Perched on the apse between the gaps...

...just an odd phrase that kept running through my head today, I don't know where it came from but it sounds like a line from some sort of existentialist poem.

Word of the day: parsimonious

Witty retort of the day:

I needed to walk to the grocery store for a few groceries after work today. We have a stray shopping cart from the local Wal-mart sitting in our parking lot. The night-time supervisor got wind of the fact that I was hoofing it and asked me if I would care to push it back to the Wal-mart, to which I said,"Now really, I have all these bags to carry and how do you think it would make me look to be pushing a shopping cart around town?" and one of my coworkers chimes in,"In this town completely normal!"

Literature and Banned Books

I finished reading The Color Purple and WOW, it was one of the better novels I've tackled this year... Now getting started on She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb (yet another wonderful book recommended by my dear sister). One interesting thing I've noted about my reading in the past year has been that many of my selections are on The American Library Association's list of most commonly challenged or banned books. I understand the reason why some of these books are frequently challenged, but some of them are at the least innocuous and at best many of them are exceptional literature. Like my sister I may not agree with some of the content in these books but I fully support one's right to read them if they choose. If you really delve into this issue and find out more concerning the entries on the banned/challenged book list (better yet, read them for yourself) you will note how many stories and tomes are considered to be subversive or dangerous (by a select few); having had formal complaints filed about them and sustained efforts to remove them from the shelves of our local libraries; all because someone disagrees with the theme or messages that they contain. It scares me how many people want a free country yet are unwilling to entertain the notion that consumption of literature and ideas, free of censorship, is part of that freedom. (I will note that I believe there are absolutes here... for example I would NOT advocate free access to things such as instructional manuals which detailed how to make psychotropic drugs or explosive substances from common household chemicals.)

Das Kompost Nazi

Some of my coworkers think that I'm a little weird (ok, probably very weird) partly because I encourage them to give me their orange & banana peels as well as apple cores and I routinely empty the coffee grounds from the break room coffee machine into a used container in my lunch box just so I can take all these things home and compost them instead of allowing them to end up in a landfill. I've even been known to pick fruit peelings off the top of the trash and bury them in the flowerbeds outside. During the warmer months, I also bury the expired fish from the aquarium department. It may seem eccentric and it has gotten a lot of strange looks from those driving by, but let me tell ya, my workplace's flowerbeds have never had such rich soil.

Mt. Ascutney Hike

I had my friend W down for the weekend and we both decided to take a hike up the Weathersfield Trail on Mt. Ascutney on Saturday. The hike was beautiful (if not a bit hazardous due to ice & bad traction in many places). Want a bit of an adventure??? Try hiking in 6-12 inches of fresh snow on a trail where some genius decided that the blazes should be WHITE!!! (I thought that blue was one of the most universal trail blaze colors???) We ended up having to pause every 50-100 feet in order to spot the next blaze... doing this against a backdrop of freshly fallen snow and searching for white blazes on trees which in some cases already had numerous whitish natural coloration from lichens & whatnot. It was a refreshing but slightly taxing hike... we never made it to the summit due to our slow rate of progress, it would likely have been nightfall by the time we made it back down. I don't mind getting lost in the woods in warmer weather (with camping gear in tow), but getting lost in the woods in sub-zero temperatures and with no appropriate overnight equipment is entirely a different matter.

A sampling of the terrain

White Blazes + White Trails = ???

A lovely natural ice sculpture in the 'Little' Cascade Falls Ravine

A perspective on the size of the ravine

W and I

My ever-so-delicious homemade soup, You are now pwned!!! I am teh soupmaster!!!

Harassing 'Spud', my roommate's cat (who is obviously so pleased to be lavished with such attention, hehee). Doesn't he look adorable in that silly sweater that she made him wear!!!?

Wacky Advertisement

I just got a good chuckle out of this advertisement. There's a marketing department somewhere who must be patting themselves on the back over this one.

Pictures and Whatnot

Last weekend I spent some much-needed down-time up in northwest VT with the family and I stayed the weekend with my sister and grandmother, I also got to visit with my aunt, soon-to-be-cousin-by-marriage (?)(sorry, her name escapes me right now), and one of the newest additions to the family, stbcbm's adorable new baby boy, Isaiah. I had a good time while up there and I've gained a lot of insight. For reasons I won't explain right now, my sister & grandmother have been a huge blessing to me and have helped me to understand the rest of my family a little better. I actually owe many positive life changes to these two fine ladies. It is because of their wisdom and example that I am not so much of an angry person as I used to be. Also my dear sister keeps recommending good reading to me which has helped me see a lot of things differently. Speaking of which, I finally picked up the book: The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. It is much better than the movie and I can't believe that I've procrastinated for so long in reading it! I am already about 2/3 of the way through and quite impressed. Further proof that just because a book is frequently banned does not mean that it is literature without high merit.

...and a few pictures from my weekend:

Hats hanging in the entrance lobby in The Lincoln Inn in Essex Junction, VT, where my sister, grandmother, and I went for breakfast (a piece of local color that I would recommend by the way, not as good as it used to be, but still worth having a meal at).

Grandmother and Sister

Grandmother and I

In random other news, I'm still having issues with my roommate's cat, Mr. Spud (previously mentioned in this posting). He is very cute and I have no desire to eject him from the household, but he is still a discipline issue. Please consider that I am very permissive about where I allow cats to roam in my household, but food-surfaces such as kitchen counters and tables are strictly off-limits. He still gets up on the counters and tables regardless of all the discipline he's had. I've tried yelling, I've tried throwing light, noisy objects, I've tried scruffing and light smacking with a rolled newspaper (whenever caught in the act). All of this to no effect. It also does not help that he literally has developmental issues and it generally takes him seven times longer to pick up behavioral cues. So for lack of any other method working, I tried something new. I've noticed that my other cats do the usual cat-thingy and hiss while showing their teeth when his roughhousing with them gets out of hand, and he understands that perfectly well. So now whenever I catch him in the act of doing something which he shouldn't do, I take a threatening posture and bare my teeth, hissing very loudly and it actually WORKS. It looks ridiculous and I hope none of my neighbors ever see me doing this... but I am glad to finally have a working method for training him.

Religious & Apocalyptic Theory

For frequent readers who are not of religious mindset or are generally turned off by religious matters, I assure you that the following post will sound like a bunch of insane blather.

There have been a lot of spiritual queries and observations circulating around in my head lately... It is no secret that my first two decades of life in a fundamentalist/evangelical/baptist background have been both a blessing and a curse. The fundamentalists who I've encountered are mostly of the ilk who do not perceive themselves as being fundamentalists (and are offended if given this label). They think that they are purely acting as a tool of God, not bothering to question whether or not it is wise to follow a literal interpretation of a book which was written as a moral code for an ancient, largely undeveloped society. I frequently consider my past spiritual life and how it compares with my views in more recent times, how it all fits into the big picture, and I continue fighting to keep a clear perspective in order to stay on the right path.

Admittedly, I am not the best or most astute Christian... in fact I can be quite the "Doubting Thomas". I frequently call my own beliefs into question, I sometimes treat my religious outlook with irreverence in mixed company, and I often have a hard time with fundamentalism: despising the mindset while attempting to understand and love those who have been trapped by it. Despite this doubting nature, I still find myself right back at a place of Faith. I've also not cracked the cover of my Bible for almost a decade. One could say that I've developed an aversion to Bible-reading due to all the times that I've seen the Good Book used by cruel people as an instrument of control, an assault weapon, or as a torture device. As of lately, I am cautiously attempting to revisit the Scriptures with a new attitude and different mental framework, without the fundamentalist dogma filter... much of this with the hopes of subverting many of the lies which I frequently encounter within my family and the general Christian community.

This is all very overwhelming and I will confess that I am a bit disillusioned by a large part of Christianity because of it's rampant hypocrisy... People preaching about loving others while happily supporting a war with extraordinarily high collateral damage (and severe long-term repercussions); insecure men who claim to be spreading the love of Jesus while treating all the females in their life with utter contempt and allowing their family to rot and wither from the inside out; people in the church hierarchy who put on an heir of acceptance and love during services but outside of it they cast revulsion and complete disrespect toward women, homosexuals, and other ethnic groups. I've watched churches eject people for simply disagreeing with what the pastor says (wouldn't any pastor worth his salt attempt to gently explain his position?), and observed congregations who tame their guilty conscience by sending a token sum of money to missions overseas while completely ignoring the abundance of physical and spiritual need within their own community (it seems to be easier to look at a few photographs and read stories instead of confronting the problems head-on). I've heard all manner of sermons about the evils of sexual immorality yet the deacons and/or pastor physically and emotionally abuse their wives, keeping them subservient with the vague threat of salvation-loss or even physical harm. When women in some churches become pregnant outside of marriage, they suddenly become an object of ridicule and stigma... yet if it is found out that a man (within the church) had sex outside of marriage, he might get a slap on the wrist or his behavior is tacitly accepted as being just part of the nature of men. There are all these supposedly "Christian" political organizations who have all sorts of lofty spiritual aspirations on the surface, but a strong bloodlust and desire for control underneath it all. Men who claim that women are to be respected, then blame them for being raped or molested by insisting that it was the woman's own fault for wearing immodest clothing or unintentionally leading the aggressor on. Church folks who profess a strict moral code except when it directly contradicts their personal interests. A society of people who greedily consume material goods at the expense of other societies and the earth (as well as all the natural life that it contains). Instances where people who come to God seeking relief from drug or alcohol addiction are warmly accepted, yet are treated like the filthy stray dog who raided the garbage bin if they happen to lose their way and backslide a bit. I forget which blog I read it on, but I recently came across a quote that stated,"Christianity is one of the only religions which shoots it's own wounded." Regrettably, I have to agree with that statement somewhat. Am I sounding overly negative yet? I apologize, bear with me here.

I've read on various Christian websites about what a sorry state the world is in, supposedly because of the decrease in true Believers. Well I ask this: Why should everyone else believe? Would you go to a psychologist who talked to inanimate objects? Would you pay for the services of a doctor who never washed his hands and was always sick? Would you be quick to form an alliance with someone who commanded unquestioning loyalty, demanded complete control of all your thought processes, and severely persecuted or executed anyone who did not follow these requirements? I do believe that all churches and branches of Christianity suffer with the aforementioned problems to a greater or lesser degree. I also firmly believe that we are witnessing the False Church spoken of in Revelation, growing within the pews of our own churches today, feeding off of the ignorance and all of this fake intellectual/moral sanctimony. It seems to consist of the minds of those who would blindly follow a doctrine just because it says so in a book, bypassing all common sense or leadings of the Spirit, and engaging in the hypocritical behaviors mentioned in the last paragraph. In deference to the fact that none of us are perfect, I conjecture that the False Church exists in all of us in some measure, the two sides continuously having a knock-down, drag-out war with each other... the ultimate prize being control of the human consciousness. I confess that I often feel the war going on within my own self and am fighting every day to see clearly past the lies.

On the positive side, there are a lot of good things coming about as a result of this conflict within the religious world... things are starting to polarize... while the False Church spews hatred and punishment, there are Christian groups who are now practicing the true teachings of Christ and embracing areas of society which were previously considered too filthy to touch... with a humble heart (not a sense of moral superiority) taking in those who are broken by drugs, abuse, and ignorance, rebuilding them and turning them into stronger people and continuing to lay a healing hand on those whose struggle is not so easily won, regardless of how many times they mess up. The Spirit is starting to move deeply within the gay community... bringing about a new sense of awareness and spiritual strength to many 'former Christians' who have been ostracized by the teachings of the False Church. There are Many in all religions and walks of life who are mobilizing to fight the corrosive ideologies which have become so deeply rooted in our failing system. I have faith that regardless of how strong or prominent the Beast gets, there will always be a balancing, healing, understanding, transcending Presence that is even stronger.

BLINK

I was just chatting with someone regarding html and the subject touched on the most obnoxious html tag known to man: the blink tag. I've not seen it in so long and it is not likely that I will EVER use it in any of my web-based creations. So here is a memorial to the seizure-inducing blink tag:

*a moment of austere silence if you please*

BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK!

...and now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

By the way, I just noticed that five posts back was my 100th blog post. YIPPEEE!

Operation Banana Prank

So, my buddy Dimitri and I had the day off on Friday and we were really bored (and I mean really REALLY bored). So we decided to go back up the mountain on the north side of town to find the odd little shack that we accidentally discovered while lost in the woods last year (mentioned in this previous blog post). We have since determined that it is not the home of a mentally ill homeless person, but the frequent meeting place of a few outdoorsy locals who (judging from the copious amount of empty liquor bottles lying around) like to go up there once in a while for a wild night of drinking in the wilderness... on the front of a steep, rocky cliff no less (hmmm.. is this safe? lol). Just for giggles, we decided to do something to mess with their heads, so we brought along a plastic banana upon which we wrote in permanent marker,"Thank you for the wonderful acomodations, though your staff needs a bit more training in how to brew a good cup of Darjeeling," and we left it sitting on their wood stove. We did not touch or remove any of their belongings and we don't expect the prank to be understood or make any sort of sense, we just wanted to do something that would leave them trying to figure out what the heck their camp was used for while they weren't there. We decided to take the main trail back down the other side of the mountain, which turned out to be mostly ice. I forgot to wear my yaktraks (incidentally, a product which I VERY HIGHLY recommend for anyone who is serious about winter hiking) so I ended up slipping and landing directly on my coccyx on a softball size rock. I didn't break it, but now I am reminded of the fall whenever I go from a sitting to standing position. Karma for the prank I guess :-p.

My town framed by trees and rays of sun, this particular hike always offers awesome views.

Dimitri and I

The cabin, whoever built it did a great job building a solid structure out of odd scrap materials and cut saplings, rather ingeniously constructed.

The insides of the camp.



Weapon: Banana, Objective: Confusion
(Why? Because a plastic banana is, by nature, amusing and it is one of the last objects that one expects to find at their camp site.)

Mission Complete

Side note: this prank is pretty harmless and mild compared to some of the evil high jinks I pulled when I was a bit younger.

Home Remedies Posting #1

I'm the sort of person who only goes to the doctor when I am on my deathbed, which turns out to be maybe once or twice a decade... not prudent I know, but welcome to the life of a lowly retail employee who can't afford to give up over 1/3 of his check for health insurance and would be paying for a doctor's visit for a dang long time. Yeah yeah, story of half the workforce in this country, certainly not unique. As we know, necessity is the mother of invention, and over the years necessity has lead me to craft a number of inexpensive home remedies for various ailments. Some of these ideas or parts of them are directly stolen from someone else, but I'll write some of them down here anyway for the sake of whoever might benefit from them. I will stress that I am NOT a medical professional of any sort, I am merely stating recipes and/or methods which have worked for me.

Conjunctivitis Treatment:
As some of you may know, over the Holidays I contracted conjunctivitis from my dear little brother. It is a little-known fact that most cases of conjunctivitis will clear themselves up within a week, without the need for the expensive antibiotic eye drops that many health care practitioners prescribe. Here is the recipe for some wonderful compresses which I used for my own issue. They soothed the irritation and cleared me up very quickly.

1 tblsp. loose-leaf black tea leaves (or sub the contents of 2 black tea bags)
1 tblsp. eyebright herb
2 tblsp. rolled oats (uncooked oatmeal)
1 tsp. mint leaves
1 tblsp. dried chamomile flowers. (or sub. the contents of 1 chamomile tea bag)
1/4 cup witch hazel
1/2 cup water

Heat the water in a mug or small bowl to just below boiling, add black tea, eyebright, mint leaves, and chamomile, stir thoroughly and allow to steep for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, add the witch hazel and the oats into the water, stir again and wait 5 minutes. While it is still warm, pack a couple heaping tablespoons of this mixture into a compress composed of a coffee filter gathered up around the edges and tied off with a piece of string. Hold the compress on the afflicted eye for 10-20 minutes then gently wipe the eye with a clean washcloth from the inner canthus (corner closest to the nose) toward the outer canthus (corner closest to the ear). One may leave the compresses on their eye(s) overnight while sleeping by using a snug-fitting knitted winter cap pulled down over the eye area to keep the compress(es) in place.


Some things for speeding up cold/flu recovery:
We all know the traditional wisdom which states that one should get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids, take vitamin C and/or zinc, and protect from a chilly environment, but if you want to speed up recovery time (and you are DESPERATE) this is what to use:

2 fresh, uncooked cloves of garlic, peeled, crushed, diced, and swallowed like a handful of pills with water. Yeah, it tastes horrible and your household cohabitators will likely avoid you like a powerfully garlic-scented plague, but garlic has long been known as one of the best things to take in order to bolster immunity. Take in the evening before bedtime so the potent effects will be minimized by morning.

Drink LOTS of green tea... a powerful detoxifier and rich source of antioxidants. It helps to tune up your immune system to work more efficiently. (I've found it also helps to nullify some of the garlic odor if you try that method in addition to this).

Horseradish, used heavily as a garnish on some sort of food, or if you're just plain suicidal, take it directly by the spoonful. Another immune system enhancer and it clears sinuses rather effectively.

Heavily curried foods.



Sore Throat:
Licorice Root tea - I had severe strep throat about 5 years ago and this was recommended to me by an excellent nurse practitioner who had a heavy focus on holistic & herbal medicine. I was surprised how well it worked.

Chamomile tea with a tablespoon of lemon juice and a tablespoon of honey in it.


Seasonal Allergies:
I used to have severe seasonal allergies which kept me miserable from mid April until late October and I was on antihistamines for about 2/3 of this time (which usually left me spacey, tired, and irritable). Now I take them very rarely and usually only if I am traveling far from home. This method was recommended to me a few years ago by a knowledgeable friend, and I thought it was crazy-talk at first, but I decided to try it any way and I can honestly say that it worked: locally-raised, raw, unfiltered honey, a teaspoon a day. It does not have to be taken straight either, you can mix it in with your tea, coffee, oatmeal, cereal, or spread it on your toast.

Let me first explain that it is very important to obtain honey which is collected within 50 miles of where you live, the closer the better, and it MUST be unfiltered/raw and this is why: raw honey contains a wide assortment of various pollens and other plant-based debris which are the most common causes of seasonal allergies (filtered honey contains almost none of these allergens and will not serve any purpose in this capacity). When one takes a teaspoon of it faithfully, every day, they are ingesting micro-doses of the allergens which commonly cause their allergic reactions. This is not usually enough to trigger any sort of noticeable allergy symptoms, yet it is enough to start building up a resistance to said allergens, much in the same fashion that allergy shots do for many folks. It is important to buy raw honey locally because honey produced by bees visiting plants a long distance away contains pollens which are genetically unique enough that they may not build up a resistance to your local plant allergens. It typically takes at least 3-6 months to notice a lessening in seasonal allergy symptoms and almost a full year before the full effect is realized, but trust me, it is totally worth it and honey costs much less than allergy shots or meds.



Now if only there were such a thing as honeybees who lived on household dust, then ALL of my allergies would be in check. More home remedies to be posted as I remember them.

Whitman's Wit

One of my other reading projects lately is a biography/tribute by the author Helen Nearing, written primarily about life with her late husband, the activist & writer, Scott Nearing. The book is entitled Loving and Leaving the Good Life, a beautiful recollection of her husband's passion for life. In the fourth chapter, she quotes the preface to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. For the most part, I found this passage to be wise and well-written and I wanted to share it here:

Life is a school, exactly adapted to your lesson.
Your present life is only a chapter out of the middle of a book.
You have written previous chapters and you will write later ones.
You are your own author.

The love of one's country is a natural thing. But why stop at the
border?

So think as if your every thought were to be etched in fire upon
the sky for all and everyone to see. And so in truth it is.

So speak as if the world entire were but a single ear intent on
hearing what you say. And so in truth it is.

So do as if your every deed were to recoil upon your head. And
so in truth it does.

So live as if your God himself had need of you, his life to live.
And so in truth He does.

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms
to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote
your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not con-
cerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take your hat off to nothing known or unknown or to any man
or number of men, go freely with the powerful uneducated persons
and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these
leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-
examine all you have been told at school or church or in any
book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul...

Jonesing

I've had a heck of a green thumb since I was only 4 years old. There is something about digging in the dirt and growing your own food which I find very relaxing and fulfilling. It has been over 2 years since I abandoned all my outdoor gardening projects due to neighbors who will not control their children and keep them from trampling my plots and ripping the plants up. So far I've been perfectly OK with this, dreaming that some day I will have a huge garden again when I own my own land and am able to erect a barrier fence around it should the need arise. Now all those blasted seed catalogs start arriving in the mail. I don't have the heart to throw them away, but I also avoid them because I know what it will do to me if I even take one little peek... and yesterday it happened. My compulsive side opened to a listing of heirloom-variety tomatoes and I found myself fighting the urge to unpack the gardening tools in the basement. Deep breaths, deep breaths, must be smart about this and wait.... :-)

Reflecting on 2006

The past year has been a year of learning, a time of extremes and a time of turning my shrewd, critical eye back on myself. I have had to slash and burn a lot of excess out of my life in order to set myself back into a state of receptiveness and growth... much in the same fashion that one has to prune the appropriate parts off of an apple tree if it is to bear more fruit in the future.

What I have learned:

• Bad things will happen to good people regardless. Common sense and careful planning will minimize them, but won't completely eliminate the possibility of them happening. So keep them in the back of your head, but don't let the potential for said bad things rule you and steer your life. One can't simultaneously have true happiness while living in a personal ice fortress that was built to keep the bad people out.
  
• The world does not revolve around me. There are causes, ideologies, and forms of spirituality which are far bigger than myself and they deserve far more attention.
• I have technically now been reclassified as a liberal democrat/libertarian/communist instead of a centrist because anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration's ideologies often gets labeled as a disloyal, namby-pamby pinko commie faggot (or so I've learned from catching occasional doses of venom from folks such as Rush Limbaugh & Anne Coulter on their radio shows).
• Don't take life quite so seriously. All work and no play makes Nonsequitur a dull boy. While it's important to maintain a good work ethic and be mindful of the fashion in which one lives and presents themself... there is also laughter, love and music to be had.
• Love thy neighbor... try to see things from their perspective and strive to find the common Good in them. It isn't always easy, but it is one of the most essential practices for being in connection with the Divine.
  
• Trite but true: Don't sweat the small stuff. If it won't matter tomorrow, next month, or 5 years down the road, what does it matter now?
• Emotions can't be left unchecked. Yeah, they're there for a reason, but they don't serve you well when your hand is always on the trigger. It has been especially hard for me to learn to reign them in... I come from a family of reactionaries. I am now constantly reminding myself to examine my first impulse long and hard before acting on it.
• Walk away from problems which are eating up loads of your energy, but not producing any results. I was raised on the idea that hard work and an iron will can accomplish anything... not true. If anything, setting down an issue for a while or walking away from it can give you time to reflect and maybe revisit it later with a different set of tools.
• Forgive.
• Openly admitting your faults takes away most of your adversaries' ammunition.
• Cheap dish detergent isn't worth it, you end up having to use three times as much.
• The bumper sticker saying is true: "It is important to speak your mind, even if your voice quivers."
• Stainless hoop earrings are very tempting toys for parrots, but hazardous to the people that they are attached to if within range of parrots.
  
• For Heaven's sake, I really need to get into the habit of leaving my car keys in the same location consistently!
  

Head In The Clouds, Reading

So, I've been back to work since yesterday... and as you may know from the last post, I've been sick since Christmas Eve... it's been crazy. The non-drowsy meds just don't work for me and I have weird chemical sensitivities... which basically means that any medicine which says in the fine print that one should not operate heavy machinery while using it.... usually will send me for a heck of a loop in which I feel like a just drank a fifth of Jim Beam and my head is a hot air balloon floating around.... viewing the world through a long paper towel tube... you know, that weird almost visceral feeling like you know you're there, interacting with people and doing things, but you feel like you are watching it on film instead of actually experiencing it. While some people partake of certain substances to attain this feeling on purpose, I generally don't enjoy it. On the positive side, this was a very busy, productive day at work and it was the first day that I've not had to take anything for my symptoms. Considering that other people I know have been down flat for more than a week with this bug, I got off lucky with just a few days. Chock it up to a cast iron immune system :-) I almost made it the entire year without calling in sick to work.

I've just finished reading White Oleander by Janet Fitch and it was an incredible read all the way through. I would highly recommend it. I am currently delving into The Deep Well Tapes, a book on Archetypal Dreamwork (which seems to be based in Archetypal Psychology), authored by my own Uncle, Marc Bregman. In truth, I am not certain what to think of it yet. There is some of it that I do not understand, but some the points that he is bringing forth in the beginning of the book... are starting to make perfect sense to me as one who was raised in a literalistic, somewhat fundamentalist, closed-minded and reactionary form of Christianity, yet secretly held a mystic's point of view on the entire religion, as well as the way that it applies to humankind. Another interesting point is that many of the philosophies that he puts forth seem to align with a majority of the tenets of Quakerism (for those of you who don't know, I've been attending regular meetings at various Quaker meeting houses for the past few months). It would be entirely arrogant and premature to say that I have even a loose grasp on any of this yet, but we will see how things go in the next year or so. I have clawed as far as I can go under the old mindset and it is necessary for me to change and grow...

Which brings me to a minor point of order in my life... several times in the past year, I have felt a strong compulsion to go back and edit this blog, to remove past content or statements that I have made in moments of strong emotion, to gloss over my own reactive nature. But every time I felt this compulsion, I resisted... why? Editing history is the hallmark of fascist regimes and those who are controlled by their fear of the ghosts of what was. And because I have come to realize that it is better to own up to the past, how one has acted in the past, and it is necessary to preserve the past as it was so that one may see clearly how they were in order to work on what they are to be.

Christmas

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday time. Santa was very good to me, but it has been hectic over on this end... the whole pre-Christmas shopping & wrapping frenzy & whatnot.

I could whine until the cows come home about being sick on Christmas day, having all my expensive soaps ruined by a leaky pipe below the bathroom sink, catching conjunctivitis from my little brother (who I am still happy to see, regardless), not having the health insurance necessary to cover a doctor's visit to treat said issues, and finding out that whoever has been rifling through my belongings in the basement had also trampled 3/4 of my wrapping supplies... but even in light of all of this, I am still quite blessed compared to some of the folk I see walking the streets of my town every day, and they in turn are far more blessed than some of the unfortunate people in overseas locations whom I read about in the news every day. Wrapping supplies can be replaced cheaply, my illness and conjunctivitis are already clearing up with the aid of some home remedies, and I have had excellent health for almost a decade... a lot of those who are less fortunate have problems of a much more permanent and severe nature. I don't live in a war-torn region of the world (although that could easily change if the current administration doesn't pull it's head out of it's rear end). I don't have to defend my household & family from inner-city criminals. I don't have any dietary deficiencies or diseases due to bad living conditions. Really people, a lot of us spit about being cut off in traffic, getting bad coffee at the drive-through, or having to put up with some annoying character in line at the supermarket, but these issues are trivial in the grand scheme of things.

I am contemplating whether or not to make a New Year's resolution this year. I kept last year's resolutions well enough, but I am already changing so much of my life that I don't know if there is anything else that I need to pile onto it. Perhaps it should be this: that I focus more on being compassionate and appreciating what I have been given and how I can help others to see the same blessings in their own lives.

I'm Dreaming of A..

Christmas dominated by various shades of earthy brown and pine green. I was hoping for white. As almost everyone living in New England right now will attest to, the weather is currently freakishly warm for this time of year. The most snow we've gotten has been an inch or two, but it didn't stick around for long. For the last two weeks, the daytime temps have been in the high 40s to mid 50s. I've been on a lot of hikes in the hills lately and have only needed a light jacket for most of them. On the upside, this means that it will likely be a gentle winter for the wildlife and they will be reproducing heavily in the springtime, but on the downside this means that ticks and fleas will also multiply like jackrabbits and next season will be atrocious for said wildlife and those whose animals go outdoors. (at least my cats are kept indoors). On top of that, Lyme disease is becoming more and more prevalent in my area, so I have to slather myself in this nasty DEET-laden chemical concoction whenever I go for one of my wanderings in the warmer months.

My little brother is up in my area visiting for the season and he has been crashing at my place. He lives out in the midwest and I rarely get to see him, so it is nice to be able to spend quality time. We used to fight like cats and dogs when we were younger and I didn't typically get along with (or care for the company of) most of his friends, but things change. Now that we've all got a few years of life experience under our belts we have learned how to interact while not to pressing each others' buttons.

In other news my buddy Dan invited me to go see Matt Besser doing a standup comedy act at UNH. The show was great, we had a good time, and I got to meet him and have my picture taken with him afterward. For the uninitiated, Matt played the character Adair on the comedy show Upright Citizen's Brigade which started as an improv comedy troupe of the same name. I love the show and I used to watch it religiously during my high school years.

The computer is back up and running, sort of hobbling along on a crutch, but at least it is useable for internet-surfing now. I likely won't get back to blogging until after Christmas... so MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you!!!

I'm IT!!!

Having blogged for this long, I guess it was inevitable, but I've been tagged by Peterson Toscano. So, against my better judgement, here goes: six weird things about myself.

1. I frequently talk to myself when I think that I am alone, usually about some conundrum that I am currently facing.

2. I am a "dog breed racist." I only like large breeds and I dislike most small, yappy, ankle-biter types... pretty much anything that can wear a bow in it's hair and be called foo-foo. (though I do like mini-dachshunds and corgis)

3. When I get distracted by something while walking, I sometimes swagger clumsily and my head oscillates.

4. I occasionally have specific feelings of (mostly) bad things which haven't yet happened to close loved ones, but these things usually come to pass, someone else in my family has weird premonitions like this too.

5. I baby-talk my cats with saccharine-sweetsy, made-up words.

6. I have frequent dreams that involve me exploring the countryside and woodlands while inane, strange things are happening all around me.... a classic sports car zooming by on a very narrow hiking trail that cannot possibly accomodate any sort of vehicle; faceless people passing through my campsite carrying strange objects or pushing a wheelbarrow full of junky found items; seasons changing rapidly every few meters while traversing a path; dead people from my past walking along side me, having a conversation; and somehow most of these dreams involve me being on a mission to do something or find something that is yet unnamed and in the dreams I am apparently totally OK with all these unnerving things going on around me.

.... and in turn I will tag some other fellow bloggers:
Shelby
McPolack
Sensei Rainbow
Rachael
Steve S
'fess up folks, what are your personal oddities? :)

My Computer Is Soon To Become A Satellite!!!

...IF IT DOES NOT STOP CRASHING!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

Yeah, so... computer issues, likely to result in less frequent blog posts for the time being. Currently experimenting with Ubuntu Linux as an OS alternative because I am absolutely sick of windows and it's horrid security holes which allow virii in despite some of the supposedly "best" antivirus programs. That coupled with the insane amount of Christmas shopping and whatnot, I am completely frazzled. Maybe things will come back down to status quo after the holidays.

Speaking of holiday shopping, has anyone else noticed a definite drop in the amount of quality gift items out there? I went shopping after meeting the other day and all the stores which usually carry wonderful gift items are now selling some of the worst kitschy crap I've ever seen. Who the heck needs to buy a faux brass plastic-framed glass top coffee table with random soul-less Thomas Kinkade paintings screen-printed on the surface; or how about wolf-themed statuary with American Flags painted all over it??? Oh, and let's not forget generic exploitative Native-American themed knick-knacks which usually feature some barbie-dollesque "Indian" princess in a skimpy outfit. Either it's the economy or the businesses & consumers in my area have lost all sense of taste.

Wow, I'm a real peach today. It doesn't help that I was one the phone for two hours last night with a tech support rep for my DSL service; she was very polite but had such a heavy middle-eastern accent that I couldn't understand 90% of what she said (could you please repeat that??? could you please repeat that??? could you please repeat that???.... ad infinitum) and as it turns out, I knew more than she did about configuring my router. Sorry people, maybe I'll be in a better mood next time I post.