Category Archives: Random

Busy Night: Normal Life

We’re doing some short-term elder-care right now for a colleague’s aunt who has mild Alzheimer’s. M and the girls have been there all day for the past week plus. It’s a rough schedule and fairly exhausting. I help out when I can in evenings and weekends–so I was there all day today. (It’s like dealing with three toddlers instead of two–one of whom has the same conversation with you every fifteen minutes or so.)

Now, M is at the desk behind me finishing up a sermon for tomorrow’s supply gig; I’m trying to figure out how to install Oracle on my test server since it turns out that my side-job’s web host is discontinuing MySQL support. What fun…

Saving the Planet–through Conspicious Consumption

Lee has a great post up on the “green consumerism” phenomenon. I think he’s absolutely right. In the part of town we live the the preferred mode of transportation is now the Lexus Hybrid SUV. The bus routes are still minimal, infrequent, and regarded with disdain.

M and I feel strongly about the environment and have been transitioning to more environmentally friendly cleaning products and post-consumer recycled products.I think more people generally are doing this and, as is the case, there is more discussion about means and motives. Perhaps the silliest thing I’ve seen was a shocked and horrified article (I don’t remember where) that people and companies who were pushing buying green and organic were making money off it! …Apparently still in the mindset that if you’re making money on it, then it can’t be a real “cause”…

Lee’s point and the article it cites are important warnings. Being environmentally friendly isn’t just about buying a whole bunch more things. After all, when it comes to “green” cleaning products, it’s amazing how much you can do with vinegar and lemon juice… ;-)

I’m Not Dead Yet…

I’m just absolutely snowed under.

Minor Notes:

  • The Shore was good but I see that once again they have ignored my advice and decided to retain the whole “sand” thing. I plan to lodge a protest with the powers-that-be.
  • It only took an absence of a week or so before the p0rn-spam comments started appearing… (now deleted, of course…)
  • As I suggested here Dr. Nokes has indeed–if only indirectly–gotten in on the Disney princess action.
  • After our latest beer-ribs-‘n’-liturgy meet-up M found Lil’ G with blue and green marker drawings all over her arms. When queried why G responded so that she could have tattoos like [LutherPunk]. She’s also recently asked when she can get body piercings and real tattoos… Since she just turned four I told her that it would be a while.

Third Time’s a Charm?

*Sigh* I was planning to get a lot done tonight. Didn’t happen. I made a silly error on protocols for handling file extensions and ended up reinstalling the OS from scratch… On the upside–I’m trying a new OS. :-D

I started out with this box on Ubuntu. That was working okay. Then, I needed to install some stuff but cleverly forgot/couldn’t locate the root password. At that point I said–hey, I’m a Windows guy from before Windows existed–why use Ubuntu which uses Gnome as a graphical interface (a Mac clone)? Why not try Kubuntu which uses KDE–a Windows emulator? (Especially since the price is the same…) It was okay–I had no major problems but I did notice a performance difference. It was slower…

This is an *old* box I’m working off of.

When I made my goof tonight I said, well, why not round it out with Xubuntu which is designed for more basic systems. So, I spent what was supposed to be productive coding time reinstalling the operating system, retweaking Firefox, and setting up my lampp stack. And in case any one else is trying this, I *heartily* recommend this site and its download. After several days trying to manual compile a stack on my Windows unit I discovered their Windows version and was good to go in under an hour. This is the second time I’ve used it on this box (once with Kubuntu, now once with Xubuntu) and haven’t had a bit of trouble.

In the meantime, however while waiting on downloads/installs/and such I’ve been glancing through Oscar Cullman’s Essays on the Lord’s Supper, John Koenig’s New Testament Hospitality, and Luke Johnson’s Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity.

Much more important than these, though, I got to spend some quality time with M which I’ve been missing a lot recently because of my crazy schedule…

Ok! I’ll Put Up a Benediction Liturgy!

I’ve been looking at my Google click-throughs… It seems that a rite of Benediction is desired for the trial liturgy page by more than a few. I’ll try and get to it before too very long.

(But how’s that for Fruedian slips–when I first typed the title it said “Benedictine” rather than “Benediction”…)

Actually–I have a bit of work to do over there… I need to correct typos that have been found so far, I need to post an adaptation of the Office of the Dead used as a liturgy for Memorial Day, I need to post seasonal variations for the Anglican Lauds & Vespers…

Oy… It won’t get done until ch. 4 gets finished–sorry!

The Weekend

We had a great–though completely exhausting–weekend.

Saturday was The Party; Lil’ G is turning 4 this week and we had a big party for G in conjunction with one of the other girls at her daycare who was also turning 4. The kids had great fun. It was at a sort of place I never knew existed until last year–essentially a big recreation hall with giant inflatables specifically for children’s parties. As for the adults, a few knew each other–but most didn’t. We only see each other in passing at drop-off in the morning except for those who live near each other or who have older children of an age. I quickly labeled it: Suburban Hell, Party Edition. That’s not to say M and I didn’t know anybody–Anastasia came bringing Kizzy and Thumper, and they came over to the house after the party concluded. All in all, a fun–if slightly surreal–time.

There’s a post in me somewhere about princesses and the marketing of northern European mythology. For those without preschool and primary school girls, princesses are a huge industry. All of the girls know all of the princess. The Disney princesses, that is. And the stories–as Disney tells them…or Barbie…or whoever is doing the packaging. What I find odd is that I see in and through these princess narratives bits of Germanic and Scandinavian epic cycles and elements. On one hand I’m glad something of these ancient stories is being passed down; on the other, they appear in their altered state for the sake of selling units that contribute to sucking children into a consumer culture that undercuts the very virtues, values, and realities encoded in those epics. Maybe we should sic Dr. Nokes on it as a warped materialistic form of medievalism…

Father’s day was grand. I grilled steaks, played with the girls and received–not a tacky tie–but an iTunes card and this: The English Office

A review will be forthcoming…

Friday Random Shuffle

(h/t LutherPunk and Anastasia (Can’t wait to see her songs-about-death list (or LP’s for that matter…)))

  1. Nobody’s Fault but Mine (Zeppelin)
  2. Tourniquet (Evanescence)
  3. The fiery spirit (Anonymous 4 [Hildegard])
  4. Lullaby (Leæther Strip’s cover of The Cure)
  5. Out of This World [Oakenfold remix] (The Cure)
  6. 1000 BPM (Beck)
  7. The Song Remains the Same (Zeppelin)
  8. Missa Brevis-Credo (Palestrina)
  9. We’re in This Together (Goth Acoustic Ensemble covering NIN)
  10. Rock and Roll (Zeppelin)
  11. Passover (Joy Division)
  12. Jimmy Hickey’s Waltz (The Waterboys)

Quiet Night at the Manse

I didn’t have to work at my usual night job tonight…

So what are we up to? M+ and I are sitting in the office. I’m doing some PHP programming, she’s listening to some German industrial [Massiv in Mensch] which she’s periodically pausing while we stop and compare plainchant mass settings… (I think she’s working on a goth mass setting for those wondering…)

Ah, a normal night at the house.