Auspicious start of my 41st year

First, gratuitous dog photo:



Loki running in the snow. He was running toward the door to get back inside after taking care of business. I guess he wanted to catch a few snowflakes on the way. Snow is a rare treat in these parts. Texas A&M will be delayed until 10:00 am tomorrow. This is assuming I even feel like going in at all. I celebrated my 41st on Sunday; in addition to some neat gifts, birthday greetings and hearing an excellent dharma talk, I got a cold.

I have plenty of sick leave and my work is not so terribly important that its worth infecting others.

Today, I felt like getting dressed and off the couch. Even stood on the porch to film the snow. Yesterday, it was bed or couch. The oddest thing about yesterday is that I channel surfed for hours and did not catch one bit of Law & Order, not even one little donk-donk. I made up for it today by watching part of an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

I tried to watch some Olympics because I've become rather fascinated by curling but all the NBC-Universal stations that my cable provider carries were acting up.

Would it kill NBC to have a commentator explain curling or at least provide a crawl with a definition of terms & how the scoring works? I suppose I could drag my laptop to the couch and look up this stuff while watching but I don't feel like doing that and what about the viewers without wireless networking?

I become fascinated by curling every four years because of the absurdity of the sport.

This blog got a shout-out from uuworld.org: the interdependent web.

Real life & online life intersects

We had a guest speaker at church today. I figured out who she is in the middle of her sermon. Oh wow, it's Lizard Eater! That wasn't the name she used for church. I introduced myself after the service and had to use my alternate name. Now we know each other's real names, not that I make much of an effort to hide mine, but I wonder if this is how spies feel after they retire and they can reveal themselves. The nature of the relationship really doesn't change with this new knowledge but more of a fleshing out of a person or they seem more real. I don't know.

If your church is looking for a guest speaker, I would recommend Lizard Eater. She is a very engaging speaker and you don't need a sound system. She drowned out a train. To be fair, it was one of the quieter trains but still didn't need to take a train pause. I did wish that she said 'love train' instead of 'love jar' while the train rolled by but that is a comedian thinking not a minister. I can get comedy anytime, ministry (in the broadest sense of the term) is a more precious commodity.

Some of the things she has described in her blog about seminary come through in her speaking style. She has a bit of pentecostal in her. We all need a little pentecostal.

This online - real life intersection was a neat experience.

Exercise Log: February 7 - 13

I walked and ran 33.52 miles, burned 3592.1 calories and weigh 139.9 pounds. Loki walked 1.61 miles.

Monday: run - 4.43 miles in 44:50
Tuesday: elliptical - 1.22 miles in 15:00
Wednesday: run - 6.17 miles in 1:00:00
Thursday: run - 4.45 miles in 44:44
Saturday: run - 8.10 miles in 1:18:25.28

Mary Faust, Part Seventeen

Click on comic to enlarge.

That lap top is making Dawn's eyebrows shorter and making her grow old!

POET

Depart! elsewhere another servant choose
What! shall the bard his godlike power abuse?
Man's loftiest right, kind nature's high bequest,
For your mean purpose basely sport away?
Whence comes his mastery o'er the human breast,
Whence o'er the elements his sway,
But from the harmony that, gushing from his soul,
Draws back into his heart the wondrous whole?

Shout Outs!

I need to get the bit of promo for "The Word" app that airs at the end of the Colbert Report to put on my website. It's the second one where Stephen points to and says the phrase, 'A Perfect World'. Happens to be the name of my comic and the domain name: aperfectworld.org.

Why dot org? When I bought the domain name the dot com version was being used by a male enhancement company. perfectworld.com is a MMORG. aperfectworld.com has nothing on it.

I subscribe to UUpdates feed. Below a list of individual blogs on UUpdates that I always read (no particular order):

• Ms. Kitty's Saloon and Road Show http://mskittyssaloonandroadshow.blogspot.com/
• it's all one thing http://shetterly.blogspot.com/
• CUUMBYA http://cuumbaya.blogspot.com/
• Beauty Tips for Ministers http://beautytipsforministers.com/ (odd since I'm neither a professional minister or interested in fashion)
• The Chaliceblog http://chalicechick.blogspot.com/
• Tete-a-Tete-Tete http://tete-tete-tete.com/ (Sorry, too lazy to look up the html for accented characters)
• The Journey http://uuminister.blogspot.com/
• The Wild Hunt http://wildhunt.org/blog/ (another odd one for me since I'm not a pagan. Proof that I do read word press based blogs)
• Pfarrer Streccius http://pfarrerstreccius.blogspot.com/ (I skip the Illinois politics posts)
• Yet Another Unitarian Universalist http://www.danielharper.org/blog/
• Orcinus http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/

Thank you to each of you for sharing your thoughts.

I felt like making some recommendations since we all have a limited amount of time. I feel the above blogs are a good use of my limited blog reading time.

Looking over the list I notice a majority use Blogger and hosted by Blogspot.com. I use Blogger and this blog is hosted by Blogspot.com. I wonder if my list would be different if I used WordPress or a different platform?

Why I don't read your UU blog?

• Congregation specific (nothing wrong with that.)
• Read entries that grab my attention but not a regular reader
• Location specific
• Just not interested in the topic

Lack of quality is not a reason.

Mary Faust, Part Sixteen

Click on comic to enlarge.

Giant Galapagos Island Tortoises are reading this and thinking, "Get on with it!"

Ents (the tree people from Lord of the Rings) consider themselves quite hasty compared to the pace of this storyline.

Which will come first: my 41st birthday (Feb. 21) or the conclusion of this plot?

--------------------------------

Poor fools the muses' fair regards.
Why court for such a paltry end?
I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask,
Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal;
Your audience seek to mystify, cajole;--
To satisfy them--that's a harder task.
What ails thee? art enraptured or distressed?