Random Dots of Monday

• I emailed the final draft of the thesis to my advisor and will meet with her tomorrow at 2 to go over it. When I saw her today and told her it was done, she gave me a hug. She is by nature a very reserved person, so it felt rather like a hug from Queen Elizabeth. Then again, QEII tolerated an arm around her back by our First Lady last week, so I suppose all sorts of miracles occur. We shall see if the advisor still wants to hug me after she reads all 70+ pages of the thing.

• Still not much happening on the job front. I have decided to put it all aside until after Holy Week, since I've got the revisions to the thesis to do, plus sermons for Good Friday and Easter as well as presiding at our Tenebrae service tomorrow night and the Good Friday service, plus assisting at Maundy Thursday and Easter, and singing the Vittoria Improperia at the Good Friday morning service at Big Old Seminary. I'm bummed that I'm not working anywhere where I could chant the Exsultet, but maybe next year, wherever I am.

• I was pleasantly surprised when I checked into the price of auto insurance with the company that has the spokesGecko. Turned out they will charge me some $800 less per year than the company we have been with for the past several years, namely the one with the spokesSnoopy. The gecko is, after all, leaner than the beagle.

• StrongOpinions is back at school after her last week's meltdown. We've got her hooked up with some resources up there that I hope will help the remainder of the semester go more smoothly. I love her madly, but it was not a good week for her to have a meltdown. I suppose it could have been worse - it could have been this week, and I would have required much chocolate and red wine to get through it all. I will still need the chocolate and the wine for this week, just in slightly lesser quantities.

• I wrote an email to a deployment officer in a diocese not my own that shall remain nameless and got a rather snarky reply: "We are the coolest most desirable diocese on earth and everyone wants to come here, so why should we be interested in you? Why are you wasting my precious time?" Oh, dear, I thought we were the church or something. I thought perhaps I was overreacting to it so I passed it along to PH, who shook his head and suggested that it was downright rude. Proves once again that the church is a human institution with all the attendant human frailties.

• I finished the icon of Sophia, the Wisdom of god. She is off getting varnished. I hope to have her back next Saturday, at which time I will post a picture of the very strange but lovely finished product. Next in the queue is an icon of Christ Pantocrator.

• We went out to dinner with in-law family (sister-in-law's brother and wife and daughters). It was a lovely evening, but that glass of sangria with dinner and another glass at their hotel suite after dinner really whomped me one. Getting up today was a challenge, and I'm still not feeling 100%. Lovely evening otherwise, although they would have been game to chitchat for another hour or two when we said we had to leave at 10 pm. We are old wusses, I guess.

• The prayers for the week, then, are that two sermons get written, that all the bulletins I've modified and proofed for this week for Saint Middle School are printed with no fatal errors, that the revisions from the advisor are within the realm of reasonability, that I will be able to fit into my rather snug cassock, and that God gives me some hints on the job front. Oh, and no rain on Sunday morning for our outdoor service on the land.

Prayer for today:

Thank you God for the wonderful sermon by DG at noon Eucharist at BOS. It was just what we all needed to refocus. Thank you, too, for folks who care even in the midst of their own struggles, and for Saint Middle School, where I have been given extraordinary responsibilities and have been applauded for my work. Keep me focused on what is really important this week. Keep me from obsessing over things I cannot change. Hold me in your hand when I feel small and in need of warmth. Bless me and give me the courage to do your work, because it is only with you and through you and in you that the work really gets done.

In your name we pray.

Amen.