a hurricane of yuck

On the agenda for the day: visit Aunt Terri and Uncle Bob, possibly visit Aunt Mary Lou and Uncle Tom, possibly visit with Aunt Alex and Uncle Vern when they come visit my parents (Uncle Vern is my Godfather), then off to spend the night visiting Candace and zeppelinmage and playing games! I'm also going to stop in at Payless today in hopes of finding some nice new shoes for work that have a fairly low heel and of course black so they'll go with most everything I have that I wear to work.

I was planning to attend church at the UU church in Nashua, the same church where quantumswordsmn and chenoachem brought me twice before and where I first started considering becoming a UU. Since we're visiting Candace and zeppelinmage tonight, and since they have a UU church down the street from them, I've decided that it might be nice to visit a UU church to which I've never been, and perhaps introduce friends to Unitarian Universalism. And it's a Welcoming Congregation and seemingly still has an active Welcoming Congregation Committee.

It was by far a very interesting weekend, but I need sleep so here's the Cliff notes version:

• Did laundry on Saturday. Not my idea of excitement, but necessary. Got it done. Yay clean clothes!
• Went for yet another four-mile walk by myself and it was glorious.
• Did some packing for the upcoming move. Still haven't found a place yet but we have a couple of prospects. There's a possibility of a house we might be able to rent from someone I know but it won't be available until September, which means we might end up renting a summer place. We'll see.
• Helped painted_wolf proofread her paper.
• Listened to some awesome new music, but you already read about that. ;)
• Went to fellowship this morning for servie and the annual meeting. I got the "You Put Your Whole Self In" award for being extremely active and helpful. Very unexpected!
• We spent most of the afternoon hanging out with Sarah and Randy, watching a bunch of those real-life forensic science shows and playing Zombie Fluxx.
• Watched the first five episodes of Doctor Who season four (new series) and oh holy crap. I love Donna! I love the return of a classic species!

Very busy week ahead. Lots of meetings and traveling and presenting. Life is going to be crazy busy for a while with two jobs and all. I hope I have the energy I had when I did this sort of thing thirteen years ago (except I have one less job this time).

Before I start my morning ritual of getting ready for work, I wanted to share this one. This is not critical, just sharing some rather amusing irony observed.

Yesterday our minister prepared and excellent service focused on Buddhist teachings. She did a great job of presenting the concept of not finding happiness in the material but rather through compassion for all life around us. It also touched on our very consumerist society and how we really should be happy with the bare necessities. Our minister used examples from her own life to show how consumerism plays a part in our lives and how often one purchase leads to a spiral of purchases, how we can find dissatisfaction in a culture filled with abundance and so much choice. I thoroughly enjoyed it! The irony came in what followed.

First, a little background: the fellowship hall was originally designed to be twice the size. When it was first constructed they ran out of funds and were not able to fully build out, meaning they built what they could with the hope of someday finishing it. The fellowship has grown and there isn't enough room to have the social hour after service in the foyer. A lot of the programs the fellowship creates end up hosted elsewhere because of lack of space. Thus there has been an effort to design, fund and build an expansion.

After the service on not finding happiness through the material and commentary on our consumerist society, we held a meeting of the membership. This meeting was to hear the results of the feasibility study on a capital campaing for the building project. We were rallied to get excited about raising funds to expand a building. There was also discussion on how the capital campaign would affect the usual annual budget drive and the need for an endowment. There was also discussion on how the expansion of the building would bring additional maintenance costs and cautionary tales of how renting the space to other groups may not be a good idea since that would add to building wear and tear and that the returns would be diminished as a result and the fellowship might not make much money from it to support the budget.

Oh the irony! lol

For the most part it was a relaxed weekend even though I did some running around. We got some stuff done, which was very good.

( behind the cut )

I'm probably going to go to church for the first time in a very long time.

I've been thinking about Unitarian Universalism since quantumswordsmn and chenoachem talked me into attending a UU service at their former church in Nashua. It seemed all fine and well, but at the time I wasn't interested in going to church every Sunday. To be honest, I'm still not, but I think it's time for me to do it for a couple of reasons. For the past couple of months I've been thinking about it as a means to bring me more into the community, to find a sense of belonging. I also think I could use it if for nothing more than some grounding and some help in finding my spiritual center since I don't have others readily available to help me with that anymore.

What really made up my mind was that the local fellowship submitted a DVD for cablecast about Unitarian Universalism. I listened to it and did some web surfing and reading up on UU and decided that I agree with just about everything (except the every Sunday going to church, but I'm willing to compromise) so it would be worth the socialization and building up community connections to go and find my spiritual center perhaps.

I think I'm ready for this. I could use all the help I can get.