The Family Letter

Gasp! I've been tagged by The Lovely Wife. So, here goes nothing…

The Rules:

Rule 1) List three reasons for your blogging.
Rule 2) List the rules.
Rule 3) Tag three others with the thread.

1a) As the name implies, I'm writing to keep my family informed of my goings on. My father has, as long as I have been conscious of such things, written a weekly letter to family. My aunt as well. So I decided to try continuing the tradition in a new way. It works better sometimes than others.

1b) I can't say peer pressure, really, since the man who originally encouraged me to give this a go was a professor at the time, not quite a peer. But I like to tell people–honestly–that I was introduced to blogging by one of the greats, AKMA. It looked like he was having fun, so here I am.

1c) Peer pressure. And because it is a fun way to stay connected with people far away. (That's two reasons. But I suppose the peers encourage me to keep it up because it keeps us connected. So there. )

2) Rules listed above.

3) Jane, Young Fogey, and Bigtooth.

Done!

You'd never guess it from the title, but this site involved PhD students fishing for squirrels. There are no squirrels here in Hawaii, a fact that I do not generally lament. I do occasionally, however, miss the antics of the little rodents as they tried to get at my bird feeders. For the first 10 minutes. Then as they systematically destroyed things, including the feeders, it got less amusing.

Enjoy!

Yesterday the run got cancelled early, so since I found myself with a decent parking space downtown (an accomplishment, this time courtesy of St. Peter's Episcopal Church), I decided I'd walk the five blocks to the blood bank and give blood. The dentist appointment went well, but was painful… Turns out my insurance as configured didn't allow me to use this dentist. But since he comes highly recommended (he's a parishioner), I just paid the bill. I'll need some work done on an old filling, but I'll wait to do that until May when the insurance gets reconfigured to cover this dentist.

The movie last night was touching, a really good film. I particularly liked the way everyone was–or seemed to be–honest as they reflected on their lives with Lior. To hear the sister say she really didn't like all the attention Lior got, and the father confess that he was worried he'd be embarrassed by Lior's poor playing in Little League… That was as touching as listening to Lior's walk through the world in his own words.

You, too, can flash back to grade school as you join the world in reading entries from Amy's Dairy. (No, that's not a typo. Click the link and you'll see why.)

This one's kind of fun. Ah, the simplicity of childhood.

Got a voice lesson this morning (this is a first, unless you count all the times Patrick patiently tried to coach me in Erie), then a healing Eucharist, then dashing downtown to the Cathedral for the tail-end of a college of presbyters meeting with the Bishop. After that a slightly less rushed drive past church to a new dentist. He's a parishioner and comes highly recommended, which is more than I can say for the dental clinic I was using last year. This one's just a checkup and a chance to get my annual AF dental form filled out, so hopefully there will be no issues. Mind you the form they sent for me to fill out listed more conditions (medical) and had more questions than the AF physical form I completed for phase two. Yikes.

Then, after all that, maybe a run and then back home for dinner. Then church again for a movie, Praying with Lior. Then collapsing into bed, I think.

Today's link is a collection of random access visual trivia (thanks, Jane, for help naming that one!). It is rather fun, actually, to see some of the stuff people do with their spare time and money.

Over the past several weeks I have mostly posted just the calendar links. Which, as much fun as that is, really doesn't have anything to do with me personally. So a quick update is in order. Like AKMA, I am trying not to think too hard about certain things, in my case the 18th of March and the meeting that takes place on the mainland that day.¹ I won't have any word from the Air Force until at least that day, probably a week or two further along, depending on how the paperwork and such travels.²

Meanwhile Lent continues. I've begun a weekly healing service here on Wednesdays which has had low but regular attendance. Also doing a service at a nearby retirement community on Thursdays now, in the assisted living wing. That's been a joy. That is followed by a bible study group out there, and we just finished working through Job. Our plan now is to switch to topics rather than books of the bible, with the aim of helping our Buddhist attendee gain a better understanding of Christianity. To that end, I am more than open to suggestions about where in the bible to go to help him, or what topics to pursue!

Okay, that's enough for now… Back to work. Mainly, today, preparing for Holy Week. I want to be a bit ahead of the curve on sermons and things if I can this year.

1. Actually, I have no idea where the meeting takes place. I imagine it will be in a dimly lit room, with shadowy figures hunkered over duplicate copies of my file, exchanging cryptic comments and finally delivering a verdict by making a secret sign to the One watching via CCTV. [