Thursday, September 29, 2005

CSAs are great.

round river farms entrance
round river farms entrance,
originally uploaded by Waldie's World.
thanks round river farms. for 16 weeks of delicious, organically grown produce and other (fun stuff--today in our last share we got home-grown sponge!) delivered right to our local grocer. it's been fabulous.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

12 hour day #1

today was my first of the 12 12 hour tuesdays that i'll be working in a row this semester. with several programs running in one day it's unavoidable.

i think it went fairly well though. started off the day running 4 hours of training for my new city year team. i'm very excited about them. the team has 8 people and most of them seem to be fairly competent and enthusiastic. ended my work day with a 2 hour info session for my family program. half the parents showed up, which is more than i was expecting. so that's good.

now i'm ending my actual day with eating a poptart (toasted). it's yummy.

Monday, September 26, 2005

who you gonna call

it's always disappointing when you go back as an adult and see a movie that you knew as a child to be really good, only to find that it's really not that good. chris and i rewatched the ghostbusters this weekend and were fairly unimpressed. i mean, don't get me wrong we enjoyed it and it was fun to see again (the one-liners are classic--"we came. we saw. we kicked it's ass!", but as far as movie-making, we've come a long way, baby.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

scuttlebutt

chris just posted some of his thoughts regarding the new scuttlebutt that's going on around a potential document that will be coming out from the catholic church regarding gays being banned from becoming catholic priests. i agree with what chris says so read his post.

i also want to add my two cents by also quoting an email that i sent to our young adult catholic listerserv at st. thomas more.

it is curious to me that there has been no talk (and i
may be wrong on this, but at least i have heard no
talk) about similar rules/changes to the female
religious life. certainly there are similar
percentages (if not larger?) of nuns who are lesbian.
yet there seems to be no issue with this on the part
of the church hierarchy (or at least not a big enough
issue to make them change the rules, like we're
potentially seeing in the priesthood).

it seems to me that this is the continuation of the
stereotype that has existed throughout recent history
which believes that lesbian women are innocuous and
gay men are a threat. clearly the same physical,
emotional, spiritual, etc. reaction/connection is
present whether you're a gay man attracted to another
man or a lesbian woman attracted to another woman (or
among heterosexuals for that matter). but the thought
of men being attracted to other men has in recent
society been looked upon as more deviant and as a
threat to individuals and society than lesbianism.
which is where the incorrect and extremely hurtful
misconception of gay men being sexually deviant and
pedophiles comes from. it is from fear and
misunderstanding.

if this ruling is indeed a reaction to the church
sex abuse scandal, perhaps our church fathers should be looking at how sexual
morality is taught in the seminary, or how the call to
celebacy is handled and how to help support priests
throughout their life to continue this difficult call.
pedophelia is a very serious psychological disorder
and is not to be taken lightly. i think it is really
easy to scapegoat people as an easy out. it is more
difficult for the church to look at themselves and
question how did they help create a subculture where
this kind of behavior was tolerated and hidden. and
even harder to figure out how to move away from this
and strengthen our church fathers and heal our
community.

so obviously i feel that this is the wrong way for the
church to go about this whole process. the church as
an institution changes very slowly (which i think is a
good thing). but what is happening is that society has
changed so rapidly, and with it the people within the
church are also changing. the church has not developed
an effective method to help our priests make the
cultural transition which must happen to live the life
of a father in our traditional catholic church.


for more information on the supposed document you can see this site or this site.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

thanks lady

for lending me (well, giving me actually) $.35 in the grocery store when all i had was plastic as payment.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

keeping more than just your chin up

today should've been a monday. it was just one of those days. i was so exhausted this morning i could barely stay awake on the drive to work. then i made a bunch of really stupid simple mistakes at work that made me look like a total idiot. you know the kind of stuff i mean, sending emails to the wrong people, mistaking important dates. that kind of stuff. oh, and, my skirt fell off in the hallway. no, i'm totaly serious. my skirt fell almost completely to my ankles. in the hallway. of a public middle school. my saving grace: there was only one girl in the hallway at the time. she saw it but handled it really well for a middle schooler. we do have cameras. i don't know if anyone watches them unless there is an incident. but i keep imagining my principal reviewing the tape for some reason and coming across footage of me walking down the hallway with my skirt slowly falling down my legs. how rediculous.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

one degree from rock stardom

you, baby.
you, baby.,
originally uploaded by Waldie's World.
chris and i had a great weekend in charleston. we went to see chris's old pal andy play in mike doughty's band. check out this video (andy is the one in the cowboy shirt playing upright bass.) we'd seen mike doughty in councert once before, but he really rocked it this time. the band was excellent (and i'm not just saying that because our friend is the base player.

we also were very fortunate to go with some great friends who offered up their friend's house for all of us to stay in. it was like a mini vacation. there was a pool and we had our own room. so much fun! you can see my pictures here. (if it works. i'm trying all kinds of new technology in this post.)

tsunami

now my brother has a blog too! insanity!

Friday, September 16, 2005

Thursday, September 15, 2005

landscapes of the mind

I will not live an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as a seed
goes to the next as a blossom,
and that which came to me as a blossom,
goes on as fruit.

-Dawna Markova

(thanks mom for thinking of me and emailing me this quote.)

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

hooray for extended family reunions

hooray for extended family reunions!

disconnected

for the past 2 days chris and i have had no cable. you may say "no cable? big deal!" oh but it IS a big deal, my friends, because cable doesn't provide us with TV (we don't have THAT kind of cable); it provides us with our connection to the world via internet and phone. so for two whole days (well, nights really) we've been utterly disconnected. but rest assured we are now connected, ergo i am posting this message, and the phone lines are open for us to now take your calls.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

weekend ramblings

even though i worked late last night, chris and i still managed to make a really nice evening of it. when i got home i was jonesing for a walk because i had just been sitting on my duff for 4 hours in a training and it was gorgeous outside. so we took 2 laps around the neighborhood and then settled in to watch the lost boys of sudan. it was an excellent movie and i highly recommend seeing it. it shows the complexities of bringing refugees to this country "for a bettery life."

we slept in late this morning and resisted the urge to go to waffle house by making a big homemade breakfast instead. then we went to our local red cross to see if we can help at the katrina refugee evacuation center which is right down the street from us. when the woman heard that i had done some disaster relief in new york she basically forgot chris was there :( and was all about me helping, which is cool but i felt bad that chris was dissed. next, a few erands and a walk around our pretty (though hot) riverwalk. tonight we're going on a date! since this is the first weekend in weeks that we're not financially in the red we're going to get a bite to eat and then going to see batman begins at the $1.50 theater!

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

thought-provoking katrina-related news

and now for some real news you can use.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

the bounty of the morning

IMG_0936
IMG_0936,
originally uploaded by Waldie's World.
there are, count them, 6 (SIX) tomatoes growing on this plant. plus basil. the plant in itself doesn't look too hardy, but it's producing. and the tomatoes are yummy.

Friday, September 02, 2005

resources

there is so much going on right now, i feel like i can't just not mentioned it. but on the other hand, i hate to beat a dead horse, as they say. i think sean put it very simply but profoundly.

some resources that i've come across if you want to help in ways other than donating to the red cross.

http://www.hurricanehousing.org - this is a database where if you have available space in your homes you can offer it up to victims to use as temporary shelter.

http://erideshare.com/llistings.htm - this is rideshare information.

i also heard a rumor that columbia will be housing a bunch of families at our military base, fort jackson, and that over a hundred students will be attending 1 of the schools i work at. if that's true, then i'll probably have more opportunities for folks to get involved with these refugees, if you're interested.