Church board

The board retreat today (I’m a trustee again at Beacon Unitarian Church) was AWESOME.  I think we really gelled as a board, but time will tell.

We’ve had some heavy, heavy losses in the church this year, some natural attrition, some resignations due to differences with either the board or the minister, and some people have retained their membership but largely withdrawn from church life.

lovely visit

Lexi had me, Jeff, Darci, Jasmine, and Paul over for chicken dinner last night and it was excellent in all ways.  After dinner I suggested we go for a walk – it was a lot cooler by the seawall – and Jasmine and Darwin and I kicked around a soccer ball on the beach.  Lexi gave me a frowning after I let Darwin walk through a bunch of puddles, upon which I learned that all of his shoes were now wet (give your head a shake Allegra, your kids never had more than two pairs of shoes when they were little).  Anyway, I gave up on that when I made the mistake of trying to use Mr. Darwin as a croquet mallet (head first).

Lexi got complimented on Darwin’s hat (again) – it happens every time I see her, it seems.  Chill Monkeys is doing awesome.  I have added it to the blogroll.

It was lovely to see Darci and Jasmine, who is the most preternaturally polite, well spoken, intelligent and compassionate 4.5 year old I ever met, bar none, and cute as the dickens, besides, in her pig tails.  If my dad doesn’t turn into a gibbering ball of mush upon interacting with her I’ll be surprised.

No meteors, too much skyglow.

ps Katie and Keith did not attend.  Keith had a date and Katie wasn’t up for a family gathering.  I’ll leave my own feelings out of it.

Ants

We has ’em.

Thursday, off to Lexi’s to meet up with my cousin Darcy and her charming offspring; Saturday, off to the church Board retreat.  (Yes, knowing that was coming up got me off my ass to get sussed out by the RCMP).

Went and harrassed Tom, one of my all time fave activities, to do something about Ziva’s subwoofer.  Ziva is suddenly getting better gas mileage; the only thing I can think of which would account for such a thing is that I’ve finally burned off all the sludge that was sitting in the bottom of the gas tank, because I’m getting 30 more kilometres out of a tank and believe me I have not changed my lead footed driving style.  Anyway, Ziva’s subwoofer has a crack. Jeff wants me to make the subwoofer removable so he can get his bike in the car (the bike would only fit with bungees last Friday when we met up at Swiss Chalet).

Tom gave me celery.  If I find a good place to grow it I’ll grow it next year.  I am already planning a hosta bed under the dogwood in the back corner.  Right now that part of the yard is just a cluster of bluebells and weeds, mostly nightshade, so something to improve it’s appearance and remove grass would be nice.

The quit-by-pictures girl was a fake.  O well.

I tried contacting the JetBlue attendant’s public defender to offer support but nobody is answering the phone there.

Got to get to work…. don’t want to move, although I’ll be fine when I get there.

Watched a simply marvellous movie called The Straight Story last night.  If you want a clean, sad but uplifting story that is full of kindness to strangers, check it out.  At one point Jeff and I said to each other that Richard Farnsworth’s wattles have more acting talent than Keanu Reeves’ whole body, not that we hate Keanu Reeves or anything, we do like him even if woodpeckers do land on his head.

I wish I’d taken a picture of Miss Margot guarding the rat Eddie killed.

[EDIT by Jeff] Ask and you shall receive:

Margot guarding the rat

Fireflies in the woods

I really like this pic.

So last night I’m watching live TV (which we never do, or hardly ever do) and there’s a tv show from 2008 about the swapping of the poles.  Yes, the poles are swapping.  It’ll take 40,000 years, maybe less ’cause we’re all in such a hurry these days.  So the partial collapse of the magnetosphere is connected to the weakening of the magnetic field of the earth, and it’s borne out by looking at ships’ logs from the 1590’s on.  Up until 1840 or thereabouts the field strength was about the same – it’s been dropping steadily ever since.  For more details, most of which are incomprehensible but at least the article links are understandable, check out Wikipedia for Magnetosphere, South Atlantic Anomaly and Earth’s Magnetic Field.

mOm is always telling me about relatives and my relation to them, and here’s a handy map. With level of genetic kinship.