September 10, 2003

Let’s Play Dress Up



There’s a cool, crisp feeling in the air. The winds are bringing about autumn, and quite honestly, I am absolutely thrilled. Fall is my favorite season. I always find the cool nights with a light wind to be so magical. Frankly, it seems a little early this year, since it’s only September 9th, but I couldn’t care less.

I’ve been on a “dress up” kick for work. Over the summer, we tend to get to get casual in our attire in my office. I usually have a button-down shirt and khaki shorts on. Come Labor Day though, I busted out the long sleeve dress shirts and nice pants and I donned a tie. I don’t know what so important about Labor Day that I feel I must dress up for the occasion, but it certainly has helped me find a little more confidence. I’m trying to lead by example at work, what with the business attire and increase in confidence. I hope that others will follow suit. Oh, that was witty. 🙂 Work has been going along pretty well. It’s a busy time around the office with high school sports on the radio station. I’ve had a couple of special projects on the back burner that I’m getting around to. Everyone has been commenting that I’ve been mopey… but I haven’t felt mopey at all, just focused on the task at hand. I’m trying to be more professional in my demeanor. I mostly fail at that, but I like to think that I succeed once in a while.

I’m typing tonight blog entry on Earl’s iMac because I’m dinking around with my computer again. As I’ve mentioned before, we have high-speed (ahem) internet through the Direcway satellite system. Unfortunately, it seems to have left out the high speed part. I’m seriously thinking about going back to dial up this weekend, since quite frankly, Direcway doesn’t seem worth the $70 a month. Earl can’t connect to it with his iMac and it doesn’t work with Linux, and since my “technology pendulum” is STILL stuck in non-Microsoft mode, I think I’m going to dump the satellite high speed and Windows all together. Let’s see where I stand in a month.

Earl was away Sunday and Monday for the Eagles game in Philly. His brother has season passes and he invited Earl along for the season opener in the new stadium. He got back this afternoon and said he had quite a good time, even though Tampa spanked the Eagles.

Healthwise I’ve been feeling wonderful. I can say that I am still solidly vegetarian and enjoying every minute of it. While Earl was gone, I took the opportunity to throw out our toiletries that didn’t say “not tested on animals” on them. Bye bye Neutrogena shaving cream, hello “The Body Shop”. I know, Neutrogena shaving cream sounds really prissy, but I am extremely vain, and the stuff worked pretty well. Honestly, I like “The Body Shop” stuff better though. I’ll let you know how my complexion feels in a week.

I went on a little bit of spending spree last night and bought a new TiVo for the household. The old one has been slowing down a bit, plus, we’ve been having problems with our satellite connection and I thought it had to do with one of the receivers in the TiVo. Well, I hooked up the new TiVo and we still had the satellite problems, only faster. So tonight I did some rewiring and replaced connections and things seem to be working better. Let’s see how that goes.

My spiritual path has been taking some interesting turns lately. As I’ve mentioned before, I consider myself a “Gnostic Christian”… I fully believe in God and all that, I just reason these things out rather than just blindly follow what I’m told. For example, and you’ve probably heard this before, I don’t understand why Catholics think they can’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent, when before Catholics couldn’t eat meat on Friday any time of the year. If you ate meat on Friday, you went to hell. Well then they said that you could eat meat on Friday except during Lent. O.k., what about all the people that went to hell for eating meat on Friday before this “revelation”? Did they get a “Get Out of Hell Free Card”? Did the gatekeepers set up a “Fish Eaters Only Express Line” at the entrance to heaven? Of course not. People have to think and then believe.

The reason my spiritual path has been taking a few turns lately is because I’ve been thinking about spirituality more. I love Sylvia Browne. Or rather, I love her message. “Do good, love God and then go home.” It’s so simple. But it seems like she’s really turning the whole deal for a big buck lately. The woman comes out with four books a year at least. No one can write four books a year without a LOT of help. Either that or she’s ‘cut and pasting’ from one book to the next. And then she says that she can’t be “tuned in” to everyone, but she can tell a woman that wrote a letter to her office that she was a banished woman burned as a witch in Salem in the 17th century and that’s why she doesn’t want a fireplace in her house. What? Perhaps because I’ve never met Sylvia in person, or I’ve never experienced any of her gifts, I don’t really understand how it all works. I’m not doubting her abilities in the least. I think she has been endowed with many gifts and she really does teach a good lesson, she does a myriad of wonderful things in the world. But I can’t help but notice she charges a lot of money to do good. ($800 for a half hour? Whew!) And now she’s on this ghost kick. Let’s talk to the ghosts. Let’s see the haunted house. Wooooooo. Boo. Just tell the ghost to head home. Leave us alone, you’re dead, head towards the white light, everyone is waiting. Don’t make such a big deal of it.

Am I doubting my spirituality? Absolutely not. It’s stronger than ever. I just don’t have a price tag attached to it. Of course, I don’t say much about it out loud except with Earl. I think I freak them out at work… gay, vegetarian, Gnostic Christian, Linux user… sometimes they look at me like I just parked my UFO out on the roof and I’m pointing a ray gun at them. As I’ve mentioned before, people think that because I don’t blindly follow a particular religion I must be pagan. I must be a witch. I must not believe in God. And that hurts since that couldn’t be further from the truth. So now I just shut up about the whole affair and just try to keep a positive attitude.

Boy, I’m on the soapbox tonight! I’ll leave you with this little gem… I was recently being grilled about why I’m a vegetarian. I try not to talk about it during meals because I start to get preachy (a fault that I recognize), but my dining companions were pushing about why I don’t eat cheese. I replied that I don’t eat cheese because it’s animal derived and I don’t like how animals are treated in farms… besides, humans don’t need cow’s milk. We don’t see people sucking on a cat’s tit but we can drink cow’s milk? Why don’t you milk your poodle? Anyways, I was informed that the reason human drinks milk is because cows will be sick if we don’t milk them. Apparently, cows will EXPLODE if they’re not milked. So there you have it. Before these huge dairy farms, Earth was covered with exploding cows for millions of years.