Happy Halloween!

Tonight I dressed up as a purple ogre wizard-guy and answered the door for trick or treaters. It's the kind of costme where there is a huge face on the body of the costume, and you cover your head with a wizard hat that you can see through. The reaction from the kids was really cute - they wanted to know where my face or eyes were, so I pointed to my body and said, "Right here! Can't you see??!" And it was extra cute, the few of them who said, "Really?"

I'm not sure how many kids came to our door, but we ran out of candy. When that happened, I went around the house and gathered up a bunch of the little toys that used to be in my office in Hawaii, and started giving them out instead.

How do you just live?

From a movie I saw on public TV last night... The Misfits, with Clark Gable and Marylin Monroe:

"Well...you start by goin’ to sleep. You get up when you feel like it. You scratch yourself. You fry yourself some eggs. You see what kind of day it is. You throw stones at a can. You whistle."

Kinda reminds me of one of my favorite people. ;)

Broken door semi-fixed

My friend Dave K will be happy to hear this. :)

A couple of weeks before moving away from Hawaii, the driver's side rear door of my Honda Civic decided it didn't want to open from the outside anymore, regardless of whether or not it was locked. A lot of times I would give my friends rides to our many different adventures around the island, and so this was a small source of frustration since no one could enter through that door, and everyone would forget.

So one day, not putting much thought into it, Dave tried changing the setting of the child safety lock on that door (you could still open it from the inside), to see if it would help. But as soon as he shut the door he realized his mistake - now the door wouldn't open at all! But who cares, it didn't stop us from having fun adventures. :)

That was almost three months ago. After moving, it took a month and a half before we even saw the car again. Then it took another month for me to get all the paperwork straightened out so that I could drive the car legally in New Jersey. Now that I can use it again, it seemed like the right time to reinstall my roof rack, which I had removed in July for shipping along with all of our household items.

Problem. How was I going to install the rear bar of the roof rack if I couldn't open the door??

All I can say is, it's a good thing we have a George Foreman Grill. They come with these nice, flexible, thin, plastic scrapers for removing grilled-on gunk.

Turns out those George Foreman Grill scrapers are also good for slipping in between the shut door of a car and the door's frame, and sliding up to disengage child safety locks!

So now my car has a roof rack again, and therefore is easy to spot in crowded parking lots!

I still can't open the door from the outside. But that'll be a different project for a different day. Or maybe a different year. Or better yet, a different owner. ;)

Plumbing, pumpkins, frogs and an ancient sewing machine

Last weekend was both productive and fun. Home improvements continued, as Russ installed a garbage disposal and fixed the leaky bathtub. Both activities seemed to go fairly smoothly, without much swearing and only one trip to the hardware store. :)

Because Russ needed a new pair of khakis hemmed, I broke out my grandma's sewing machine and brought it back to life. Well, most of the way back to life... we can't figure out why it won't sew in reverse. Actually, we're unable to change the stitch length at all. Fortunately, the machine was stuck on a stitch length that was good for the type of material, so I didn't let the fact that it wouldn't sew in reverse stop me from using it to hem the trousers. Not that I know much about sewing, but I do know that you want to back-stitch a little bit both when you start and end a seam - in lieu of tying a knot.

Funny, I know I was in posession of this machine for at least a year or two before I moved to Hawaii, and before taking it out the other night, I could have sworn I'd used it before. Then when I was trying to figure out how to set it up and encountered the problem with the stitch length setting, I realized I must not have used it - it was all foreign to me. I'm too used to using my mom's old Singer (which isn't as old as this one - a Kenmore). And I do have to say they don't make things they way they used to. I'm surprised the machine is broken, old as it is - it is very solid, and everything on it is made of metal. I didn't see a single cheap plastic part. And, according to the manual, it was tested extensively at the Sears Home Economist Laboratory, hehe. :)

So anyway, chores day was Saturday. On Sunday, we got up bright and early at 10 o'clock and, seeing the sun was out again, decided to go for a nice Sunday drive down to the little town of Lambertville, New Jersey. Lambertville's claim to fame is that it boasts good many antique shops. We're kinda-sorta looking around for a floorlamp and a coffee table, to go with our living room furniture if it ever shows up. I wish I had brought my camera with me, because Lambertville is a cute little town, just across the Delaware River from Hope, Pennsylvania. In addition to antique shops, there are a whole bunch of other interesting shops to poke around in, restaurants, and a nice view of the river.

On the way home, we stopped at a roadside stand and bought these two pumpkins for the cats to play with. Ok, the cats don't really like to play with the pumpkins. The only way I could get them to pose with the pumpkins was to entice them with little plastic flowers. Anyway, we'll carve them (the pumpkins, not the cats!) on Saturday, just in time for Halloween.

Of course, now that we have cats, I have to be like my friend Rebecca and talk about them all the time. Ok, hopefully I'm not as bad as she is. I thought I'd share this action shot of Musubi playing with her favorite new toy, the little green froggy my Hawaii mommy, Gail, gave me when I left. Actually, she put the frog on my desk a year or two ago, and she just told me to take it with me.

Reconnecting with old friends

The internet is cool.

Today seemed to be the day of hearing from people I haven't heard from in a while. Most were friends I haven't emailed with in a few weeks or months. But the biggest surprise was getting a message from my friend Greg. Greg is one of the people I met in Connecticut about seven years ago when I first started swing dancing. He's a really awesome dancer, and turns out he's also a pretty talented web designer - which as far as I can recall, started out as a result of swing dancing. ;) I beleive one of the first web sites he developed was a Connecticut swing dance web site, that eventually turned into SwingMonkey.com.

Ohyah, so anyway, the reason Greg decided to email totally out of the blue today was because he was listening to Ryan Ozawa's The Transmission, a podcast about the television show, Lost. Now wasn't I just talking about Ryan's HawaiiUp.com podcast a few posts ago?? I guess the HawaiiUp podcast reminded Greg of me since the last he knew I was still living in Hawaii.

Home Improvement

Last week we had our first guests over - Russ's mom and dad flew in from Seattle on Thursday night and stayed with us for a week. And then my folks drove down from Massachusetts yesterday and stayed till this morning.

We are very grateful to our moms and dads because they helped us out a whole bunch. Now we have the proper wiring to install a garbage disposal in the kitchen, and an exhaust fan in the bathroom. Thanks to Russ's folks, now we can also see our back yard and entryway at night. My folks loaded up their pickup truck and brought down all kinds of things I haven't used in five years - turtlenecks, my bicycle, sewing machine and materials. They also brought a nice Boston rocker that was my grandfather's - our first proper piece of living room furniture - and a drafting table that was my Uncle Walter's.

Oh, and the best thing was all the great cooking by Russ's mom. :) Even the roast she said was no good was really good (we finished the leftovers tonight).

Macy's was supposed to help us get some more real living room furniture in our house earlier this week, too, but they messed up and somehow misplaced the furniture order I made a month and a half ago.

The kitties also visited the vet on Tuesday - they both got a clean bill of health. Musubi is still showing Spam who's boss. Spam has taken to pretending that I'm a tree, and he climbs up my leg and the back of my shirt to sit on my shoulder. I'm putting a stop to that though; otherwise his little nails are going to poke all kinds of holes in my jeans and shirts.

Spam!

Meet Spam, our latest addition to the family. :) He's a very feisty little boy. In fact, he's trying to type his own blog entry right now, but the spell-checker doesn't seem to like his spelling. So I told him to get his own Blogger account. ;)

Although this entry will pretty much be all about Spam, I thought I might take a moment to mention that the color of the sun is yellow! Yes, after nine consecutive days of grey, glum dreary overcast rainy days, Mr. Sun finally decided to make an appearance - a day earlier than expected too. :)

Getting back to Spam, we brought him home on Wednesday night, so this is his fifth night here with us. As expected, Musubi wasn't exactly thrilled to have this new little brat hanging around, stealing her toys, stealing attention from her humans, stealing her scratching post, and stealing her food. As you can see, Spam has no compunction about pushing Musubi's head right out of the food bowl, though she is more than twice his size.

So Musubi hasn't been quite as sweet as she used to be before Spam came along, although she is beginning to come around. The first couple of days she sulked and slept most of the time. When she wasn't sleeping, she was running away from little Spam when he chased after her. I have to give her credit though for not being a truly territorial cat, since she never hissed or growled at him or tried to hurt him. On the first full day that Spam was here, she even consented to let him cuddle up next to her while I was working, which is when I snapped this little picture of them snuggled together on the chair in front of the window.

Like I said though, Musubi has begun to come around. On the fourth day of Spam, she finally decided to purr again. She also stopped letting Spam chase her all the time, and instead chases him, occasionally pinning him to the floor to show him who's boss. She also doesn't mind sharing her food bowl with him, and will push his head out of the way when she feels like it.

I think Spam's biggest quirk is that, for some unknown reason, he likes to stick his paws in the water dish and sweep water out onto the floor. We can always tell when he's been to get a drink - both paws are soaking wet, and there are little kitty footprints everywhere. Musubi's biggest quirk is also water-related, though not as strange. She just prefers to drink from the tub faucet.

What color is the sun?

Is it purple? Maybe it's green.

I don't know. I haven't seen it in so long - since last Thursday, or so I think. Yikes, and according to Weather.com, we still won't see it through the weekend. It's times like this that I really miss Hawaii!

Speaking of Hawaii, last night I listened to a couple of HawaiiUp shows by poscaster Ryan Ozawa. I think it's really cute that as a part of his show, he incorporates TV/movie reviews with his wife. In one of the shows, they discuss her top five all time favorite movies - it reminded me of when I was in elementary school, how every week my brother used to make his own "Hot 100" list of pop songs after checking out Billboard Magazine's weekly music charts.

I guess I never cared enough about music to make that long of a list of favorite songs. And nowadays, I hardly even remember most movies I see. Good thing I have a blog now, otherwise I might have already forgotten that we saw Skeleton Key a few days ago. ;)

Fishing buddies

Still kind of rainy and overcast today here on the east coast. Though I'm not complaining, because at least we didn't experience any flooding and destruction, like folks who live in Keene, NH, or near Ramapo River. I'm not sure where Ramapo River is, just that it's somewhere in New Jersey.

Due to the inclement weather, we are spending a lot of time indoors. I've been working on my next silly Mochikids (TM) painting. It's called Fishing Buddies. So far, I'm not sure if I like it as much as the first one I made. But I'll reserve judgement until I put some color on it. It's a work in process.

In search of a particular NJ swing dance link

At the dance on Friday, someone mentioned a particular web site that has lots of information about swing dances happening in northern New Jersey. I can't remember the URL, but it's something simple so I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually. So far though, I've found out through Google that njdance.com is up for sale for a mere $700. Also, did you know that Square Dancing is the official American Folk Dance of the State of New Jersey? I certainly didn't.

Rainy Weekend

Finally, New Jersey has gotten some much-needed rain. Too bad it seems to be pretty much all at once! According to my mom, who is in Massachusetts, there were cars in Newark up to their hoods in water. At least that's what she told me she saw on the TV. We don't have a TV, so we didn' t see any of that. But it did rain pretty hard here - water pooled up a bit in the back yard, and a little bit seeped into the basement. Hopefully that won't become a big problem for us the future.

On Friday, we went to our second dance up in Montclair. It was fun and this time we met more people. The nice thing about the people we met this time is that they seemed more willing to talk about things other than dancing, which I always find refreshing at a dance. :) We also spent some time at a nearby mall on Saturday. The Short Hills Mall reminds me of Honolulu's Ala Moana Shopping Center, since it has all the same upscale stores like Tiffany, Needless Markup, etc. And today we found the $2 movie theater. I'm still not really sure exactly where it is... maybe Secaucus or maybe Hoboken, or maybe even some other town over there by the Meadowlands. We saw Skeleton Key, which I liked because I like movies that feature big scary old houses.

Tonight is like a weekend night too, because tomorrow is Columbus Day (or Discoverers' Day if you are in Hawaii), and this is the first time Russ has had this particular holiday off in years. When I lived in Connecticut, I spent every Columbus Day hiking up to the top of Talcott Mountain (more like a bump since the peak is only about 900 feet above sea level), just to get some apple cider and donuts, and see the view from the top of the Heublein Tower. I didn't miss doing that so much when I was living in Hawaii, but now that I'm back on the east coast, I think it will feel like a little something's missing.

But no big deal, because now we have a cute kitty cat to play with! Musubi is such a sweet kitty. :) We took her back to the animal shelter on Thursday so we all could visit with her soon-to-be adopted little brother, Spam (he doesn't know his name is Spam yet... he still thinks his name is Eenie). Spam liked visiting with Musubi. Musubi was so busy checking out the whole place that she kind of didn't notice Spam. Even though she is still a kitten, Musubi is twice the size of little Spam. While she didn't show much interest in him, at least Musubi didn't hiss or growl at him. They sniffed each other a little bit, and then she went on her way to go check out the other cats and stuff around the shelter. I wonder how she's going to like sharing her new house with a little brother.

Speaking of sharing houses with brothers... my big brother may be coming to live with us for a month or two! Eek, I don't know how I feel about that! Usually I can only handle visiting with him for a few days if we are staying in the same place... a little longer is ok if we are staying in our own places. He's just so big-brotherish, and likes to have things the way he likes them. He also likes to think that the way he likes things is inherently better than the way I (or our parents, or whomever) like things (unless I/we like it the same way he does), and therefore he usually tries to impose his ways upon me... which kinda gets my goat. For example, he will insist on having cable TV while he is here, which I guess is fine if he pays for it. I just don't want it to become a permanent fixture here, and I don't want it in the living room!

New addition to the family

Last Thursday we went to the animal shelter and got ourselves a kitty. :)

Well, we actually sort of got ourselves two kitties, but one of them was still too young for us to take home yet. He still needs to get some tests done to make sure he's not diseased, and also has some shots to get.

But the little girl kitty we brought home is named Musubi. If and when we bring her brother home, his name will be Spam. People from Hawaii will get it, but maybe not other people. If you don't know what Spam musubi is, then google it. :)

Musubi is a very sweet little kitten. She was born in April, so she's about 5 months old. She loves to cuddle, and always makes sure to snuggle up between Russ and me when we go to sleep. I don't know too many cats that sleep through the whole night - usually they wake up at 3am and start running around acting crazy. So we lucked out - at least so far- since Musubi saves her crazy cat energy for the daytime.

The day we got her, we made a stop at Petco on the way home to pick up some cat essentials like food, litter, and a litter box. We also bought some toys for her. I'm glad we only bought one or two toys, because it turns out that she prefers to play with our toys more. Here she is with her little fan club.

She likes to pick these guys up and toss them around all over the place. But she's pretty gentle wiht them - she doesn't use her claws too much on them, and she doesn't try to rip their heads or limbs off with her teeth. If we still had squirrels in our basement, she probably woudn't be too helpful in getting rid of them - probably would just pick them up and play with them. ;)

That's the other thing that makes her a really sweet cat - when she plays with us, she doesn't use her claws, so usually no one gets hurt. Once in a while she'll bite, but even then she doesn't bite too hard. Well, except for that time she tried to eat my toes for breakfast...

Her other favorite thing to do is drink water from the bathtub. She likes it when we turn on a very small stream of water from the faucet. She'll climb right into the tub, and sit there drinking from the water as it falls and splashes on her head.

Nori

Last Monday I went to a job fair that was in our town. There weren't any jobs there that I was particularly interested in or qualified for, but nevertheless, the event resulted in me scheduling two interviews. Because I want to start my own business, I'd prefer to get a part time job if any, and both of these were for full time positions. The first one I ended up canceling. I nearly did the same with the second because I nearly forgot about it until it was too late. ;) I remembered about it at 9:30am, thinking it was to be at 10:00am - turns out it was really scheduled for 11:30am, so I still had plenty of time to get ready.

Funny though that I nearly forgot about the interview - because it turned out they forgot about me! When I got there, the president of the company apologized for neglecting to tell me that they'd already hired someone for the position last week!! Well - they seem a little disorganized, so I suppose I wouldn't want to work for them anyway. Not to mention that even if they offered me the position, it's likely I would have declined.

But the trip out to Florham Park wasn't all for naught. It gave me a chance to explore someplace new, and in doing so, I found two nice grocery stores (the Shop Rite we normally go to kind of sucks) - King's, and right next to it, a Trader Joe's. Yay!

Now getting to the title of this post - King's is the first place here where I've found nori! It was darn expensive though, at $5.29 per package! I don't remember how much nori cost in Hawaii, but I'm quite sure it wasn't that much. On my way home, I also checked the little healthy food store that is nearby our house. They had nori this time, but it was even more expensive than King's - $7.92!!! But at least the lady at that store said she'll order some more reasonably priced nori for me, and call to let me know when it comes in. Then I'll have all the parts I need for making spam musubi. =)

FYI - I think it's cute that Blogger's spell check wants to replace "musubi" with "massif".

Everyone's your friend... in New York City...

...and evrerything is beautiful, when your young and pretty... the streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see... but the best thing about New York City is... you and meeeeeee... (ala They Might Be Giants)

(Um, it's actually the 27th, but I made most of this post on the 23rd... just Blogger and my Mac and uploading pictures was not behaving... so how here I am finishing up on my PC...)

Yesterday afternoon Russ dropped me off at Newark Penn Station and I caught the train to New York Penn Station and met up with my good friend, Viv. She and I both used to be swing dancers in the Connecticut scene, just not at the same time. We met when she came to study for a semester at the University of Hawaii. Now she lives in Hawaii, and I live just a short train ride away from her parents. :) BTW - that picture was taken from the top of their building, looking down on the avenue below.

We managed to pack a lot into my less-than-24-hour getaway: had a wonderful home-cooked Chinese meal, which, might I say, included the best salmon ever; went swing dancing for several hours and met lots of new people, not to mention at least two people I already was acquainted with who used to live in Hawaii; checked out the Museum of Modern Art; ate delicious food of Afghanistan at a little place on St. Mark's Way, and topped it off with wonderful Italian cheesecake from Veniero's Pasticceria & Cafe at 342 East 111th Street (www.VenierosPastry.com). Like the salmon the night before (well, it didn't taste like salmon), the cheesecake was the best ever!

Sorry I didn't take a picture of either the salmon or the cheesecake. But I did take a picture of a NYC bus. While we were walking to catch the subway to the dance, we spotted this bus:

You might be wondering who Rency is, and why the bus is asking people to call him (or her). Actually, I was being a silly tourist-type, trying to take a picture of a bus that had a sign alternating between "Emergency" and "Call Police". I don't think I could have timed it any better than I did - midway between the two!

And while I'm at it, a couple more random photos from my 24hrs in NYC...

Viv and me and some pointy skyscraper from the top of her parent's building.

These girls watched over us from across the street while we lunched at the Afghan restaurant. Did I mention the food there was really delicious? Shame on my for not taking pictures of that, either...

SCORE!

Today I got up early-early. Well... if you compare it to the time I used to get up for work when we lived in Hawaii, 6:00 a.m. is actually kind of late. But so far, for my new life in New Jersey, it was early-early. :)

Ohyeah, the reason I got up at 6:00 a.m. was to go to a workshop that took place in Newark. Although the workshop didn't start until 9:00 a.m., I got up so early because I wanted to take the bus instead of drive, and I needed extra time to figure out how to use the bus system here. :) The NJ Transit folks have a pretty good web site that makes it easy to find which busses, trains or light rail you need to use to get from one place to another, but the problem I ran into is that they sometimes don't use the full address for their stations, which makes it tricky for New Jersey newbies like me to figure out where they are. For example, the bus schedule makes reference to "Erie Loop" station in Orange. I can't just look up Erie Loop in Google Maps... doesn't come up.

Anyway, when in doubt, just call the guys. That worked out nicely because the guy at NJ Transit told me a better place to go wait for the bus (a different one than I ended up taking, but both lines had the same destination), and also how much it would cost and what time I would be picked up.

The workshop took place in the Small Business Administration's offices in downtown Newark, and was presented by the New Jersey chapter of SCORE - Senior Corps of Retired Executives. Basically it was all about starting your own business in New Jersey. They have different retired (and some not yet retired) executives come to talk to the group about writing a business plan, bookkeeping and taxes, financing, choosing a legal entity, and personal qualities needed to be a successful entrepreneur. I thought all the speakers were very informative, and most were also very engaging... I did get a little sleepy during one of the sessions after lunch, but I guess that's normal. ;)

If I do decide to go ahead with the business I want to start, I think the biggest obstacles I'll have to overcome are the personal qualities. Although I know I've come a long way from being the shy, un-confident scaredy-cat I was before, a lack of confidence in my abilities is something I still battle with quite a bit. Also, I have to become more of an avid researcher of the industry I want to get into, so I guess that can be my goal #1 for now... learn more!

Russ plays plumber

Since we moved into our first home, we've had problems with drainage from our bathroom sink. It seemed to drain just fine if the water was run only a little bit at a time, but after running the water for 30 seconds or a minute, the basin would begin to fill up, and then drain very slowly, taking 5-10 minutes or more.

First, we tried a bottle of Drano, but that seemed to be a very temporary fix. Then, on Friday, the drainage problem became so slow, that water would remain in the sink for hours before the basin was empty.

So this weekend it was Russ's project to play plumber. He took apart the sink trap, found no clog there. Then he made several attempts to snake the system. Six feet... eight feet... ten feet... nothing! Still the sink would not drain. Finally this morning, he was able to insert the entire length of the snake, which took it all the way into the cellar! And when he took the snake out, it was all covered in icky yucky disgusting gunk. Ewwww.

To finish up, after pulling all the gunky snake back out of the pipes, we flushed the system with a little more Drano, and then with a couple pots of scalding hot water. Seems to be working fine now. :)

Come Dancing!

After being closed down for the month of August, the Jersey Jumpers resumed their semi-monthly dance at the Montclair Commonwealth Club. And after a month of being in New Jersey, we too resumed dancing.

This was the anniversary party for the The Jersey bOunce® dance event, so in honor of that, organizer Simone hired live band Eight To the Bar, and had the venue decorated all nice and pretty with shiny gold and purple streamers, flowers, lights, and lots of delicious food! Too bad Russ and I already ate supper just before going to the dance... if we had realized there would be so much food, we would have just dined there instead. ;)

The dance was a lot of fun. Although New Jersey doesn't have a large swing dancing scene, it seems to be quite a bit larger than the one in Hawaii... well, at least if last night's turn-out is any indication. There is also a good ten or fifteen year difference in age demographic, as well as a mix of abilities. People seemed genuinely friendly, which to me is the most important thing.

I'm normally very bad with names, but those I do remember (mostly men because that's who I danced with) include Simone (of course), Pär, Tim, Joe (who lives about a half a mile away from us), Ray, Carl, Peter, Jonathan and Diana. Ok, so I remembere all those names, but remembering which name goes with which face next time I see any of them will be the real challenge!

Oh, I did remember to bring my camera with me to the dance, but then I forgot to take pictures! Sorry, no photos in today's post...

On a completely differnt note, Russ had an exciting day at the post office yesterday. Too bad I can't tell that story. =)

Spam Art!

Not bored. Inspired!



I also applied for a job today, mostly because they asked for applicants to describe two life experiences in which they had great success. I thought it would be fun. Plus having more money would probably be ok, too.

Cookie!

Peanut butter... and chocolate chips. Mmmmmmm.

Enjoy Family Life

After supper this evening, I took a nice long walk around the surrounding neighborhoods. It's nice to live in a place again where there are ample sidewalks, and streets without too much traffic. When I lived in Makiki, sidewalks were iffy... there would be a sidewalk for a while, and then suddenly it wasn't there anymore. In Salt Lake, there were sidewalks, but the neighborhoods I felt comfortable walking around in alone were limited. Here I can walk for several miles with a number of different streets to choose from. Many of the homes are very nice, though not ostentatious. I see people walking their dogs, or pushing their young children along in stollers. So far, I haven't seen any homes with cats.

Before leaving Hawaii, my friend's clairvoyant friend told me that in my future she sees us living in a neighborhood with many large houses, and many women wearing aprons! The houses are large here, but I've yet to see a single apron, except for the one my friend Rebecca put on the "action figure" she made of me before I left. I kind of like the grenade necklace detail. ;)

Anyway, while I was walking, I remember seeing a car drive by with two nicely dressed young men in white button-down shirts. I saw them only for a moment, but my immediate thought was, "I bet those are Mormons, or Jehova's Witnesses!" Then I thought about why I thought that for a while. Then I had to cross a somewhat busy street, so I stopped thinking.

About a half an hour later, on a very quiet street, in my peripheral vision I detected a black car slowing down for me. I didn't really hear it because I was listening to Jelly Roll Morton. My frist instinct when this happens is to be suspicious, so I casually stepped away, looked at the car and turned off the music. Two women, also nicely dressed. Next I thought they might ask me for directions (like I know how to get anywhere yet), but instead, the passenger extended her arm out the window, politely offering me a small pamphlet entitled, "Enjoy Family Life." She said I could read it at home. So I took it.

So it seems the Jehova's Witnesses were indeed out in the neighborhood this evening, on a proselytizing mission. I don't mind it so much if they just hand me a pamphlet on the street, as they did this evening. I don't care for it when they come to my door, or interrupt my day by trying to engage me in a conversation about religion. I did read the pamphlet... and I can't say I disagree with much of its contents. I suppose what I do take objection to is the prescriptive nature of the language. The you-should-do-this or you-should-not-do-that makes it sound like they are addressing simplistic, thoughtless automotrons that will simply do as programmed, instead of people on a journey to developing good character.

What I really enjoyed about that walk though is how some people like to water their sidewalks and the edge of the street. Funny that I don't usually like to walk in the rain, but I do get a kick out of walking through someone's sprinkler. ;)