I was driving in to work this morning and heard this: This I Believe: There is No God by Penn Jillette.

I knew about Penn’s position on God, but this was a nice, short essay (even better if you listen to it, he’s an enjoyable speaker to listen to, but the whole transcript is up to read right now).

I had a really great weekend.

Meeting of Swedish friends!

Clockwise from top left: Azi (from Western PA), , me, , Morgana (from Maine), Sand (from Sweden), and Grifter (from Sweden)

DC Linuxchix-PhillyChix meeting!

Not sure why this turned out so grainy, hopefully someone got a better picture. From left: Erin (Philly), (DC), (DC), Steph (Philly), me (Philly), (Philly)

Sunday morning I got up before everyone else and did some cleaning up of the beer bottles and dishes from the evening before, and then got to work on making pancakes for our guests. The Swedes had never had pancakes for breakfast before, and were shocked when we put butter on them. It was an amusing breakfast, and everyone was stuffed when we piled into cars to drive down to Philadelphia.

Morgana and Grifter rode with Michael in the Civic, and Sand, Azi and I rode down in Azi’s Prius. The idea was that one local would ride in each car to help if we got lost, but I don’t know anything about the city and I just wanted to ride in the Prius ;D The Prius is a great car, the whole dashboard display of gasoline engine/electric engine/battery usage was so cool. It also tells you how much gas mileage you are getting, so Azi was able to show off his coasting ability that he’s refining that uses as little power as possible. Nice. I want one.

We arrived at the Constitution Center around noon, parked in the parking garage right by it (probably a mistake, since it was so expensive to park there). On our way in the bottom of the cars were searched with a mirror on a pole to check for bombs or something. Azi and I were somewhat surprised by this, but our Swedish companion just said “I thought you’d be used to this sort of thing by now.” Sigh.

It was a beautiful day for this meeting. We all waited in front of the center to meet with the LinuxChix. We decided to go out separate ways once we all got together. Michael went with Morgana, Sand, Grifter and Azi, and I went off with the LinuxChix.

Amusingly, we both chose to have lunch at the same place, the Independence Brewpub near Market East station. Disappointingly they were out of their yummy pale ale %( but the food was good, and so was the conversation. It’s fun to meet up with LinuxChix, you always get such a great mix of smart people!

After the long lunch us Chix went to visit the Liberty Bell (this is where I apologize to for going to see it without her – I’m sorry!). This was quite an experience, Erin said she’d write an essay about it and I’m considering writing my own. They now have security, metal detectors and x-ray machines that everyone has to go through to get to the bell. It’s absurd! The detectors are so sensitive that you need to take off belts, watches and anything that even has the smallest bit of metal. We all decided that this security nonsense is not worth it, people need to stop being so scared. Once you go through that and put your clothes back on, you walk through this building that has lots of informative displays, complete with lamps shaped like the liberty bell. It all had the post-modern feel that I’m not a big fan of. Eventually we got to the bell. Erin took a couple pictures of some of us in front of it (we’ll be swapping pictures soon, so I’ll post a link to them when I have it).

After seeing the bell we walked outside through gates, and were stopped in a “gate pen” with a bunch of other people and spoken to by a park ranger dude about the buildings across the street. I couldn’t help feeling l
ike herded animal while he blabbered on about the buildings where our freedom and democracy were etched out. See why an essay about this all is begging to be written?

By the time we saw a couple buildings it was close to 4PM when I was due to meet with Michael and company again. I said goodbye to the Chix and we went our separate ways.

Michael had a nice time too, I’m no sure where they all went, but he got this nice picture of Morgana, Sand, Grifter and Azi in Philadelphia:

We left Philadelphia shortly after 4PM and went back to our house. I heated up some apple pie that we got from Whole Foods, which went over very well, there wasn’t any left by the end of the evening. dropped by around 7:30 to meet everyone. Soon after Morgana and Grifter were tired so they went back to the hotel they were staying at in Quakertown, but Azi and Sand were sleeping at our place, so we all stayed up until about 10 watching MST3K.

By then I was beyond exhausted %) I didn’t even bother with the dishes.

And now I’m back at work, Michael stayed home this morning to see them all off. The two cups of coffee I had this morning hardly put a dent in how tired I am, but I can function well enough, it was so worth it!

I’m going to bed so early tonight.

Mmmm coffee.

More later.

Shortly after leaving Crabby Larry’s (which was quite good, their Red Ale is yummie!), we got a call from our online friend Sand from Sweden who was planning on visiting tomorrow.

“We’re running a bit ahead of schedule, mind if we come a day early?”

A day early would mean about 8pm that night. How could we refuse having him and Morgana (from Maine, we’ve stayed at her house before) for an extra day?

When they arrived they had a surprise. They brought along our good friends Azi (from Western PA) and Grifter (from Sweden). YAY!!! %D!

We had a great night with much beer and wine and talking.

Today we’re driving down to Philly, I’ll be meeting up with the DC Chix while Michael takes our friends on his own tour of Philly.

I’m having a lazy day. It feels so good.

Thursday evening we didn’t have plans. I spent a bunch of time in the evening organizing my email, which I do every couple of months when my inbox exceeds 300 messages. I had known about tagging in mutt, but this was the first time I used it to organize my email – what a difference! Tags are great. I also started putting together an .addressbook, after talking to about mutt addressbooks on Tuesday, or more specifically the fact that I don’t have one and that’s WEIRD! I guess it is weird, whenever I want to email soemone I search my email for the last time I cooresponded with them and grab their address.

Friday night , and came over for movie night. After getting pizza we spent time being indecisive about what we wanted to watch, and eventually the guys turned on Dune and and I went off to the kitchen to talk. I hadn’t really intended for the talk to turn into a big heart to heart discussion about our families, but it did and I’m glad I had a bottle of Slivovitz by my side! I don’t think I realized how badly I needed to talk about things, so much has been on my mind lately, is such a great friend to talk to %D

Needless to say I got pretty Slivovitzed (hah!). It was all good though, I had a nice evening.

I’m not hungover today, I managed to drink many glasses of water before going to bed. I spent the morning doing website updates, added a Wedding Plans section to my site, so I won’t have to repeat these deails when I post new things about our plans here. the sari I have as an example on that page is a very nice one, seen here it’s made of silk, and even with the “Swarovski crystals” on it it’s only $200 ($135 without). I don’t think I’ll ever stop being amazed at these prices, I can’t believe I almost went the traditional route and settled for a basic dress with a $500 price tag.

I also spent some time working on WallaceAndGromit.net. I’m somewhat glad the crazy movie release time is over, it’s fun to update it again.

Now I should go take a shower. Michael and I are going to try out Crabby Larry’s Brewpub Steak & Crab House this afternoon. Seafood + Brewpub = happy !

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, but nothing I want to complain about in public. I think I’m mostly just being moody anyway.

Tuesday I went out to dinner with . We tried a Mexican place in Collegeville which turned out to be pretty lousy. Not “makes me sick” lousy, but “gee, I could have made this at home” lousy. Plus, their guacamole had big chunks of onion in it, what’s up with that? It’s so hard to find a good Mexican place around here, the closest one that’s any good is one that and bring me to in Kennett Square, and that’s about an hour from home.

The food aside, it was good meeting up with . We’ve both been so busy lately and I enjoyed finally sitting down for a couple hours and catching up.

Last night was our Wednesday night Shaman class. We almost didn’t go because it was raining and Michael was tired from work. But we did go, and I’m glad. I was surprised that only about half the group showed up, but it turned out to be a nice night anyway. I got to talk about my whole “using shaman techniques to address my fear of birds” thing. Later in the evening we were paired off to work on some journeying stuff and I ended up as a partner to the bird expert of the group, who was very much interested in my phobia, and helping me get past it. I had a good night.

Tonight and tomorrow night we don’t have real plans, yay! It’ll be nice to relax. We haven’t really decided on anything for Saturday, and Sunday is packed, with the PhillyChix-DC LinuxChix meeting, and then running home to spend some time with friends from online who are visiting.

My boss brought in english muffins and Shedd’s Spread Country Crock Cinnamon, which is like a butter stuff with cinnamon that looks a bit like peanut butter with spots. I figured I wouldn’t be breaking my healthy eating habits by enjoying some of that with my oatmeal. I couldn’t help but feel incredibly lazy though, it’s just spread with lots of cinnamon mixed in. It was good though, cinnamon is yummie!

Now that I’ve had time to sit down with everyone in the wedding party to discuss our wedding plans thus far it’s time to share with the world! I should make a webpage on princessleia.com so I don’t need to repeat this stuff.

We have a date! Sunday October 22nd 2006

People who were invited:

Minister El Sybesma & husband

Bob
&

We’re sticking to our “no family” plan. Just invited close, local friends.

Location (as previously mentioned): The Castle, Mount Savage, Maryland. If weather permits it will be outdoors.

Clothing: I’ll be wearing and Indian Sari and Michael is thinking about some sort of robe. We’d like to dress the wedding party in a similar manner. And no shoes!

Ritual ideas we’ve been floating around to incorporate:

Mixing of sands: Two different colors of sand are brought in separate bottles, during the ceremony they’re mixed, which takes a little while and then is nearly impossible to separate. The mixed sand is kept as the Wedding Sands.

This instantly struck a cord with us when we heard about it. Since then I’ve been wondering about the sands – should they be sand we collect and dye ourselves? Should I ask my sister up in Maine to gather a jar of sand for me? Or should we just order some colored sand?

Wedding Runes: Sometime before the wedding, the key members of the wedding party get together and make a special set of Runestones for the wedding. During the wedding, each Rune has a short sentence prepared for it in relation to the stone and the marriage, these sentences are read by members of the wedding party. After the wedding the Runestones are kept as the Wedding Runes.

Back when Michael and I met online in 1998, one of our first real conversations had to do with the mutual interest in Runes. So even though I’m the only one who still actively practices with them, they have meaning beyond that. I also think I’ll be designing the wedding invitations with Runes on them.

Smudging: This site accurately describes it: Smudging is the burning of certain herbs to create a cleansing smoke bath, which is used to purify people, ceremonial and ritual space, and ceremonial tools and objects.

This is something I recently learned about through our involvement with the Shaman class, but Michael knew some things about it and has always been into burning herbs and incense.

There are also rituals that we read about that include candles, but since it’ll be an outdoor wedding we worried about the logistics of pulling this off in a reasonably dignified manner.

It feels so weird planning all this stuff 11 months before we’re actually going to do it.

Last night I went to the Montco/BCLUG meeting at Borders in Montgomeryville. I got to the store around 6:15, spent some time wandering around the store and sat down in the cafe around 6:40. I was somewhat nervous that no one would show up, or that too many would show up. But at 7PM, right on time, 7 people showed up. 8 total people is pretty good for a first get together meeting. We stayed almost until closing time at 10.

Clockwise from top left: Tom Lowery, Lee Marzke, Aaron Mulder, Jesus Arocho, Lyz Krumbach, Erin Mulder, Carl Husa, and Michael Toren ().

It was great meeting the new people, and nice to see the ones I already knew. The conversation pretty much had a life of it’s own, never really lulled into awkward silences as such unstructured meetings sometimes have a tendency to do. In all I’d say it went as well as could be expected. and it looks like we’ll be shooting for our next Montco meeting in January.

Today is just another day. It’s cloudy, but warm out, good day to enjoy the chicken soup and fresh white bread that Michael made. Michael is meeting his grandparents for lunch, they’ll be seeing the house for the first time. This evening I’m going out for dinner to a Mexican place in Collegeville with which should be nice and relaxing.

Yesterday we spent most of the day on the yard. Mulching leaves, pulling up the dead things in my gardens, cleaning gutters. I was out there from about 11:30AM-4PM.

The evening was spent paying bills and doing laundry. Just all around catching up on things. Probably should have done cleaning of the house, I completely forgot that Michael’s grandparents are coming over to see the house for the first time tomorrow, and I won’t be home until late tonight!

In the late evening I pulled out my knitting stuff. It’s getting to be that time of year when snuggling in a blanket with a couple knitting needles and the TV on is a good thing. I hadn’t picked up my needles in months, and got out my notes to make sure I remembered how, but apparently it’s something you don’t forget, once I got the yarn on the needles I didn’t have a problem. Michael made steak for dinner, and a loaf of cornbread from scratch! He’s really getting into this cooking thing.

We went to bed pretty early.

This morning I woke up with a pretty bad headache. I stumbled out of bed a little after 6AM to take some Advil and drink a glass of water, then went back to bed. Around 7 Michael brought me a piece of his freshly baked white bread, which came out PERFECT and is very yummie. By about 7:45 my headache was gone enough so that I could get out of bed and shower. I called my boss to tell her I’d be late, and didn’t leave the house until 8:30.

So now I’m having lunch. The morning dragged by, but I’m not the only one here having a rough morning. I’m staying until 6 this evening to make up for getting in late this morning, and it’ll work out nicely for getting to the MontcoLUG meeting around 6:30-7. I haven’t a clue what the turnout will be like for this meeting.

Friday evening Michael invited over some friends, we had a great time.

arrived around 7:30, and showed up soon after, with a couple gifts for me! They’re so sweet %) In the big red bag they brought along Scene It? Deluxe Disney Edition. I had no idea that Scene It? was a whole line of games, so when I said I’d do great if a Disney one existed I had no clue a Disney one actually did exist. It was a very thoughtful gift, we had to play it.

It was fun. I fell on my face when it came to live action Disney movies, but was sickeningly good when it came to most of the cartoon ones. Still, and Michael came very close to beating me! It made for a very fun game.

We ordered some pizza and had a great night. Spent some time talking, and took the opportunity to invite the 3 of them to our wedding. This was a big thing, we had previously thought that we’d only have 3 people at our wedding, but the logistics of the castle wedding made it easy to invite more of our close friends and fill up the place. I’m so excited, we now have our wedding party!

They left around 1:30, after watching the three Wallace & Gromit shorts (which hadn’t seen, gasp!).

Saturday we got up early for no reason. We didn’t have solid plans for the day and I was in a lousy/sad mood. We wanted to go hiking, but weren’t sure were. I messaged to find out their plans for the day, changed my mind about what I wanted to do about 324 times (that’s a symptom of my lousy/sad mood) while talking to her. After much thought and talking with Michael over a yummie pancake breakfast Michael and I decided to go to Hawk Mountain, just the two of us. They were holding an educational event, teamed up with Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center to show off 3 birds of prey, the most notable being a Golden Eagle.

Most people who know me, know all about my fear of birds. Most of the fear is completely illogical, but I was perfectly fine to live with it until we started studying Shamanism. There is a lot of bird stuff in shamanism. Spirit guides that can be birds, smudging with feathers and whole wings of birds that died. At first I just toughed it out and tried not to freak out when I had to touch a feather, but it quickly became apparent that I needed to deal with this fear. So recently, parts of my journeys and some of my waking thought has made use of spirtual guidance to explore this fear and deal with it properly.

Seeing a golden eagle up close was a huge step, I thought it might be too big of one. The last time I saw one was this summer, I freaked out and it was in a cage 1000 feet away from me.

We left home slightly later than I wanted, but arrived at the center early enough to catch the final, 2PM show with the birds.

I took pictures and didn’t freak out.

The golden eagle has a 6-7 foot wingspan, and weighs a mere 12 pounds. They’re powerful birds, can kill baby deer and lambs, but often stick to rabbits and smaller birds as their prey. They fly 45-60MPH, but when they dive they can reach speeds of 120MPH. Yowza. See, there is good reason to be scared of these! The golden eagle that they had was a female (which are larger than males) who had a pretty sad background. She was born in captivity, but raised so she could be released in the wild. Once released she lived fine for a while until being electricuted (from powerlines or something similar). The center found her badly hurt, and today she’s a 15 year old bird that suffers from permanent damage from that, she has a talon missing, part of the bone in a wing is missing (she can’t fly), and her beak is crooked so she can’t tear up meat like she used to be able to so they need to cut up all her food for her. Poor thing! I let my sympath
y emotions take over.

I was able to get relatively close to her without being too scared, something I wouldn’t believe was possible a few months ago.

The next bird they brought out was a Screech owl. She was SO CUTE! We only got one little picture of her because she was so small and wasn’t out for as long. She had the feathers on the top of her head up in a defensive pose, trying to look as large as possible, which as adorable for an animal her size. She had a similar sad story though, after being hit by a car she was brought to the center for help and when she was all patched up they learned that she had lost sight in one of her eyes. The center also has two other screech owls, same injuries from similar accidents. The owls like to hunt in open spaces, and quite often the open spaces they find are roadways which also have prey that come for the trash people throw out of their cars. It’s a bad combination, they said that many of the birds treated at the center were brought in after accidents with cars.

The final bird was a barn owl. He was a nice looking bird, injured somehow and so he’s lost the use of one of his wings. We got very close to him.

It was a little after 3 when we left the presentation area and headed for the trails. It costs $7 per adult to walk on their trails, and that seems to be the only thing they charge for, the whole presentation we watched was free. The walk wasn’t nearly as nice as some of the ones we’ve been on in West Virginia because there were so many people. The birds migrate at this time of year so this is the busiest time for the park. There were a lot of people and most of them were being noisy, even the adults. We got some nice view pictures.

So, people aside, the trails are nice and the views are great. We’ll be keeping this place on our list of good places to go, it’s only about an hour from home. Perhaps next time when it’s not one of the busiest days of the year.

We left the park around closing time at 5. Our plan was to just go home, but we decided to go meet up with Bob at The Drafting Room in Spring House. There we were able to tell him about the plans for the wedding (he’s Michael’s best man). The food was good, beer was great (I wasn’t going to have beer, but how can I resist the Lindemans Framboise on tap?), and for once, the service there was really good. We had a nice evening and went home around 8:30. About halfway home I realized that I didn’t have my purse – I had left it at the restaurant! We turned around and I called them to see if they had found it, they had it and when I went to pick it up a quick inspection proved that nothing was missing. Phew.

Today the only solid plans we have are to do some work in the yard.