There reaches a point near the end of the day during Quarter End where you might start wondering if the inhabitants of my office might be slightly drunk.  Just before I left today (at 7pm), my coworker Adam comes up to me to ask about some accounts, and a) I couldn't put into words what I'd found out about them, and b) he couldn't remember the email I'd sent him about them earlier in the day.  And neither of us was making complete sense.

That's when you know it's time to go home.

(Also, my typing is atrocious.  Considering that on a normal day I type 90+ WPM with good accuracy, the fact that I've had to rewrite every third word in the above paragraph - some of them twice - is testament to my failing mental faculties.)

I think one of the things I like about arguing is that sometimes I end up changing my own mind.  (No, I'm still a Christian.  A conservative Christian.  Just a slightly weirder one.)  'Cause truth is infinitely surprising, and arguing can cause me to think of things in different ways, and then I find something that ends up altering my opinions and views to something I didn't expect.  Not that these always go down well, or even turn out to be right, but the point is, sometimes they do.

Quarter End continues.  Today I had a data glitch that almost stumped my supervisor.  Yeesh.

At the moment, I find myself thinking, "Is there an atheist around I can argue with?"

I just started into C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory, reading small chunks and then thinking about them because, y'know, this is C.S. Lewis, who puts two dozen fascinating ideas in the space of a paragraph.  And though it wasn't the point of the essay/sermon, I ended up on the tangent of trying to work out a rational argument for the existence of the supernatural.

I can't imagine it will do anybody much good, though.  Very, very few people are actually convinced by a good, rational argument.  Emotion, experience, instinct, bias - truth is, these are what people really make decisions on.  So this would really just be to satisfy my own desire, to try and answer everybody who says that religion is just a byproduct of evolution.  To find a way to explain, rationally, why there really is ( Something Out There )

Argh, it's late.  I've already spent longer on this than I expected, and with it being Quarter End, the chances of continuing this are pretty much nil.  Oh well.

This has got to be the most unlikely ad campaign in, well, ever.



I saw it for the first time yesterday and wondered if my brain had actually, really melted this time.

According to the Gulbransen Piano website, my parents' Gulbransen upright grand was built in 1926.  We have no idea when it was last tuned (best estimate, over twenty years ago), but it is still mostly in tune with itself.  Awesome.

I've been looking after their house while they're out of town, and took advantage of said piano this evening to play out of one of my more unusual hymnals: a large-print shaped-note Mennonite hymnal that once belonged to my great grandmother.  Great-Grandma was an excellent church musician who could transpose music at sight (hence the desire for shaped notes) but her eyesight was failing in her later years (hence the large print).  There are some lovely songs in it that I'm unfamiliar with, usually chorales that, well, have fallen out of fashion these days.  (Sad.)

And in a nice intersection of subjects, when Great-Grandma was introduced to our piano, she sat down at it, played awhile, and said, "This is a Gulbransen, isn't it?"  She'd recognized the way the wood laminate across the front had been split to make a symmetrical pattern in the woodgrain.

I gotta say, the more I learn about Great-Grandma, the more I wish I'd gotten to know her.  She died when I was ten, and only afterward, over the years, have I heard about how she was musical and artistic and a great reader and very intelligent.  I remember a family reunion where she got out an entire arrangement of tuned cowbells, laid them out on a table, and played songs on them.  She traveled cross-country and overseas after her husband died.  My copy of A Wizard of Earthsea belonged to her.  (Why yes, geekiness is genetic!)  It's like, there's other people I wish I'd known before they died, but Great-Grandma I sort of knew, and it turns out that wasn't enough.

Note to self:  vinegar + laundry = cleaner clothes.

The best bit?  Vinegar is dirt cheap.

Also, I bought The Weight of Glory and I'm gonna read it.  ::anticipates book::

I've been packing.  Checked the weather for my destination: mid seventies all week.  And it topped out near 100F here today.  Man.

I always get anxious when I pack.  I'm always worried I'll forget something.  Never mind I've done this hundreds of times (mainly thanks to that year I spent in a traveling music group in college) and know full well that if you get somewhere and you're missing something, it's not so terrible to run to the store to get a replacement.

I think I may not take near as many books as usual this time.  Blank books, notebooks, some novels... I usually bring a bunch.  But I have my laptop now.  All my downtime entertainment can be on here.

Tried on an awesome silk Vietnamese dress today.  I don't have the money for it now, but I will have to go back for it.  The amazing bit is that the cloth they use has no give whatsoever, so you're kind of stuck with the cut, and I usually have the worst time finding dresses because I've got low shoulders and a high waist, and so I was shocked how well it fit. (In fact, I felt it was a gamble leaving it behind, but oh well.  It's only a dress.)

Ever notice how the colors in your closet change?  Four years ago, I had lots of stripes, fitted blouses, things with cuffs and collars, and it was black and red and light blue and white.  Two years ago, the colors were almost uniformly dark, black and brown with some dark-colored patterns.  Now I have rich red and green, some white and cream, still some black and brown, but not as much, and more blue.  I wonder what the colors say about a person.

It's the small things in life that make you grateful.  ( Cut for TMI of the feminine sort )

On the subject of "later this week," I will be out of town from Wednesday through Monday, and since my grandparents don't have wifi, I probably won't be updating.  But I will be having fun with my dad's family.

I just finished re-reading Your God Is Too Small by J.B. Phillips.  Please allow me to highly recommend this short little book to all of you.  Whether you're a Christian, or not-a-Christian, or used-to-be-a-Christian, or just find yourself wondering why anybody anywhere would want to worship or obey a god, this book is good, chewy, food for thought.  The first half deconstructs various ideas about the Judeo-Christian God which he explains are "too small" before making arguments for what a "big enough" God would be like.  I'll be reading through the first half going, "why would someone see God that way?" and then I'll get to a particular deconstruction and I'll, "Oh, dang.  That's me."

Now, granted, it was written before post-modernism really came to maturity, meaning that some of his assumptions about culture are now wrong, and he doesn't touch on arguments that would be valid and timely now, but it is seriously a good book.

Solstice or no solstice, you know it's summer when the National Weather Service tells you that the following day, thanks to heat and humidity, the entire state will be under a Heat Advisory until 7pm.

Bit of a fun day today.  The family went out for breakfast this morning for Father's Day (yes, it's tomorrow, but this worked better).  Then my mom and I went shopping.  She ended up with one shirt and I ended up with two.  Which I wasn't planning on, but we discovered where Von Maur keeps their "cheaper" stuff, and they had this totally sleek sort of zip-up thing, with black and grey and dusty blue.

It's the frustrating thing about Von Maur, though: the clothes really are that much better - in fit and style - than your average Younkers, but you totally pay for it.

Then I went home and did my laundry and visited Ryan & Mary's cat, Fortuna (they're out of town for the weekend).  Fortuna's a lovely cat, a rescue from the Humane Society.  She's a Manx, which is weird.  I never realized how much I depended on a cat's tail to read its mood.  Fortuna seriously has no tail at all, just a little tuft of hair above her rear end that stands up when she's excited. 

It's nice to be able to visit a cat from time to time.

And then I played on the piano a bit.  We need to get it tuned, but some days I just can't help myself.

Y'know, I don't think I was really very fair to my mother growing up.   I didn't understand her all that well, (we're very different) and I didn't take her criticism properly.  'Cause my mom is not a "critical" person, meaning in the negative "you can't do anything right," "I know better than you," etc, kind of way.  She had good reason to try to teach me to be friendlier and a better listener, and to just plain learn to keep my mouth shut.  But for some reason, I had to learn that on my own.  I wish it hadn't taken so long.  I've got a lot of catching up to do.

I GOT MY TEA.

They didn't leave it in front of the door as I'd requested, but dropped it off at the neighbors', but the neighbors were very nice about it and got it right away when I asked, and that was a slight panic moment, but it is over now, and I GOT MY TEA.

Entirely too much trouble for two 250g of tea.  Twinings, you morons, start carrying this stuff on your own U.S. website!

Sleep now...

Y'know, I forgot to mention that last Sunday, I went over to Amy's parents' house for dinner (all of Amy's friends are permanently invited), and we decided to watch "The Trouble with Tribbles" afterwards.  And Amy's nieces and nephews, all under the age of ten, loved it.  The oldest, Alyssa, was giggling nonstop.  She told us later that she wanted a tribble for a pet.

Warms my old Trekkie heart, it does...

If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

It's amazing how many of you there are.

Anybody else find the artistry of crop circles gorgeous?  I'm looking at some examples on telegraph.co.uk, and they're amazing.  All the swoops and circles and rings and patterns... there's one they've got that's actually a phoenix.  I love it.  Giant field art!

I ordered some tea a couple weeks back, Twinings Assam and Twinings Afternoon, both loose, from the only place on the web where both were available... and they only just shipped the package yesterday.  Argh.  ::pines for tea::

So concerning the Monday night singles' group... I'm beginning to think I should leave.  It isn't that there aren't awesome people there - there are - and the teaching is excellent, it's just that the time and money the administration expects us to devote to it is threating to leach off the time and money I would rather be devoting to my home church.  In fact, I'm disagreeing increasingly with ( the way things are run. )

I'm sad, though.  I like the people there a lot.  But if they're going to be "all or nothing" about it, then I, in good conscience, can't stay.

On the bright side, at the study last night, another single from my church says they're thinking of restarting the "young career singles/marrieds" suppers at our pastor's house.  I would love that.

I've had my windows open in the apartment six days out of seven this past week.  I don't know how we got such a cool, lovely June, and I know it won't last, but holy cow is it nice.

(well, except when the neighbors decide to go smoke on the walkway, but that's a minor niggle.)

Today I went over to my parents' and dragged out a whole lot of old stuff, especially books and notebooks and journals, to be sorted and either kept or tossed.  I was kind of embarressed by the number of half-finished (or barely-started) journals I found.  I think I'm not gonna buy any new ones for awhile...

While there, Mom and I pulled out some old clothes of mine, including the bridesmaid's dress I wore to Daniel & Lisa's wedding almost ten years ago.  When Mom wondered whether I might still fit into it, I couldn't help myself and had to try it on.  And I did fit.  ::is slightly dazed::  Still, it's not like I could wear it anywhere, so it went back into the closet, along with my flag corps uniforms and my swing choir costume.  The strappy pearly high-heeled sandals that went with it the bridesmaid's dress, on the other hand, are now with the rest of my shoes.  I've got nothing to go with them at the moment, but that could change.

So I sorted through old books and papers, and found the book report for The Return of the King I did back in sixth grade, and tried to get the pen marks off an old CareBear, and otherwise was up to my elbows in nostalgia.  I now have a lot less guilt about what's sitting in my parents' basement.

Been looking up choral songs online tonight.  Finally found the haunting Kyrie I'd sung back in high school: it's the one from Haydn's "Nelson" Mass.  Also, found this particularly good performance of "The Awakening" by Joseph M. Martin:

It's about the only modern "song about the power of music" that I actually like.  Directed by Dr. Eph Ehly, who is crazy awesome.  And the orchestra (which I'd never heard with it before) gives it the oomph I never knew it needed.  I snooped around for the choir, and it turns out they do have a CD of this...

Okay, now I have an NES simulator in Firefox.  And my mom was wondering what I was going to be doing when I'm waiting at an airport for two hours this month.

I'm messing around with my Lego Digital Designer (I can finally build proper roofs!  'Cause there's unlimited roof pieces!), and it's kinda funny to discover the "official" names of bricks.  David and I had our own lingo, which aided mightily in searches because you can't really have two people searching in the same box at once (at least, we found it unwieldy), so we got in the habit of describing what we were looking for to whoever was currently searching, who would then also look for that piece.  (Though a fair number of the pieces just got described as "one of these guys," while holding up a matching one.)

"Two by three, thick, blue."
"How many?"
"Any you can find."

"Gray arch.  Six long."
"How many?"
"Just one."

"Any hinges?"
"What color?"
"Two matching, I don't care."

Also, in the realm of my job, I have decided that what we really need is a ( librarian )

Of course, they would probably want an experienced business librarian and not me.  And someone high up would have to get excited about it and be able to prove to everyone what a time-saver it would be.  But it would be so cool.

You guys, I went to the Lego website and downloaded the Lego Digital Designer.  That is to say, I have Legos on my laptop.

It's true, then.  The toys do get cooler as you get older.

I must be weird.

To clarify, I know that there are a great many Christians who find a lot of comfort in applying the pronouns "I," "me," and "my" as often as they can when talking about God, seeking to bring their faith to a personal level and finding ways to apply it directly to their thinking and their lives.

( Not me, apparently. )

Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

You guys, we went and saw Up on Friday night.  And I gotta tell ya, if you go, bring tissues for the first act.  ( SQUIRREL! ) Pixar is ten for ten.

And today I watched The Time Meddler, being an old First Doctor serial.  And was impressed.  The first bit, between the Doctor and Vicki, was surprisingly sweet, with her being sad about Ian and Barbara leaving, and the Doctor commisserating, but also trying to cheer her up.  And all through, I was amazed at how awesome Hartnell was.  I've seen some of his other serials, but he just stood out in this one.  (Even if you don't see him for all of part 2...)  He's all impish and ornery and clearly having the time of his life.

Also, this is the one with that famous First Doctor quote.  "That is the dematerializing control, and that over yonder is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, my dear boy! Now please stop bothering me."  I about died laughing.