on liturgy

Yesterday we visited a church in the area, the type that enjoins clap offerings and holds at least two alter calls per service. During the first of these alter calls, while the band (older women with microphones and a young guy on drums) repeated the chorus of a five-line song about twenty times, I noticed a hymn book in the back of the chair in front of me. Joyful, joyful. I picked it up and hummed “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” in my head. Suddenly I noticed that an older man was kneeling beside me and had his hand on the arm of my silky-soft pink sweater.

“Excuse me,” he said “but I feel the Lord drawing me to you. I noticed you from across the church, and you’re sitting over here with your head down.”

“I’m reading,” I replied, a bit astounded.

“The hymn book,” he rebuked me gently.

At the risk of sounding defensive, I said: “Yeah, there’s good stuff in here.” I eyed the older ladies to my right and to the front, who were likewise being quiet, who might, even, occasionally, pick up a hymn book by virtue of their upbringing. But then, I’m young, and I’m wearing jeans and a pink sweater. I must like rock music, and, by default, anything passing itself off as such.

The man was telling me that I was too “drawn in” to myself, asked me what was bothering me, what he could pray about. “Uhhh…” I said “I’m new to Sandpoint, and…” and I’m church hunting, pray for a good congregation?

“The wild north, it confuses and scares you,” he informed me.

“Actually,” I said “I’m from Bonners Ferry.”

The man eyed me skeptically. How resistant I was being to the Word Of The Lord. He prayed for me anyway, however. I had trouble making his words out amid the cacophony; something about “this sister having no fear to praise Jesus.” I said thanks, he left, and I re-shelved the hymn book. One wouldn’t want to offend the brethren by being still or meditating on anything that had existed for more than 50 years. This free-love praise segment required intense devotion. Overt expression, or else. God could fit into no other liturgy, unless you, too, aged more than 50 years.

Business tripping

Sunday: hotel in Spokane and not much further

We get up at 5 a.m. to catch our flight, only, due to daylight saving’s time, it’s sort of 4 a.m. No mishaps there, though; we manage to get off in time. We leave Spokane at 6:10 and get to Chicago around noon local time (airlines, by the way, don’t serve food unless they’re traveling overseas, I think). We had planned on continuing to Montreal, but our flights have been cancelled and the earliest we can get anything in to Montreal is Tuesday night. The conference starts Tuesday morning, and we’re sort of putting it on, so that isn’t quite good enough. We wait in line at the customer service desk, watching it grow to epic portions behind us; watching passengers freak out at the service people in front of us. Apparently, this winter storm put a lot of flights and even airports out of commission. As we stand in line, we call the airline, talk to other passengers and our guy in Montreal. Ottawa and Burlington are also no-gos; we get a flight in to Toronto for the next morning after hearing there’s a train from there that arrives three blocks from our hotel in Montreal. We get up to the desk and ask where we might be able to find our luggage. We get 50 percent off a hotel stay in Chicago, and track down the office where our baggage has been locked– but nobody’s there. Kevin and Bonnie go look for someone to unlock the door, and Donna and I wait, sitting on a rail because there’s nowhere else to sit. Donna in the meantime gets on the phone to reserve train tickets, and discovers they’re already all booked for the next day. Hertz is also out of one-way cars. Apparently other people have already cleverly routed themselves through Toronto. Finally we get a ride: one of the conference speakers lives in Toronto, and is willing to rent a round-trip van (since we’re paying for it) to fit us all. Bonnie brings back someone to get our luggage out, and we go to eat and then take the shuttle to our hotel. By now it’s almost 5 p.m. We have to be up at 3:30 local time anyway (1:30 our time; 12:30 old time) to catch our morning flight, so we figure it’s about time for bed anyway. Chicago theoretically has some cool stuff to see but today is not the day I’ll be seeing it. I kind of just want to take my shoes off and put my feet up and have some tea. Herbal. The hotel has an armchair, and some chamomile teabags.

I’m beginning to see why people don’t like traveling on business. Mishaps are ok if you aren’t on a schedule; you can always just explore the mishap, sleep in, and have a good story to tell. When, however, you know you have to get somewhere to keep 100+ conference attendees happy, it’s a little different. The 100+ conference attendees aren’t going to be satisfied with a quaint little story about how the weather prevented them from getting their money’s worth.

Monday: taxi in Chicago, rental across Ontario and Quebec

Wow, 3:30 comes early when it’s not 3:30 in your head. Predictably (although we did not have the fortune of predicting it), our flight is delayed. In Toronto, things finally go a little better; customs is the easiest I’ve ever seen, and Richard kindly picks us up from the airport. We proceed to drive across a now-sunny stretch littered with abandoned shoulder-bound vehicles; carcasses killed by the storm. I’m in the back seat with Richard’s son, a 15-year-old intent on playing Final Fantasy IV. We get in to Montreal at 5, I take a 10-minute walk outside and then we assemble conference stuff until late.

Tuesday: training day (I’ve now been on the job a week-plus)

As I’m looking in the mirror getting ready, I realize that I should have plucked my eyebrows. I’m supposed to be meeting people from the UN and the Canadian government today.

I don’t actually meet those people, but I do meet others. I go to sessions in my newly-purchased (too funky, I worry, as I scrutinize my feet) brown oxford-style lace-up heels, take notes on localization and translation memory technology and text source quality and shake hands with a lot of people. I attend a speaker’s cocktail reception after, and another reception after that, and try to schmooze without imposing on anybody (schmoozing in two languages is cooler than schmoozing in one). I get business cards and ask specific people about potential articles they could write for us, and converse with young marketers and programmers from London and Quebec and Barcelona about the importance of spending quality time with your children (though none of us have kids). I come away with a high, or headache, from being so important. I go up to my room on the 33rd floor and look out at the city. This is pretty much all I’ve seen of it, and I’m tired (my calves are killing me from being in heels all day) yet I conclude that though traveling can be a pain, even just for business it’s worth it.

Two days of conferencing to go, then it’s home to my husband, who misses me.

Ten things I’ve learned in four weeks of being a housewife

1. If you put your husband’s fine merino sweater in the dryer (even 20 minutes on gentle cycle, apparently) you will magically get a new you-sized fine merino sweater.
2. Men, even clean men, leave their dirty socks on the floor.
3. Men do not like being given a running stream of advice when they are attempting to make an omelet.
4. Men have specific places for things. If the place happens to be on top of a pile of junk, and you clean up the pile of junk, they will lose their equilibrium, and therefore, their keys and wallet.
5. Men often resort to giving presents they know they will enjoy. Thus, if they give you chocolate, hide it.
6. Men (at least some of them) get up in the middle of the night to eat chocolate.
7. Men (or at least men over 30) like to relax/unwind after work more than anything else.
8. An entire shelf in the fridge needs to be relegated to beer, just in case.
9. It is possible to spend an entire day cleaning up a not-so-dirty apartment, and it is possible to spend an entire afternoon making a not-so-elaborate dinner.
10. Shopping for luxury sheets with someone else’s money is fun.

(I need to find an intellectually stimulating job. I’m starting to sound like a matronly advice columnist)

Belize highlights

1. exploring Actun Tunichil Muknal, the “Cave of the Stone Sepulcher,” or supposed entrance into the Mayan underworld, where the peoples of the Belizian jungles performed their sacred rituals, including human sacrifice, more than a thousand years ago. We paid a guide to take us through the winding passageways– some nearly entirely underwater– and up into a cathedral-like room where the rituals took place. Minus aging and calcification and flooding, nothing had been much disturbed since the Mayans left it– the locals were too terrified of the place to loot it, and archaeologists found it difficult to navigate.

2. staying on Caye Caulker, a backpacker-friendly island with no roads save the packed white sands over which the golf carts used for transportation traveled. Granted, there’s not a lot to do on the island itself– most activity is directed outwards, towards the barrier reef. We went snorkling (those are nurse sharks and another snorkling boat–slightly overexposed by my camera) and took windsurfing lessons for an hour, both of which resulted in sunburn. Otherwise we wandered around, eating lobster or fruit or ceviche or barricuda, and tried not to get bit by sandfleas.

3. hearing Scott describe how much more useful contact with people was to find out information that could save money, time, or even life itself than mere research. In slightly out-of-the-way places, little was listed on-line, and guidebooks got out-of-date too quickly. Other travelers and local people provided excellent information, on the other hand. You did have to pay attention to what they said, and retain it, though. A good example of this: I booked a place on Orbiz for the first night in Belize city; a place that sounded great from the on-line description. It turned out that the “king-sized” bed was less comfortable than the floor, and the “beach” the hotel was close to was nothing more than a few square feet of dirt behind a concrete retaining wall. The night before we left, we were in Belize city again, and, at the recommendation of another traveler, stayed a few streets away from the first place in D’Nest Bed and Breakfast, at almost exactly the same price, in a four-poster mahogany bed with perfect pillows. Breakfast the next morning was another highlight — succulent and filling, served in three courses in an ancient dining room.

Done done

The meaning of this contrastive reduplication (a term I learned in Grammar 518) is that I have just submitted the final grades for my sections of English 102, at four minutes to five the Monday after final’s week. I am now finished with Grad school.

This is, of course, barring complications. I don’t have my diploma yet; not even my own final grades. I had a nightmare last night that I got a B- on my last paper.

Biblical footwear

Every winter since I can remember, my toes have turned dull purple from the cold, and stayed that way until spring. This is not an exaggeration; it has something to do with my poor circulation. I remember walking around in the snow as a kid and thinking what a luxury it must be to have warm feet.

This winter I bought sheepskin boots. The Ugg knockoffs beloved by sorority girls. I have to say, though, that in this respect they have some sensical basis for the ugliness of their fashion. My toes are still pink and toasty, and I have been traipsing through the snow for weeks. I like the snow much better now; I do not cringe when I see the flakes falling, knowing I must trek through it.

I mentioned this to my fiance: “the man with good footwear fears not the winter,” I said. “That should be a proverb,” he said.

“It is,” I replied “‘She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for they are clothed in scarlet.'”

“Scarlet” is perhaps more accurately translated “the best material.” And what better material did they have for winter boots in 800 B.C. Palestine than sheepskin?

Traveling with directions

Michal sent me directions to her place in Portland today, hoping, she said, that they were less cryptic than the directions I had left her on a door in Paris once. I had almost forgotten about those directions.

I had gotten to this apartment in Paris, rented out by my host brother, a self-proported would-have-been count, had it not been for the revolution. Alas for him, the revolution took place, and the apartment was a miniscule trash bin. At least, the way he had left it when he vacated for Christmas — I cleaned the place, waiting for Michal, Tara and Ashleigh.

The next day I waited. I sent multiple e-mails to my visitors, in the event that they were lost but near a computer. To venture to the internet cafe safely, I made a notice stating where the key could be found, and stuck it on the door. Now, this area was not particularly steller, and most Parisians know at least a little English, so I used stealth in crafting this notice. I made it so cunning that no English-as-a-second-language-learner could comprehend it. I referred to the earth (the doormat) as “Gaia,” and the riddle for key was something like “Island off the coast of Florida plus an R&B singer.” I did not put the key under the doormat, mind you — I put the key to the mailbox under the doormat, and the key to the door in the mailbox. Actually, as I recall, there were three keys, since the door had three locks. This also was encoded.

Fortunately, my visitors never had to decipher this. I returned before they had found it, and eventually, they showed up and I let them in.

Now, on to Portland.

Good fruit

I’ve been eating pomegranates lately. They are probably the most interesting fruit I’ve ever seen — and seem created for the express enjoyment of man; to get at the seeds, glistening ruby-firm in honeycomb packed rows, one needs an opposable thumb. One must peel the membranes back, and, bit by bit, glean the fruit from its surrounding packaging, turned in on itself like a maze, like a womb. The vitamin-rich bubble of juice and fiber explodes between the teeth, and the inner seed crunches, nut-like. This is delightful to the palate and good for the body: protein, antioxidants, linolenic acid. And yet it is relatively easy to prepare: you peel it. In the right locales, peasants can pluck these off trees.

Man, being the arrogant animal that he is, would rather toast his own genius by filling his belly with Twinkies. Twinkies contain so many things that man, trying to improve on nature, invented to save time and money: shortening, enriched white flour, modified corn starch, high fructose corn syrup. Wrapped in plastic for freshness. These, too, you can peel, and peasants can purchase them at gas stations. This is why the peasants, in America, are prone to diabetes.

Losing stuff

I went to Oregon for Thanksgiving with my mother, father, two brothers, sister, brother-in-law, and fiance. Another brother rendezvoused with us. We stayed for three days. This evening we returned to Idaho, in separate cars. As we pulled up to my apartment, I checked my pocket for the keys. Not there. Nor, as far as I could find, anywhere else. My fiance helped me look; took my computer bag out and searched it, as I searched my backpack, but all search was vain. I got back in my sister and brother-in-law’s car; my fiance left for Sandpoint. My brother, returning in the other vehicle, had a key; no keys for work, but at least I would be able to get into my dwelling.

Some time later, with my sister’s in-laws, waiting for my brother, I decided to search my computer bag again. Only the computer bag had now gone missing; the last time I had seen it, it was outside, being searched. Suddenly the loss of the keys was put in perspective; keys are fairly replaceable, even if one does need to get them to get into one’s mailbox, dwelling, office, office building, etc. A computer, with three almost-done term papers shimmering in its memory, (along with countless other files) and its bag, also containing the notes and research for said term papers (and 15 graded student essays), is not a good thing to lose three weeks from graduation. I began to wonder: would I have time to re-do all that work in three weeks? Given the missing research, it was not likely. But perhaps the computer was still sitting outside my apartment. Omaha steaks had been stolen off my doorstep on more than one occasion, but maybe the college students wandering by would consider stealing a computer bad karma. Or maybe nobody would have noticed it yet. My brother-in-law jumped in the car and drove back into town to see.

It was still there. So I am typing on it. And I still care less about my missing keys.