have to clean them some more.  I have to find a more efficient way to clean them.

I was invited to Tanya’s and to Baumfest this weekend and as I was feeling quite low I didn’t go.

Church was excellent.  The minister preached of one of the theologians of Unitarian Universalism, Hosea Ballou.

Chipper sends me this disheartening news from the internet front.  Disgusting.

Ziva is running quite rough – she hates the wet.

I have a sound tech for the Social Justice Open Mic.

Sundry and various

Church was good; I like the water ingathering service because people do the “How I spent my summer vacation” by using the physical and metaphorical linking of water.  The Tea Lights (my secret name for a harp/recorder/cello trio composed of church members) were fabulous, as always.

I was opening and closing, too; I had to be there for 8:45 and didn’t get out until 1:30, and I forgot the flipping signs so I had to drive all the way back and get them.  I was going to put them back in the building and realized that they need to have the times amended so I am going to get little laminated bits to cover the inaccurate times this week… and THEN put them away.

Paul and Keith came over and Paul and I attempted to put 25 years of being incapable of sharing a kitchen behind us.  The chicken stir fry came out pretty good. Then Katie turned up and we watched True Blood’s season 3 finale, all together for once, and I have to say A-Skars (Eric Northman) got all the good lines.  Then Keith, who has his driver’s licence (did I mention that he finally broke down and got a driver’s licence previously? Guess not!) drove his sister home.  Aw.

Now I’m going to fold laundry and have a shower and really get at my day.

Sad Face

It is with blank incomprehension mixed with sadness and dismay that I bring to you my woeful tidings.  Rev Katie has resigned.

Now, she gave us a year’s notice, so it’s not like we immediately have to run out into the street looking for another minister, and it’s most likely that she will stay in the lower mainland, so we won’t lose her presence, but I called Paul when I got home from the board meeting last night and we just went “Wow” at each other for about fifteen minutes.

I am exhausted this morning; it took ages to get to sleep, I was so keyed up.

Round up of events

Up at 4:30 yesterday, fed myself and Jeff breakfast (bacon scrambled eggs), then fighting with two different printers to get the order of service printed out. Got to church around 9:30, discovered we had a plethora of sound people (after my initial fears) but my karma must have just been to the spot remover, because there wasn’t a single feedback squeal all morning.  I hug them all, those sound sound people.

Lots of people out to church and we had a lovely service talking about how it is normal to be afraid of change, and we have had had a lot (as in far too much for this cowgirl), and we’ll be okay, but we have to stick together and be nice to each other.  I know, a hopelessly Pollyanna-ish take on events, but accurate, and my goodness people were thankful to have everything brought up to date.  We did our absolute best to neither minimize nor dramatize the financial and volunteer crises facing our church.  The minister was in the congregation, which provided some reassurance that the board is coping with this crisis as a unit, which never hurts.

It will be okay.

Then I took Sue to lunch at the Amelia, then I bought lemons, then I made lemonade, then I took it to Tom and Peggy (with special guest Joe, squee, whom I haven’t seen since he made his wife so spectacularly rotund) and I watched them pour concrete and then beat a hasty retreat.  Then I came back to my place and apart from a half hearted attempt to throw food into the microwave for Jeff, Katie, Keith and Paul (had them all over, heart full of happy) I didn’t do another thing for the rest of the day, oh, except take the awning down with Paul’s help.  It was full of insect eggs, so just as well.  Either moth or katydid, I’d have to look it up. I looked at the wind and sky and determined it was time to get the awning down before the weather got wetter or windier.

Now, for nautilus3, a flickrset of Birds of BC. I only know about this because Paul found a dead bird and took pictures, and be darned if I can identify it.  I may need to call on experts.

Eddie let me cut all his nails and he hardly struggled or wailed, and he made no attempt to bite or scratch.  The same cannot be said of Margot, who popped her claws into me the last time I trimmed her.  I guess Eddie is finally getting over his antipathy to me.  If, and only if, I’m sitting on the downstairs couch and Jeff’s sitting there too, Eddie will let me scritch him.  Sometimes.

Finally made it to the Orange Room

It’s a restaurant / bar in New West I’ve known about for some time but I’ve never been.  Véronique and I had a bit to eat and a little something-something to drink, and it was very yummy and convivial.  I am hoping at some point to get custody of the church website, currently her bailiwick, so we worked through my extreme rudeness in asking for it when I wasn’t really authorized by the Board to do that (sorry!) and how any handoff will be handled in this ‘real life’ we keep hearing about.

I recommend  the Orange Room; pricey but really nice and comfy.

We also talked about some trends in second wave feminism which includes a culture war with transpeople, which I had been dimly aware of but not really up on, and candidly it’s appalling, but it’s hard for me to entirely sort out how icky it is because I’m not in possession of some background.  Anyway, I need more reading material, so I asked for it.  I do think gender essentialism, unless you’re talking about the mechanics of getting and bearing children, needs an enema.

Katie has moved into a place with the help of her father.  I came home and the top mattress off my bunk bed was gone – so that’s done.

Canoe trip

The minister, Rev Katie, sponsored a church fundraising trip via canoe. We took the “Cranberry Lady” out onto the Fraser, and there I saw:

  1. Gillnetters working.
  2. More raptors and birds of prey than I can ever recollect seeing in one day.
  3. A LOT of dead salmon.
  4. A LOT of very bloated, unable to fly seagulls.
  5. The rotting backsides of businesses facing onto the Fraser.
  6. Kanaka park.
  7. A convivial bunch of fellow church goers including the 17 year old grandson of one, (who’s a bible believing Christian, but I don’t hold that against anybody I know in meatspace), whom I got seated with, and who regaled me with Red Dead Redemption stories, seeing as how I was the only one in the canoe who had clue ONE what he was talking about.  And I know who Linkin Park is.
  8. My lunch.  Rev Katie makes insanely good potato salad.  It wasn’t on her resume, but YUMMERS.
  9. What it’s like to paddle on the Fraser when you’re paddling upstream and the tide is making.
  10. Monster homes with monstrous docks.

I am a little stiff and a little sore today, but nothing like I expected, and I’m feeling a little giddy today from the exercise.  Blessed be!

More meetings?

More meetings.  Last night’s was awesome… a planning meeting for the 5th September service, which I’m abruptly helping with.

There’s no beer in the house, and Jeff and I are going to leave it that way until the weekend at least.  I am finding my crabbiness has increased somewhat, but not enough to be too worried about it.

Katie has definitely found a place to live and is now agitating for help moving.  I’d say no, but I volunteered already.  One of my ongoing personal hazards…..

Zombie walk and hymn sing

The hymn sing at Tom and Peggy’s was awesome, as was the potluck afterwards (whoever brought the masala chickpeas, thank you, they were YUMMERS).

The Zombie Walk was even awesomer, and my fave part was being part of a zombie mob that tried to overturn a post-apocalypse zombie fighting bus.  That and going to Tanpopo still in full zombie regalia and having all I can eat sushi with Katie K.  Happy me.

busy tizzy

1.  Paul and kids over to watch latest True Blood.  Since I knew they were coming I went to Choices and got delicious om-nom-noms for them, like fresh bread and Dijon turkey and Avalon chocolate milk, which still comes in a glass bottle and is the best commercial chocolate milk in the known universe.  Even Paul had some and he stopped drinking cow’s milk years ago.  Damn, it’s fine!  Also edamame salad and fresh veg.

2.  Leo and Linda coming tonight…. can’t wait for them to meet kitties.

3.  Jeff biked to and from work yesterday… go Jeff. The last three 3 k involve about three hundred feet of elevation, so he was rather warm by the time he got back.  I took one look at him and asked him if he wanted some water.

4.  At church meeting last night (Nominating committee, my house) we had fun and got shiz done.  I was so happy to see everybody.  Now I have more work to do, even though an item came off my list!

5.  I’ll be doing a bed and breakfast thing in Bellingham in September but I don’t know which weekend.  I’ll be taking Katie for some CBS.  (Cross border shopping).  Clothing for women my size is more easily obtained Stateside.

6.  I’m helping train somebody at work, and as a consequence my house-fly strength attention span is even MORE truncated.  I’d like to thank her family for raising somebody so smart.  And she takes kick boxing classes, too.

7.  Keith was too – I don’t know – to check flickr for pictures of Animé Evolution, and when he said he didn’t know where pictures would be, I said, “You’re daft, check the flickrstream.”  Gosh all whacky, am I the only person in the world who knows how to use the internet, grump grump.  And there he was, in his costume.  Now I go looking for it and I can’t find it, but suffice it to say Keith made a GREAT Dr. McNinja. Grandparents are warmly encouraged to apply to him directly for photographs.

8.  Dropped by her workplace to see Lady Miss Banjola and inspect her tummy.  Yup, she’s knocked up.  She’s also artistically pale but I think she looks great.

9.  The spicy Thai beef salad yesterday was unbelievably yummy, but the transit time of 8 hours was accompanied by the burnination of a lifetime.  I can no longer eat hot peppers, unless I want multiple lashings of discomfort and abrupt departures from whatever conversation I’m engaged in at the time to flee for the house of ease.  It was worth it, but only just.  Ky can cook.

There’s more but I gotta go.

HOT, so hot

Between the heat and the hormones I had a very truncated night’s sleep last night.

I am very slowly getting organized around various church activities.  I requested a key (yes, if you have a joke about a church key, or redneck wrench, please insert here), dug into the website and confirmed commitments with those of the church who don’t have email.  I also commiserated with a sibling congregant about how married couples using the same email address is creepy (and f^ckyeah it IS creepy, especially when it means one of two things, that one spouse can read private correspondence to do with church matters or that one spouse is controlling the information spigot, and either way, EW!), and her response started with “Dude!” which just goes to show you which side of the digital divide I fall on.  I am attempting to get instructions and training for the sound system, if you can call that giant nexus of crap a sound system (and I don’t mean to beat up on the volunteer technicians because there are serious technical issues which will be neither easy nor cheap to resolve).

I rejoiced in learning (there had been hints, but now we know) that church start time has moved back to 10:30 am which is a) mostly the doing of the minister, who never gets any credit for having either brains or the welfare of the whole church in mind, which is bloody annoying for me as I find she has both and b) REALLY good news for the people who live in the hinterlands of our catchment area. Getting up at 8 to get to church is just plain horrid and you have to get up even earlier if you’re doing set up, so booyeah Rev Katie.

I have also, as of the last board meeting, gotten the okay to revive Chalice circles.  Go Allegra.  I really like small group ministry, especially when it consists of:

Meeting – checking in – lighting candles for joys and concerns – meditating – closing song – eating – socializing!

Now to consult Jeff about dates.

Church is going to eat my brain for the next two years; I know it.  Now I have to pace myself.

It’s true we’ve had a lot of departures in the last six months but sometimes the big trees gotta come down to let the little shrubs closer to the light.

New gal started at work yesterday – I think I’m going to like her.  Her uptake curve on new technology is impressive.

Mark October 16 on the calendar, we’re going to have a Social Justice Open Mic at church.

Safe congregation policy

As part of our safe congregation policy, everybody in a voluntary or paid position with my church has to be inspected for felonious behaviour by the RCMP.  I had been putting it off (and why not, yecch) but this morning I assembled the letter which allows me to be inspected at no charge, my i.d. and my amour-propre and hied myself off to the Deer Lake RCMP Detachment.

It took 10 minutes.  I was the only person there.  Honestly, I thought it was going to be quite a production, but it was trivial.

Next, I hied myself off to Village de Valeurs, where I purchased a dress, a blouse, and something to replace my bathroom which does not actually have enough fabric to be a modest garment, given my current girth.  I am sure Jeff will be relieve to see less of me as I stagger out of my room in the morning in my zombie like quest for caffeine.

I’m back home and waiting for my new purchases to get out of the washer.

It’s pouring rain; the garden is very happy.