Monthly Archives: January 2010

The State of The Blog, My Reading and My Life Address (TSS)

Posted on January 31, 2010 by | 8 Comments

So if any of you drifted over here from one of my other blogs that recently died (again), you may be wondering what is going on in terms of body, mind and soul (the themes of those blogs and this blog) in my life. Or, to word it another way, what is going on with me in terms of running, reading and my spiritual life?

Running: Not any. After my wife and I signed up for three months for the gym at the beginning of the month, I’ve gone once. Sad but true. However, only this morning I signed up for the Idita-Walk 2010, which involves walking 30 minutes a day for 35 days from Feb. 1 to March 31 for a total of 1,049 minutes. The walk benefits Boy Scout Troop 298 in Alaska. Tomorrow, the journey begins again…

Reading: As of later today, I will have finished one book for the year.

While shelving books at the library where I work part-time, I came across this book and thought it would be appropriate with the Super Bowl coming up at the start of next month (now next week). Since then, I also have picked up Black Sunday by Thomas Harris, which was made into a 1977 movie

Again, sad but true. However, also today, I will be starting Ovid’s Metamorphoses as translated by Mary Innes as part of the Really Old Classics Challenge (click on button to go to challenge’s main page). I had taken this book out of the library last year twice, with the most recent time at the end of November, and now I have it out again. The plan is to read a little each Sunday over the next few Sundays to finish in time for the end of the challenge. Today, the journey begins again…

Spiritual life: Earlier this month, I talked with a deacon at our church about what I would need to do to become a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. Since then, I haven’t contacted the diocese, but I still am interested in applying to become one.

This past month, I participated in the Sleeping with Bread meme group four times here on this blog: Surrender, Surrender; Cats, dances and bread; On stepping into the clearing and breathing; and What is the measure of your success?

I also continue to pray The Liturgy of the Hours for Morning and Evening Prayer, something I haven’t done yet today but will do here shortly before my wife and I go to Mass. In a few minutes, the journey begins again…

In truth, the journey never ends, and as J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “The road goes ever on.”

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Posted in Body, Books, Mind, Movies, Running, Soul, The Sunday Salon

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Elvis is the janitor in the basement of our library

Posted on January 28, 2010 by | 1 Comment

This is part III of an intermittent series on “Things You Didn’t Know About Your Local Library.” Parts I, II and III can be found here, here and here.

The other day I happened to be in the basement at the library where I work part-time, because as Etta James and Sugar Pie DeSanto croon, “In the basement, In the basement, that’s where it’s at,” when I saw this:

P1011130

Closeup No. 1:

Elvis photo

According to my friend “Bob” in South Korea, to whom I talked via instant message earlier this morning (earlier tomorrow morning for him), Elvis is the janitor at our library with the janitor closet clearly visible in the background.

And the reason that he has a photo up of himself? Both of us thought of it at the same time:

“Picture of the glory days.”

Closeup No. 2:

Elvis's car

Picture of his last car, of course. Bob told me:

“It all adds up.”

Bob continued:

“I bet Elvis is really into the Internet.”

Makes sense to me. The library has computers upstairs and Elvis probably has the codes to get into them. Bob concluded, that like Peter, Michael and Samir in Office Space , Elvis is:

“…figuring out ways to get a half cent here and half a cent there off his royalty payments to his estate.”

Personally, I think he already figured it out and that car isn’t just his last car. That is the car in which he drives around our little town.

There’s even a table in front of the window where I imagine Elvis making peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches “the way Mama used to make ‘em.”

If you think you’re going to escape without an Elvis clip before you leave this post, you’re wrong. Here it is (just listen, the clip is dark, but you can still hear the music), with perhaps the song being an argument for why that photo isn’t of Elvis’s car:


Tip of the hat to Bonehead, who wrote a post earlier in the month to celebrate Elvis’s 75th birthday, which had me reminiscing about Elvis already. Check out the videos there that probably coincide better with the time when the photo above was taken than the clip I provided.

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Posted in Music, The Library, Things You Didn't Know About Your Local Library, Unfinished rambling

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“Once upon a time, there existed a site called Humor-Blogs.com” t-shirts now available

Posted on January 27, 2010 by | Comments Off

Humor-Blogs.com t-shirt

Humor-Blogs.com t-shirt Johnny B. Truant version?

In all seriousness, though, I did write a complimentary review of the novel from the asshat who founded the site on my other blog and Johnny B. Truant actually likes the book too as evidenced in this post here. I have to admit that the novel wasn’t half-bad, considering the author is an asshat.

Author’s note: I have to give credit where credit is due with my wife, Kim, being the first person I know to use the phrase “tits up,” so I co-opted it from her. But don’t wield the phrase around lightly, warns a user on this forum: “Just so everyone is certain, this is a slang phrase and should not be said to someone who just lost a relative, etc. ‘I’m so sorry your dad went tits up’ would be a terrible faux pas.”

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Posted in Books, Unfinished rambling

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What is the measure of your success?

Posted on January 27, 2010 by | 1 Comment

For this week’s Sleeping With Bread post (click on the badge at right for more information about the meme), this week’s host Lamont had phrased the questions: “What turned your lights on?” and “What turned your lights off?” instead of the customary ones such as “For what am I most grateful? Least grateful?,” “When did I give and receive the most love? The least love?,” or “When did I feel most alive? Most drained of life?” and so on that we often use.

For me, how to phrase the questions this week isn’t happening as I want to reflect on a different question:

What Is The Measure of Your Success?

I awoke this morning with the song “What is the measure of your success?” by Steve Taylor (push the play button on right side of page to hear the song, sorry my blog posts are interactive). It then got me to thinking about my recent receiving of my W-2 and 1099 for last year. While I won’t share the amounts, out of the opposite of vanity whose proper antonym I can’t find in the thesaurus to describe, I will say this, in temporal terms, it is a pittance, or what many would consider a pitiful sum.

Not to be flippant, but the measure of my success obviously isn’t money. So what is it? How do I measure it? If it’s not money, how do you measure it? It’s easy to say that “in the end, the love you take/ is equal to the love you make,” but actually to attempt to put that into practice is quite another matter. Am I doing that? Am I working on the love I make or, to word it in another less humanistic way, am I spreading the love with which God has graced me?

I like to hope so, in the small ways –

by sharing not only a smile, but also a connection about the book or movie they’re taking out, with the patrons when I work behind the counter at the library.

by carrying out one of my late grandfather’s mannerisms of actually talking with the checkout people and trying to connect with them.

by letting “people in power” (in this case, limited power as with a school district or a borough, but power nonetheless) know when I talk to them for a story for the paper that I understand, or at least, attempt to understand, the bureaucratic and legislative hoops through which they have to jump every day. I should add that I honestly don’t do this out of a need to get a quote or “get the story.” It’s just a small way to let them know I know where they’re coming from (and I know I’m still not wording this right, but the thesaurus doesn’t cover the various nuances in this wasteland between meaning and non-meaning).

I could go on and on with the “bys,” but before I sound too vain (you probably think this post is about me), I’ll stop and say that I’m not always spreading love, that sometimes I, yes, even I, as hard as it may to believe, spread dissent and even hatred with the words I speak and the actions I take.

Lest I spread more dissent and hatred than I already have, I won’t repeat them here (plus out of vainglory, truth be told).

Just as I don’t seem to have the proper words for this post today, I also don’t seem to have the proper ending for this post.

So I’ll just leave you with the question, “What is the measure of your success?” one more time as asked by Steve Taylor, this time from YouTube:

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Posted in Soul

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