Finally

Our power came back on at 10:10 last night with a welcome burst of light and the sound of the furnace rumbling into action. Thirty-four hours without electricity is plenty long enough to remind me of how dependent I am on the power that runs silently into my house on a fairly constant basis.

After lunch yesterday the Kid went to a friend's house to do homework and watch the football game. I came home and wandered aimlessly around our chilly house for a bit. It was too cold to sit and read and with darkness looming early, I decided to seek warmth and light elsewhere. I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening at Panera and Borders, drinking coffee, reading blogs, looking a books and magazines. I had reading I could do--I'm in the midst of several books--but I felt unfocused. Normally I enjoy--even seek out--time sitting in coffeeshops reading but yesterday I just wanted to be home with heat and light restored.

When the lights came up, I flipped on the internet to make sure the wireless router was up and running, and them promptly feel asleep on the couch. Two hours later I groggily set all the clocks and took myself off to bed. This morning I've been cleaning up bits of wax and returning candles and flashlights to their drawers for the next storm. I still have to tackle the refrigerator and throw out food that more than likely was warmer than it should have been.

I'm grateful for another sunny day, and for the conveniences I take so for granted.

Convention redux

One of the highlights of diocesan convention was a Mardi Gras themed benefit banquet to raise money for continued relief efforts in New Orleans and Mississippi; another was an unanticipated but delightful blogger meetup with Liane who has an awesome picture of our bishop at that banquet at her place. Check it out.

Stormy weather

For the second year in a row, I've come home from diocesan convention in a storm to a house without power. But it was much worse this year. The remnants of Hurricane Noel, as an "extratropical storm with hurricane force winds," hit our area with a vengeance yesterday. I was in another part of the state most of the day, and had to get home. I was traveling with three others from my church, and we were most worried about the bridge we had to cross to get here, because it can be closed if the winds are too high, but that part went fine. The rest of the way home after the bridge was a bit hair raising though. It was raining quite hard, it was very dark and the wind was ferocious. There were huge puddles and lots of limbs down all over the place, including in my driveway. But thankfully we all made it safely.

According to the Kid, power went out around lunchtime yesterday, and at 1:00 pm today it still isn't on. (I'm posting from our local burrito cafe which has free! wifi!) We had peanut butter crackers for dinner and watched a movie on the laptop last night and then went to bed. I slept more fitfully than usual, waking up to see if the power was on several times. I'm really hoping that it will come back on before dark tonight. As it is I'm afraid everything in the refrigerator and freezer will have to go. I don't keep a lot of food on hand, but there is some fish in the freezer that I can possibly cook tonight if the power is back on.

I'm very grateful that we have a gas hot water heater. Spoiled girl that I am, I would've been less than happy to have to go to work without a hot shower first. We had church in semi-darkness but that actually worked out okay. And in the grand scheme of things, it all could've been much worse. We have a mess in our yard (I'll post pix later) and all over the area, but I haven't heard of any major damage so far.

It's very nice to see the sun shining today!

Wake up call

~6:30 am -- I had just snuggled up to snooze for a few more minutes while my roommate showered when an alarm sounded and a robotic voice began droning, "An emergency has been reported; please use the nearest emergency exit." Great. I pulled on my raincoat and shoes, grabbed my phone and key and headed downstairs.

~Imagine a throng of sleepy Episcopalians--no showers, no coffee, rudely awakened. We were remarkably good natured. Apparently the frenchtoast in the kitchen was burning.

~All back to normal. Time to shower and get ready for the day.

~I would've been in bad shape if it had been a real fire because I neglected to take my computer down with me!

Convention blogging

~I'm at our diocesan convention. It's one of those mixed-blessing kind of things. I like convention--keeping up with what's going on, seeing people, the energy of worshiping together--but this is a big diocese and there are LOTS of people, and long days and it's a bit exhausting for an introvert like me.

~I was sitting behind a young woman priest with a nursing baby--a little girl who looked to me not more than a month or two old and thinking about NSLS's ultrasound today, and not five minutes later my phone buzzed--it was a text from NSLS saying, "It's a girl!"

~So I guess this grandma schitck is getting more real...

~I love wireless access in hotel rooms--maybe I can sneak in watching last night's Gray's Anatomy tonight--usually I watch it on abc.com while I eat lunch on Fridays, but clearly that didn't happen today.

~Tonight there is a banquet and then a full day of meeting tomorrow. As I said earlier, I'm glad we get an extra hour of sleep this weekend.

Pssssst

Hey! It's NSLS's birthday!

I wrote this about her birth last year.

Go wish her a happy day, okay?

Confusion

Because I worked on Monday I took yesterday off. And all day long I thought it was Friday:) Which of course confused the Kid when I kept thinking today was Saturday.

But of course today is Friday and I am off to our annual diocesan convention on the far side of the state. Being even further off my normal routine, I don't know what day I'll think it when I get back Saturday night...but I will be glad that this is the weekend we get an extra hour of sleep.

Boundaries and borders

When I was in the fifth grade we spent a few weeks studying the United Nations. Everyone in the class chose a country to learn about and at the end of our unit we dressed in national costumes and had a big party. We even got our picture in the paper (the clipping is somewhere in a box upstairs).

Ever since then (political realities aside) I've found the notion of truly having a "United Nations" kind of appealing--not so much the organization, but really a world that was united and where nations and boundaries weren't so important, a nation where I could move to another country as easily as I can move to another state. I don't always get the whole nationalism/patriotism/ my-country-is-better-than yours schtick and the posturing that goes with it.

What made me think of all this was thinking while I was showering this morning (as I've said before, I do some of my best thinking in the shower) about Woman Warrior (aka LD#1) and the GS and about the difficulty of their situation. And I was thinking about the absurdity of nations and states and boundaries and borders and passports and visas. And I envisioned a world in which there were no such boundaries, where people could come and go freely, and I thought, why not?

Okay, I know I'm an idealist, and I'm sure that there are a thousand pragmatic reasons why that would be difficult if not impossible. Even as I type this I realize how ridiculous it seems on some levels. People are way too invested in power and control among other things. But just imagine if we could spend our resources on making the world a better place to live--everywhere--instead of arming ourselves to protect against whoever the perceived enemy is--just think what we could do.

Hallowe'en today, NaBloPoMo tomorrow

~It's another very quiet Hallowe'en again here at chez Rev Dr Mom--no trick-or-treaters, no candy, no pumpkins. The Kid had thought about trick-or-treating, but his plans never materialized. I kind of miss Hallowe'en actually.

~Tomorrow starts NaBloPoMo. I did it last year; can I do it again? I've actually saved up some things I wanted to blog about for November, knowing that I wanted to post every day.

~But really, can it be November already?

~I saw my first Christmas decorations last week at a Duane Read on the Upper West Side. And now they seem to be EVERYWHERE. Ack.

~We're having a weird fall here. Lots of leaves are down, but there isn't much color. The trees in front of my house which in the last two years have been brilliant are just sort of meh. It hasn't be as dry here as some places, so I don't what the lack of color can be attributed to.

~Since I'll be posting everyday, and no doubt looking for topics, does any one have any suggestions? Questions you want answered?

~Happy Hallowe'en everyone. May there be lots of chocolate in your trick-or-treat bag!

Cathedral

Last week when I was in the city I spent one afternoon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I've long felt a sort of connection with the cathedral, for reasons I don't really understand. No doubt Madeleine L'Engle's stories set in and around the cathedral influenced me, but when I am there it feels to me like what it is proclaimed to be, "a house of prayer for all people."

My first visit was in 1985, when I visited friends who had moved to the city. They lived on the Upper West Side and the Cathedral was just a short walk from their apartment. At that time the stone masons were still at work (the Cathedral has been under construction on and off since 1892) --part of a project begun in the 1970s to train unemployed and underemployed people in the neighborhood in stone craft as work on the cathedral proceeded. But by the time I returned in 2002, the project had been disbanded for lack of funding, and work had ceased. The scaffolding on the south tower, however, remained, rusty and unsightly, because there was no money to dismantle it.

In 2001 the Cathedral suffered a devastating fire. The whole time I lived in the city parts of the Cathedral were blocked off. My last Christmas there I was part of the altar party (as a Eucharistic minister) at the Christmas Eve service--the last service before the high altar and chapels (off an ambulatory behind the high altar) were closed for cleaning.

That was the last time I was at the Cathedral until last week. Walking over to Cathedral Parkway from Broadway, I immediately noticed a difference....the scaffolding that had been surrounding the south tower since th 80s was gone! And the stones underneath were clean. Amazing. But there is something a bit sad about it, too, because there are still parts of the cathedral that are unfinished, and there is no plan for further construction. The scaffolding, as rusty and unsightly as it had been still seemed like a sign that someday building might resume.

St. John the Divine is one of the largest cathedrals in the world. Inside the high altar, choir, and all but one chapel are cleaned and reopened. But the nave which is the length of three football fields is 2/3 closed off for the rest of the cleaning and restoration. So it was very weird to walk down what I knew to be the center aisle but have walls on either side.

I wanted to get some good pictures, but my camera skills failed me at the Cathedral. The lighting was such that I really needed to understand how to use all the manual settings, and I'm just not there yet. So I have lots of dark and/or blurry pictures. Gah.

But here are a few outdoor shots...

Tagline

You might have to know me in real life to appreciate this...it's a phrase I use from time to time and I guess it reflects my identity as a Southern girl turned New Englander--but I really started saying it without thinking about it and was surprised when other people found it funny. A parishioner gave me this bumper sticker yesterday.

What I'm trying to figure out

~How does one go on vacation and not get horribly, awfully behind at work, so behind that you have to work on your days off when you get back to make up for it? Because the working on the day off bit....it sort of cancels out the vacation, you know?

~Seriously, when I went on vacation in August and when I took last week off, I front-loaded, and got some weekly tasks done ahead of time (really not how I usually work) to avoid this. But both times I come back and it's just crazy busy. So I worked all day Friday, and I have to go in tomorrow (and Friday and Mondays are my days off) to finish a newsletter than must be mailed on Tuesday.

~I know my job really doesn't have hours per se....but it's not pastoral emergencies that consume my time, it's week to week office stuff. Much of it I enjoy, but sometimes I wonder if my willingness to take on new things and my slight perfectionist tendencies aren't getting the best of me.

Books

It seems like I've always had more books than places to keep them--until I moved here, where I was lucky enough to have a few built-in bookcases, and an office right next door. For a short while--a very short while--I even had some extra space. But there's something about books--I just keep on acquiring them. So I've reached this point again:








books in the pantry....

















books on the coffee table...














books in the bedroom...





















more books in the bedroom...













and yes, even books in the bathroom.















I think it might be time to buy another bookcase.

Pssssst

A few of you know this already, but I have a new blog. It's in my real name, and is/will be mostly churchy stuff, but you are all welcome. Email me at revdrmom(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll give you the link.

Why all the secrecy? To attempt to protect my (at least partial) pseudonymity here, I don't want to connect this one to that one. So if you visit, don't mention or link to revdrmom, please. Thanks.

This post will self-destruct in a few days.

Pumpkins and apples and ghosts, oh my!

A Halloween RGPB Friday 5

1. How did you celebrate this time of year when you were a child?

We went trick-or-treating, of course. Hallowe'en wasn't such a Hallmark holiday when I was a kid, and it didn't extend for weeks. We usually had some sort of Hallowe'en party at school and then trick-or-treated in the early evening. The most decorating we ever did was to carve a jack-o-lantern. And when I was very little, we collected pennies for Unicef either on Hallowe'en or a day before or after.

2. Do you and/or your family “celebrate” Halloween? Why or why not? And if you do, has it changed from what you used to do?

My kids always trick-or-treated. And I've decorated some, but not the last two years, because we don't have any kids close around. When the Kid was little we lived in condo and there were lots of kids around. We'd have pumpkins and spider webs and sometimes scary music. And at seminary we always had fun at Hallowe'en on the close. I even dressed up there (as Dumbledore and as a witch).

Hallowe'en is much more elaborate than it used to be. And it seems like costumes have to be more elaborat, too. I enjoy it, but I'm not over the top with it.

2. Candy apples: Do you prefer red cinnamon or caramel covered? Or something else?

Red cinnamon. But it's hard to get good candy apples. I hate when the apples are all mushy inside.

3. Pumpkins: Do you make Jack O’ Lanterns? Any ideas of what else to do with them?

Just jack-o-lanterns. Although I love pumpkin pie and pumpkin muffins and pumpkin bagels and pumpkin ice cream and pumpkin soup and....well, you get the idea, I've never actually cooked the pumpkin from scratch, and I was never able to roast the seeds so they were good, either.

4. Do you decorate your home for fall or Halloween? If so, what do you do?

See above, but not the last couple of years.

5. Do you like pretending to be something different? Does a costume bring our an alternate personality?

There's a part of me deep inside that wants to be totally outrageous (in a good way of course) but I just can't pull it off. I did really like dressing up as Dumbledore, though. And I went to chapel in my witch costume once.

What I did on my vacation

~Walked to the greenmarket--what an abundance of yummy and beautiful things!
~Ate Thai food--delicious!
~Went to church at my field ed parish--great liturgy!
~Walked and walked and took lots of pictures.
~Got horrible blisters on my pinkie toes :(
~Spent an afternoon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where I reached the limit of my camera skills and didn't get many good pix.
~Took an evening walk by the river and back by a yummy chocolate shop (recommended by Ianqui).
~Sat in my favorite coffee shop and read three mornings in a row.
~Went to the movies.
~Went to a class.
~Went to the seminary book store and bought a bunch of books.
~Talked with my friend D and did bloggy things.
~Loved every minute of being in the city.

Home now--I got in a little over an hour ago and vacation is officially over because I have a meeting tonight at work.

Sails into the wind

The Frank Gehry building in Chelsea (also seen below)

Color circuit

Tucked away

in a little nook between two buildings

Manhattan skylines of a different sort