Elizabeth (the delinquent, ecumenical) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hermionesviolin) wrote2009-01-17 09:54 pm
hermionesviolin) wrote2009-01-17 09:54 pm
adventures in subzero, public transit, Singspiration, and etc.
Friday
When I went to take a shower this morning, there was no hot water. (It usually takes some time for the shower to heat up decently, so I never just hop in the shower, don't worry.) I wondered if the furnace had gone out, and when I checked the thermostat I saw it was set at 60F and registering 48F. (I had thought it a bit cold when I got up, but it felt on par with just the usual "I was under flannel sheets and two blankets and now I am exposed to the air.") I went downstairs and turned the furnace on. I forgot that it takes 20 minutes to kick in, though, so I should have just gone to the gym and taken a shower there after I worked out, but it is so in my brain that I require a shower before I go and be functional -- and I am so stubborn about The Way I Do Things, that my brain couldn't even really process that as a possible alternative.
Weather.com said it was -6F at 7:05am. If I'd had a coat I trusted was warmer (or knew where I'd stuck my scarves -- see also the fact that my long coat is like v-neck, so I don't actually want to wear it outside in serious cold without a scarf) I actually would have worn it. This was the first time that after walking for ten minutes I actually felt colder after walking for ten minutes than I did when I left the house (often I'll go outside and be initially struck by the cold but after five or ten minutes of being in motion I'm fine, but this time after about ten minutes my thighs hurt and I was entertaining idle paranoia about frostbite.) One of the tvs at the gym mentioned that it was like -44 in North Dakota, so every time anyone grumped about the cold I would respond, "Well at least it's not North Dakota."
At Harvard, I headed out of the subway, chucked my metro in the recycling, and put up my hood. A young woman came up to me and I assumed she was gonna have either a sob story asking for money or would try to save my soul, but no, she said that I looked cold and she had an extra jacket. I said, "No, I'm fine -- I work just around the corner" (technically a lie, but I didn't want to get into a conversation about the ten-minute walk -- though I suppose I could have said "I work just up the street," and that would have been true but sufficiently misleading).
Speaking of adventures in public transit, my commuter rail train home stopped a bit before Norwood Central due to mechanical problems. One woman was wicked cranky. We had been stopped for like five minutes and she's on her cell phone complaining that she's probably not gonna be able to go to the gym now, and I'm thinking, "How tight is your schedule?" 'cause I usually get in to Norwood Central like five minutes later than the time on the schedule.
They've been announcing frequently recently that you should not do not get on or off a moving train (I assume someone tried to do that recently), but this time the conductor repeatedly announced that this was not a station stop and we should not get off the train, which amused me because I would have thought I would be the only person who would think, "I could walk Norwood Central from here." The cranky woman said to another passenger that she's actually done it before and yeah, she does not recommend it.
***
Due to the aforementioned train delay, we were a little late in getting to Singspiration.
MikeF and JohnP were both at the back, but I JohnP hadn't been at the last Singspiration, so he was the one I went to hug first. He hugs like... how did Laurie put it re: us CAUMC young adults? that we "hug with conviction"? He said it's hard being back at UCN, seeing people like my mom and he, said he misses us. (His family was one of the many to leave UCN in the last exodus.) He said something about my still going to UCN on Sunday mornings and I said no no no, said I knew that as soon as I moved to Boston I was not going to commute back and forth to go to UCN on Sunday mornings. (It didn't even occur to me until later that, also, UCN stopped being "my" church before I even finished high school, and the months I was home after college graduation I spent the majority of my Sunday mornings at the Congregational church.) He asked if I went to church, and I said yeah actually I hang out at a lot of churches, but my primary church is "Cambridge Welcoming Ministries, a Methodist community. It's specifically missioned to gays and lesbians, but it's a really vibrant community, lots of young people, like 20s and 30s, lots of people with seminary training so the community is very theologically engaged, lots of social justice engagement."
When I said "gays and lesbians" (I felt really disingenuos not listing the full GLBT, but the program had already begun so I was rushing a bit, and felt like if I just said the acronym so I did want to say actual words) he nodded like, "Yes, I can see how that would be important," and I was confused and tried to remember what exactly I had said, whether maybe he had misintrepreted it as reaching out to gay folk to save them from their gayness, whether I had actually said "welcoming" or "inclusive".
We talked through the whole first round of hymn requests (reconnecting with beloved I barely see totally trumps) and Elyse showed up later (looking/seeming really healthy) and he was talking to her (he said we were his favorite girls -- Elyse mentioned his wife and daughter and he said that was different, they're his "homegirls") and then the congregation started singing "Holy Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty," and Elyse automatically started singing along and I followed suit, and for the remainder of the program we actually sang all the hymns.
Singspiration is supposedly about the "old chestnuts of the faith" or whatever, but even though I've been to just about every single one since i graduated college three and a half years ago, people keep requesting songs I don't know. Elyse decided to request a hymn herself and was looking the hymnal index and I think she was gonna request "Be Thou My Vision," but JeffC kept not calling on her.
Someone requested ... iirc (yeah, I didn't actually take notes as I was chatting with folks -- the whole crew was up back, with DonT showing up late as well) "Sing to the Lord a new song" by Fanny Decker (Psalm 96:1). There was actually a significant pause as the pianist (and instrumentalists) figured out the melody. It turned out to be this really upbeat hymn, even though it consisted basically entirely of the lines, "Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth." Later in the program, JoeF said it sounded like hava nagila or something, and Elyse looked over at her mom like, "See, didn't we say that?"
At coffee hour, Bev asked me something about where I was going to church, and I basically repeated the spiel I gave JohnP except I said, "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons," and and I talked more about how engaged they are in the denomination.
Saturday, I was telling my mom about how after the December Singspiration, MikeF was asking me about my holiday plans, and I mentioned my best friend coming to town and that I hadn't seen her in person since she moved to Kansas last January, and I used both "partner" and "girlfriend" in talking about why she had moved, and he didn't appear to react at all and so I found myself wondering what it was that he was hearing me say. My mom said she thinks people mostly hear "blah blah blah."
***
"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mylittleredgirl [more info]
Do not be afraid, I am with you
I have called you each by name
Come and follow Me
I will bring you home
I love you and you are mine
-"You Are Mine" (David Haas)
Five good things about today:
1. Vegetable dumplings for lunch.
2. The schedule for next Thursday's candidate is mostly done (thanks in part to Ian).
3. JohnP.
4. Telling two different UCN people about CWM and having them not react negatively.
5. I got to spend part of the train delay with my mom rather than with the cranky woman (yeah, Ari, when I said the train was moving, that turned out not to last).
I felt so meh-some in putting together last night's joy sadhana, but I felt like it was in times like that that I really should make the effort to do joy sadhana (plus I wanted to get to use that line as a subject line). "Good things" yesterday also should have included:
* I has a bff. It was good to be able to tell her the stories I'd been holding since the previous day.
* The amazing water landing of USAir 1549. Rich mentioned it when the candidate and I were walking by questing for hot water (he wanted tea) around 4pm, but I didn't really grasp the import of it.
I read about it in the metro this morning and kept getting choked up (yeah, I'm easy). The front page had: Last night a pilot on pprune.org said: "My instructors laughed when they were teaching me about ditching because it was so unlikely that anyone would survive if you had to ditch. Unbelievable -- makes me proud." [And then reading the AP story -- Some passengers prayed. Vallie Collins, 37, tapped out a text message to her husband, Steve: "My plane is crashing." For a desperate half-hour, he was unable to get in touch with her to learn that she had survived.]
* I saw pixie!MediaServices-tech.
Three things I did well today:
1. I successfully turned the furnace back on. (Housemate had showed me how a few weeks ago, but I'd never actually done it myself.)
2. I went to the gym (30min treadmill at 4.2mph and 1.5 incline -- I would have done my usual 45 minutes and just been late to work, but B was teaching [at 10:05] and I'd felt bad coming in at like quarter past nine last teaching day [I'd gotten breakfast at Spangler] and when I left yesterday I told B I'd be in at 9 the next morning and he joked, "Don't you usually come in at 8:30?" -- I laughed and said, "Nice anchoring theree, but no; I can come in at 8:30..." to which he said no that was fine, and commented to Andy how I was picking up the lingo and Andy was like, "Yeah, did you see Ian's email?" and asked me if Ian had cc-ed me on that and I said yeah, he'd forwarded it to me and then told me the story myself). Katie was all impressed that I still went to the gym after a morning that started with no heat.
3. Various work things -- nothing major, but still.
Two things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
["anything that you're looking forward to, that means you're facing tomorrow with joy, not trepidation," as Ari says]
1. [redacted]
2. Going to bed at a reasonable hour?
Saturday
"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [more info]
Do not be afraid, I am with you
I have called you each by name
Come and follow Me
I will bring you home
I love you and you are mine
-"You Are Mine" (David Haas)
Five good things about today:
1. My mom's homemade sourdough pancakes.
2. I got to see Terry, albeit briefly.
3. I was at Staples with my mom and saw Self-Adhesive Foil Stars. I'd been looking for those a while back 'cause I kept giving Ian rhetorical gold stars and so decided I wanted to give him real ones, but I wasn't seeing them at places like CVS, and the Internet was coming up empty.
4. Lightly toasted cinnamon raisin bagels with peanut butter. (What? They never stop being awesome. Shuddup.)
5. Also, Fig Newtons.
6. The sweater I grabbed on a whim when packing turned out to work well and be comfy; Terry even complimented me on it.
7. I had "Rest in Peace" in my head walking home, so then I put in my OMWF soundtrack (the unofficial one -- which has the appropriate spoken bits included). Yes, I have a visual track running in my head as I listen.
8. Mrs. Leary bumped into us at Hannaford and complimented my haircut.
9. We showed my grandma (we had brunch today for her birthday -- did I mention that?) my brothers travel photo albums on facebook, so I got to see some of the lovely California pictures I hadn't gotten around to looking at myself (yeah, I am like never on facebook).
Three things I did well today:
1. I was pleasant with my grandma.
2. Heading back to the car after a grocery run with my mom, I pushed a cart from a parking space to one of the cart returns (not far at all!).
3. Laundry. [Addendum: Okay, "well" might be an overstatement -- I forgot that new clothes tend to bleed, and two of my new shirts are red ... yeah. Sigh.]
Two things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
["anything that you're looking forward to, that means you're facing tomorrow with joy, not trepidation," as Ari says]
1. Feeling a little more well-rested.
2. CWM.
***
I have new reasons to be concerned about Terry, which was about the opposite of what I had been hoping for as a takeaway from today's brief time together. Sigh. The song as a whole doesn't really fit, but as I was listening to OMWF I was struck by the line "Wish I could slay your demons."
When I went to take a shower this morning, there was no hot water. (It usually takes some time for the shower to heat up decently, so I never just hop in the shower, don't worry.) I wondered if the furnace had gone out, and when I checked the thermostat I saw it was set at 60F and registering 48F. (I had thought it a bit cold when I got up, but it felt on par with just the usual "I was under flannel sheets and two blankets and now I am exposed to the air.") I went downstairs and turned the furnace on. I forgot that it takes 20 minutes to kick in, though, so I should have just gone to the gym and taken a shower there after I worked out, but it is so in my brain that I require a shower before I go and be functional -- and I am so stubborn about The Way I Do Things, that my brain couldn't even really process that as a possible alternative.
Weather.com said it was -6F at 7:05am. If I'd had a coat I trusted was warmer (or knew where I'd stuck my scarves -- see also the fact that my long coat is like v-neck, so I don't actually want to wear it outside in serious cold without a scarf) I actually would have worn it. This was the first time that after walking for ten minutes I actually felt colder after walking for ten minutes than I did when I left the house (often I'll go outside and be initially struck by the cold but after five or ten minutes of being in motion I'm fine, but this time after about ten minutes my thighs hurt and I was entertaining idle paranoia about frostbite.) One of the tvs at the gym mentioned that it was like -44 in North Dakota, so every time anyone grumped about the cold I would respond, "Well at least it's not North Dakota."
At Harvard, I headed out of the subway, chucked my metro in the recycling, and put up my hood. A young woman came up to me and I assumed she was gonna have either a sob story asking for money or would try to save my soul, but no, she said that I looked cold and she had an extra jacket. I said, "No, I'm fine -- I work just around the corner" (technically a lie, but I didn't want to get into a conversation about the ten-minute walk -- though I suppose I could have said "I work just up the street," and that would have been true but sufficiently misleading).
Speaking of adventures in public transit, my commuter rail train home stopped a bit before Norwood Central due to mechanical problems. One woman was wicked cranky. We had been stopped for like five minutes and she's on her cell phone complaining that she's probably not gonna be able to go to the gym now, and I'm thinking, "How tight is your schedule?" 'cause I usually get in to Norwood Central like five minutes later than the time on the schedule.
They've been announcing frequently recently that you should not do not get on or off a moving train (I assume someone tried to do that recently), but this time the conductor repeatedly announced that this was not a station stop and we should not get off the train, which amused me because I would have thought I would be the only person who would think, "I could walk Norwood Central from here." The cranky woman said to another passenger that she's actually done it before and yeah, she does not recommend it.
***
Due to the aforementioned train delay, we were a little late in getting to Singspiration.
MikeF and JohnP were both at the back, but I JohnP hadn't been at the last Singspiration, so he was the one I went to hug first. He hugs like... how did Laurie put it re: us CAUMC young adults? that we "hug with conviction"? He said it's hard being back at UCN, seeing people like my mom and he, said he misses us. (His family was one of the many to leave UCN in the last exodus.) He said something about my still going to UCN on Sunday mornings and I said no no no, said I knew that as soon as I moved to Boston I was not going to commute back and forth to go to UCN on Sunday mornings. (It didn't even occur to me until later that, also, UCN stopped being "my" church before I even finished high school, and the months I was home after college graduation I spent the majority of my Sunday mornings at the Congregational church.) He asked if I went to church, and I said yeah actually I hang out at a lot of churches, but my primary church is "Cambridge Welcoming Ministries, a Methodist community. It's specifically missioned to gays and lesbians, but it's a really vibrant community, lots of young people, like 20s and 30s, lots of people with seminary training so the community is very theologically engaged, lots of social justice engagement."
When I said "gays and lesbians" (I felt really disingenuos not listing the full GLBT, but the program had already begun so I was rushing a bit, and felt like if I just said the acronym so I did want to say actual words) he nodded like, "Yes, I can see how that would be important," and I was confused and tried to remember what exactly I had said, whether maybe he had misintrepreted it as reaching out to gay folk to save them from their gayness, whether I had actually said "welcoming" or "inclusive".
We talked through the whole first round of hymn requests (reconnecting with beloved I barely see totally trumps) and Elyse showed up later (looking/seeming really healthy) and he was talking to her (he said we were his favorite girls -- Elyse mentioned his wife and daughter and he said that was different, they're his "homegirls") and then the congregation started singing "Holy Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty," and Elyse automatically started singing along and I followed suit, and for the remainder of the program we actually sang all the hymns.
Singspiration is supposedly about the "old chestnuts of the faith" or whatever, but even though I've been to just about every single one since i graduated college three and a half years ago, people keep requesting songs I don't know. Elyse decided to request a hymn herself and was looking the hymnal index and I think she was gonna request "Be Thou My Vision," but JeffC kept not calling on her.
Someone requested ... iirc (yeah, I didn't actually take notes as I was chatting with folks -- the whole crew was up back, with DonT showing up late as well) "Sing to the Lord a new song" by Fanny Decker (Psalm 96:1). There was actually a significant pause as the pianist (and instrumentalists) figured out the melody. It turned out to be this really upbeat hymn, even though it consisted basically entirely of the lines, "Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord all the earth." Later in the program, JoeF said it sounded like hava nagila or something, and Elyse looked over at her mom like, "See, didn't we say that?"
At coffee hour, Bev asked me something about where I was going to church, and I basically repeated the spiel I gave JohnP except I said, "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons," and and I talked more about how engaged they are in the denomination.
Saturday, I was telling my mom about how after the December Singspiration, MikeF was asking me about my holiday plans, and I mentioned my best friend coming to town and that I hadn't seen her in person since she moved to Kansas last January, and I used both "partner" and "girlfriend" in talking about why she had moved, and he didn't appear to react at all and so I found myself wondering what it was that he was hearing me say. My mom said she thinks people mostly hear "blah blah blah."
***
-
mylittleredgirl [more info]Do not be afraid, I am with you
I have called you each by name
Come and follow Me
I will bring you home
I love you and you are mine
-"You Are Mine" (David Haas)
Five good things about today:
1. Vegetable dumplings for lunch.
2. The schedule for next Thursday's candidate is mostly done (thanks in part to Ian).
3. JohnP.
4. Telling two different UCN people about CWM and having them not react negatively.
5. I got to spend part of the train delay with my mom rather than with the cranky woman (yeah, Ari, when I said the train was moving, that turned out not to last).
I felt so meh-some in putting together last night's joy sadhana, but I felt like it was in times like that that I really should make the effort to do joy sadhana (plus I wanted to get to use that line as a subject line). "Good things" yesterday also should have included:
* I has a bff. It was good to be able to tell her the stories I'd been holding since the previous day.
* The amazing water landing of USAir 1549. Rich mentioned it when the candidate and I were walking by questing for hot water (he wanted tea) around 4pm, but I didn't really grasp the import of it.
I read about it in the metro this morning and kept getting choked up (yeah, I'm easy). The front page had: Last night a pilot on pprune.org said: "My instructors laughed when they were teaching me about ditching because it was so unlikely that anyone would survive if you had to ditch. Unbelievable -- makes me proud." [And then reading the AP story -- Some passengers prayed. Vallie Collins, 37, tapped out a text message to her husband, Steve: "My plane is crashing." For a desperate half-hour, he was unable to get in touch with her to learn that she had survived.]
* I saw pixie!MediaServices-tech.
Three things I did well today:
1. I successfully turned the furnace back on. (Housemate had showed me how a few weeks ago, but I'd never actually done it myself.)
2. I went to the gym (30min treadmill at 4.2mph and 1.5 incline -- I would have done my usual 45 minutes and just been late to work, but B was teaching [at 10:05] and I'd felt bad coming in at like quarter past nine last teaching day [I'd gotten breakfast at Spangler] and when I left yesterday I told B I'd be in at 9 the next morning and he joked, "Don't you usually come in at 8:30?" -- I laughed and said, "Nice anchoring theree, but no; I can come in at 8:30..." to which he said no that was fine, and commented to Andy how I was picking up the lingo and Andy was like, "Yeah, did you see Ian's email?" and asked me if Ian had cc-ed me on that and I said yeah, he'd forwarded it to me and then told me the story myself). Katie was all impressed that I still went to the gym after a morning that started with no heat.
3. Various work things -- nothing major, but still.
Two things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
["anything that you're looking forward to, that means you're facing tomorrow with joy, not trepidation," as Ari says]
1. [redacted]
2. Going to bed at a reasonable hour?
Saturday
-
mylittleredgirl [more info]Do not be afraid, I am with you
I have called you each by name
Come and follow Me
I will bring you home
I love you and you are mine
-"You Are Mine" (David Haas)
Five good things about today:
1. My mom's homemade sourdough pancakes.
2. I got to see Terry, albeit briefly.
3. I was at Staples with my mom and saw Self-Adhesive Foil Stars. I'd been looking for those a while back 'cause I kept giving Ian rhetorical gold stars and so decided I wanted to give him real ones, but I wasn't seeing them at places like CVS, and the Internet was coming up empty.
4. Lightly toasted cinnamon raisin bagels with peanut butter. (What? They never stop being awesome. Shuddup.)
5. Also, Fig Newtons.
6. The sweater I grabbed on a whim when packing turned out to work well and be comfy; Terry even complimented me on it.
7. I had "Rest in Peace" in my head walking home, so then I put in my OMWF soundtrack (the unofficial one -- which has the appropriate spoken bits included). Yes, I have a visual track running in my head as I listen.
8. Mrs. Leary bumped into us at Hannaford and complimented my haircut.
9. We showed my grandma (we had brunch today for her birthday -- did I mention that?) my brothers travel photo albums on facebook, so I got to see some of the lovely California pictures I hadn't gotten around to looking at myself (yeah, I am like never on facebook).
Three things I did well today:
1. I was pleasant with my grandma.
2. Heading back to the car after a grocery run with my mom, I pushed a cart from a parking space to one of the cart returns (not far at all!).
3. Laundry. [Addendum: Okay, "well" might be an overstatement -- I forgot that new clothes tend to bleed, and two of my new shirts are red ... yeah. Sigh.]
Two things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
["anything that you're looking forward to, that means you're facing tomorrow with joy, not trepidation," as Ari says]
1. Feeling a little more well-rested.
2. CWM.
***
I have new reasons to be concerned about Terry, which was about the opposite of what I had been hoping for as a takeaway from today's brief time together. Sigh. The song as a whole doesn't really fit, but as I was listening to OMWF I was struck by the line "Wish I could slay your demons."