So I said I'd tell a little more about the visit. I drove up on Friday. It was a fine pleasant trip listening to The Lexus and the Olive Tree, a book about globalization by Thomas Friedman. I also saw a wild turkey on county road 4 west of Rochester. Jim and Tara have got a beautiful little farm. The front yard is like a park with lots of trees, especially a huge maple that's big enough to be seven or eight normal size trees. They've got a fixer-upper house, several outbuildings, a windmill, and a scuzzy pond. One of the outbuildings is Evan's inventor's workshop which he has graciously opened to his brothers between noon and three.
It was so good to see Tara and the boys when I arrived and to meet Avery. Toby was very concerned about my owie, the big scab on my leg from my softball sliding adventure. He must have asked me forty times on Friday, "Why do you have an owie?" He asked the other days as well. He's a cute little fellow who can generate a mighty stench. Aidan trapped me in the living room by telling me it was a dungeon with traps on the doors. It took awhile before I remembered that I was strong enough to walk through his traps. I didn't get to see Evan on Friday because he was at his grandpa's so I could have the bed. Tara made delicious strombolis for supper and Jim and I talked late into the night. We spent Saturday hanging out and goofing off, playing horseballs and trackball. Eventually Evan came home and he and Jim and I drove "aimlessly" through the countryside looking for tractors. I really like the southeastern Minnesota landscape. After supper we took Evan back to his grandpa's where we talked and played pool and ping-pong. Jim won at ping pong but I managed to take at least one of the pool games.
Sunday took us to Berean for the start of a series on Ephesians and then out for lunch at Golden Corral. In the afternoon Jim and I talked while he worked on painting the house and the boys played in the sprinkler. In the process Evan developed a case of albino foot by stepping in a can of paint thinner that Jim was using to dip his primer brush. I love Jim, Tara, the boys, and Avery. I'm glad I got to go up there.
This weekend it's off to Gatlinburg and the Smokeys for a week with Mom, Dad, Lydia, Geron, and, primarily, Cora. WoooHooo!
Haiku:
On the drive home on Sunday I developed the idea of coming up with a summary haiku for each book of the Bible.
Dumb Galatians, dodge
The snip-snip. Live by faith in
Christ. You've been set free.
Happiness falters.
Man's desire is vanity.
Fear God all your days.
(Ecclesiastes, thanks to Nate's youth teaching on Wednesday)
I got through Ecclesiastes on Sunday but I didn't remember any well enough to write down besides the Galatians one.
Have a good week wherever you are.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
A Few More Haiku
From the drive home from Minnesota:
Bright lights fill my eyes.
I gently tip the mirror.
Ahhh. Ocular peace.
Wild turkeys roadside,
Two hawks soar over the fields,
Birds on the prairie.
Haiku while driving.
Look up, look down, up again.
Safe driving? Folly.
A couple from my division meeting on Monday:
Weeded books abound.
Primeval reference volumes
Will soon fill dumpsters.
Caffeinated Dew
Preserving my alertness
Both blessing and curse.
Two related to current library problems:
CARLI load misstep
Where are my authorities?
Alas for headings.
(Due to a very fundamental miscommunication in our consortial load process several thousand locally created authority records weren't transferred to the new server. Hopefully they can be recovered. CARLI is the consortium we just joined.)
Call number browse failed.
Help! I'm in the Z's not B's.
Cat. Staff search needs help.
(The call number search in our staff modules got broken during the switch to CARLI as well. You can search for a specific number but you can't browse a range.)
Bright lights fill my eyes.
I gently tip the mirror.
Ahhh. Ocular peace.
Wild turkeys roadside,
Two hawks soar over the fields,
Birds on the prairie.
Haiku while driving.
Look up, look down, up again.
Safe driving? Folly.
A couple from my division meeting on Monday:
Weeded books abound.
Primeval reference volumes
Will soon fill dumpsters.
Caffeinated Dew
Preserving my alertness
Both blessing and curse.
Two related to current library problems:
CARLI load misstep
Where are my authorities?
Alas for headings.
(Due to a very fundamental miscommunication in our consortial load process several thousand locally created authority records weren't transferred to the new server. Hopefully they can be recovered. CARLI is the consortium we just joined.)
Call number browse failed.
Help! I'm in the Z's not B's.
Cat. Staff search needs help.
(The call number search in our staff modules got broken during the switch to CARLI as well. You can search for a specific number but you can't browse a range.)
Monday, July 09, 2007
Trip and Haiku
I drove up to Minnesota to the Kluth farm on Friday and came back last night. It was great fun on which I hope to report later.
Y'all might remember that I wrote about a character from the book Cryptonomicon back in May. Another character in that book was Bobby Shaftoe, a U.S. marine in the Pacific theatre during WWII. Bobby Shaftoe had a Japanese friend from before the war and liked to make up haiku. I got to thinking maybe I could too. I made a couple on my way to Minnesota:
Rest stop in 1 mile
Next rest stop 21 miles
Maybe I should pee.
Look! Outback Steakhouse
Bloomin' Onion, sirloin, beer.
Wish I had money
(or, Would that I had time)
I made a bunch on the way home including these:
Boys play in sprinkler
I watch while Jim primes for paint
Tara reads in peace
Horseballs hang on rack
We chat in adirondacks
cooled by pleasant breeze
Ephesians sermon
In praise of glorious grace
Calls us to praise God
There were others that I'll put up sometime.
Y'all might remember that I wrote about a character from the book Cryptonomicon back in May. Another character in that book was Bobby Shaftoe, a U.S. marine in the Pacific theatre during WWII. Bobby Shaftoe had a Japanese friend from before the war and liked to make up haiku. I got to thinking maybe I could too. I made a couple on my way to Minnesota:
Rest stop in 1 mile
Next rest stop 21 miles
Maybe I should pee.
Look! Outback Steakhouse
Bloomin' Onion, sirloin, beer.
Wish I had money
(or, Would that I had time)
I made a bunch on the way home including these:
Boys play in sprinkler
I watch while Jim primes for paint
Tara reads in peace
Horseballs hang on rack
We chat in adirondacks
cooled by pleasant breeze
Ephesians sermon
In praise of glorious grace
Calls us to praise God
There were others that I'll put up sometime.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
June's Gone
I enjoyed June. It was a good month. The weather wasn't too bad. I got to travel. I got to work, eat, hang out with friends and do other stuff. I went to Philadelphia on June 13th for the American Theological Library Association annual conference with my friend and boss, Matt. We did some quick sight seeing on Wednesday night, seeing the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. On Thursday I attended worship at a beautiful old Episcopal church, heard an address on Calling, and attended various educational sessions. Thursday night we got together with our friend and former coworker Stephanie and one of her staff members for dinner. It was a good time of catching up, reminiscing and meeting Stephanie's baby. On Friday I heard about the training of Muslim chaplains at a historically Christian seminary, attended more educational sessions and saw the Phillies get blown out by the Tigers. Saturday saw more education before flying home. The following weekend I flew down to Nashville to meet Mr. and Mrs. Aluru who are visiting from India. I also saw Mom and Dad, and of course, Ann and Daniel. They fed me an astonishing amount of good Indian food and are very nice and friendly people. We also watched a fun Bollywood musical. The rest of the month has been full with youth group meetings, LIFEgroup events, including a fun outing to a Reggae/Calypso concert at Independence Grove in Libertyville, LIFEgroup leadership events, and other stuff. I finally finished the Cryptonomicon and Steve and I are making steady progress through the first season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. I've played a lot of softball and I hope I can say I'm getting better, though my sliding technique needs definite work it won't get. My friends John and Sarah had a great wedding to end the month. On a sad note, my favorite wrestler murdered his wife and son before committing suicide last weekend.
July has now started. I'm looking forward to travelling to Minnesota and Tennessee and spending time with family and friends. There will also be more softball and the TIU staff volleyball tournament, so July should be as full and as fun as June.
July has now started. I'm looking forward to travelling to Minnesota and Tennessee and spending time with family and friends. There will also be more softball and the TIU staff volleyball tournament, so July should be as full and as fun as June.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Interesting characters
I was struck over the weekend by a couple of interesting characters in books I'm reading.
Edmund McGowan, in The Gates of the Alamo, is a botanist in Texas on the eve of the Texas war of independence in the mid 1830's. He has devoted his life to seeking greatness that will set him apart from other men. Particularly, he has obtained a commission from the Mexican government to describe and catalog the plants of Texas. He has dedicated years to this task collecting specimens and travelling all over seeking out new plants. In dedication to his task he's forsworn most relationships with other people, especially women. On his way to Mexico City he meets and becomes friends with Mary Mott and her son teenaged son Terrell. Mary is an innkeeper in a coastal town and a widow. She is puzzled by Mr. McGowan and frustrated by the way he holds himself aloof from others but finds herself falling for him and he for her though he is very puzzled by the emotions. Several things lead to other things and Edmund, Mary, and Terrell find themselves in the Alamo. Despite the belief that his life's work has gone for nothing Edmund finds himself, because of long habit, unable to appropriately respond to Mary's interest or the new feelings he is encountering in himself, even on the edge of apparent death. In his sense of honour, duty, and his life's calling Edmund has numbed something in himself that he cannot reawaken. He reminds me of Lord Eddard Stark in George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones and Woodrow Call in Lonesome Dove, two other characters I've found intriguing for their devotion to their sense of honor (though Ned Stark is much healthier emotionally than the other two).
Captain Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is one of the chief characters in The Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Waterhouse is a born mathematician. When he takes a placement exam for the Navy just before Pearl Harbor he is so intrigued by the first question that he spends the whole exam examining the underlying math of that question. In the process he develops a proof that is published in international academic math journals. On the other hand the navy sees that he has only answered one question in two hours and decides he's too dumb to trusted with anything useful on a ship. Because of his musical talent, music being a wonderful outlet for applied mathematics, he's made a glockenspiel player in the Pacific Fleet band. After Pearl Harbor the band members are assigned as typists in a cryptoanalysis station on Oahu. Waterhouse shows an obvious skill at code breaking and soon is one of the allies top code experts. Among the other interesting people Lawrence knows through the course of the war is Alan Turing (a real life British mathematician and one of the early computer pioneers). Lawrence thinks his way through the war and eventually ends up in Brisbane, Australia working on Japanese codes where he falls in love. Though not normally a church going man, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse begins to attend church in Brisbane because Mary Smith does. On his first visit he decides to fix the church pipe organ. He is an organ player from his childhood drawn to their inherent mathematics. As he works on the organ and powers his way through Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, transposed into C on the fly to make use of the particular organs characteristics, he has a brainstorm about a problem he and Turing have been working on in their attempt to develop an electronic computing machine. Forgetting his shoes he runs out of the church to write a letter to Turing explaining the plan, passing a young woman on the way. He is several blocks away before he remembers the shoes or realizes that the young woman was Mary Smith with whom he is in love. He'll go back later. The Cryptonomicon is a very long book that deals simutaneously with events during World War II and the present. One of the things that makes it enjoyable in addition to the intrigue and so forth is the way that Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse's mind works. He's a funny guy.
Edmund McGowan, in The Gates of the Alamo, is a botanist in Texas on the eve of the Texas war of independence in the mid 1830's. He has devoted his life to seeking greatness that will set him apart from other men. Particularly, he has obtained a commission from the Mexican government to describe and catalog the plants of Texas. He has dedicated years to this task collecting specimens and travelling all over seeking out new plants. In dedication to his task he's forsworn most relationships with other people, especially women. On his way to Mexico City he meets and becomes friends with Mary Mott and her son teenaged son Terrell. Mary is an innkeeper in a coastal town and a widow. She is puzzled by Mr. McGowan and frustrated by the way he holds himself aloof from others but finds herself falling for him and he for her though he is very puzzled by the emotions. Several things lead to other things and Edmund, Mary, and Terrell find themselves in the Alamo. Despite the belief that his life's work has gone for nothing Edmund finds himself, because of long habit, unable to appropriately respond to Mary's interest or the new feelings he is encountering in himself, even on the edge of apparent death. In his sense of honour, duty, and his life's calling Edmund has numbed something in himself that he cannot reawaken. He reminds me of Lord Eddard Stark in George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones and Woodrow Call in Lonesome Dove, two other characters I've found intriguing for their devotion to their sense of honor (though Ned Stark is much healthier emotionally than the other two).
Captain Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is one of the chief characters in The Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Waterhouse is a born mathematician. When he takes a placement exam for the Navy just before Pearl Harbor he is so intrigued by the first question that he spends the whole exam examining the underlying math of that question. In the process he develops a proof that is published in international academic math journals. On the other hand the navy sees that he has only answered one question in two hours and decides he's too dumb to trusted with anything useful on a ship. Because of his musical talent, music being a wonderful outlet for applied mathematics, he's made a glockenspiel player in the Pacific Fleet band. After Pearl Harbor the band members are assigned as typists in a cryptoanalysis station on Oahu. Waterhouse shows an obvious skill at code breaking and soon is one of the allies top code experts. Among the other interesting people Lawrence knows through the course of the war is Alan Turing (a real life British mathematician and one of the early computer pioneers). Lawrence thinks his way through the war and eventually ends up in Brisbane, Australia working on Japanese codes where he falls in love. Though not normally a church going man, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse begins to attend church in Brisbane because Mary Smith does. On his first visit he decides to fix the church pipe organ. He is an organ player from his childhood drawn to their inherent mathematics. As he works on the organ and powers his way through Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, transposed into C on the fly to make use of the particular organs characteristics, he has a brainstorm about a problem he and Turing have been working on in their attempt to develop an electronic computing machine. Forgetting his shoes he runs out of the church to write a letter to Turing explaining the plan, passing a young woman on the way. He is several blocks away before he remembers the shoes or realizes that the young woman was Mary Smith with whom he is in love. He'll go back later. The Cryptonomicon is a very long book that deals simutaneously with events during World War II and the present. One of the things that makes it enjoyable in addition to the intrigue and so forth is the way that Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse's mind works. He's a funny guy.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Memorial Day Weekend
Okay, it took a few days to recover before I could consider posting about the weekend. It all started on Friday when I ran by the church and picked up a couple of tents before heading to my friend Aaron's in Waukegan. We set up the tents in Aaron's typical suburban backyard and discovered that one of the tents was nearly as big as the house. We also hooked up an LCD projector pointed at the back of the house. As it was getting dark we set up the portable fire pit we had borrowed from Dianne and Sarah so as to make s'mores. One of the friends who was helping light the fire decided to run into the house to get more paper to get the fire going. She didn't make it. She ran forward and with a mighty thud struck an invisible barrier and rebounded down the steps onto the patio. She remembers going forward and suddenly reversing and wondering why she wasn't in the kitchen. In a beautiful imitation of certain Windex and Bud Light commercials one of Aaron's housemates had cleaned the sliding glass door earlier on Friday. Someone else had shut it and my friend had run right into it. She was okay and it was very funny. After Sarah and Becky stopped rolling on the ground in laughter we got the fire lit and eventually watched the movie Hoodwinked projected onto Aaron's house. At a later point that night the older sister of our door thudding friend also ran into the closed door. It was also very funny. The guys slept in the tents. Most of the girls started the night in the circus-sized tent but they went in to sleep around 4:30.
At some point on Saturday morning we got up and straggled into the kitchen for breakfast. In the process we tried the new Doritos X-13D experimental chips that I had purchased the night before. They come with the gimmick that you try them and then you can name them yourself. I don't think the company will accept my proposed name, "Crap Chips". On the other hand, as a reward for graciously making us pancakes, one of my friends has now been nicknamed "Crap Chip" because she seemed to like them. (I think Doritos was going for a hamburger taste, mostly they got mustard and the worst qualities of other Doritos). We learned that Anthony carries wet sponges in his pants pockets. "Always be prepared." After a long breakfast and general sitting around time during which and Anthony and Aaron emerged from hibernation we decided to disperse for the afternoon and meet together later for Pirates of the Caribbean III and supper. Steve and I took the opportunity to go to a graduation party for two of our friends who just finished high school and who will be Illini in the fall. Pirates III was great. We returned to Aaron's for another night of fun involving the projector and pizza. This time we were inside watching My Super Ex-Girlfriend (but my terrible movie) and playing Time-Splitters wherein I mostly died.
We rose early-ish Sunday morning and Anthony, who had previously learned the meaning of the word "androgynous" and that it was something he didn't want to self-apply, made us some good pancakes. At church we heard a challenging sermon from Ezekiel 33 about being a watchman. Over a Fodrak's lunch we learned about some friends' recent trip to New York and how one had said she could "dress like a 'ho'" on a national t.v. show. After church we joined a large crowd of folks from church for a fun game of mushball. The softball team had the weekend off but some of us wanted to play anyway, hence the mushball. Then we returned to Aaron's to play some volleyball. The t-shirts trounced the tank tops and we preened. I picked up a friend from the airport and then went home and watched part of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind before turning in. Others spent the evening at Aaron's playing games and talking but I needed a break.
11 of us gathered at the church around 10 on Monday morning to head down to Starved Rock State Park for an afternoon of hiking. While we were waiting we threw some frisbee and were treated to Steve's attempt to skate on a frisbee. It worked for about five feet before he wiped out. The drive to Starved Rock was uneventful except when Anthony was pulled over by the police in Utica, Ill. so they could check his and his female passengers' i.d.'s. They were "old enough." "Old enough for what?!" Anthony inquired. The officer didn't respond. The park was very crowded but beautiful. Most of the canyons had waterfalls in them and we had a good time hiking. One friend wiped out on a sandstone slope trying to deliver a caterpillar safely onto a leaf and later she accidentally shooed a bug down the front of her shirt when she was trying to make it go away. Neither incident resulted in significant injury, and both resulted in significant laughter, if not so much as her "force field" experience the previous Friday night. We got home tired just as it got dark and some of us took the tents down in Aaron's backyard before going to Chili's for supper. We also learned that Aaron can shower in less time than Anthony can poop. Steve and I returned home where he went to bed and I finished Eternal Sunshine. It was an exhausting but fun weekend.
Gratuitous Weekend quote:
"Something stinks."
"I think it's us." Crap Chip in the church parking lot after Starved Rock
At some point on Saturday morning we got up and straggled into the kitchen for breakfast. In the process we tried the new Doritos X-13D experimental chips that I had purchased the night before. They come with the gimmick that you try them and then you can name them yourself. I don't think the company will accept my proposed name, "Crap Chips". On the other hand, as a reward for graciously making us pancakes, one of my friends has now been nicknamed "Crap Chip" because she seemed to like them. (I think Doritos was going for a hamburger taste, mostly they got mustard and the worst qualities of other Doritos). We learned that Anthony carries wet sponges in his pants pockets. "Always be prepared." After a long breakfast and general sitting around time during which and Anthony and Aaron emerged from hibernation we decided to disperse for the afternoon and meet together later for Pirates of the Caribbean III and supper. Steve and I took the opportunity to go to a graduation party for two of our friends who just finished high school and who will be Illini in the fall. Pirates III was great. We returned to Aaron's for another night of fun involving the projector and pizza. This time we were inside watching My Super Ex-Girlfriend (but my terrible movie) and playing Time-Splitters wherein I mostly died.
We rose early-ish Sunday morning and Anthony, who had previously learned the meaning of the word "androgynous" and that it was something he didn't want to self-apply, made us some good pancakes. At church we heard a challenging sermon from Ezekiel 33 about being a watchman. Over a Fodrak's lunch we learned about some friends' recent trip to New York and how one had said she could "dress like a 'ho'" on a national t.v. show. After church we joined a large crowd of folks from church for a fun game of mushball. The softball team had the weekend off but some of us wanted to play anyway, hence the mushball. Then we returned to Aaron's to play some volleyball. The t-shirts trounced the tank tops and we preened. I picked up a friend from the airport and then went home and watched part of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind before turning in. Others spent the evening at Aaron's playing games and talking but I needed a break.
11 of us gathered at the church around 10 on Monday morning to head down to Starved Rock State Park for an afternoon of hiking. While we were waiting we threw some frisbee and were treated to Steve's attempt to skate on a frisbee. It worked for about five feet before he wiped out. The drive to Starved Rock was uneventful except when Anthony was pulled over by the police in Utica, Ill. so they could check his and his female passengers' i.d.'s. They were "old enough." "Old enough for what?!" Anthony inquired. The officer didn't respond. The park was very crowded but beautiful. Most of the canyons had waterfalls in them and we had a good time hiking. One friend wiped out on a sandstone slope trying to deliver a caterpillar safely onto a leaf and later she accidentally shooed a bug down the front of her shirt when she was trying to make it go away. Neither incident resulted in significant injury, and both resulted in significant laughter, if not so much as her "force field" experience the previous Friday night. We got home tired just as it got dark and some of us took the tents down in Aaron's backyard before going to Chili's for supper. We also learned that Aaron can shower in less time than Anthony can poop. Steve and I returned home where he went to bed and I finished Eternal Sunshine. It was an exhausting but fun weekend.
Gratuitous Weekend quote:
"Something stinks."
"I think it's us." Crap Chip in the church parking lot after Starved Rock
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Beautiful Day
Yesterday was an all-around good day. The weather was fine. Our work task force on Information and the Future delivered our presentation on Books in Cyberspace, an examination of GoogleBooks, Amazon, Worldcat.org, and LibraryThing.com, that we've been working on for a while. It's good to be done. I learned interesting things about the different databases and my part of the presentation wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. In the afternoon I found out that a DVD I'd had on hold for a while at the public library had come in. I found the book The Gates of the Alamo on cassette and have started listening to it. I bought a bike. Last night we had a good time at 3-D even though only eight students were there. My friend Noah, who graduated from high school on Saturday and who will be a horned frog in the fall, spoke to the students about living life for God. He did well and did even better as he helped lead my small group. I got to do some reading when I got home. It was a good day.
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