Love Stephan Pastis (make sure you click on the pic to get the whole strip)

Expensive Tastes

Recently Christy and I had a brief conversation about how much money a year I spend on beer. After a quick calculation we found the money spent was considerable and I don't even drink as much as I used to.
Because of this I have come to the conclusion that I will not buy beer anymore and this will hopefully be the catalyst I need to start crafting beer again.

P.S. THIS LIMITATION DOES NOT EXTEND TO BEERS PURCHASED FOR ME!

Preparation

We have started getting our garden ready again. Hopefully this year we will be able to actualize our expectations a little fuller. Last year we built more permanent beds and I ran water to each bed. We planted a bunch of trees and some grapes.
My Cascade hops started coming up a couple of weeks ago. I still have to make a large, climbable structure for them, probably use wire.
Christy has mad gardening skills and has a plethora of various and wonderful things planted around the property.

Here are some pics of the garden area:

My beautiful bride pulling weeds around the grapes


The result of chasing a rototiller


Some of the elements


One of two residing beautiful cowgirls on our ranch

Buzzing

Have fallen off the wagon right into a large, fragrant pile of Fair Trade Nicaraguan French Roast.
Can't really remember why I stopped drinking coffee. Maybe I will remember when I come down.

The easy way is almost always the wrong way.
-My dualistic .02

You can look at a piece of art and it can evoke in you a feeling, or impression. But that is more about you than the art. Often those feelings hearken to a time or place in your life. Or, for whatever reason, attach to a particular emotion that belongs only to you, not the work of art.
People can be like art. Some people on the surface evoke strong feelings, or impressions. In fact we all probably form initial impressions based on the affect or presence of the person we are meeting.
But you should never venture to form real knowledge of people without understanding the strokes it took to paint their particular picture.
True love should never be formed based on the image presented.
Likewise, I believe, hate cannot happen when we truly venture to know someone.

The Peace that Passes

I got a message from an old co-worker/friend yesterday that had as its subject line the name of an older man we used to work with. I knew this could only mean one thing.
I spend a lot of time thinking about "high" things, I suppose. Stuff like god, ways of thinking and being, philosophy and religions. I haven't thought about Jim for a number of years. Jim did not dwell on those issues but his life warrants reflection.
He was faithful. To his wife, his family, his job. You could set your clock to Jim.
He was kind. He was honest. He was loving. He was peaceful in his own way.
It kind of angers me when I think about the stuff I give attention to, and see other people give attention to, and I rarely dwell on or around life's true sages, like Jim.
Is it more important to make waves in life or to be a steady foundation?
Jim should be famous for the virtues he practiced daily.
I want to live my life more like Jim Miller did.

Being

Tonight I was able to meet some wonderful new people in Chico at the Sierra Nevada Brewery.
The segue into meeting these people was my connection to Emergent Village. I originally got involved with Emergent Village and the movement because of its peaceful pursuit of asking questions. Tonight was a reaffirmation of that along with a calm assurance amongst the tension of certainty and doubt. It is so wonderful to sit amongst a group of people (agnostic, conservative, gay, progressive, and otherwise) and honestly just "be" without any label or ideology distracting or debilitating our fellowship.
I look forward to following a couple of my new friends, notably Adele (who you can follow here and here) and Patrick (who you will find here)
Thanks friends.
Be at peace.

I would rather

be reading about comparative religion and philosophy.
Instead this semester I will be reading about Special Education Law, Assessment & Evaluation, Technology in Specialized Environment, Teaching Reading/Language Arts.

Ughhh...

Itchy & Scratchy

I used to not get poison oak, bad, until my mid-twenties. Now I get it so bad, I get it somewhat systemically (read: my lymphatic system is kind enough to spread it for me to the "warmer" parts of my body)
I currently have a student who has it pretty badly.
My lips started itching a couple of days ago.
I think I contracted it from grading his homework.

moral: homework can be bad for you!

Testing twitterfeed

Anyone else use Twitterfeed?
Happy with it?
Use something else?
Let me know, thanks.
peace

WOW!

Go here, read this!

HT: Tony Jones

Thinking

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Recent Happenings...

Ok so it's be a while, and I hold a loose definition of "a while"

First and foremost we welcomed the newest addition to our clan on May 31He is a wonderful little guy. We have been graced with great kids and I love them dearly.
Christy is radiant when she is a mom and I love to watch her love my kids.
I added his name to the roster on my arm and got a little something else on my other arm. If you want to see those head on over to my Facebook page.

We have been crazy busy this year. Obviously waiting for the new guy to show up. Surgery on my hand again. Work. School (including one class I am taking this summer...argh). And all those pesky animals Christy likes to let hang around (in fact I get to stack hay tonight when I get home from class...woo hoo!) Big garden.
Pics coming.

Hope you all are doing well, please drop me a line.
Peace

Lyrical Addiction

Check this interview with Bill Mallonee over at Homebrewed Christianity.

To Ryan and Holly

Wow

It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to
save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved
25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases. - Bono

Yellow and Blue

I experienced pride and cowardice simultaneously. Maybe that is not so rare. Maybe cowardice is born from a sense of pride, a sense of protecting what is yours to the point of running away with it.
I did not want to talk about it with her because she seems so smug and certain that I am not safe to say my thoughts without a feeling of condemnation. Why do we have to protect our ideas so vehemently, so violently? I felt that if I didn’t come away converted to her idea there wouldn’t be any satisfaction unless I at least felt like I was guilty for holding to my idea. So I refrained from uttering a syllable of my thoughts other than the refrain, “I don’t really want to talk about this.”
I am tired of the two-side systems of our societies that cannot seem to operate unless they have some perceived threat of the other who is always out to undermine or destroy what is theirs. And yet, isn’t that what I am making of her, and her, and him, and them?

Um...

My wife and I have worked with kids for years who are considered severely emotionally disturbed in the highest non-corrective, restrictive environments in the state of California.
We have experienced a lot of violence.
But NEVER on the scale and organization as this

damn!

Wow

All I can definitively say is that it did not look like this before my daughter got a hold of it!

This was a "rah-rah" for my nephew's Cub Scout and Weblos troops that she has made some sort of statement with