Beloved Communities

Here's today's homily. The Gospel is Luke 7:1-10. I wish everyone a happy and peaceful Memorial Day.

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Years ago, my husband and I had a friend recently retired from an Army career. I remember him telling us about the psychological effects of military hierarchy. "You're obeying orders from your own commanding officers and giving orders to the people under you. Ideally, that chain of command keeps you humble and flexible. You're responsible to your superiors and responsible for your subordinates. The fact that there are people over you means you can't exaggerate your own importance, but the fact that there are people under you means that you can't minimize it, either."

I think of our friend every time I read about the Roman centurion in this morning's Gospel. "For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me." We've all heard far too many stories about people who use their authority -- privilege or power or money -- to exploit anyone lower on the ladder. But the Roman centurion cares for the people under him. I suspect that his own position as a subordinate plays into his compassion. If he were ill, he would want his commanding officers to seek healing for him; therefore, he will do the same for his slave. Without even meeting Jesus in person, he is already loving his neighbor as he loves himself.  

It's worth remembering that Roman centurions would not have been considered friends by many people in first-century Palestine. Yes, Jews were allowed to maintain their religion, but Romans were still the agents of oppression, occupation, and taxation, a situation that ultimately led to three major Jewish rebellions beginning in the year 66. And yet this centurion not only cares lovingly for his household slave, but has forged remarkable alliances with the Jewish community.  "He loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us," they tell Jesus.

In a setting deeply divided by military, political and religious conflict, the Roman centurion has created a taste of what the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., many years later, would call "the Beloved Community," where discrimination is “replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.” In the Beloved Community, Dr. King said, disputes will be resolved peacefully, by conflict resolution and reconciliation rather than military power, and “love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred."

This Utopian vision arose from Dr. King's principles of nonviolence. We aren't there yet, and the rare glimpses we get of this ideal world generally don't last. The Roman centurion's model of love and social harmony didn't sweep first-century Palestine; if it had, the rebellions wouldn't have happened. But the centurion proves that someone entrusted with military power and posted to occupied territory can still act in the service of love and reconciliation.  

On Memorial Day, we remember those who have served, and especially those who have been lost in military conflicts, including occupations. Our country has occupied many countries over the years. All of those occupations have produced stories both of compassionate soldiers -- who loved and served the people among whom they lived -- and others who ruled, and were ruled, by fear and force. Even at its worst, though, occupation offers a chance for people from very different backgrounds to form relationships. If that Roman centurion had been a drone operator, he never would have learned to love the Jewish community.

My nephew is in the Navy, serving on an aircraft carrier. The Navy has announced that his ship will soon be deployed to the Persian Gulf. Before he enlisted, he researched military jobs and decided that being on a carrier is one of the safest, because carriers are protected by cruisers and destroyers far from combat fronts. I'm very relieved that he'll be in a relatively secure position, but I'm also troubled that he'll be surrounded by what he already knows, living in a bubble of other American military personnel. He is far less likely to die than he would be in the Marines or the Army, but he's also less likely to change his mind about other people, or have the chance to change their minds about him. All of us seek safety and familiarity, but they can become barriers to relationship, preventing the Beloved Community Dr. King described.

In fact, I learned about the Beloved Community from a book by Rebecca Solnit called A Paradise Built in Hell, about the unexpected moments of social utopia that often arise after disasters like 9/11 or Katrina. Our media and entertainment teach us to view such events as unleashing the worst in human nature, rampaging mobs that loot and pillage, but that's rarely what actually happens. Instead, people extend helping hands and work together, often overcoming preconceptions about one another in the process.

During Katrina, my father lived four blocks from the water in Ocean Springs, a hard-hit section of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. When I visited him that Christmas, three months after the storm, everyone had a story. One of my favorites is from our friend Darlene, an art teacher in an at-risk school.  The Friday before the storm, she'd gone to school to get her classroom ready for the start of school the following week. She decorated the room with old students' artwork, to inspire her new students, and left a to-do list on one corner of her desk.

That weekend, the storm hit, and Darlene’s school became a National Guard barracks. A few weeks later, Darlene went to look at her classroom. "I thought it would be a mess," she told me.  "After all those young military guys had been staying there, I was sure the place would be trashed." Instead, everything was immaculate. The floor was swept. Darlene’s to-do list was in the same spot she had put it before the storm. And the National Guardsmen had covered the blackboard with notes telling the students how beautiful their artwork was. That occupying force, feared even though it wasn’t foreign,  truly had come to love and serve.

What does any of this have to do with us, here, today?  And what does it have to do with God?  As Christians, all of us are -- as the old Hebrew National commercial put it -- subject to a higher authority. Our service to that higher authority takes the form of loving and serving our neighbors, including anyone over whom we have real or perceived power:  our employees, our children, anyone who performs work for us in any capacity.  

Because we have not yet achieved Dr. King's Beloved Community, we also live and work in places divided by highly contested differences:  between religions, ethnicities, political beliefs, levels of income and education.  All of us are parts of chains, if not of command, then of privilege and prestige. It can be tempting to retreat into bubbles, spots of safety where everyone's like us, to try to protect ourselves from conflict. But when we do that, we shortcut the possibility of achieving, even for a fleeting moment, the Beloved Community.

Here's one last example for you, more explicitly about God. Eric Heidecker, whom many of you know, told me this story. Most of us remember the controversy surrounding the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as the Bishop of New Hampshire. At the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in 2003, the gathering where that election was ratified, Gene Robinson needed bodyguards, because he'd received death threats.

One day during the convention, Eric arrived at the convention center in Minneapolis and saw an ambulance parked outside. He immediately feared that someone had acted on the threats to hurt Gene Robinson. But Robinson was fine. The patient was one of his bodyguards, who was having heart-attack symptoms triggered by the stress of his job. Bishop Robinson sat with the bodyguard during the ambulance ride, and stayed with him at the hospital, and held his hand, and prayed with him.  The threat to Robinson’s safety became a chance for him to embody the love of God by serving the man who was being paid to serve him.  

I wonder if Robinson thought of the Roman centurion during that ambulance journey. May all of us think of him the next time we feel a conflict between being responsible to the authorities we serve, and being responsible for the fellow humans who serve us.

Amen.

Ten Years After

The Biloxi Bridge after Katrina

In 2005, my father (83 at the time) was living in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, in the Villa Maria Retirement Apartments:  a low-income senior building, a concrete high rise, that was four blocks from the water and one of the tallest things in town. He lived on the top floor, with a panoramic view of the Gulf Coast and its casinos, which often shot off fireworks on Friday nights. Villa Maria was a mile, maybe less, from the U.S. 90 bridge between Biloxi and Ocean Springs. He adored living there. He’d been even happier living on his sailboat in Biloxi, but health concerns had forced him off the boat and into an apartment. He’d had quadruple bypass in 2001, and in 2005 he often used a wheelchair and was also on a feeding tube -- which he hated; the man loved his food and especially his drink -- because of swallowing problems after a stroke.

I don’t clearly remember the sequence of events leading up to Katrina. We were all concerned about the storm, but Dad’s building wasn’t under mandatory evacuation orders, and he had no plans to leave. I remember at some point hearing that storm damage hadn’t been that bad and being relieved. We weren’t yet worried about not being able to reach Dad; we weren’t surprised phones were down. Then, on Monday morning, my sister called me and said, “Susan, New Orleans is flooding. The levees broke.”

My father was ninety miles from New Orleans, but reports from the Mississippi Gulf Coast were grim, too. That bridge I mentioned?  It’s the one everyone saw on the news, the one reduced to rubble by the storm. What were the odds that Villa Maria, so nearby and with such a high profile, hadn’t also been demolished?  “He has to be dead,” my sister said. “I just hope it was quick.”

We started a frenzied search for information. There was no getting through to anyone in Ocean Springs, but I found an online bulletin board where relatives and friends of people who lived in the Villa Maria were posting queries and sharing whatever they’d heard. No one had heard much.

Then, on Wednesday, a friend of Dad’s drove by the Villa Maria, saw people there, and realized that the building hadn’t been evacuated, as he’d assumed. He raced up to my father’s apartment, handed Dad his cellphone, and said, “Call your daughters. They’re going to be frantic.”

Dad called my sister. She heard his voice and started crying.

To hear him tell it, the storm had been a jolly romp. “They told us to go down to the lobby, so I went down there in my wheelchair with my mattress and my pillow and my Ensure and a bottle of vodka, and I poured Ensure and vodka through my feeding tube, and I was fine!” Whatever gets you through the night, Dad. Remarkably, the Villa Maria had suffered only minor roof damage, perhaps because the strongest winds had flowed around it rather than hitting it head-on. Dad was back in his apartment within a day.

We were very lucky. Millions of other people weren’t.

I flew down to Ocean Springs for Thanksgiving that year. Ocean Springs itself had been largely spared, although all of the beautiful old trees had trash in their topmost branches: clothing, children’s toys, kitchen utensils. Dad and I went for a drive along U.S. 90, the road to New Orleans, taking a long detour around the ruined bridge. Before the storm, the road had been lined with floating casinos on one side and antebellum mansions, surrounded by venerable trees, on the others. All gone. We drove through a moonscape littered with unidentifiable sticks and scraps.  A few staircases rose alone into the air for a few feet. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to tell that the area had ever been populated.

Our drive back to the Villa Maria was very quiet.

Everyone I talked to in Ocean Springs had a Katrina story. Almost everyone knew somebody who had died; many people had harrowing evacuation stories. No one had anything good to say about FEMA. No one had anything bad to say about the National Guard, hailed as heroes and saviors. One woman told me she’d complained to a Guardsman about the Meals Ready to Eat that everyone had been given. “It’s too much food! I can’t eat all that!”

“Ma’am,” the Guardsman said, “MREs are designed for the nutritional needs of soldiers in combat. You’re sitting in your living room reading a book.”

My favorite National Guard story came from Dad’s friend Darlene, who taught art at a local at-risk school where most of the students were black and very poor. The Friday before the storm hit, she’d gotten her classroom ready for the beginning of school the following week. She’d cleaned, put up student artwork from the previous year to inspire her new pupils, and left a to-do list on the corner of her desk. 

School didn’t start the following week. Darlene learned that her school was being used to billet National Guard troops, and assumed that the place would be a shambles. As soon as she could drive safely again, she went to the school and asked if she could visit her classroom. Yes, of course she could.

The room was pristine. The to-do list was still where it had been on her desk, and the Guardsmen had used the blackboard to leave notes for the children, telling them how beautiful their artwork was. I’m not sure if Darlene cried when she told me this story, but I cried when I heard it, and I’m crying now, typing it.  

The Villa Maria instituted a new policy that in the event of a hurricane, all residents would have to evacuate and wouldn’t be able to return to the building until any repairs were completed. Because evacuation wouldn’t have been feasible for him, Dad decided to leave his beloved Gulf Coast. In 2006, he moved to live near my sister in Philadelphia. On his birthday that year, he sent me $300 and asked me to research Katrina charities and send the money to the ones I considered worthiest. In 2008, he moved to Reno to be near me and Gary. He died in 2009. He wasn’t technically one of the displaced because he left shelter that was still habitable, and he didn’t apply for or receive FEMA money, but there’s no doubt that he was part of the larger Katrina diaspora. He was never as happy as he’d been on the Gulf Coast. (After he died, our plans to scatter his ashes in the Gulf were defeated by another disaster, the BP oil spill. I was glad he wasn’t alive to see that; it would have left him sickened and despairing.)

Meanwhile, in 2006, my novel The Necessary Beggar won an Alex Award from the American Library Association, and I flew down to New Orleans to accept the award -- one of ten given to adult books with YA crossover appeal -- at the ALA convention. We were the first convention to meet there after Katrina, in the infamous convention center which had gotten so much press, and which was now as bland and antiseptic as most facilities of that sort. On the shuttle ride from the airport, my driver pointed out storm damage, implored us to spend as much money as we could in the city, and thanked us fervently for coming.

Everyone thanked us for coming. Shop windows displayed signs: “We love you ALA.” The city was desperate for business. Many people at the convention took storm tours of the hardest hit parts of the city; I didn’t, because I didn’t think I could bear it, but I wandered through shops, searching for anything I wanted to buy, fighting my guilt when I found only a bracelet, a Katrina memorial t-shirt, and a souvenir voodoo doll for Gary.  

For several years after the storm, I occasionally met Katrina survivors in the ER. One patient told me he was from Biloxi, and we had a long, lively conversation. “Sure I know the Villa Maria! You can see that building for miles. I’m so glad your dad was okay.” Although we’d never met before, and although I’d never actually lived in those communities, it felt like a family reunion. The patient had gone through, was going through, agonies I'd been spared; even so, both of us understood things that other people around us didn't.  

My family was very lucky. My father was in the right place in the right circumstances; even with limited income and mobility, he was less poor and had more options than many of the people (black and terrifyingly poor, left without any money because the storm hit at the end of the month) who died when the New Orleans levees broke. We were grateful for our privileges and enraged on behalf of those who didn’t share them. We mourned those who had died and gave thanks for those who hadn’t.  

I live in the desert, thousands of miles from the Gulf Coast. I know some people might challenge my belief that Katrina is part of my history, too. I’m white and affluent; I wasn’t there; the person I loved who was there made it through largely unscathed. Other people lost and suffered so much more. But I’ll always feel a connection to that terrible time, and I’ll never hear a hurricane forecast without thinking about Katrina.

Monday

Hella original post title, what?

I didn't write today, alas. I wove a bit, swam a bit, wasted entirely too much time on Facebook, and wound up going to the hospital after all (to visit a friend, not to volunteer). The friend will have surgery tomorrow. I can't be more specific here for privacy reasons, but let's all pray for everyone facing surgery, shall we?

Meanwhile, my friend Inez flew back home to discover that a hailstorm had destroyed her car's windshield while she was gone. So while we're at it, let's pray for everyone dealing with severe weather. Also, car repairs.

Which reminds me that I have to take our car in to the shop, so they can fix my perpetually illuminated "check engine light" icon (which has already been fixed at least four times) long enough for the car to pass its smog so I can renew my registration. My mechanic assures me that the CEL issue doesn't interfere with the actual operation of the car. What he needs to do to fix it this time, though (since the other fixes have lasted about ten miles each) will cost about $400.

Gack.

Today the loom I want (used and discounted) was advertised on Ravelry, but someone else snatched it up ten minutes before I saw the ad. Just as well, given the car situation.

Button Scarf

Here's the new button scarf. Turns out it's long enough to work as a short scarf without buttons, but I think the buttons add visual interest, and they're fun to play with. I couldn't get my webcam to include my face in this photo, but it's probably the best shot of the scarf itself.

I'm experimenting with different ways of buttoning the scarf. The advantage of the lace pattern is that almost any point on the scarf can serve as a buttonhole.

The first time I sewed on the buttons, the edges of the button end tended to stick out in unsightly ways. And then the buttons started coming loose, because it turned out I'd never learned how to sew a button on properly.

So today I read an internet tutorial on the proper way to sew a button, and now I think they're much more secure. I ran out of the yarn I used to knit the scarf -- although the tutorial said one should use thread, anyway -- and I didn't have thread in the right colors, but I had some old embroidery wool of my mother's that matched.

I used a different color wool for each button. If I decide that's too goofy, I'll redo them again, but right now I like the effect.

Here's the "wrapped around the neck twice for maximum warmth" style, which I'll normally only use if I'm outside in cold weather (although it's once again rainy and chilly here, and I could've sworn I saw fresh snow up in the mountains).

I'm really happy with how this came out. I tend to love knitting things but to be a little bored with the final products, so I'm enjoying having so much fun with a finished piece.

Hunkering Down

It's frickin' freezing here: we may get snow tomorrow night! Some Memorial Day.

Yeah, it's our fault. We never should have had that awning installed.

Anyway, look who's being smart and cuddling up with a blanket.

That's What We Get for Putting Up the Awning

I reread the draft today; it needs a heckuva lot of work, but I already knew that. Tomorrow I'll start editing by hand, marking up the manuscript in pencil: a combination of line editing and plot revisions. I'm hoping to do seven pages a day, although that may be too ambitious.

Thing is, I was really hoping to do the work while sitting outside on our lovely deck, under our lovely awning. But noooooo, because -- after eighty-five-degree, sunny weather last Friday -- we're back down in the forties and fifties, with rain and snow flurries predicted through the week. It's also been really windy (as in National Weather Service alerts advising people to lash down their lawn furniture).

Sigh. I'm really glad we got a retractable awning this time; it's snug and safe against the house. And I'm sure the sun will return long before I'm done editing. But I want my outside office back!

Awning

Big. Nice. Easier to unfurl than to furl, so at some point we may want to invest in a motor, but being able to get it out of wind and weather -- even with significant expenditures of upper-body strength -- is a real plus.

I have my summer office back! Yay!

But That's Why I Love Him

Have I mentioned that my husband's a little strange, although no stranger than I am? We're strange in different ways, though. He, for instance, is fascinated by bad weather, and actively looks forward to rough days at sea. I enjoy a bit of rolling just so I know I'm on a boat, but I don't want to go through anything too dramatic.

He's gearing up for the November cruise by watching videos of cruise ships in storms. His current favorite is this little gem. (The music's a disco version of the theme song from Titanic; how fitting!)

I gather that everyone on that cruise got 20% off their next one. No wonder! Geez!

Sweetie, you can go on that cruise. I'll take the calm boat, thank you.

Spring Flowers

Gary's Better, Thanks

I figured I should post to this effect, since a friend e-mailed to ask me. He's fever-free and fine, for which I'm very grateful.

The weather's getting warmer, finally.

Summer's coming.

Work's grim right now: ongoing budget issues, a colleague in the midst of a personal tragedy, widespread exhaustion and plummeting morale.

But summer's coming.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow's the second anniversary of my father's death, and the first day back to work after Spring Break: not an especially auspicious combination! I've felt tired and sad all day, although I did swim for an hour this afternoon. My weight basically held steady on the cruise -- I ate too much chocolate, but I also ate lots of fish and fruit, and got a decent amount of exercise -- but I still need to work on shedding some of it.

I'll probably be too busy tomorrow to think much about Dad, but I'll still be glad when the day's over. We got home yesterday to find a lovely note from Fran, marking the anniversary and talking about how much she loved Dad. That meant a lot to me. It's good to know that someone else is aware of the date, too, and thinks about him. I'll call Fran tomorrow if I have time.

It snowed most of today, which didn't help my mood. I believe we expect nasty weather through mid-week. Yuck.

Another Friday, Another Snowstorm

So, once again, it's crazy snowy here. I-80 is closed from Colfax to Truckee due to "zero visibility." 395 and Mount Rose Highway are closed, too. Down here, it's been snowing steadily all day. I cancelled both my chiropractor's appointment and my fiddle lesson.

We'll see if I get to the hospital tomorrow.

Sigh.

Ice and Clouds

All three of these photos are taken from inside our house, looking out at icicles hanging from the eaves. At least we saw some sunshine today!

Thicket of Light

Sunsicles

Snowier

It's been snowing off and on all day (with chain controls on all mountain roads). We're expecting another two to four inches overnight. One of the ski areas got four feet in twenty-four hours. This is good news for skiers, of course, and also for the snowpack, which had been running a bit low, and which supplies our water during the summer.

This morning I took Gary to the eye doctor for a routine exam, but other than than, I've stayed in: I canceled my fiddle lesson because of weather and didn't even go to the gym, which I probably should have done for my back. Instead, I finished these socks, which I've been working on forever: they aren't things of beauty, but they were my first attempt at calf-shaping (although it turned out I didn't have quite enough yarn for true kneesocks). I'm wearing them now and they're comfy, which is all I ask of socks.

I started another pair with some lovely cashmere-blend sock yarn I bought in Alaska. I've already made socks for my sister with this yarn, and she loves them, so I look forward to wearing mine.

I read a little, wrote a little, graded a little. Gary ordered a wetsuit online. Gary and I used some of our we're-not-in-San-Francisco savings to splurge on two more shore excursions: a snorkel trip in Cabo and a boat-ride-to-Stone-Island in Mazatlan. These are probably overpriced, but we feel safer booking through the ship, especially in Mazatlan; I'm hoping that Stone Island is well away from drug-related violence, although Holland America and several other cruises simply stopped visiting the port for a few weeks when there were problems. Since HAL's put it back on the itinerary, I hope things are safer now.

In very sad news here, the body recovered yesterday has indeed been identified as that of the missing hiker. No cause of death has been made public, although the police say they don't suspect foul play. The woman who died was only fifty-seven.

I don't plan to go to the hospital tomorrow, especially with all the snow. We're not in SF, but I'm taking this as a stay-cation anyway. Of course, if I wake up and feel some prodigious burst of energy, I might change my mind, but how likely is that? And it's not like I don't have enough to do here.

Good Call

As friends have been commenting all day, we clearly made the right decision: it's been chains-only in the mountains since this morning, and even down here, the snow's so heavy that UNR canceled evening classes.

Note to Claire: Yes, you read that right. The accumulated snowfall in the mountains from today through Saturday is projected at twenty-nine to fifty-one inches. This ain't Central Park. Gary and I live at 5,000 feet, a bit higher than downtown Reno (elevation 4,500); Donner Pass, thirty-five miles away, lies at 7,085. (You'll recall from your history lessons that the Donner Party got stuck in lots and lots of snow, right?) This is ski country; also avalanche country; also if you get caught outdoors you could die country, which is why it's major search and rescue country. Even our little local mountain, Peavine, right across the street, can be deadly, which is why I insist that Gary bring his cellphone when he hikes there (which he does for two or three hours every other day, weather permitting), even though he loathes the thing. Neither of us has ever been caught in a storm on Peavine -- although other people have, and have died -- but I almost honest-to-god got bitten by a rattlesnake once. It was coiled and very well hidden in the middle of a trail, and I almost stepped on it, and it struck but missed. I've seen rattlesnakes lower down, too, a few blocks from here on walking trails, albeit not for several years. Granted, they're a warm-weather hazard; one needn't worry about snow and snakes at the same time!

So I'm glad we gave the mountains a miss, but I did drive around in the snow down here today. The new winter tires worked very nicely. In the late afternoon, Gary and I decided to be adventurous and check out a large mall in neighboring Sparks; at a sporting-goods store there, I found this funky wetsuit -- which fit me! -- on sale for $40. Sweet! The water in Mexico will probably be colder than Hawai'i (and Gary finds even those tropical waters too chilly), so I'd wanted to get a wetsuit for our snorkeling excursion, but I didn't expect to find one so quickly. I could do without the dorky logo on the front, and I'm pretty sure it's a guy's suit rather than a woman's, but it fits and the price was right, so I can't complain. Gary had less luck; they didn't have anything in his size that was reasonably priced, but it turns out there are a couple of dive shops in Reno, so we'll check those out. We both love snorkeling and plan to do as much of it as we can, so the investment makes sense.

Speaking of snorkeling, the sporting-goods store sports several huge fishtanks in the form of arched gates, so when you walk under them, you look up to see fish swimming over your head. Surreal photo, eh? I think those guys are catfish. They have whiskers, anyway.

Driving home from the mall was slightly scary; visibility was very poor, and even with the winter tires (going thirty-five miles an hour), I fishtailed a couple of times. But we're here, safe and sound and warm. Time for some nice hot tea!

Addenda:Turns out that I-80 was actually closed for part of today; westbound reopened at 7 p.m., but eastbound's still closed.

Also, tragically, when I looked at that SAR site, I realized that they did a search today -- and recovered a body -- only about six miles from here, in a residential area with lots of hiking trails. (My friend Sharon lives nearby.) A hiker had been missing since Wednesday. The paper notes that police haven't yet confirmed the identity of the body, but it sounds like everyone thinks it's the missing hiker. The body was only recovered a few hours ago, so the authorities haven't determined cause of death yet, either.

Scary, scary stuff. My heart goes out to her family and friends.

It's Definite

We're not going. Gary's been obsessively tracking forecasts and says the mountains are expecting up to another fifty inches of snow by Saturday.

I'm disappointed, but maybe I'll get some hideously overdue work done here. Or maybe I'll just veg out. Each has its advantages. With luck, I can do a bit of both.

Still. Feh.

Snowy

This morning's view. I'd say that our trip tomorrow -- through the High Sierra, where's there's always a lot more snow than we have down here -- is indeed looking doubtful.

Sigh.

Foiled Again

So, for the first time since I got my winter tires, we're actually expecting snow, just in time to interfere with our travel plans this weekend.

Grumble.

Down here, the snow's supposed to start tonight and continue through tomorrow. In the mountains, snow's predicted to continue through Saturday. We're going to get up Thursday, check road conditions, and see if we want to risk the drive, but I'd say our chances of getting to San Francisco are very iffy. (And airfare's prohibitive: I checked.)

Grumble.

On the plus side, I didn't have to give my chiropractor any money today, because my insurance suddenly started paying fifty percent -- even though we all thought I had hundreds of dollars in deductible left -- which means that I now have a balance there. Hurrah for small blessings!

The money I've saved at the chiropractor's office will come in handy when we hire a contractor to fix the small cracks in our sidewalk and driveway, which our insurance company says we have to do before they'll approve our new (and less expensive than the old, thank goodness) homeowners' policy.

Grumble.

Is this the world's most boring post, or what? Sorry about that! I was in a major black hole on Saturday and Sunday -- that ER shift really did a job on me, and it took me a few days to work my way through to the other side -- and yesterday I was busy, so I haven't been posting, so I thought I should post, even though I clearly have nothing very interesting to report.

Grumble.

Oh! Yes I do! Next week, I'm meeting with my new rector to discuss if and when I'll be preaching there.

Yay!