Category: Church

Train wreck

1.  I didn’t want to be at church this am.  My mOm’s in town.

2.  Nobody else volunteered to open after two appeals by the board member who got a competing (good reason, though) event and so could not open.  So I did.  My training consisted of being told what to do, nothing in writing, and being handed two keys.

3.  I got to the church and discovered that the set up person and both greeters hadn’t turned up in a timely way.  So there I am slinging hymnals and folding orders of service, but the GREAT THING ABOUT BEACON is that if somebody sees you doing something they come and HELP.  So after about ten minutes I was no longer crabby.  I wasn’t there by myself and it was all good.

4.  The service I will not complain about although I could.  There is a reason why intergenerational services aren’t as well attended as other services once you get past the notion that all the kids are there so their parents are too.  Any time I see the little-littles I get all goofy in the smile department.

5.  If you’re closing as well as opening, you have to be the last person to leave.  I put the key in the front door and it didn’t flipping work.  I breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving that the caretaker was on site, conveyed my sad intelligence that I couldn’t lock the flipping front door, and went home and poured myself a very well deserved beer.  Thus concludes the train wreck portion of the morning, with one final comment.  If we don’t do something about the fucking sound system, I’m going to go all Doukhobor at the next church service and either strip naked or torch something or both.

6.  Then conveyed mOm to Katie’s place and exposed her to the many animals there.

7.  Then conveyed mOm to Paul’s place for Tea and Macadamia nut cookies.

8.  Now the smell of roast pork is filling the house.  Aiming to get the roast out about 4:15, 4:30.

9.  Then, I will convey mOm to the ferry.  Then, TRUE BLOOD and TREME.  Life is good.

Put on a very very sad face

Now try to watch this video without changing your expression. Ha!  Knew ya couldn’t.

I’m still in full bore freakout mode about today’s service, but oh well.  I ran through the new songs last night (new as in I don’t recollect them ever having been sung in church before).  Four old standards and three new ones.  We’ll see how it goes.  At least I know I have a sound man now, up until 11 am yesterday I didn’t know I’d have one.  Yup, nervewracking, exciting and amazing.

Saturday round up, occasionally unsafe for work

Religious persecution quiz, scanged from a facebook/filking buddy.  Who himself was reposting it.

Statins have much worse potential side effects than was previously believed.

Wretched excess meets explosive cuteness.

I’m not posting a link, but one of the church women posted a youtube link to her toddler doing the Hokey Pokey with her, and I just wanted to mention that that’s what it’s all about.

We live in a culture which has little use for our basic instincts, and is thus breeding / punishing their existence out of us as fast as it can.  One can only wonder what the hell will take its place.  These days I wonder how some people manage to feed themselves.  As long as we are where our instincts don’t serve us, many of us will feel alienated.  I think church is a kind of hamfisted way of addressing that alienation. I can’t help thinking that we’re a step away from ‘customized religious experiences’ and I’m not just talking about going to rural Peru to have a drunken shaman pour ayahuasca down your throat and then count his money while you trip endlessly into a brightly painted bucket of existential horror.  I’m talking about thinking, “I want a religious experience that includes singing and labyrinth walking and drums this Sunday,” and if you live in a big town, actually being able to get it.  Virtually, perhaps.                  but if we do not breathe together…. if we do not conspire….. what are we?  That’s why we live from con to con, from dance to dance, from concert to concert, from gig to gig, from (please do NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK AT WORK or IF YOU THINK Lesbian or BDSM sexuality is icky) hookpull to hookpull, from Sunday to Sunday (or whatever your religiously mandated gathering day is).  Re hookpulls, I personally know two people who have attended and participated in these events, and I like ’em fine, so if you want to remonstrate with me about how sick it is I’m just gonna make a sad face and change the subject. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of them though, I ain’t going anywhere like that just to be a voyeur and I don’t need any additional pain in my body at the moment, thanks.  My complete incomprehension does not include disgust.

Extra solar planets for the win. Every time I look at it, there’s more.  Everything is on fast forward.

Of course, if I fail to mention the artificial life, people will wonder if I dropped off to sleep.

As I type this I am looking at the handwriting of my ancestor Henry Thomas Wake, and wishing I could have handwriting like that.  Copperplate. He actually made money from designing lettering.  mOm says he would be a blogger if he was alive today.  He records in his diary, March 1859, that we went to Euston Square Station to determine the cheapest way to go visit Carlisle, and also that a friend has kindly lent him a book on double entry bookkeeping.  (He was demoniac about self-improvement).

I’m going to take my chalky and somewhat premigraineous brain out for a drive now.  I want a drum.

This tickled my funnybone

I really have to work harder on the second Unitardian principle of respect for everyone.  But when I’m not feeling respectful, this little squib applies. 

Kids have their own version of the principles:

  • Each and every person is important.
  • All people should be treated fairly and kindly.
  • We should accept one another and keep on learning together.
  • Each person should be free to search for what is true and right in life.
  • All people have the right to speak out and vote about things that concern them.
  • We should work for a peaceful, free, and fair world.
  • We need to take care of our planet, Earth, the home we share with all living things.

    • Mozart, moods and metal origami

    I was a complete frackup this weekend.  I did manage to get some cleaning and laundry done, and I did cook some meals, so I didn’t entirely lay about and do nothing – but mostly I did, while feeling sorry for myself.

    Saturday I bought work clothes for our dreaded new overlords have high standards in these things.  I even bought stuff that matched, which is just weird, and it was all solids or stripes, no tie dye. All of it makes me look older than my mother, buy which I mean that it’s all like polyester pantsuits.  Saturday night Jeff and I went to the opera.  It was a masterpiece but the chairs are BRUTAL at the Queen Elizabeth theater and the perfume was a-waftin’.  At half time, despite it being a superlative performance with amazing direction and one tight orchestra, we bailed.  If we could have watched it without being gassed by the fancy lookers in the audience, that would have been grand.  Jeff and I want to go back but we’re thinking a matinee.  The opera was Marriage of Figaro, and honestly, a better introduction to the opera isn’t possible.

    Sunday, despite the fact Joy sent me a reminder email that I was supposed to do set up for church, I forgot and came to church late and Jason did all my work for me.  I did a penance afterwards which consisted of drying every last dish that had to be washed out for the annual congregational meeting.  I came home in full bore collapsing mode, I was so upset, and watched Talladega for a while.  Many crashes and a nailbiter finish.  I finally hauled myself up and tidied a bit.  After supper Paul and Keith came over.  I got all weepy and tragic on Paul, who very sensibly responded by hauling out the massage table and working me over until I quit whining, at which point he tucked me into bed (trust a dad to know how to do that right) and went home and then I slept for ten hours.  This is so much more sleep than I normally get that I am thrilled out of my mind.  I haven’t had any beer in the last two days, either.

    And just to prove I haven’t stopped taking an interest in cool stuff.  …. metal origami.

    Tom and Peggy and singin’

    Tom and Peggy put together a housefilk last night, complete with little kids, blackberries and Brooke PLUS special guests from Washington state.  I really like Jeff C and Jeri-Lynn and Jeri-Lynn’s cello adds that touch of class to any musical gathering.  Was amused (and mentioned it to Paul) that Diane Loomer had done the choral arrangement for her sheet music for “Frobisher Bay” which is about getting on a whaler and not getting off it cause it gets stuck in Arctic ice.  Diane Loomer is the genius what directs the Chor Leoni, of which I have spoken many times here on the blog.  So it is all cunningly intertwingled, as it were.

    Creede played Crossroads (how I love that man’s whiskers!  His whiskers should have their own TV show!) and when he didn’t play the last verse (the one which mentions the banjo) there was a simultaneous sad face across the entire room, followed by a couple of people saying, Hey, what about the last verse, at the completion of which Paul burst out laughing because he’d never heard it before.

    Brooke played Orion Swings, which is such an ominous tune, but so pretty.  And there was a little bit of everything else, like all filks.  Oh, and I debuted “Forty Million Light Years” minus the last five verses, which I still have to write.

    I forgot how to tune a mandolin.  It was like having an outbreak of Alzheimer’s in my head, or I could say something about how long it’s been since I cradled Mistress Aria in my arms.  Yes, indeed, Tom finished the repairs just in time for the filk, and I don’t think I ever thanked him. Well, that’s just how I roll, diving into things and then figuring out the social niceties afterwards.  Fortunately Tom knows me well enough not to take it personal.

    There was a brief moment of WTF as I woke up this morning without being in my own bed (yes, I was at Planet Bachelor, where Keith woke me up with the blessed scent of coffee,  moving right along now) and now it’s the mad scramble for church and hopefully deking home to fetch Margot and give Brother Jeff the instructions for getting her home.

    Finally saw The Hurt Locker

    Recommended, if a little grue-y in spots.

    Tentacle porn Tarot deck.  You bet your ass it’s not safe for work.  The shizz you find on Facebook!  Anyway, there’s just one card, but the descriptions are pretty awful.  If I did a Tarot deck it would be updated for modern life, and there’d be an internet major arcana, and one of the suits would be grease (as in petrochemicals).

    Tonight, laundry.  Tomorrow night church meeting.  And soon, soon, I will go to the opera for the first time in my life. Course I have to pay for the tickets first.

    1/4 of Pink Floyd is coming to Vancouver on December 10 and I wanna go.

    I stared at a tesseract for a long time last night.  It is helping me come to terms with change.

    If I sound a little odd…. it’s because…. I am!  Bet you didn’t see that one coming.  I’m just happy cause I thought I lost my cell phone, but Jeff found it in his car.

    no foolin’

    It’s April Fools Day.  I am so tempted to go to work in my superhero cape, but that’s not gonna happen.

    Church meeting last night; Rev Katie brought warm hot cross buns.  Like, she had just taken them from the oven at home. All this – and she cooks too.  Good meeting.  Margot came in at one point and played with Rev Katie’s shoelaces.

    I have to say I am looking forward to the weekend.  I will collapse on Friday, go canoeing if the weather cooperates on Saturday, and then church and practicing instruments on Sunday.  And at some point, digging; the garden isn’t dug out yet. Tom says I’ll definitely need a mattock to get the worst of the tree roots out.

    PS, one of the reasons I like Henry Rollins.

    Denis’ Celebration

    Things I learned.

    Food first, talk second.  You would think this was obvious, but it bears repeating.

    The Beacon food volunteers ought to be running the world as nobody does anything better with the budget they have.

    Denis’ grandchildren rock.  Sean’s anecdote was perfectly tuned to the mood of the room.

    Denis got his wish, and got a couple of scoldings from various people.  So no, he isn’t perfect.  The scoldings were also perfect….

    If you ask a crowd of Beaconites for a drum roll, please, you WILL get one.

    I really HATE it when I get people’s names wrong, and it happened twice.  I am not sure who besides the principals noticed, but oh how I go all squeaky chalk when that happens.

    My refusal to have a set speech worked perfectly.  When people weren’t coming up, I vamped from his little book of reminiscences (I brought copies for the family and the Lay Chaplaincy Committee, under whose aegis the celebrations took place), and that worked really well.

    Denis should have been miked for his poem but the darned cable didn’t go that far.  Grr.  Next time, guest of honour closer to Mike Rofone.

    When everybody keeps their remarks brief, heartfelt and to the point, MC’s job is MUCH easier.

    As you can see I’m much more able to talk about yesterday now I’ve had seven WHOLE hours of sleep.  As for my performance as the service coordinator yesterday, I would have imploded if Rev. Katie hadn’t helped me out so much.  *Note to self, get the music up to the podium, ya ditz.* Although I heard that my rendition of the children’s story was very good.  I said, “Never saw the story before today,” and folks were startled, so I guess all the weirdness and confusion going on in my brain were not communicated to the littles.  Phew.

    Could not have happened to a nicer guy

    I don’t know if any of you have been following along after the career of Joe Arpaio, the meanest sheriff in the US.  He’s actually a full-bore sociopath, from what I can gather, whose office and cadre of patriotic meanies have been abusive towards pretty much anybody they could abuse while they had their guns strapped on.  The ACLU has had at least three motions in play at any given time against him for the last five years.  Here’s a timeline of his reign of terror, and I fail to see how you could call it anything else.  One that reaches into 2009 is here.

    If ever there was a reason to distrust democracy, it’s in his person.  He’s been re-elected five times.

    Anyway, a whole slew of emails which were supposed to have disappeared, to his advantage, have reappeared.  Now things will get interesting.

    I’m recollecting several times a day the choir singing in church on Sunday.  It was so good I cried. Marcy told me after church she could see me grinning in the back as she addressed us… and well I know that feeling of what it is like to see a friendly face up there.

    I am doing a lot better, although I wish the weather would decide it’s spring.  There are skunk cabbages in Lynn Valley now, so it is officially spring by my standards.

    Sunday miscellanea

    Dug out one fifth of the garden yesterday, after an entertaining visit chez Tom and Peggy (Peggy was working) to borrow gardening tools and drop off the busted mandolin.  Anybody who has seen Tom’s garage knows how this is possible.  Paul accompanied me, and there was much mirth and mocking; personally I found the image of the concrete bags which had turned solid enough to form gun emplacement material very happy making.   Tom offered four substantial pieces of wood to frame the garden plot with (I am not turning down ten foot lengths of six by six treated aged cedar for this purpose).  I didn’t need a mattock, but it was so axe murder-y I had to borrow it.  Also, I now have a picture of myself cuddling a meter long spanner, this also being the kind of thing one finds lying about in Tom’s vicinity.  I was also thinking of asking him for sand as I was thinking of doing the potatoes grown in tires thing, but really I only have so much energy, and Jeff has already registered misgivings about my ability to keep up with a garden, which is only reasonable. I volunteered for various of Tom’s plans (mostly holding the ends of things, this being a requirement for most of Tom’s plans).  Tom and I also agreed to split a cartload of topsoil; Paul is going to investigate manure for his little garden plot.

    I stopped digging after I twisted my knee.  It appears to be okay this morning, so back to the grind after church.  The dirt I’m pulling up is full of earthworms (also those nasty lawn chafer larvae, which I carefully threw onto the concrete so Margot could mishandle them).  Margot croaked in excitement when she saw the measuring tape.  So shiny ! So crinkly ! So making a wonderful noise as it disappeared into its hole !  She pounced on it but I was able to wrestle it away from her.

    Great church meeting yesterday.  Various matters arose and I slept on them; I will be taking a decision later today.  It’s not particularly earth shattering.

    It turns out the migraines were hormones.  As my career as a breeder staggers to a close, I suppose I’ll get this crap happening occasionally.  Grr, the mama bear said.  Grr.

    When I was a kid I thought my dad was the coolest man who ever lived; he let us watch Laugh-In, he bought gouramis and lizards and four eyed fish (anableps anableps) and painted a stick man on the side of the house and he had a beard and he put up a geodesic dome in the backyard and he had trophies for shooting and he’d been in the Air Force and he could fix anything and he had a succession of unusual cars (Simca, anyone?  original Mini Minor?).  One of the many cool things about him was his taste in music.  (This is no longer the case.. he listens to Muzak now, but we all get old and tired, so I won’t repine).  I used to love it when he played the soundtrack from the early sixties show “Checkmate” – he had the soundtrack album – and it wasn’t until last night that I realized that the Johnny Williams who wrote that score (which is MADE OF OSSUM) is the same John Williams who wrote the Star Wars theme, and many many many others.  Prescient dude, mi papa.

    Steak and eggs and coffee for breakfast.

    Biscotti are on for the first bake…. I promised some to Tom this morning, and given his many kindnesses I’d better get on the stick.  Can you tell I’m feeling better?

    You will note that the blog is having issues

    I lost my post from Sunday, and the comments added themselves to the next post.  Jeff and I are monitoring it, but we had a talk this morning and we think it’s a user error (that would be, uh, me) combined with wireless issues, possibly.

    I’m really trying to commit to making church a better experience for everybody, so I loaned my Kaossilator to one of the youngsters on Sunday.  He stopped being bored, instantly, and I helped solidify Beacon’s reputation for musicality…

    Work yesterday was excellent; managed to straighten some things out and resolve an outstanding customer issue to his satisfaction and mine.  Also closed some cases, always a good thing.  My open case load is approximately 70 right now, but in real terms it’s less than twenty actionable cases.  I have to leave a lot open or they disappear from my consciousness as requiring action.

    I think the worst of the software issues is resolved, but the phone system still drops out when I go on break or work offline.  The really weird part is that it can do this IN THE MIDDLE OF A CALL.  The screen goes dark and I’m still talking to the customer… say wha?

    Singing didn’t happen on Sunday – too many people cancelled out on the jam.

    Now, coffee and a shower, not necessarily in that order.  Hope everybody has a glorious day and gets out in the sunshine.

    I need to make a new list.

    Jeff is a genius.  The bicycle pump I thought I broke just needed adjustment, the vacuum cleaner from Granny works perfectly (the missing bit was hiding in plain sight) and he helped me with my blog AND picking up the freezer order.  Happy sigh.

    Paul and I walked in Deer Lake Park on Sunday and I saw my first turtle of the season.  Yay!

    Miss Crankypants sits in her corner

    I have lots and lots to complain about.  Like, lots.  But I’ve decided to save my best and purest bile for real live people instead of the intarboobs, and the saddest and teariest of complaints for other real live people, and the horrid consequences of brutal self-examination strictly to myself. Continue reading Miss Crankypants sits in her corner

    various

    1. I learned that Margot fur is unbelievably flammable.  On a suggestion from Paul, I took some of her combed out fur and fired it up on the deck.  I expected it to self extinguish and it went up like an Olympic torch.  Just to prove how gloriously overbred and candidly fireplug stupid she is, Margot nosed the dying embers.  GAAA!  As you can imagine, I watched the lighting of the chalice candle for the growth meeting last night with some small anxiety.
    2. It was a very good meeting last night, and I’m glad I could host even if my house was a mess.  As I remarked to the folks, I started a full time job the same day my Granny died, so the place was clean enough to hold a meeting in but not up to spec for tidiness.
    3. Jeff and Paul will be renting a truck to fetch the last of Granny’s things on Friday.
    4. Keith interviewed for and got a part time job starting March 1st.  He will continue to work with Ted on weekends.
    5. Katie is still not working, but if I responded to boredom by getting facial piercings, however attractive, I might be making myself harder to employ as well.
    6. We’re working our way through BSG again.
    7. Work is good, except for some software bobbles.vv