Friday, October 23, 2009

Huh? What? How'd That Happen?

A few weeks back I heard this phrase: "want God to laugh at you? Tell him your plans for the next six months." That's a paraphrase, but I'm sure you get the gist of it. Something has happened in my life that I am still scratching my head over, its a good thing, a blessing, but something I totally was not thinking about. I have met and started dating someone. I have a girlfriend. We have been dating about six weeks.

Six months ago, the very idea of getting involved in a relationship like this was almost laughable. I probably would have laughed if someone had said I would be in a relationship.

Its been an amazing experience getting to know her. She is kind, funny, smarter than me (which is one a good thing and not too hard to be); she's a Lutheran, her father is an LCMS pastor in Ft. Wayne, and she laughs at my bad jokes. She has two beagles, Heidi and Gracie, who she calls affectionately "the girls."

I've met her parents last weekend. And over the Thanksgiving holiday I'm sure I'll meet her brother and sister-in-law. She talks alot about her brother and his wife. About ten years ago he and a friend biked across the country, it took 44 Days to go across the country from west to east. And he also goes to France every year for the Tour de France. He sounds like an interesting cat.

My girlfriend, who I shall dub Guns for this blog (a nickname I bestowed upon her right after we started dating), works in one of the local hospitals as a labtech and she loves her job. We have odd working schedules, so we see each other when we can and strangely, its been working okay. There is some frustration that we can't see each other more often, but in this case maybe its quality of time is better than quantity, yes? I don't know.

So, there it is. I'm dating someone, I'm not sure how she fell into my lap, but she did and I'm thanking God for her, everyday.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Thoughts on ELCA

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy to serve churches as pastors. Last weekend the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, voted in convention to allow openly gay men and women to be ordained and pastor their churches. The resolution was passed by a majority of 619-407. To say that I disagree with this resolution is an understatement. I think it flies in the face of God's word.
In Colossians 2:8 it says: "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." The ELCA, in my opinion is trying to be "culturally relevant" (I actually saw that phrase in a Twitter message the other day. However, once one goes does that path of "culturally relevant" it becomes a slippery path. You start to give in to society a bit more and bit more and before long you start to mirror society. The ELCA lost its cultural relevance this past weekend when in convention they voted the way they did.

If you read the Scriptures, we are constantly reminded time and again not be of the "world.' We see this particularly in John 15:18-19 when Jesus says "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." We, as Christians are in the World, but not "of it." In short, we are not to be 'lemmings' in search of a cliff.

It is my fear that the ELCA has done exactly that. The ELCA's liberal (I hate using that term) interpretation of scripture has, to say the least, weakened it. In short, I am afraid that ELCA has decided that, in fact, it is a good idea to "do as the Romans do," or perhaps it is better said to "do as the Corinthians did." I do not think that it was God's intention, or Jesus' mission validate sinners and their sin. No, Jesus' mission was bring them up from their sin, to make them holy in God's sight.

The church is culturally relevant by not being of the world, by being in the world and not of it, by being a beacon of light to a dark world that is full of sin, that is where its "cultural relevance" lies.

Pres. Gerald Kieschnick, the president of the LCMS, Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod, addressedthe ELCA convention with very profound words of sadness. He said:
I speak these next words in deep humility, with a heavy heart and no desire whatsoever to offend. The decisions by this assembly to grant non-celibate homosexual ministers the privilege of serving as rostered leaders in the ELCA and the affirmation of same gender unions as pleasing to God will undoubtedly cause additional stress and disharmony within the ELCA. It will also negatively affect the relationships between our two church bodies. The current division between our churches threatens to become a chasm. This grieves my heart and the hearts of all in the ELCA, the LCMS, and other Christian church bodies throughout the world who do not see these decisions as compatible with the Word of God, or in agreement with the consensus of 2000 years of Christian theological affirmation regarding what Scripture teaches about human sexuality. Simply stated, this matter is fundamentally related to significant differences in how we understand the authority of Holy Scripture and the interpretation of God’s revealed and infallible Word.


The LCMS is not antigay, or homophobic. We believe that sinners must be ministered to and brought the words of Salvation and Grace through Jesus Christ, but we will and and cannot put a stamp of approval clothed in church jargon of sin, any sin. We believe that we are all fallen from God and only through His son Jesus Christ are we forgiven.

I will continue to pray that ELCA will come to its collective sense, but I fear it is too late. The die is cast.

Friday, July 10, 2009

In Which Your Faithful Narrator Almost Admits Defeat, Sort Of

I almost have myself convinced that I "need" an iPhone. It's not something I actually "need" at all, it is quickly becoming a "want," though. Or maybe it has been a "want" all along and suddenly my subconscious has convinced my conscious that I really do "need" it. Who knows? The next question then becomes "can I afford it?" Yes and no. I have the money to buy the phone and the money to get it activated. I have a landline that I never use, the only reason I have the landline is for my internet (I have AT&T highspeed and I have to have a landline for that). That costs a little over 50 bucks a month: about 30 bucks for the internet service and 20 for the phone). I like having a phone line in my room. I don't use it very often, hardly ever, actually, but for some reason I'm loathe to give it up.

I went to an AT&T store yesterday to look at the iPhones. I was impressed. Too much fun. Really. I stopped at a TMobile store recently and looked into the BlackBerry, but I wasn't all the impressed by the salesguy. I've been with Tmobile since it was "VoiceStream," so that's been a while.

The reason I'm looking into these various phones is I starting to become more "connected." I do more and more things online from banking to twittering and blogging and facebooking. Maybe I don't need to be connected so much and I have tried to fight it and since I'm writing about this it is safe to assume that it has been a losing battle.

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Julie and Julia

I'm reading the book Julie and Julia. It started out as a blog. Julie Powell decided to cook every recipe in the book called Mastering the Art of French Cooking and then, as we are want to do, blog about it. The blog became popular and a publisher decided to go from the digital to the analog and voila (dig the French term) a book was published, bought, and then, to beat all, made into a movie.

I'm a bit jealous. Sort of. I've been blogging intermittently, off and on, for roughly five years or so. Probably closer to the "or so" than the "five years." And nary once have I been contacted by a publisher or a movie production company about the possiblity of making this blog into a book or, for that matter, a movie. Of course, I realize that if one goes through this blog (and trust me, not many people do) you will find a hodgepodge of poorly written, not very exciting, banal entries. A few flashes of brilliance here and there, but on the whole, probably not so much.

Why blog, I mean what's the point? I never really thought of myself as a cyber-narcissist. And I never really thought of my blog as a "bully pulpit," though, I have used it for that purpose from time to time. I call this, to sort of steal a phrase "my own slice of cyber-heaven." Its not even that. Its just a little stop on the great big cyber-highway. Barely a blip. Not even a one-horse town. I guess, in short it, and I hate this phrase, is what it is. Whatever this it "might be" I'm not too sure.

I've read one or two other books that started out as blogs and ended up on the bookshelf. One was by a female cabdriver in New York City. I can't remember the book's title, but it was a decent story. Had a few laughs and a cringe or two. Not a barn burner, but an entertaining read.

That brings me to Julie and Julia. Essentially the reason I picked up the book was this: I saw a trailer for the movie and though hmmm, that might be fun movie and since it is a book, I further thought let me read the book and see what the movie is about. I am currently on page 128 of said book and I am fighting the urge to either skim the rest or just put the book down. I'll do the best I can and continue reading it. Its not a bad book, but is just, I don't know, almost silly. Powell, the Julie of the story, as narrator can be a bit... allovertheplace. She loses focus and digresses and then suddenly reverses course and goes back to her original point. If I'm lucky, it lasts a paragraph or two, if I'm not it goes on for a pager or more. These "digressions" are, I think, supposed to be "backstory," but they don't always work.

It is nice in this regard: I don't have to think about it too much. Its not that deep, its almost shallow, but not in bad way. I don't have to worry about solving for Pi which is actually a good thing because I don't solve for pi. I don't even eat pie, not a big fan.

So, I'm not bitter or angry about my lack of bookdeal and movie deal. Really, I'm not. I promise.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Tisza

It's been too long and I've neglected this blog. I've typed a few things here, but then decided I didn't like them, there was no flow, or somesuch verbal ailment that neccesatated the need to delte.

I helped a friend yesterday. I got my first "gig" as a "freelance" writer, I guess you could call it. I wrote a biography that is posted on his website. I've known Brian since I think second grade. We went to school together. My mom and I bumped into he and him and his mom one day at a bakery. The two moms started talking and before I knew I had a someone to walk home from school with. My father, as a pastor, had his office at home so he was there when we got home from school. Long story short, we became pretty good friends and, as is often the case, the pastor's family moves away. We did our best to keep in contact, but like all things we kind of drifted apart.

Our mothers kept in contact more regualarly than we did. I was able to "keep tabs" on Brian that way.

Brian is a photographer and I think I had something to do with that fact. Brian and his parents came and visited us one summer when we lived in Accident, MD. At the time, I myself, was an "ameteur" photographer, and I mean that in every sense of the word, but I had taken a picture of a flower, a Jack-in-the-Pulpit and submitted it to a photography competition at the county fair. It got a pretty blue ribbon, I think, if i remember correctly, it was tied as "best in show," but I could be wrong about that.

Brian saw that and a light went on in his head. He got reall intersted in taking pictures. He went to school near Atlanta and learned how to take proper pictures. He is an architecture photographer. I was just looking at his website and the pictures he takes are amazing. He really does have the "eye."

Check him out.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Neck-snap Music Memories

Erin hinted that I needed blog more, I would, but I have been at loss as to what I should actually blog about. There is enough drivel and bad opinion in the cybersphere, and my short, not vert well thought-out blogs will do nothing more than muddy the waters, or perhaps just cause some more pond scum to cling to the edge.

One must have a topic to write about. I could pontificate on nothing and you would be rewarded for your endevoured reading with, well, nothing. I figured I'd mine Erin's blog for a topic. She wrote about music and songs and how particular songs whisk her back to time and place. As I read the post I let my mind wander down the path of amnesia. I was thinking what songs rip me back to the past. There are two that came to mind. And they both take me to the same place: the student lounge at GCC, circa 1993/1994.

The first song that knocks me back to the future is Beck's "Loser":


For some reason, I taken back to the pool table. I never really played pool, I would knock the balls around for fun and to "play with physics." I was usually there after lunch or before class. I think it was the hook that got me. That guitar riff at the beginning. I remember just kind of bopping along to the tune. I'm not doing a very good job of getting the feeling across.

The other song that zaps me back to the past is The Cranberries "Zombie."
This song I have an even more visceral reaction to and I don't mean that in a bad way. I remember playing Mortal Kombat. I was never good at Mortal Kombat, but it was fun to play. We'd have tournaments and the like.

I think one of the reasons why I have such a deep memory neck-snap to these songs is they were in heavy, and I mean heavy rotation on MTV and that was the only place I could watch MTV when I was living in Garrett County. We didn't have cable at home (that wasn't a bad thing, either).

This entry has kind of rambled and teetered and tottered a bit. By the gist is there.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Head Spins

The big news today, it seems, is the Ashton Kutcher, the actor (term loosely used) has reached a pinnacle that, to this point, has been unheard of: a million plus Twitter followers. I, too, use twitter I have a grand total, of, drumroll please, nine followers, I think. Well, I must clarify, I don't use twitter use twitter, if you get my meaning. I do play around with it and send pithy (okay not so pithy) tweets from time to time. I'm still not really sure what twitter is for. Though, I have actually started using Twitter to help in my job search. I have started following libgig which hosts job posting for libraries.

I find myself a bit overwhelmed, truthfully, when it comes to all the new things that are popping up almost daily online and in technology itself. Just seven years ago I thought I was on the cusp of it all when I started my "online diary," who know that would turn into "blogging" and then from there, well, here we are, I guess. When my father was alive one of my favorite things to do was to go to BestBuy or another electronic store and walk around with him. Sometimes I'd walk a little bit behind him and listen to him as he looked at the new "fangled" things. He would often turn to me ask me what such and such was for or what it did. If I was lucky I had an answer, sometimes I was just as baffled as he was and now, I find myself getting even more baffled by things like twitter and even tweetdeck , which seems to be a great "clearinghouse" for all things twitter and facebook related.

Yes, my head spins, too. I can't even write to it effectively.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Adventures in Facebooking

The Feb. 22, 2009 issue of Time magazine had an interesting article about Facebook.  The article was entitled: Facebook is for Old People.   It was one of those little pity articles that Timemagazine is good for.  Light fare, nothing too hard to handle.  The premise for the article is this: any one over the age of 30 is a perfect fit for Facebook because, well, we feel sentimental about the past, "we're not cool and we don't care," and my personal favorite "we don't udnerstand Twitter," which is true at least for this humble blogger.  Full disclosure, though, I do have a Twitter account, but I'm trying to figure out what the purpose of said account is, but that is neither here nor there.  This is a blogpost about Facebook and what it has done to me the last week.  

The last few days have been a strange, weird time for me. I don't necessarily mean in the surrealistic kind of way, or even the had-too-much-caffine of kind way, no its been I've-reconnected-with-people-I-haven't-seen-in-23-years kind of way, and its all Facebook's fault. 

 From the middle of first grade to the middle of sixth grade, I went to Woodside Elementary School in Peekskill, NY; roughly from 1981-1986.  In 1986 my family and I moved away to Maryland.  

As usually happens, when one moves away, after promising to keep in touch and stay friends for ever, I fell out of contact with pretty much everybody from my elementary school classes.  I did keep in contact, somewhat with one kid: Brian.  In actuality, my mom and Brian's mom, Pat, kept in contact and by default I was able to keep up with Brian and some of the other kids that we kind of ran with, but ever that became more difficult.  And then there was Facebook.

I set up my Facebook account about two years ago, I think.  It was at the beginning of the "social network' craze.  I got involved with Myspace shortly before that time.  I set up my Facebook account because for an assignment for one of my classes.  I set up quickly in the class and sort of forgot about it, but I eventually became disenchanted with Myspace because it was hard work trying to find friends mainly because I didn't necessarily know their handles.  Facebook was easier because I could just type in a name and if they were there I'd find them.  I also got tired of the teeny-bop-esqueness of Myspace: flashing pages, music on every page, a virtual (and I mean the both literally and figuratively) cyber-cacophony.  I eventually started going to Facebook more and more.  Their applications were more fun and I enjoyed the simple screen interface they had.  In short, it just kind made me feel better.  I didn't have visual, or auditory overload.  

I started finding people I knew.  At first it was people I was going to school with adn then I started to find people I knew from other places.  Before long, I started having almost a cyber-web of friendships.  I made one rule for myself when it came to friends on Facebook: "I'd add them if I knew them personally; that is, if I'd broken bread with them or had spent time with them in "real life" and liked them in person, then I'd be okay with them being my "friend" via facebook.  I have, at present, 210 friends.  This to me is shocking, I didn't think I knew that many people.  Of those 210, 206 are people I have actually broken bread with, had a meal, or spent time with at some point or another.  The four that are not in the "broken bread" category, are people that I have become friendly with through their blogs and online diaries.  

Eventually, I added Brian to my list and was able to reconnect with him.  He's probably my oldest friend.  I met him in first or second grade and we started walking home together after school after mom and I bumped into he and his mom as they were walking out of a bakery that my mom and I were walking into.  We started going to my house after school because my father was usually there (he worked from home) so there would be someone to keep tabs on us after school.  

After finding Brian, I eventually found Andy.  Andy, now known as Andrew, was another good friend of mine from elementary school.  We hung out a lot.  He was one of those kids that had the amazing ability to draw.  I mean he was (and still is) a dynamite artist.  I was in awe of him.  He had a gift, let me tell you.

So, I had two buddies from elementary school on my list.  That's cool, we chatted from time to time and would leave a message on the other's "wall," etc, etc.  

Then came this past Monday or Tuesday.  

Another guy I knew from elementary school Sean K. posted some class pictures.  You know the pictures I'm talking about: school picture day, each person in the class has their mugshot/portrait taken and then the class is herded over to some benches, posed, and a picture snapped.  Even at the tender age of eight or nine, in the back of your mind you're hoping against hope that you will be able to make that picture disappear.  Invariably that picture resurfaces, usually when you're digging through an old box and suddenly, boop!  There is your third grade self, awkward as hell, smiling up at you.  It is the very definition of what I like to call a Carpe Diem moment (I coined after seeing Dead Poets' Society, the scene Williams takes his students into the trophy room and makes them look closely at the class pictures in the display cases... just kind of a creepy scene to me). 

Sean K. wasn't on my friends list, but he had tagged Brian and Andy in the picture.  Their tagging showed up on my Facebook page.  I clicked on the pictures and saw my elementary school self smiling at my 35 year old self.  I had a Carpe Diem moment.  I 'friended" Sean and we started chatting, getting caught up, you know, the usual.  

Suddenly, though, something strange and unique started to happen.  Other people from that picture started to tag their names to it, or they were tagged to it by someone else.  Those that had Facebook profiles showed up with links to their profiles.  I had, in matter of 24 to 36 hours reconnected with a goodly portion of my elementary school class circa 1981-1986.  It was a bit of a shock to see the adult versions of the little gap-toothed kids that had stared at me from the picture for lo these many years.  

I don't know what will happen with this, probably nothing.  We all have lives now, and are far removed those pictures and those days.  It makes me wince a bit to think that 23 years has passed since that last class picture that I was a part of was taken.  Twenty-three years... Reagan was still in the White House, A.I.D.S. was just starting to scare the hell out of every one, we knew who are enemies were, they were across the Atlantic, they were the Russians.  The Mets were on their way to win the World Series and this was the Burger King ad campaing:


As a matter of fact, Sean M., someone else I'd refound this week, gave me a T-shirt as a birthday present that said 'I'm not the Herb you're looking for."  It was a pretty cool shirt.

There is one really big part to this that I forgot to mention.  I am a librarian.  And I can honestly trace my chosen career path to the library at Woodside Elementary School.  And I can further trace the zenith of my chosen career path to the librarian in particular.  I don't remember her name, but I'm sure if I ask enough of my former classmates, one of them may remember her name and it will be great day for me, because I need to thank her, sadly, for all I know she has passed away.  I mean it was 23 years ago. I have been asked many a-time why I decided to become a librarian.  The story is very simple and I would tell it something like this: the librarian at Woodside had hooks for hands, she had two prothstethis hooks where her hands should of been.  I found that fascinating and I remember one day watching her stamp books with a rubber stamp clutched between the hooks of her hand and I remember distinctly thinking to myself "if she can do that, so can I." 

The last few years, though, I started to think that maybe it was a made up memory or an amalgamation of memories, or even just a wishful thought memory.  In short, I was starting to doubt what I thought I had known.  It turns out I was right and the memory is sound, though, as I talked to Sean K. about it he remembers her only having one hook instead of two.  That's not a big deal.  The fact that the memory I had was, to a degree, correct made me feel very good.  

As I reconnected with my former classmates, I got to talking one of the "twins."  There was a set of twins that I went to school with at Woodside: KC and Missy.  I was talking with KC and I asked her, too, about the librarian.  I had already gotten confirmation from Sean K. about her, but I just needed a little bit more.  So I aked KC and she agreed with me that there was a librarian that had a hook (or hooks) for hands.  I told simply that it was because of her, the librarian, that I had chosen my career path.  It turns out that the librarian had a similar affect on her, too.  KC isn't in the library business, no she does something more important than librarianship.  She works for a company that fabricates and fits patients with artificial limbs and backbraces...

About two years ago, I got involved with a documentary series, called the Up! Series, or the 7 Up series.The series as done by BBC television.  It's premise was simple: the documentarians decided to follow a group of children, starting at the age of seven, and would check up on them every seven years.  The first one was at age seven, the next at 14, 21, 28, etc.  The last one made was, I think, 42, but their might have been a 49.  The thesis, if you will, of the documentary was this: 'give me the "boy" of seven and I will show the "man."  Meaning, by seven we have been programmed to be who we are going to be.  And it was kind of interesting to see this played out through the videos.  What does this have to do with this suddenly bloated blog post?  I don't know, lets see: I became a librarian, KC works with people who need artificial limbs because we were influenced by a librarian.  Andy, the artist in elementary school became an artist as an adult and also has illustrated books.  Sean M. who was a newspaper boy in school went on to work in the newspaper business.  I'm sure if I dug down deep enough I'd be able to make other connections with my class then and what they do now.  

Like I said, this has been a very intersting week.  I've learned alot and I've reconnected with a past that was hazy at best, but is now very bright and full colored.  And for that, I am very thankful, and yes, somewhat flabbergasted.  In short, its been, to use a common phrase "cool' to get reconnected with a distant, faded past.  Yeah, it has.  And as much as I hate to say it, I mean it: "God bless Facebook."  

There, I said it.
  


Friday, February 13, 2009

Fridays

I always knew that being a librarian would not be glamorous. Let me rephrase that, I suspected it wouldn't be all that glamorous and, to a degree, I was right. It isn't. It is enjoyable, but not especially glamorous, which is fine by me. There is one problem, though. One teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy problem that I hadn't really thought about. It can be boring. Particularly on a Friday late-afternoon. The little clock at the bottom of the screen tells me its 5:09 pm. If I stood up, I could probably count all the patrons on two hands, maybe.


Jockeying the reference desk on a Friday afternoon, late in the day can be an excercise in endurance. Not because its hard work, or busy, but because the opposite is true. It can, and it is right now, quiet.  It is beastly quiet right now, which is actually kind of nice. The reference room can be, in a word, cacophonic at times. There can be a dull roar at others. This soft hum is actually refreshing.  

Fridays are interesting for another reason.  That's the day I usually field a call or two from professors working in their office looking for articles and having a hard time navigating the database.  Its nice to have the "power" over them for a little bit.  Recently, I had a conversation with one professor who was adamant that they were the "database queen" (her words, not mine) and that she knew how to use this particular database... there was a smartaleck in me that wanted to say "obviously the opposite is true," but alas, the smarter, more reasoned little voice won out.  

I am a library geek, I know I am.  So I actually get off on trying to help someone with database searching or just general searching.  I was thrilled the other day when I actually was able to use a print resource (that doesn't happen all that much, sadly).  I dig it when I have to work with a database I've never used before.  For the most part, one database works that same as another, but its how you get to the information that is the key.  For example an "Ebsco" database is much easier for me to use then say an "Ovid" one.  The "user interface," to use the "parlance of our day" is much more "user friendly," than some of the others that I use.  

So, Fridays come and go.  If it's quiet and it usually is, I work on my budget for the next two weeks, or I read, or, because it sits in front of me all day, I'll surf the internet, that gets boring after a while.  The key to a Friday evening is this: get up and move around.  Walk around a bit and dont' watch the clock. 

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

bluch

Rain. That's the way to describe today. Rain. Lots of it. More than I care to see, but I suppose in the great scheme of things, it is better it rain three inches than snow three feet. Neither is very pleasant, but I'll take rain over snow any day and yes, that includes Christmas Eve. White Christmas's are overrated.

Its even grey outside. Not just cloudy, but grey. Dark grey.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Just Stopping In

Its cold outside.  Bitter cold.  Its the kind of cold, that if there is wind, it finds the proverbial hole in your pants.  Yes, its that cold.  I like cold weather, but a friend of mine said something, somewhat off-handedly that made me feel a bit bad when I said I liked cold weather.  She said, that's nice, I don't work outside.  That stopped me in my tracks.  I don't have to work outside.  I work inside, second floor, reference room, University Library.  I'm inside right now.  I'm wearing a pair of shorts and it is, according to WTHR's homepage 7 degrees outside.  Single digits... yummy.

Supposedly, the tempeture is going to be somewhere in the area of zero and, if we're lucky, in the negatives.  I like cold weather, I do.  I enjoy it more than hot weather.  I had my fill of hot weather when I lived in Texas.  If I never hear the phrase "heat index" again, it will be much too soon.  

I haven't update this blog in ages.  There hasn't been much going on, lately.   I've been working and paying bills; I did start to re-read the Harry Potter series.  Currently, I am about half-way through the first book.  I applied for a "tenure track" librarian position at the University Library.  I am in a pool of about 60 people or so.  I guess we'll see what happens with that.

Other then that, nothing much to say.  I just thought I'd stop by this little slice of cyber heaven and kick the walls a bit and maybe rattle the cages.  I hope all is well in your real and cyber worlds.

Blessings to all.