Time marches on...
Monday night already? Four days before I leave for Virginia? Only a couple weeks before I have to be back at school? Argh! Thank heavens I have scheduled the boys to be at Miss J's tomorrow so I can get things done. The inlaws leave in the morning. It was a great visit, but I'm ready to move forward and get my own work done.
1) On the down side, Robbie dropped my camera yesterday and it's not working. The lens will not zoom in and out when you turn it on, which means it actually won't turn on properly at all. (Or rather, every so often it will work, but not reliably enough). The good part is that I have managed to find someone on craigslist selling an even better one than I have for a reasonable price. It's more than I really wanted to spend, but I can go pick it up tomorrow so I'll have a camera for the trip. It's a 10MP with excellent zoom and sort of a midway between a point & shoot and a digital SLR, so it will be fun to play with.
2) Took the inlaws and the boys to the beach this evening. So great. Robbie spent the whole time making sandcastles, and Max spent as much time as we'd let him out in the cold water jumping in the waves. Of course, that meant I needed to be out there with him. It may be August, but that water is still cold!! You get used to it, and I love being in the water, too, but brrr! The beaches in South Carolina definitely have the upper hand on water temp.
3) The closet rod did get installed yesterday. It's way higher than I'd have liked, but I can't really complain or I should have done it myself. Now we need to get a board to put up on top for the shelf so I can have some storage up there.
4) On Sunday, my MIL and I attended the "summer" Episcopal church in town, a sister church to the one I usually attend. It's only open in the summer and brings in a different priest each week from somewhere in the country. Yesterday it was the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, a rather famous woman who holds the distinction of being the first woman elected as bishop in the worldwide Anglican communion. At her ordination she received death threats and obscene notes and was encouraged to wear a bulletproof vest (she declined). She marched in Alabama with MLKjr and is a fascinating woman. I really enjoyed her sermon as she talked a lot about being instruments of change in the world. One thing she talked about which really made me think was the difference beetween an institution and a movement. She defined an institution as a group in which one small group makes decisions but another group does most of the work. A movement on the other hand, can be defined as a group of people in which the people who are doing the work make the decisions. It's also a group in which people are often called to make sacrifices and to work towards something which might be unpopular (or at least controversial). The point of her sermon was "Whose movement are you in?" insinuating that as church people, we should be more concerned with being part of the "movement" of the church than with the institution. It was a lot of good food for thought from someone who has obviously been through a lot in fighting for various civil rights/gay rights/women's rights in her lifetime. She also said "it's more important to be loving than to be right" in the context that many churches today are too concerned with dogma and not concerned enough with spreading the love of Jesus first, regardless of other details. Naturally it's possible to both do what's right AND to be loving, but that wasn't really what she was getting at. Anyway, it was all very interesting stuff and I'm so glad I got to hear her speak.
5) My eye is still bothering me. I thought the infection was gone, but maybe not. It's been watery all day. Fortunately I still have drops and never stopped taking them, but I really don't want to have to deal with this during my 12 hour drive south.
1) On the down side, Robbie dropped my camera yesterday and it's not working. The lens will not zoom in and out when you turn it on, which means it actually won't turn on properly at all. (Or rather, every so often it will work, but not reliably enough). The good part is that I have managed to find someone on craigslist selling an even better one than I have for a reasonable price. It's more than I really wanted to spend, but I can go pick it up tomorrow so I'll have a camera for the trip. It's a 10MP with excellent zoom and sort of a midway between a point & shoot and a digital SLR, so it will be fun to play with.
2) Took the inlaws and the boys to the beach this evening. So great. Robbie spent the whole time making sandcastles, and Max spent as much time as we'd let him out in the cold water jumping in the waves. Of course, that meant I needed to be out there with him. It may be August, but that water is still cold!! You get used to it, and I love being in the water, too, but brrr! The beaches in South Carolina definitely have the upper hand on water temp.
3) The closet rod did get installed yesterday. It's way higher than I'd have liked, but I can't really complain or I should have done it myself. Now we need to get a board to put up on top for the shelf so I can have some storage up there.
4) On Sunday, my MIL and I attended the "summer" Episcopal church in town, a sister church to the one I usually attend. It's only open in the summer and brings in a different priest each week from somewhere in the country. Yesterday it was the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, a rather famous woman who holds the distinction of being the first woman elected as bishop in the worldwide Anglican communion. At her ordination she received death threats and obscene notes and was encouraged to wear a bulletproof vest (she declined). She marched in Alabama with MLKjr and is a fascinating woman. I really enjoyed her sermon as she talked a lot about being instruments of change in the world. One thing she talked about which really made me think was the difference beetween an institution and a movement. She defined an institution as a group in which one small group makes decisions but another group does most of the work. A movement on the other hand, can be defined as a group of people in which the people who are doing the work make the decisions. It's also a group in which people are often called to make sacrifices and to work towards something which might be unpopular (or at least controversial). The point of her sermon was "Whose movement are you in?" insinuating that as church people, we should be more concerned with being part of the "movement" of the church than with the institution. It was a lot of good food for thought from someone who has obviously been through a lot in fighting for various civil rights/gay rights/women's rights in her lifetime. She also said "it's more important to be loving than to be right" in the context that many churches today are too concerned with dogma and not concerned enough with spreading the love of Jesus first, regardless of other details. Naturally it's possible to both do what's right AND to be loving, but that wasn't really what she was getting at. Anyway, it was all very interesting stuff and I'm so glad I got to hear her speak.
5) My eye is still bothering me. I thought the infection was gone, but maybe not. It's been watery all day. Fortunately I still have drops and never stopped taking them, but I really don't want to have to deal with this during my 12 hour drive south.