Posts from November 2008

In reference to @paul #46588

Leviticus is an interesting book of the bible and one that kept me thoroughly entertained during church services when I was too young to follow the sermon.

@paul asked, "Why not edit the book and just have a whole new book?"

I was totally dismissive of the Old Testament for a while and totally ignored it. But now I appreciate how the entire bible gives great context and insight to the teachings of Jesus and his apostle Paul.

Take for example this story from the gospel of Mark.

A woman who has been bleeding for 12 years is in a crowd surrounding Jesus. She reaches out and touches his cloak and is healed. He asks who touched him and the woman in fear admits that it was her. He says, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."

She approaches in fear because according to Leviticus she is unclean and shouldn't be going around touching people and people's stuff. Now she's made this man who's a teacher "unclean". So she's expecting Jesus to be pissed off. But nope, Jesus healed her and treated her with compassion.

WITHOUT the context of Leviticus, we can see that Jesus is compassionate and brings healing to the sick.

WITH the context of Leviticus, we see that he is much more than a compassionate healer. He is revolutionary. He brings healing to a suffering woman despite her "uncleanliness" which is in direct contradiction to the law of the land and in direct contradiction to what everyone in the crowd practices. He offers hope to people who suffer under the law - which was never meant to burden people, but had been twisted in such a way that it did.

Received a friendly letter in the mail from Time Warner that they would be increasing our internet rate if we did not combine our internet with their phone service or cable.

I don't want cable and I already have a phone service so Time Warner can screw themselves. What we actually said to Time Warner is that we will be dropping them if they rase our rates. They didn't seem to care. So off we go to find a new internet service provider.

The next obvious choice seems to be Verizon. Any other internet service providers we should be considering? Maybe a local Buffalo provider?

As the Thanksgiving Holiday approaches, we will be looking for a pet sitter. We need someone to come in on Thanksgiving Day, the Friday after, Saturday and Sunday. As you may know, we have as sweet, gentle dog and two cats who need some attention twice a day.

We're always happy to pay for services or to do an exchange of pet sitting. We'll be in town the days leading up to and including Christmas day. Just not the day after. So we can do some pet sitting in kind on those days.

Had a fabulous time at the party. Super glad our friends came home. Super pissed at the surprise waiting for us when we got home.

All of our porch furniture was moved onto the lawn. One of our pumpkins smashed. Eggs smashed on the sidewalk. Mailbox taken off the front of the house. Toilet paper strewn. Eggs hidden under the door mat which we caught before we stepped on because it really wasn't that smooth. And a neighbor who lives outside on his porch but didn't see anything.

So at 2am we cleaned up the mess before we could go inside and go to bed.

Drew is much more positive than me and sees the upside to eggs hidden under the door mat which he can now have for breakfast tomorrow, lol.

and I went trick or treating... If someone offered me a bowl of candy to choose a piece, I knew it meant ONE piece. Because my parents were right next to me to smack my hand if I even LOOKED like I might take more than one piece.

Apparently, that rule no longer holds as kids are attempting to take handfuls. Although, I shame them a little bit by saying, just one please, and they reluctantly open their fist and allow several pieces of candy to trickle back into the bowl. Sometimes it is followed by a bashful apology.

But now I'm going to take control and choose for the little punks what piece of candy they get.

The funding for my program at work is temporarily on hold because of state financial problems. For the time being it cannot move forward and may not ever move forward in it's current structure.

The agency is going to restructure my program so it can be funded differently. However, any kind of funding is touchy right now due to the budget problems.

Just as I got the news, I had an individual sitting in the lobby waiting to interview for a position with my program. Oh, my. I had to tell them the position no longer existed because of funding. Which also means I wasted my time vetting and interviewing several other people for a non existent position.

Now I'm processing whether or not I think my agency will be successful in restructuring the program. If it's not, it will be an opportunity for me to try something new that I've had on the back burner ... being a paralegal!

Tonight we were at a party where a woman couldn't get enough of my husband but kept giving me the evil eye. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

At the grocery store this evening, an older woman stopped me with a question. "You look like a good shopper. Good shopper, where do I find lightbulbs?" I pointed to a few aisles down. She replied, "Thank you, Good Shopper!".

Perhaps I exude confidence and knowledge when I grocery shop?! Anway, I want "Good Shopper" to be my new nickname in my picture, instead of pastor's wife.

=)

@james was so kind as to accompany me to the Linda Yalem 5K Safety Run at UB's North Campus this morning.

The race started with bagpipers playing Amazing Grace in memory of Linda Yalem. And then we were off. I started with the 10 minute mile group and @james went with the 9mile group. I think we both regretted it and should have moved up by one so we could get out faster. I wasted a lot of initial energy dodging around people and I did run my first mile at 9 minutes, my second mile at 10.5 minutes and the last 1.16 miles at 10.5 minutes.

I was happy to end at 30.5 minutes which is a 2 minute decrease from my previous 5k. But I had bee hoping to hit 29 minutes or under. James put me to shame with his 26.5 minute run.

We left the race full of UB cafeteria food, stylish t-shirts, tired bodies, and happy feelings!

I bought this book at Talking Leaves and I'm not very satisfied with it. I don't have the receipt and I don't want to try to return it.

I'm wondering if someone would like to swap books with me. You give me something that you're not going to read again or isn't of interest to you and I'll give you Istanbul: Memories and The City.

It's a memoir of this individual's life that accounts what it is like to grow up in Istanbul. A lot of black and white photos of the city. It's written by a Nobel Prize Winner of Literature so it must be a good book to a lot of people. It just wasn't what I was looking for.

So throw something at me that might be of interest to me and I'll trade you. I really like historical fiction; memoirs (except for this one); and travel literature. Or maybe you just think there's something I absolutely should read.