Happy.

Happy.

These first few pictures are from our annual Thanksgiving morning sunrise hike. We've done this every year we've known each other, and it's a wonderful day to ground ourselves and be thankful for creation.







And later on, at my parents' house, my special Thanksgiving Tofu:



That's all. Stories later. Much love and thanksgiving.

I am thankful for a house full of tables.

I am thankful for a house full of tables.

To make up for my intermittent-at-best postage here, I'm going to make a post of all bullets and pictures.

Really, I'm just going to put the pictures in their own LI tag. It'll look a little strange, but I'm posting pictures of my dining table(s) and my butternut squash soup bowls on the internet, so I'm no stranger to strange.

Sunday night, we had 18 of our lovely friends over for a Thanksgiving dinner. In our tiny dining room. We had to get kind of creative with the seating, as shown in Figures 1 through 4, below. It was so beautiful and wonderful and delicious.

Table.

Yet more table.

The post-dessert funk. Also, some table.

And here's one of me holding Grace, for good measure. Near the table(s).

These people are as close as family to us, and we love them dearly. I'm so happy that we could find time to celebrate Thanksgiving with them, instead of hurriedly shuttling off to our respective families. I am indeed thankful.

The end.

Open Letters.

Open Letters.

Dear Cost Plus World Market,

"Minimum assembly" my ass.

Love,
Julia


Dear Scott and Sarah,

There are no words for how much I love you guys for bringing over not only your own turkey, but also your own cutting board, carving knife, and pot to warm up the gravy. I think all of our friends had pre-resigned themselves to a turkey-less thanksgiving and were delighted at the sight of the roast beast. I was also delighted to not have to clean it off my stuff. Also, thank you for raising Grace and having another baby on the way. You two make good babies.

Love,
Julia


Dear Starbucks,

It took a lot for me to come around to the dark side and buy tasty things from the imperialistic green mermaid. So why did you give me a cup of vanilla syrup today? I could barely taste the latte. I had to drink it down a little and top off my cup with Free Mystery Coffee from the engineering break room, therefore, you know it's bad. I think I deserve a free gingerbread soy latte next time I come in, okay?

With half the syrup.

Sweetly,
Julia


Dear Nacho The Groomsman, Who I Was Paired With For A Wedding On Saturday,

I love that you shaved off your 70s mustache for the wedding. That's true dedication. Also, I think you were the only other person in the bridal party who cussed as much as me. Actually, we were the only people in the bridal party who cussed at all, come to think of it. We were meant to be. Also, did you notice how we were always at the end?

During the bridal party dance, my heart pretty much overflowed with like-like when all you said was, "after this, I'm getting a white russian."

Love,
Julia


Dear Internet,

I know, I'm a terrible friend. I run away for a week and then come back and post like nothing happened and expect you to love me just as much. Please forgive me. After this post, I'm going to post again entirely in bullets and pictures.

Love,
Julia

And there was a great gnashing of teeth.

And there was a great gnashing of teeth.
Around 2:30am on Monday morning, Erik shook me awake. "Julia, you're grinding your teeth." This left me in a freak-out-induced hour or so of sleeplessness. I finally woke up again at 7am, noticing that my teeth were grinding again when I woke up. A dismal future of chewy plastic dental appliances flashed before my eyes.

Later that day, I mentioned the early morning rude awakening to my friend John, and he insisted that nighttime teeth grinding is an undeniable sign of stress. I just sort of brushed it off. Or I was interrupted by Joel. I'm sure it was a combination of both. Yeah yeah, Julia is stressed out again and it's causing freaky physical manifestations, blah blah blah. When I'm stressed out, I usually deal with it psychosomatically more than on an purely emotional level. This wasn't really that surprising to me.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn't think of any particular teeth-grindingly source of stress. I was going over this with Erik last night, listing the steady baseline of work stress and social stress but nothing really huge. I told him it was a little odd that I'd choose to start grinding my teeth right now, when I could easily list times in the past where stress had totally trumped anything I'm dealing with this week/month/year. I was actually wondering if there was something huge on the horizon that I was interpreting on a subconscious level. And then I started thinking about the word "gnashing" which always cracks me up in church when they read the part about Judgement Day. Most people are afraid of the Book of Revelations, but I'm always slightly entertained by images of a group of crazy people prancing around and gnashing their teeth. I digress.

Then Erik sheepishly said, "Oh. You've done it before, though." Maybe he didn't really have a sheepish tone, but I thought he should have sounded sheepish and took some psuedojournalistic liberties.

So it turns out I'm a habitual teeth-grinder. Thanks, person-who-has-slept-next-to-me-every-single-night-for-the-last-four-years-and-two-weeks-but-never-brought-it-up-until-now.

Update.

Update.
I know, I know.

I've had a few things going on that I just couldn't really air out on here. It's unfortunate, because airing things out on here is one of my favorite pastimes.

In other news, I have been recently alternating between giving up caffeine and deciding to start next week. My doctor highly recommended it, and I just keep reminding myself that my late-November appointment was cancelled and rescheduled for one last week. Therefore, I really shouldn't have heard her no-caffeine recommendation yet. So therefore, I raise my glass (cup) of hot tasty latte in thanksgiving for the gods of rationalization.

In other, other news, I was inspired by an old coworker, Kristin, to have a small gathering of close friends a few days before Thanksgiving. We always seem to neglect our beloved friends in favor of family at the holidays, and it's high time I did something about it. These people are as dear to me as family is, if not moreso.

Oh, and speaking of Thanksgiving, unless my icky cold develops into the flu or something, I'm going to participate in Oxfam's Fast for a World Harvest again. Every Thursday-before-Thanksgiving, they ask that you fast for a day and donate whatever you would spend on food to their campaign. Or, just cut something out of your diet, exist on simple staples, or participate in an fast-y event somewhere. I just can't bear to sit around a warm Thanksgiving feast when 842 million human beings are hungry. It changes the way I'm thankful for my own blessings.

And finally, we have a new bishop! I'm really excited. I put a lot of prayer and meditation into the decision of who to vote for (each church has 3-5 delegates, unless you're a huge church), and finally decided to vote for Canon Jim Mathes from the diocese of Chicago. He was actually my first choice from the get-go, before I even met them all. Just reading his profile, it appeared that he was the most likely to preserve unity, mediation, and the center of the church. Things got pretty nasty and political the few weeks before the election, and that's one of the huge things I refrained from writing about. I'm sure there was a lot of internet searching going on, looking up people's names and things like "bishop search" on google, and I really didn't want any search hits landing here. I was a facilitator for some small group discussions and Q&A sessions with the candidates, so it was probably a good idea to maintain a neutral image. That makes me laugh. Anyway.

I'm simultaneously looking forward to and afraid of the next few years as we adjust to new pastoral leadership in our very fragile little church community.

That's enough out of me for now. I promise I'll post tomorrow, too.

My heart is breaking...

My heart is breaking...

...with sadness and apathy and a little bit of fear that we re-elected Bush.

...with pity that John Edwards is now totally out of a job! I'd totally hire you!

...with amazement and joy that Donna Frye is doing so well as a write-in candidate in the San Diego mayoral race. Last I checked, she had 35% and the next place person (incumbent) had 33%. A write-in is beating the incumbent. Erik and I have always loved Donna Frye as a city councilmember, and generally turn to her to make sense of vague initiatives (WWDFD?). I heart her so much. Keep an eye on this race!

...with swooning as I witnessed my FightingForDemocracy! husband get home from work last night at 2:30am and walk around the bedroom wearing only his Registrar of Voters polo shirt and clearance badges and boxer briefs. Holy goodness. It's my version of the fireman fantasty.

...with despair, regret, remorse, horror, strife, etc., upon my recent discovery that Guinness, Newcastle, Boddington's, Murphy's, etc all use isinglass, a fish-based gelatin, as a fining agent. I had found out about Guinness, and told my coworker about it. He jokingly said, "I'm so sorry for your loss. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you." So I quickly fired back, "Yes, you can buy me a Newcastle," only to find out that Newcastle also uses dead fish to clarify the stout. I guess I'm stuck drinking expensive Belgian beers, then.

Walk humbly

Walk humbly.
Last week, I participated as a facilitator in my local diocese's bishop election "walkabouts." We're electing a new bishop in a few weeks, so we had all eight nominees and petition candidates come around to various places in the diocese and spend 20 minutes a pop with different small groups (~30-50). I facilitated two groups over the week, and feel deeply blessed to have been a part of such a process. The first night, I was focusing a little more on the facilitation than bishop-ness, and on how inexperienced and inarticulate and socially inept I am, and how everyone was going to think that Julia fucked up their chances of getting a solid, basic knowledge of each candidate. The second time around, sure, I was still all of those things, but I had a chance to actually pay attention to the answers a little more and try to process who I want as our bishop.

Interestingly, despite the frantic first night worries and concerns circulating in my weary mind, a response from Canon Jim Mathis from the diocese of Chicago pierced me. He asked us to fire back our own quintessential scripture message, something that defined our faith. I immediately thought of Micah 6:8. I hate to like, quote bible verses on here, but it's part of my story so hang in there. "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" This is how I live my life. I don't feel like my God requires much else of me than to be a just, kind, loving, humble person, standing up for what I believe is the right thing, and doing all of this hand in hand with God. Were God to have hands, of course.

Other people responded to the question with the God-gave-his-only-son stuff. It suddenly struck me that as a Christian, maybe I should be concerned that Jesus isn't at the forefront of my faith. My "quintessential verse" is from the old testament.

I've spent the rest of the week and weekend in a mixture of wonder and concern, going back over the questions that I've gone over so many times before, thinking I'm a lousy excuse for a Christian. This time, though, I have a more mature view of scripture and spirituality than I did when I was first coming to terms with the whole Jesus business as a child. Jesus was the son of God. A part of God himself. He was a radical in his time and as followers, it's our duty to live Christ-like lives, loving everyone as we ourselves would wish to be loved, and feeding and clothing and caring for the less-fortunate long before feeding and clothing and caring for the more-fortunate. Etc.

But I'm not sure I fully believe in sacrificial atonement -- that Jesus "had" to die to forgive all of our sins, or that it was some sort of necessary sacrifice for the sake of worldy sin. I don't fully believe that "none shall come to the father except through [Jesus]," either. I'm borrowing this thought from someone else, but if I were to go to heaven, and find out that my non-Christian neighbor (whom I loved and who loved me and was a very good person) ended up not in heaven, heaven would then cease to be heaven for me.

If we take those little disobediences, and toss in that I don't even rattle off a Jesus verse first when defining my faith, then I really don't know what to think. I may be walking humbly, but I feel totally lost.

Okay, Fine. I'll talk about politics.

Okay, Fine. I'll talk about politics.

Erik and I used some literature from the (ELCA) Lutheran Office of Public Policy's California division to help weed through the many propositions. And for the measures that LOPP does not take a stand on, the descriptions of the propositions and the reasons they declined to take a stand ended up being quite discerning for us, too. I just like getting progressive Christian perspectives on this stuff.

Their home page is:
www.lutheranpublicpolicyca.org/index.shtml

and a detailed look at each California proposition is here:
www.lutheranpublicpolicyca.org/alerts.shtml

And if that's not enough, here's a pretty detailed look at who supports and opposes many of the ballot measures. When the "for" and "against" arguments all seem to sound the same, it's always telling to then look at the list of supporters. i.e., what kinds of groups really want this ballot measure to pass/fail? And is what they want a priority for me and my community?
www.lutheranpublicpolicyca.org/supportoppose.pdf

Happy voting.