Get Her Words Out

Buffy Season Eight #5 "The Chain"

"You don't even know who I am.

But I do."

Triennium

I've been struggling to think of what to say about Triennium.

Some of it was really great, especially my small group.  They seemed to be much more engaged than the groups I've had at Montreat.

I also enjoyed meeting colleagues, seeing friends and having a community for a week.

On the other hand, some of it was painfully bad, like the preacher on Friday night who talked about how, in those places in the world where there is injustice, Christ is still being crucified.  I apparently missed the memo where we repealed the Reformation.

The other painful part was the blisters on both my feet for the first three days.  There was so much walking and I barely made it back to the dorm on Wednesday night.  After that I got a little bit of second wind and things got better.

There are pictures in the "PYT/Purdue" album on the right.

Three Years

Update 7/23:  I'm back and I had a great time, but right now free time is for reading Harry Potter, so I'll write about Triennium later.

At 5:00 Monday morning (seven hours from now) I will leave here to drive to DIA, so that I can catch a plane to Indianapolis so that I can catch bus to West Lafayette so that I can go to Triennium.

I'll be back late next Sunday night with pictures and (I hope) lots of amusing anecdotes to share with you.

This made me laugh

So the local Outback closed without warning this weekend, after losing money for all of the four years it's been here.

But to read this editorial piece from the Greeley Tribune, you'd think it was a tragedy of the-Dodgers-leaving-Brooklyn proportions [emphasis mine]:

Closing of Greeley's Outback was a sad experience

Guest Commentary
July 12, 2007

 
I'm glad my son, the manager of the Greeley Outback Restaurant, was out of town and didn't have to witness one of the saddest things I've seen.

Late Monday afternoon, I had an appointment near the Outback at CenterPlace, 47th Avenue and U.S. 34 Bypass. Here's what I saw driving by from the west: a large yellow moving truck in the parking lot on the west side of the Greeley Outback, people carrying out equipment, loading it in the truck, the benches from the front porch and round tables waiting their turn to be loaded.

OK. Feeling like I was going to cry or throw up or both, I drove by the east side of the restaurant. That did it. There was a signage installation truck parked in that parking lot. Nope, not installing a sign, but removing the large red lighted letters that spell OUTBACK. Whoa!

It was truly the saddest thing I can remember ever seeing. It actually took my breath away.

Waiting for my appointment, there was another girl there. She recognized me as my son's mom, and told me that she "used" to work there at Outback, that she'd spend the better portion of that day looking for a job. She seemed stunned and sad. She was concerned about my son; I thought that was sweet. She was concerned about the "regulars" and how sad they will be. So, except for a few, all are looking for jobs.

So, I went to my appointment and about an hour later came out, and boy that sign guy was quick. No more bright red OUTBACK signs anywhere. As I rounded the west side again, there was a girl on a ladder unscrewing the "To Go Curb Side" parking signs from their poles. By the next morning, no one would ever know that Outback had been there, except all of us! Oh, they left the signature green roof.

Now, I'm the first to acknowledge that this stuff happens, everyday, everywhere -- corporate America all right. I'm just saddened that a great Greeley restaurant is closed. Most will agree that the staff was great, the service was great and obviously, the food was great. We will miss that Bloomin' Onion, the funny coasters, figuring out if you are a "Sheila" and the purple ceiling, just to mention a few things I will miss.

Thank you Greeley Outback for your commitment to this community and your unselfish spirit of giving. Good night and goodbye Greeley Outback -- you did us proud!

Debbie Pilch is a member of the Greeley City Council. She represents Ward IV.

Grump

I just got back from the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which I really enjoyed, but I have a movie going grump that I want to register.

As someone who goes to a lot of movies by myself, I have to say that I am not a big fan of the "let's send one person ahead to hold six seats for us so the rest of us don't have to get there until five minutes before the show" thing.

I am all for first come, first served, and if someone gets to the theater before me I'm cool with them getting a better seat than me.  I just don't understand why they should get six better seats than me.

Here endeth the grump.

"No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess." *

While I had no problem with the sermon I heard yesterday as a whole, there was one side point or illustration that just struck me wrong.

The preacher started talking about the wonders of modern technology and asked why we have things now that we didn't have in the past, in effect he was asking "why didn't Shakespeare have an iPhone?"

I didn't even know that this was a question that needed to be asked, and I definitely didn't know that there was a theological answer to it.

The preacher's answer was part intelligent design and part special revelation.  You see, he said, the knowledge to build these modern marvels was always out there, but we couldn't have it until God decided to reveal that knowledge to us.

In other words, the only reason Shakespeare didn't have an iPhone was that God didn't think it was time for us to have iPhones yet.

The first problem I have with that is the image of God as Carol Merrill.  "Let's see what we have behind door number two . . . it's Special Relativity!"  It also makes God seem more than a little capricious, arbitrarily deciding what we can know when.