Food, Family, Football II

Well, Oregon State's Rose Bowl aspirations are not to be satisfied -- or at least not by their own hand. The Ducks came into the Heart of the Valley and gave the poor Beavs a 65-38 spanking right there in their own back yard. Ouch! The Beavers can still play in Pasadena on New Year's Day if UCLA manages to upset USC next week, but odds are that the Beavers will be playing in El Paso's Sun Bowl next month, USC will meet Penn State in the Rose Bowl, and Oregon is probably now bowl-bound as well, although I haven't the slightest idea where.

But enough sports. It was great to see my family for the holiday, to share that special holiday meal and even to share the four hours in the Verizon store on what I thought would be a 45 minute errand. But I finally think I have all my phone and internet problems resolved...at least for now...assuming I can find the time on Monday to do all the actual software installation and synchronization. But I will. No Worries.

And for those of you who missed it yesterday, here is the bird's-eye view of Husky Stadium and (more accurately) Union Bay where the boats raft out on game day starting from the small marina on the left-hand side of the photograph.

Food, Family, Football

[Earlier this week, I posted this comment to a friend's much more popular (and therefore more widely read) blog, "Beauty Tips for Ministers:]

...[my family and]...I have been going “holiday lite” (as opposed to Holiday Lights!) for years. I’m bothered by how the individual holidays have lost their religious distinctiveness, and instead become kind of a stinky amalgam of shopping, consumption, gluttony, overindulgence, and other such nonsense. An annual Holiday letter, two or three gettogethers with friends and family, and the traditional Xmas/UU holiday services such as I find them: here a Cider & Cornbread Communion, an annnual pageant (created by Vincent Silliman, a former minister of this church, and now in its 80th+ year), a candlelight service, and an annual New Year’s burning of regrets. In years past I’ve bought food baskets for my relatives, buts, but may do something different this year reflecting my disease.

The one thing I miss is a good annual Holiday football rivalry! Whether it’s been Harvard - Yale,or the Ducks and the Beavers, or the Cougars and the Dawgs, for me Thanksgiving in particular has traditionally been about food, family, and football…a trinity deeply grounded (if you read up on these things) in the historical evolution of the holiday itself.


Comment by The Eclectic Cleric — November 26, 2008 #


Last week's "Apple Cup" did little to feed the hunger. Apparently this was only the fifth time anywhere that two college football teams with a combination of 20 losses have met since the formation of the NCAA, and the fact that it took overtime for the two teams to settle the result (since neither seemed capable of losing it outright in just four quarters) simply seemed like "par for the course." And the Seahawks v. Cowboys Thanksgiving Day showdown wasn't much help in taking the edge off either. But at least I could tell it was a football game going on, which was some comfort.

The best thing about Washington football has always been the opportunity to "tailgate on the poop-deck," which is to say take your boat to Portage Bay, raft on to the huge FLEET of boats that assemble there on game day, then make your way across the raft at gametime and enjoy. Hell, now that I think about it, I wonder whether you even have to ATTEND - just join the raft, enjoy the party, and then when the games starts put on the radio and go down in the cabin and write. Something to think about, in the HIGHLY unlikely possibility that I ever move back to Seattle, am living on a boat, still serving a church, and decide to become a local Husky football fan again. I mean, once you were actually PART of the raft, it would be awfully hard to get you out again...




THE Game last Saturday, which featured Harvard's 10-0 domination of Yale (on what I believe was the 125th iteration of their competition) was apparently respectable enough. But still, it had none of the makings of the classic 1968 game featured in a recent documentary on the subject, where a til-then undefeated home team (Harvard) came from way behind to score two touchdowns and two two-point conversions, which eventually lead to the headlines: "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29" and "Old Schools Tie." And don't get me wrong. I really enjoy Ivy League football, and if I could have simply disciplined myself to get my sermons written before Saturday I would have bought season tickets and enjoyed EVERY game the Crimson played (Hoop too. Probably even Women's Hoop.). But now it's a little late for that.



The real problem with IVY league sports (not that it's really a "problem") is that very few of those kids have ever really played on a field like this. This is Ratliff Stadium in Odessa Texas, home of the Permian Panthers MOJO and scene of the book, film and (presumably) television series "Friday Night Lights." Below is the empty parking lot as you see it in the daytime, just to give you a little different sense of the place. A lot of these Texas Schoolboy Football teams could blow undefeated through the Ivy League without breaking a sweat (OK, they would sweat. That is, perspire.).

I recently saw an interesting article by a former Harvard student who was talking about how difficult it is to get in to Harvard (in terms of the competitive admissions ratio, at least), and wonder what was he going to do with his life now that he had already accomplished the most difficult thing the most difficult thing in it at the age of nineteen...only to discover that admission to Harvard merely opened the door to all SORTS of other interesting and even more difficult challenges.

But many of these West Texas High School football players really HAVE seen the best years of their lives by the time they turn nineteen. That was the whole point of the book (Friday Night Lights) -- how do you BACK to being an oil roughneck after you've been worshipped like a God?



At least this year's Oregon/Oregon State game (I can't bear calling it "the Civil War." Maybe "Warfare on the Willamette?") has some meaning. The Beavers are undefeated this year at home, and if they can beat the Ducks there in Corvallis they will be going to the Rose Bowl for the first time in a long time (1965: Michigan 34, Oregon St 7). If they don't, then USC is playing in Pasadena (yawn. just another home game), and both the Ducks and the Beavers are bargaining for bowl bids somewhere else. So sorry Mike Belotti -- I'm pulling this year for the kids from the Heart of the Valley. And since I have degrees from both schools, I can't be wrong in that either. I know it's been a long time for the Ducks too (1995: Penn St 38, Oregon 20). But at least that's more recently than New Years Day, 1920, which was the year Harvard handed the Ducks their tailfeathers, 7-6.

Vintage Gas (from the UK)

I'm not sure whether this guy is trying to tell her that her money's no good here, or that she needs a ration coupon before he'll fill her tank, but until I found the Germans he seemed like a strong candidate for the other Gas Post. Of course, the dialog doesn't really come across in translation. Just what would the German for "fill-in" BE anyway, and would the homonym still work? One would probably have to make up an entirely new word, which would change the joke. (Just like the image did anyway, although it also helped me find it. Still: "Ich will Ihren Benzinmeister sein?" I don't think so....)

These other photos are also all from the UK, only current times. Just in case you happen to be living overseas, and want to enjoy a little meaningless recreational driving, as so many of us STILL do here in the States....



A filling station in Wales, with two great vintage gas pumps right out front.



This vintage pump is located in Cornwall. Just what is a "Gig Club" anyway? Anything to do with small boats?



This Filling Station is in North Yorkshire. You can almost see the Scottish influence, in the location of the American-style "Picnic table" around the corner to the left as you exit the shop to return to the motorway....

Happy Motoring, Everyone!

GAS SPOTTED FOR UNDER TWO DOLLARS IN PORTLAND MAINE

"Good Morning! Welcome to The Filling Station. My name's Phil, and I'll be your fill-in today. Fill 'er up?"

My Haunted Home

And it's starting to happen, just as I always knew it would. I can hear her rustling dogtags tags as though she were right in the next room, shaking her collar. Or hear what seems to be her heavy breathing as she sleeps, and sometimes I even think that I've just caught a gimpse of her in the corner of my eye as I'm entering or leaving a room. And ALWAYS my left eye, it seems; never the other.

Sometimes I just wake up in the middle of the night, and feel her presence nearby.

And for thirteen years it always was....

And then, of course, two months ago now we finally had to say goodbye. She waits for me now at the foot of the Rainbow Bridge, and someday sooner or later we shall join each other there, and once again be united in the Spirit as we cross over together into whatever awaits us next.

Does that sound too conventional? Almost naive and childish, like pie in the sky when we die? A boy and his dog, frolicking again on a sundrenched meadow, running and playing fetch on an endless summer day, and feeling young and happy and alive again....

Or maybe it's a beach, and the muddy tideflats of a place like Camano Island? A boy and his dog in the bathtub, watching the dirt stream off of her and leaving me only with a pouting, but clean-smelling pooch with shampooed, fluffy fur and dog-tired from her romp?

What does it matter? I am so thankful for those years, and if that's the most comforting measure of eternity I can summon up, why should I criticize or judge it?

Instead I thank God for the great gift of this animal. As I have written here before, I am a better person now as a result of my relationship with this dog, and my decision to bring her into my life and care for her. To feed her, shelter her, groom her and take her to and from the vet: to be her "master" (or perhaps, more accurately, the leader of the "pack"), no matter how childlike it may seem.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

a note on the photo -- this picture was taken in 2001 while I was on my way from Nantucket to my first Thanksgiving with my brother in Connecticut. It was seven years ago, ten weeks after 9/11....half a lifetime for Parker, as well as the year my nephew was born. How much water has flown under the bridge since then....

The good news is, the fire station is just across the street

Long time readers of this blog will immediately know why this front page story from the Portlaned Press Herald (albeit below the fold) is upsetting to me. Just before my illness, Monday night "Stump Trivia" at Bingas Wingas had become a fixture in my life, and once I was released from the hospital I continued to play as often as I could...which meant basically whenever I could get a few friends to play along. My brother got to be so infatuated with it that he even started to stay over a day on his weekend visits when he could, so that we could play together.

In fact, most of my friends who experienced Trivia started to feel a little enthusiastic about it. When my good friend Chris was here last summer visiting from Seattle with his family, we played together two weeks in a row (the second week with his daughters), and actually won prized of hats and tee shirts for them to take back to the west coast with them. But my best experience was playing with both my brothers and my sister-in-law when they were here visiting in June. It was amazing to me how quickly they recognized the strategy of the game, and how easily we settled into a working routine of play with each of us understanding our roles in processing the questions and generating either the right answer (or on occasion a correct guess). It was like we'd been playing together for months, even if it was only the first time any of them had played at all.

More recently I've been playing with a small group of church members, either with or without my brother. And I've lost track now of how many times I've won prizes playing this silly game. My favorite prizes were always free Portland Sea Dogs tickets, followed by "Binga's Bucks" and Bingas gear (i.e. hats and shirts). There often seemed to be plenty of beer paraphernalia available from our local breweries as well, but it always somehow seemed to evade me, Likewise, one of the traditions of game is to chose a different, unique, and sometimes a little risque name for the team; may favorite was (and remains) carpe scrotum (which I understand has now been picked up as a permanent moniker by another trivia team playing another night in a different bar) It means exactly what you would think it would mean knowing that carpe diem means "seize the day!"

Bingas has been important in my life in a few other ways as well. I was eating lunch there one day with my father when it occurred to me how annoying it was to have to reach up over my head just to eat a wing, and knowing that I was eventually going to have to climb up on a stool in order to preach from the high pulpit again, I decided to start small and see If I could manage to climb up into a bar stool first. I could, and so you might well say that my return to the ministry started from my decision to sit first at a bar (rather than the other way around).

But the other thing I always appreciated about Bingas (at least before I was diagnosed) was that it was somewhere close to my home where I could always get a quick bite to eat and watch a game without being immediately identified by what I did for a living, rather than simply by the fact that I was a "regular." In Ray Oldenburg's terms, it was a "Great, Good Place" -- a Third Place (apart from home or the office) where I could relax and "be myself" without always needing to be my ENTIRE self. Where I would be recognized with a nod of the head by the other regulars, and enjoy many of the pleasures of being in community -- good company and lively conversation, for instance -- and still go back home in the evening and back to work in the morning without worrying too much about what went on there in my absence. Pubs, cafes, bookstores, even hair salons all share some of these characteristics -- as can urban churches when the "chemistry" is right and the ministry of "Radical Hospitality" is correctly understood. Of course, churches can be much, much more than this as well. But being "a great, good place" for a few hours on a Sunday morning (or perhaps a Wednesday evening) isn't such a bad thing for a church to do well. And at places like Bingas, I also started to learn a little more about what that looked like.

Incommunicado and Aching to feel better

And if you're wondering why I've been virtually incommunicado for nearly a week, it's because I have been, and I'm not even sure if I can remember all the detail about how it come about. Relatively painless chemo last Monday (I think), and Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty painless as well. But I was starting to feel a little less chipper by the time Thursday rolled around, and Friday I was a basket case. Part of the problem was that at some point my SMTP host stopped recognizing my outgoing mail, but more to the point is that my post-chemo side-effects suddenly shot of the page...so now I have over 152 unread/unanswered emails in my in-box, and none of my temporary "work-arounds" seen to being even close to catching up. So if you have a solution for me, give me a call -- or send me an e-mail in ALL CAPS (so I'll be able to hear it over the "noise" of my box)

Meanwhile though, desperately struggling to get my physical pain under control, which has now become so excruciating that I actually had to drop out of today's service, and have booked a substitute for next Sunday. And believe it or not, his is all I can manage for today. It's funny. When things are going smoothly, life seems so flexible, and I feel like I can go on forever. And when things take a turn for the worse, well...I'm sure you get the point. Now I'm just going to try to find a happy picture to post, and see whether that turns things around...rather than running them further aground.

The Hurrieder I Go...

the Behinder I get.

And this is really getting to be not much fun at all. The pile of crap on my desk just keeps getting higher and higher, and I feel trapped in this terrible double, triple, quadruple bind of knowing I need (and wanting) to slow down, and to eliminate a lot of the extraneous distraction from my life, yet still feeling like there is so much more that I want and NEED to do, and not being able to keep up...whether by working smarter, or harder, or longer, or by delegating the "non-essential" tasks to others, or even by "dumping" altogether the things in my life which are neither urgent nor important to me.

If anything, I feel like I need to find MORE time in my life: to read, to meditate, to exercise and pursue my physical therapy, or even just to nap and take it easy...something I seem to have been able to do far more easily when I felt healthy than for some strange reason I am able to now.

At least I did have one nice moment of inspiration today though, when I saw a version of this in the newly-released fall "Forum," which is Seventy-Five State Street's Resident magazine. Afterwards found several other variants on the internet, and since no one seems to be willing to claim the original as their own, I tweeked it a little until I got a version that suited me, and have now become "Anonymous" again myself. (Mark my words, this will probably turn out to be another Fulghum "Kindergarten" kind of tale, but until it does....)


[by Anonymous]

If you can start the day without caffeine;
If you can always be cheerful,
ignoring aches and pains.
If you can resist complaining, 
and boring people with your troubles.
If you can eat the same food every day
and still be grateful for it.

If you can understand when your loved ones
are too busy to give you any time.
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
And overlook those times when those you love
take it out on you when,
through no fault of yours,
something goes amiss.

If you can ignore a friend's limited education
and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend
better than a poor one,
If you can face the world
without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension
without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can honestly say that deep in your heart
you harbor no prejudice
against creed, color, religion or politics....

Then, my friend, you are almost as good a person as your dog!

Warm Beer & Cold Pizza

Once a month the Activities Department here at the Assisted/Independent Living Center where I currently reside hosts a Social Gathering for men in the South Commons Living Room. There are generally about a dozen of us who show up to eat cold pizza (typically sausage and onion, but sometimes also pepperoni or plain cheese) and drink warm beer (yesterday Bud Light, with a single Silver Bullet tucked in among them...but sometimes also Heinekens or something from one of the local craft breweries: Shipyard Ale, Gearys Winter Ale, or the Long Trail Pale Ale). And then there is always Ginger Ale (and sometimes even Root Beer) for the teetotalers among us, one of whom has been attending AA for over 50 years.

But moving right along, yesterday I attended this pathetic but well-intended effort to create male camaraderie because on Monday I learned that my most recent CT scan shows that the primary tumor in my right lung has once again started to grow, which means that NEXT Monday I begin my second regimen of chemotherapy. This time I'll be taking two drugs named Olympta and Avastin, probably only once every three weeks for a total of 4-6 cycles, which may then be followed by a course of treatment with yet a third drug, Tarceva, which is an oral medicine rather than an IV infusion. But a lot of this is yet to be determined, since what we do next really depends upon how well what we do first actually does.

Even so, this news was obviously a big disappointment. I've always known that there was more chemo waiting for me somewhere down the road, but I'd anticipated it starting up later this spring, and being able to tiptoe through the holidays without letting cancer become too big a factor. But apparently that's not the way it's going to be; instead, it looks like I'm going to be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah, (a.k.a. Feast of Lights, Festival of lights, Feast of Dedication, Chanukah, Chanukkah, Hanukah); Yule; Saturnalia; Shabe-Yalda; Bodhi Day (a.k.a. Rohatsu); and whatever else may happen to stumble along my path with a tube in my chest, rather than painted blue and dancing around a bonfire in praise of the Huntress, the Horned King, and the Lord of Misrule.

Or to put it another way, all I asked for was a little wassail and some figgy pudding, and instead I'm left to make due with warm beer and cold pizza. Bud Light, fer crissakes. I hardly know what to say next. To memories of better Christmases past! And the hope of many Christmases yet to come...

Nominations for First Pooch

And I'm a little embarrassed to say that I've gotten so carried away with this conversation about what kind of puppy the Obamas should acquire that I've been neglectful of many of my other "duties" -- not the BIG ones, of course, but little things, like keeping up with this blog and answering my routine e-mail. Instead, I've been surfing the internet for photos and other images suitable for posting...even though I know most of you would much rather hear from me in my own words.

Here's an interesting photo, for example, of a Boston Terrier in a stare-down with a Siberian Husky. Looks like it could be a poster for a big football game between Boston University and the University of Washington, or even a more mundane basketball showdown between BU and nearby UConn. But the truth is, it's just a random photo -- significant to me only in the sense that I am indeed a Washington Husky (undergrad), and my very first dog (or perhaps I should say -- my very first "Dog of my Own") was a stray Alaskan Malmute mix (i.e. a "Mutt") who showed up at Juniper Beach the summer after I'd graduated from High School.

We immediately hit it off, and he didn't have to follow me home because we were already there. I named him "Foster" -- in part because he was indeed a "foster" dog, in part because he reminded me of a character in a novel I was reading that summer (Richard Brautigan's The Abortion), but also because he reminded me of a sophmore girl who had likewise followed me around for most of my Senior year hoping, I think, that I would ask her out!
The very first dog our family owned when I was a kid growing up was a dachshund named Gunner. I remember "Gunny" as a mean little dog who barked constantly, slept most of the day (when he wasn't barking), and who didn't care much for little boys who pulled his tail (that was, after all, the safer end of the dog), played too rough, or got between him and his food dish. But my dad adored that little black wiener dog, and he lived with us through most of my childhood, until he finally lost the use of his rear legs and had to be "put to sleep" (as my father so gently put it).

Over the years though, I've developed a whole new respect for Doxies. And critter who is bred and trained to crawl face-first into a badger's den and kill them has my respect, which is EXACTLY why the Dachs ("badger") Hund ('dog" or "hound," - duh) was created in the first place. Of course, nowadays they do all sorts of more creative things, including performing in the The Greatest Show on Earth! They're a lot smarter than you might think, despite their admittedly ridiculous appearance.

I'm not actually suggesting that the Obamas should adopt a dachshund. It actually sounds to me like the Labradoodle (and, more specifically, a Goldendoodle) is both a great choice and the front runner, and who am I to argue with polling data at this point? I'm certain they will be very happy with whatever dog they adopt, regardless of whether it turns out to be a purebred champion or rescued mutt.



On a similar note, people keep asking me about when I'm going to get another dog of my own. And the answer, of course, is I don't know -- although I'm not really in any big hurry to take steps in that direction either. Parker was a fantastic companion to me for over 13 years, and I miss her company more than I can say. But before I commit to another dog, I need to have a little bit better sense of how much longer I'm going to be around to hold up MY end of the covenant. Not to put too fine a point on it. In the meantime though, I am learning to take great pleasure from "other people's dogs," and in sharing memories of Dogs I Have Known and Loved with other like-minded souls. Besides, my new totem animal is now a Giraffe -- and I've decided to take a little time to explore what that means before taking another "non-spiritual" critter into my life. But that's another post. Hope you've all enjoyed this one.

We Can, We Did, and Then Some

And like just about everyone else I know, I am very excited about the election -- or at least very relieved to have it over. Or ALMOST over -- still waiting to hear whether Al Franken is going to be able to pull out a victory out there in Minnesota, which I sure hope he does. It's a strange coincidence, but it just so happens that Mr. Franken is married to the daughter of one of the sisters of one of the fellows I eat breakfast with every morning, so we keep hearing the updates about Jim's "nephew" every day as we sit down with our coffee (which is nice). Hard to believe though that people are already speculating about whether or not Sarah Palin will be making a run in 2012. Trust me America -- by 2012 Sarah Palin will scarcely be a footnote in a Texas-approved High School History textbook.

Did a very stupid thing today --well, more absent-minded really. But the middle of the day came and went, and for some unknown reason I simply forgot to take my mid-day meds. Forgot about them all the live-long day, until I finally got home from the Membership Committee meeting tonight at a quarter of eight (feeling terribly flush, puny, under the weather, and not quite myself)...discovered my mistake, and took them then instead. Now I'm starting to feel a little better, but still nowhere near as good as I would LIKE to feel...plus I'm dead tired, yet kinda wanting to stay up late enough to get close to back on schedule again.

Meanwhile, here's an image I would like to hold on to for a long, long time. Because I could sure use a little bipartisan peace and quiet for the next couple of years or so....

The Society for Utopian Studies

And I know this is supposed to be a "cancer" blog, but it really has pretty much evolved into a "life, the universe and everything" kinda blog -- the blog that the original "Eclectic Cleric" was supposed to have been when I first started writing it back in 2006. And I guess that's OK with me for now as well -- my tumors are essentially dormant, and God only knows when they'll decide to wake up. [And as far as I'm concerned, they can stay dormant as long as they like! You know what they say: let sleeping tumors lie] Still, the medical part of my life story is actually pretty boring at the moment. I have relatively good pain control; my fatigue is getting markedly less severe; and my strength and mobility seem to improve almost daily.

So instead I have a panoply of lesser symptoms/side effects which I never really noticed before: dry mouth, hoarseness, and shortness of breath for starters; occasional blurred vision, intermittent ringing in my ears and other hearing difficulties; and finally bruising, edema, and various other little skin things associated with the blood thinner I've been taking to treat my deep vein thrombosis. The weight gain issue, of course, has gone from being mildly humorous and amusing to a pretty serious source of distress and annoyance for me -- taking that weight off is going to be an awful lot harder than putting in on was...but who in their right mind wants to read about that?

Likewise, after Tuesday the Election will be over too. Or at least I HOPE it will be over, and that an unambiguous victory with a powerful electoral mandate will have gone to the first African American President in American History. That would certainly give me plenty to write about..but it might grow tedious for those who do not share my own peculiar political sentiments.

Meanwhile though, I've actually had a pretty full week this week. The Society for Utopian Studies was hosting its 33rd annual conference here in Portland at the Holiday Inn By The Bay, and my friend Diana (who just finished her PhD in Comp Lit at the University of Virginia) was here in town to present a paper in a panel called "Embodying Utopia: Should Utopians Have Perfect Bodies?" Her paper was about "The Immortal Cyborgs in Abre los ojos by Alexandro Amenabar" and was almost completely incomprehensible to me except for a great, off-the-cuff quote from Donna Haraway about how "I'd rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess." I was more taken by some of the broader ideas that emerged in the conversation between the panelists that took place after the presentations about the differences between utopian imagery of "bodies plus" (i.e. eugenic manipulation, or certain cyborg technologies) and "bodies minus" ("virtual" bodies in the forms of avatars, or disembodied consciousness) and their various dystopian varients (Brave New World, Blade Runner, the Matrix).

It was a little easier for me to keep up with the panel on "Transcendentalisms Old and New" which was mostly about Thoreau's "Pocket Utopia" at Walden, except for one paper about utopian imagery of Wilderness in Thoreau and John Muir, and the development of "Eco-Tourism." And there was also a panel on "Geriatopia" and the use of Utopian Imagery in the marketing of Retirement Communities which I found kind of intriguing given my current living situation. But I think what I liked mostly about the conference was how profoundly interdisciplinary the Society is, and how much fun it was to catch up with Diana, who has just started a tenure-track job out in Ohio, and still isn't certain where she belongs in a state that is "High in the Middle and Round at Both Ends."

The Church Service Sunday was Día de los Muertos, and didn't leave much left over for me to do once I had welcomed folks to church and greeted the newcomers. We only do it once a year, and so once again we were all over the place liturgically -- the preacher actually skipped over her sermon in order to get to the Offering, which is almost unimaginable to me! (She did eventually go back and include it, and her message itself was actually quite inspiring). Early in my career I routinely skipped over the offering in order to get right to what I thought was the "main event" (i.e. me preaching), which always made the treasurer a little nervous. But I don't think it ever would have occurred to me to do it the other way around. Taught the first "New UU Inquirers Class" after the coffee hour, with two more sessions to follow on the next two Sundays. Had eight turn out for that as well, not including myself and the other co-facilitator, or one of the participant's Golden Retriever.

Anyway, I guess that's about all for now. I'm very happy to be feeling a little better, but I worry about how quickly that could turn around without warning. I'm trying to pace myself and take it easy, but I'm also trying to push myself a little as well, in the hope of continuing to make progress on my strength and stamina and mobility. And mostly, I'm just trying to make the best of those "good days" that the Goddess gives me, since I'm not really sure I WANT to be, say, a 600 lb cyborg in a motorized chair living "the life of the mind" at the expense of sensation and physical pleasure.

But that's a topic for another day.