Place Holders

Wow, its been fifteen days since my last post.  And to be honest the only reason I'm probably posting right now is that I've got to start working on a brief. 

I got a new sweeper: A Shark.  I have a difficult time sweeping the carpets as my father would sweep the house whenever he came home from work, no matter how late.  Every day that I lived at home.  Every day.  However, with eight cats and two dogs a guy has gotta do what he's gotta do, particularly since my wife can't because of her handicap.

So anyway the sweeper is one of those bag less kind and does a hell of a job.  Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking and I kept emptying the full container into the waste about six or so times.  Well, with my allergies and the cat dander floating upward...... I now have an allergy attack to match any I've ever had.  Which makes it that much harder to work.  On the plus side the carpets are cleaner than I've seen them for some time.  In fact I now see stains that I didn't know were there and I will have to be shampooing it here shortly.

My wife and I went into Columbus yesterday and went to a religious book store.  Since it is not something I'm particularly interested in I was just kind of wondering around.  One of the employees asked me if I needed any help and I said:  "No thanks, I'm with the cripple."  The store employee did not seem to see the humor in it.

Finally, went to see Jackson Browne on Tuesday (thanks Sue and Keith).   Just Jackson Browne a keyboard and his seventeen guitars as my wife said.  He was great.  The concert was wonderful, except for the fat chick in front of us with the Iphone who had to have taken about fifty pics.  Now since all he did was either sit at the keyboard or sit in a different chair playing one of his guitars I'm not sure what she thought she was preserving, but preserve she did. 

Well OK, back to work to see if I can win one for a change.

I Hope You Had A Happy War On Xmas or The Holiday Of Your Choice

NOT THIS YEAR

I'm back at work after Xmas. (I just can't help myself, I need to keep fighting that war even if it is all over for the year. Incidentally, I live in the heart of Ohio in the middle of the bible belt and all over the place there are "Happy Holiday" signs. What is the matter with hill billies don't they take the war on Xmas seriously.)

At any rate I am over whelmed with work as I always am after Xmas. I think that perhaps I expect to be hit by a meteor during the Xmas break and therefore I don't have to be prepared for the week after. Unfortunately that has not yet happened. If it does, I expect that it will only happen when I am all caught up on everything. So, there is another reason not to get caught up.

A felony jury trial on the Eleventh and a Brief due the same day. Major custody matter the day before and here I sit writing in this blog. It might be a country and western song.

Reformation Sunday

Cleaner than I suspect they actually were.

So it's Halloween, is it just too trite to comment on the up coming election and Halloween like terrors it holds? Yeah, I guess so, but then I already have haven't I?

Out today and into Columbus for the ordination of a guy who was the visiting pastor at my wife's church. Very nasty fights at that church over the direction this specific church is going. The congregation, on the whole, loved the guy, but the elders hated him and wanted their own. So this guy was out and they gave the "call" to the one the elders wanted and he turned them down.

We drove up, but there was also a bus from the church taking about 50 people. Very interesting, most of the big money people were there and the elders can't figure out what is happening and why they are unable to make their budget currently. Still it is just so much like what is going on at a national level that I am kind of amazed at the similarities.

In the last several years my wife's church has had several pastors (they call them in the Missouri Synod as opposed to ministers in the Presbyterian, where I grew up). One whose wife was into heavy metal and goth and writing about the congregation by name on the Internet. Then one who wouldn't baptise a kid because he was a bastard (the kid, not technically the pastor), one who didn't want to move out to our town and who didn't like visiting sick people and wanted not to do the Christmas service because it was a time for him to be with his family. They have really been without a pastor for several years. One also announced from the pulpit that if people didn't vote for George Bush they were violating God's laws. Him they didn't fire, but he left to go full time as a military pastor.

I hear this stuff from my wife and I find it very interesting. Particularly since it doesn't affect me at all as this is the first time I have been in a church (unless attending a wedding or funeral) in probably ten years. Don't figure that there is much there that is worth much so why go. Never was much interested not from since I was a kid. Don't care.

I was brought up in the Presbyterian church, as I said and just last week at a funeral, I found out why Presbyterians say "forgive our debt as we forgive our debtors" instead of trespass in the Lords Prayer. According to the minister it is because the Scots are more interested in money than land.

Oh yeah, in addition to it being Halloween it is also Reformation Day the day that Luther nailed his thesis to the church door. A big deal for Lutherans I guess.

Listening to Buffy Sainte Marie's newest album Running for the Drum. We're going to Quakers on Sunday and then for an hour with a drumming circle, with my new native american drum. I have become so DFH like, I find myself a little much at times. I wasn't this way in the 60s. Of course in the 60s (and 70s and 80s come to think of it) I was more interested in getting high than in expanding my consciousness, or whatever (and 90s).

We've also just gotten back from another funeral. I am intimately aware of all the funeral parlors in the greater Zanesville metropolitan area. Given the number of people who are friends of or related to friends of my wife who have shuffled off this coil of tears within the last six months, I'd suggest that if you are a friend or a relative of a friend of my wife to keep your doctor close at hand.

I've also been listening to Homer in the car. I figured that since they were originally meant to be listened to that I would listen rather than try to read the Iliad and the Odyssey. I've already went through the Iliad as translated by W.H.D. Rouse into prose. Although, we've got the Rouse version of the Odyssey, I found a verse translation by Fitzgerald. That is after, of course, listening to the new translation of Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell .

Unfortunately it does look like I will have to go back to work on Monday. Drat.

The Classics

You know you just can't go wrong with the classics.

Home Again -- Almost

On the way back home and staying in the mountains of Virginia. Stopped at a nice little place called the Bates Motel. A nice young man runs it. He seems very fond of his mother and collects stuffed animals. We foresee an early start tomorrow.

Ok so once again into the breach

Ok so once again I got nothin. Question, isn't this getting repetitious?

I got Nothin

No really nothin at all.