Time in a bottle

Jim Croce's timeless hit song written to and for his son A.J. is running through my head at the moment. If I could save time in a bottle, one of the many things I'd like to do is spend a lot of that time studying ancient manuscripts and compare them with modern theological thought. Rick Warren's latest edition of The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth am I here For? will most likely be added to my reading list soon. You ask, what does Rick Warren and ancient manuscripts have in common? They are all an exploration of the relationship between mortal man and an immortal God. Yes, big G.

While I have become persuaded that the earliest peoples of biblical times may have been polytheistic, I still believe that the one God, the creator of all things, was the God supreme and was to be regarded as the only god in reverence and worship, if not the only god De facto. In more modern times I believe that a polytheistic mindset would be confusing at the least and torture at the worse. Tampering with modern theology is most likely a dangerous thing to do, considering our background imprinting and self promoting bent. In other words, we probably have enough to worry about without trying to keep several to many deities in perspective.

This is no doubt going in a direction that would have been best posted on my other blog, Dendrite Activity @ http://fiberflashes.blogspot.com/, but it just began streaming out of my head when I sat down to update this blog.

Back to lighter material. The end of the month where I work is always a bit frantic, especially for managers. And this eom is especially frantic for me. We switched from a monthly audit cycle to a quarterly audit cycle and I reached the end of the month to find my quarterly audit done the first week of the last month of the quarter had gone on a trip into cyber space. So, nothing to do but rescan. I will be done tomorrow, just squeaking by. Of course those who know me best know that I seem to live just squeaking by. Sorry about the eos with a prep. phrase. Sometimes the mind doesn't think in the King's English. My sincere apologies to my dear friend and English professor in college Mrs. Kathleen Rousseau, God rest her soul.

Life has been so frantic lately I have failed to make time to eat any of the pansit my Filipina friend, Margylou made for me. The formal spelling, Pancit Bihon, is a Filipino dish very much like Chinese fried rice, only using very thin noodles instead of rice. There are a number of different pansits eaten in the Philippines, but the dish I am familiar with is indigenous to the main island of Luzon, and known throughout Southeast Asia. Most of the time pansit is made without meat or with finely chopped pieces of either pork, chicken, shrimp or fish. I have had all but the fish. And I'm not real sure I even want to try the fish. Filipinos regularly eat fried fish heads and rice for breakfast. I never tried it. Nor did I ever try roasted dog mostly sold on the street skewered on sharp sticks or fermented embryo duck or chicken eggs known in Tagolog as Balut. Nasty smelling stuff.

A long way to say I've been too busy to eat something a friend so graciously prepared for me and my sweet daughter-in-law, Diana. Diana is a VERY adventurous gourmand. Not the indiscriminate eating part, but the fond of good eating part. She and I will enjoy the pansit providing I have not waited too long to eat it.

Not much else to report. The basement family room remodel is coming along OK. I have two small places that still need a piece of drywall and that phase will be finished. I was able to find the power side feed from the two way switches which controlled a light just beyond the bottom of the stairs and add a light over the stairway. Made a nice difference both in aesthetics and illumination of the steps. We pulled the carpet off the steps and plan to paint them and put hooked rug treads down.

Pictures later. I am closing tomorrow night (well, tonight now!!) but off on Sunday. Woohoo. Giann and I had dinner at Sergio's in Bridgewater tonight. He makes what I think is the best pizza I have ever eaten. And I have been a major fan of pizza since 1966. Sergio is Italian born and came to the US when he was young, learned the pizza trade in the northeast, then ventured down to the valley. His sister also works with him. Go by and see them. Tell them Mr. Bruce sent you.

Georgiann and I went to Williamsburg, Virginia over the weekend. We had a nice time and ate more than we should have. Well, I did at least. We spent a couple of hours on the original site of Jamestown, which celebrated it's 400th anniversary recently. I had wanted to get to that, but decided it would be pretty difficult. I understand there were people from all around the world there. We stopped in at the Jamestown glass blowing site and spent perhaps an hour conversing with the curator and watching them make beautiful glass ware by hand.

We went to Bruton Parish Church, which has been rebuilt on the original site, but has been in continuous use as a place of worship since colonial times, for a wonderful brass and organ concert. It was beautiful. Sunday we spent mostly in the restored area just soaking up the history and remembering some of our earlier trips. This was our only winter trip except the time we came before Christmas for the Gran Illumination at the Palace quite a number of years ago. We saw snow flakes in Williamsburg for the first time. First time for us. They have snow pretty regular there. We are normally there in the spring or summer.

The pictures are a hodge podge of things. Georgiann carried the Nikon digital and I was carrying the Canon digital. We tried to take similar pictures from similar vantage points so I can compare the two cameras. I know already each has their own advantages. I just want to know which camera is the clearest and sharpest shooting on full automatic. I can manipulate both, but I want to know what each camera's bias is.

Today was the last day of my 4 days off and I spent part of the day watching the inauguration of Obama. A very historic day to be sure. I enjoyed what I got to see.

Christmas Review & Family Room Makeover

Georgiann and I had two wonderful Christmas days this year. On the traditional Christmas day we had Todd and Diana with Abigail over for dinner and Jill and Mari was with us as well. One week later, almost, Chad and Lesa were back home and came up for a dinner of pork and sauerkraut so we will have money all year. 36 years of that and it hasn't worked so far. But no sense in tampering with a tradition, hey?

Not a lot to say, just an introduction to more pictures.

We are also into a family room makeover launched rather quickly when we discovered mold behind the paneling. One of the objectives in this makeover was to enclose the open stairs a little better to protect the little ones running around now. We ended up stripping the very lovely and talented pink carpet off the stairway. They are to be painted with hook rug (possibly) attached on each tread. We are hoping for a more Early American look. The wall is coming along. Not being one that easily envisions this stuff in my head I have to work slowly. As long as we are done by May we will be fine. Georgiann is optimistic she can get April 15 out of the subcontractor. The general superintendent of the sub contractor is playing things close to his vest.

Another Year History

Wow. Can you believe 2008 is gone already? I can remember so well the 1999 predictions of world calamities as a result of Y2K. I wish I had been blogging then. Was there bogs in 1999? I don't remember any. But I said all along nothing would be any different as a result of 2000. And I was closer to right than anyone predicting problems. There were some minor local glitches in systems to be sure. But mostly it was ignorance that fueled the panic.

We had a second Christmas here at the home in Mount Sidney on New Year's Eve. The entire family was together for pork and sauerkraut. Brings luck you know. But I wanted to post some pictures from the event.