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Thursday, July 08, 2004
My ebay addiction has kicked back in again lately, no big surprise. I've been selling off a bunch of stuff (magazines! People will give you $40 for old magazines!), and then getting things for the kitchen, and maybe I've been dabbling in lace trims a bit. We're having a garage sale a week from Saturday, though, so that's when I'm really going to clear out some clutter.
The oddest auction site I've found is The Property Room, which runs police auctions of evidence and seized property. If you're looking for a set of grow lights, a computer with its hard drive removed, a set of bolt cutters, a very precise scale, or a cheap cel phone...it's all here.
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I have aquired a new superpower. I knit.
My friend Rita brought me yarn and needles last week and gave me a quick lesson. I worked on swatches for a couple of days, using Stitch 'N Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook as a reference. Then I got bored and started making little iPod cozies. Yes, Larry the iPod has a sweater. I made a wool one, using the yarn Rita gave me, and then I got some eyelash yarn and made one for Ryan. It looks like I skinned a muppet. Very silly.
The wool one features a buttonhole, which only took me an hour and a half to figure out. I crocheted a little button loop on Ryan's, since it has a big plastic flower button. Anyway, it's a very satisfying thing to do with my hands while Dennis and I plow through our Freaks and Geeks DVDs. Best show ever.
My other small project right now is I'm glueing rhinestones to the flip-cover of my Handspring Edge PDA. It's a Handbling. I don't know why I feel so very driven to do this, but I got the unit really cheap on ebay because the cover is kind of scuffed, and pink and orange rhinestones just seemed like the best solution. I have about a third of it covered so far. I'm using 12ss stones, which are teeny, so it's taking a while, and involves tweezers. E6000 adhesive is doing a fine job, though. Once it's finished, it will need a little knit muppet-skin cozy for sure.
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Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Hip Hop Mass.
"My sistas and brothas, all my homies and peeps, stay up -- keep your head up, holla back, and go forth and tell like it is." With this proclamation, Bishop Suffragan Cathy Roskam of New York sent people on their way at the Bronx's third Hip Hop Mass, held Friday, July 2 at Trinity Church of Morrisania.
Other highlights included versions of the 23rd Psalm, adapted by Ryan Kearse, and the confession, adapted by Tom Mercer.
The 23rd Psalm
The Lord is all that, I need
For nothing
He allows me to chill.
He keeps me from being heated
And allows me to breathe easy.
He guides my life so that
I can represent and give
Shouts out in his Name.
And even though I walk through
The Hood of death,
I don't back down
For you have my back.
The fact that you have me covered
Allows me to chill.
He provides me with back-up
In front of my player-haters
And I know that I am a baler
And life will be phat
I fall back in the Lord's crib
For the rest of my life
Confession and Absolution
Merciful God
We confess we have sinned against You and our Neighbor.
We have not done right by You.
We have not done right
by other people.
We are sorry.
We want to change.
Remember Jesus, Your Son.
Have mercy and forgive us.
From now on may we try to do what you want,
To the glory of Your Name. Amen.
It's Cool.
God has forgiven you.
It's a done deal!
Things like this make me happy. We're trying to re-imagine the liturgy at St. Ned's, and while this particular approach doesn't really work for the Whitest Church in Whiteville, I like that someone is taking everything out of the big Serious Church Stuff box and playing with it. We Episcopalians do love our liturgy, but sometimes we sort of love it too much, and get upset when something new happens.
I think if the liturgy is just The Way We Do Things, it keeps us from asking WHY we do them. It's easy to just start going through the motions, because this is when we kneel and this is when we stand and this is where we sing the Gloria and we know all this because we're in the club and have gotten through the awkward part when we didn't know it. It's not comfortable when things change and all of a sudden everyone is a newbie again, but it does create opportunities for new moments of grace, for a certain phrase you've said a thousand times to hit you with its full force because the words have changed slightly and you have to pay attention again.
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On Sunday, Dennis and I did coffee hour at St. Ned's. The person who usually does it wasn't available, and the people who usually fill in weren't available, so I called Dennis and he agreed to take it on.
It all went pretty well (except for the getting out of bed at 6:00 a.m. part, since we had to drive to St. Ned's and be set up by 8:30 a.m. for the early service folks). The only thing we couldn't figure out was the art of working the giant 60-cup coffeemakers. I couldn't find anything which said how much coffee to put in them, so we just kept making pots on the 15-cup machine and filling carafes. Dennis said that the big percolators can make really bad coffee if you don't know what you're doing, and the church wasn't going to serve bad coffee on his watch. He seemed to have a pretty good time with it; hospitality is definitely one of his gifts. We went home tired and covered with little bits of coffee from the grinder, but content.
Everyone thought we were being swanky because we used the china coffee cups instead of paper ones, but actually we arrived Sunday morning and realized that we were out of paper cups and had no choice but to get out the china. Really, it wasn't that much more work, and it did look nice. I think the no-paper thing may have technically been my fault, since I didn't place a supply order, but um, yeah.
Fun fact about me: I am incapable of making Tang. Not just because it's hard to get the astronauts into the juicer, either. I think the breakdown was in the difference between 'heaping' scoop and 'level' scoop, but I made it so strong the nursery sent it back to the kitchen. Ooops. Dennis fixed it, and we made three correct pitchers out of my two crazy-strong ones.
All in all, not a bad way to make $75.00 for a morning's work. It's weird; last month I was starting to feel kind of stressed out about money, because I will have to pay for Skool for Deacons somehow, and now it just seems like little cash sources are popping up everywhere. I've got some housesitting gigs, and sales are way up on my t-shirts, and the insurance company finally settled my accident from last September, so we're going to be just fine. I wish I could have a custom message pop up when I log into online banking. Maybe something like, "God Provides, Twit. Stop Worrying."
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Sorry I've been MIA for a bit. I have much backfilling to do on the events of this weekend, which was a very very yellow kind of time, since the kitchen has finally been painted.
So, it's a Tuesday that feels like a Monday because of being off yesterday. It also feels like a Monday because I dropped my entire diet coke all over myself at lunch today. Nothing like wearing damp jeans to make a person feel cool. At least I was able to snag a dry St. Ned's t-shirt back at the office.
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