Claudia and Duffy

Gas Prices

Accosted in the parking lot

So I was coming out of the new Bi-Lo tonight at about nine-fifteen, and putting my groceries in my trunk, and this man was walking toward me. I kept my eye on him, to see if he was threatening, and he didn't really seem to be, and just when I thought he was just going to walk past me he stopped. Looked me straight in the eye, and said,

"Do I look over sixty?"

I looked him up and down, and said, "Um....no?"

"Thank you. Cause I was at the bank today, and they wanted to know if I wanted to open an over sixty account. Over sixty! I tell you what...."

He trailed off, still muttering, as he climbed into his car and drove away.

Well, he didn't look a day over fiftyish to me.

I laughed all the way up the mountain. Sometimes I think it's the angels that are entertaining me unawares.

The Frying Pan of Doom

Well, the freshmen all arrived and moved in yesterday. I'm delighted with the ones who came into my building, although it'll be hard to remember their names when half of them are named Katie.

And the exceeding cool part was that we were still in the middle of laying carpet as they moved in. No carpet yet in the lobby; and Suburbs and Rowan were not finished at arrival time. I prayed that no Suburbians or Rowanites would come until their rooms were done. And by the time all the other halls had at least six students already moved in, there was noone on those two halls. One solitary Rowan girl came before her carpet was done, but she was great about it and moved in a couple of hours later when it was finished. Rooms were ready for everyone else. God is good.

It was time

This is much more peaceful. I could sit around here all day.

Make a Word

I found a new game to stay up too late with and prevent Alzheimer's.

I have to say, I usually got only a "journeyman" rating and once or twice a "master," so my one "grandmaster" had to be celebrated.

The A/C is out

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

One of the built-in hazards of this job is that it requires introspective analysis of my own spiritual life every so often. This is what I discovered late two nights ago.

Love is patient. I am not.

Love is kind. I really amn't. Sometimes I want to kick puppies, just for latent cruelty's sake. Never mind what I want to do to people.

Love is not jealous or envious. Um, yeah. Ask Rachel how much I've been having a hard time with that one, as I am currently listening to her beautiful cello playing on an actual CD.

Love is not boastful or proud, Oh sh...

never haughty or selfish or rude. "Snob" pretty much covers that.

Love does not demand its own way, Heck, I even pray that way.

it is not irritable or touchy, ...and you know God understands about PMS and still expects this!

it does not hold grudges and hardly even notices when others do it wrong. Last one's probably the worst, as evidenced by the earliest home videos we have with me trying to order my cousin how to play his piano piece the right way.

Now, this is the cool thing, though. After I was lying there in my too-warm bed, rather too much on the wilted side to be crushed by my condemnation, God re-listed it back to me - and every single one had some small evidence that he changes the way I behave. For example, there was a grudge that I had held about an absolutely ridiculous piece of cast iron for an entire year, and just a couple of weeks ago, God beat on my stubborn head in the night until I cried over the issue (idiot), and the end result was of course that he took the grudge away from me without me wanting him to. I don't know why I'm shocked every time this happens. You can talk about free will all you want, and this is how it works. I am free to say "No, God, I'm keeping that one," and then in a split second, I don't have it anymore. I mean, I even tried to feel mean about it again, and I couldn't. I didn't even have any guilt over my part in the incident. The whole thing was just gone, wrenched out of my will.

God loves me.

His Dark Materials

Wow. I just finished reading "The Golden Compass" and was rather undone by it. I had been put off by the "His Dark Materials" series title, which sounds slightly demonic, but if I was way more classically literate, I might have known it to be a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost referring to the stuff God makes worlds out of. If I was more literate in general I might not use so many ugly commas in my sentences.

At any rate, do read this book. It's not average. I need to get my hands on the next two...but first, I have to finish that book on worldviews and write a nice little paper on it. I did get very far in the reading of it last night, finally, and got past the part where the authors' tone had been making me yell and slam the book shut every five paragraphs. Not that the content was really objectionable at all - I just reacted to the writing style in about the same way I did to Thomas Friedman's, only quicker. Ugh.

"Just thinking about it give me the jibblies."