Note: I had this written yesterday, but the pictures went all pear-shaped and I was too tired to fix them.
The hike was longer than expected. I opted for the "loop" option, which seems to add at least two miles to the 4.5 mile length. Not sure of the exact amount. Anyway, it was a beautiful hike through pine and aspen forest, and wildflower meadows. Even up in the mountains it was a bit warm, though there were cool spots deep under the trees. Anyway, I saw a whole bunch of mourning cloak butterflies. None of them felt like holding still for a picture, though. I saw a shrew, as well, unless there was a mouse with an extra-pointy snout. It also ran away too quickly for a picture. I did get a picture of a weird beetle on a fallen aspen:
I also got a picture of a woodpecker:
And this is the end of the actual "Corral Creek Trail":
You can't quite see it in this picture, but at the top of the hill, there's a weird...staircase thing made of rebar. On the other side of that is a road that (eventually) takes you back to the main highway. Why did I go that way instead of retracing my path? Well, there are several reasons.
(1) Curiosity - I would have spent the rest of the day wondering what lay down that road. As it is, there were several branches going the "wrong" way that I didn't explore, so I'll have to go back and take care of that sometime.
(2) Practicality - The trail was rather muddy and slippery in several spots. Going up was quite difficult. Going down seemed like a good way to break something. I probably could have managed it safely, but the idea didn't enthuse me.
(3) Walking surface - the trail has not been maintained since the winter thaw from the looks of things, and parts of it are just deep, angled channels (some dry, some still wet). Rather difficult to walk on. The road was much MUCH easier in that respect.
And though it added quite a bit of distance to the overall trek, I wouldn't have seen the woodpecker or heard the frogs if I'd just turned around and come back down the same way.
I've also got a whole bunch of flower pictures, but I'll put those in a separate post. Or posts. Eventually.
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Saturday
My mom and I have orthogonal traveling styles. I’m the rise at 6 am be on the road by 7 type. Mom is the sleep till noon type (thankfully hotel checkout times force her to be up by 9 at the latest, since she takes two hours to get ready and checkout time is 11). However, we have a compromise in Fort Collins, at least when we don’t have very far to go that day. I get up and do whatever during the morning (today I walked down the frontage road by the interstate, came back and loaded the car, then practiced taiji), so that we’re still in town at noon and can eat at Sri Thai. It’s not JUST because it’s my favorite restaurant. There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to find edible food wherever we wind up next, and any leftovers become future meals for me. If necessary, I can order a dish to go as well. So I don’t pester my mom to get going and she doesn’t growl at me (unless I’m too loud when I get up).
We did some shopping while waiting for the opportune time to dine. I found a wool poncho and blanket at the Nepal/Tibet Import Store. Which means I can get rid of a few more old acrylic and/or polyester blankets. I also finally got a new pair of sandals. The ones I have are still wearable, but they are near to falling apart. I’ve glued the straps back into the base two or three times now, and the elastic that holds the straps to the buckle is about stretched to the breaking point. They no longer make the exact style that I got (and have no color remotely as good as that color), but I found a pricier style that was SOOO comfortable. I mean, if feet could sing, they’d be singing when you put these on. Not as pretty, not as good a color, but for that level of comfort I can overlook a lot of minor cosmetic imperfections. (Incidentally, my mom agreed they were more comfortable; then bought the less comfortable ones that looked prettier. I will not state my opinion of this action).
At any rate, we left for Akron around 13:30, and got there around 15:00. The hotel was more organized this time (last time the hotel clerk was no where to be found), and we got checked in right away. Then we headed over to Beula's house to hand off the Intrepid. She was still rather flabbergasted about the whole deal. However, she seemed to like the car. My mom was rather frazzled and managed NOT to bring the title with her, but she's going to mail it to them.
Then while Mom was at the Alumni banquet, Virginia and MaryAnne (two of Grandma's friends) took me out to Akron's one decent restaurant. They have several things I can eat (that night I ordered salmon, and was very glad they put the sauce on the side: cucumber, yogurt, and garlic. All I can say is, "What's your damage?"). There was a singer at the restaurant, sort of folksy-country stuff. The singer reminded me of my uncle Darwin, though I don't THINK Darwin ever sang.
Sunday
Breakfasted with MaryAnne, Virginia, Beula and Bill at the same restaurant. I ordered sausage and eggs (no hashbrowns or toast). We left town around 10:00. Stopped at the Outlet Mall by Loveland for a bit (for food and because I wanted to go to the Coleman store; I got a very nice sleeping bag for $30). Then we drove. And drove. And drove. And drove. When I wasn't driving, I generally slept. At least with onle one car we COULD trade off. Mom was asleep when we got to Rock Springs, so I continued on to Little America. She got food there and I made use of their microwave to heat up Thai leftovers. I asked if Mom felt up to continuing on, and she drove from there up to Cokeville (I slept through Kemmerer; I'd halfway expected she'd try to find a hotel there). Then I drove from Cokeville to the rest area just barely outside of Pocatello, as Mom needed to stop. I let her drive the fifteen or so remaining miles. We got into Pocatello around 22:15. Mom dropped me off and we unloaded essentials. The rest waited until Monday.
Monday
Walked up to a park by the interstate to practice taiji. It was a bit too warm for this to be comfortable: summer seems to have struck in our absence. Otherwise I didn't do much, but I did go over to see the bouquet that Beula sent Mom. I also got a bit of writing done, but I'm in the process of weaving some threads together at the moment and that happens in my head before it happens on virtual paper.
Today
I think I'll go up to Gibson-Jack after lunch and hike around a bit. Not sure if I'll make it the full 8.5 miles, but I'll go in a ways at least. :^D (UPDATE: I might try Corral Creek instead; it's short enough I might make it all the way through)
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Oh, I called my mom yesterday after I had all my stuff together and (mostly) in Grandma's car. This was around 7:15
Mom: *warily* Hello?
Me: Hey, Mom! I'm ready to go now. Are you?
Mom: Oh God.
So I headed over there and helped her finish getting ready, and ran to Fred Meyer to grab something she'd forgotten to get, as well as some ice.
Incidentally, it would be incredibly easy to find out where someone was staying. All you'd have to do is wander in looking confused, "Do you have a reservation for P.X.Somebody? No? Darn, they told me the wrong hotel. Thanks anyway." Or: "Oh, good. I finally found the place."
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We got into town around 17:30. Discovered that Mom remembered the hotel wrong, but the right one was two hotels down, so no major loss. SRI THAI!!!! THAI ICED TEA FLOAT!!!! *ahem* Anyway, the Asian store in the mall had moved to the opposite side of the mall, but I found a small Buddha statuette (I'd been looking for a male statue the right size to compliment a Guan-Yin statue that I've got), some Chinese coins, and a mother's day present for my mom. (Shh!!!) At Barnes and Noble, I found a few books that interested me, but they are all available in Idaho, so I didn't bother with them. I did get two CD's that probably aren't to be found in Idaho. Joanne Shenandoah: Skywoman, and Ceredwen: Or Mabinogi. They're songs of legends, Iriquois and Celtic respectively. The Iriquois one seems to be mostly in English, but the Celtic one is in someting else, probably Gaelic.
Oh, and I got a really cool picture of the moon with a planet (likely Jupiter or Mars). If it looks as good on screen as off, I'll try to post it. But I'm too tired to dig out wires, unload pictures, load them into blogger, etc. Though that might take less time than me stating that I am too tired for such activity. Anyway, since this is rapidly deteriorating, I will say: "Good night. Sleep light. May fireflies provide you light."
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We leave for Colorado tomorrow. I've got bread raising, and muffins being mixed up. Also, laundry being washed. I need to get my office room cleaned up, as my Aunt Sandra indicated she would take my old twin bed off my hands. So I'll be able to turn it into a full office. I might replace it with a little fold-out of some sort. That way I'll have a guest bed beyond the couch. The twin bed just takes up too much room the way it is. Anyway, that's about it for today. I still have to pack, once the laundry's done. *shrugs*
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Hey, look what I found!
What did I find? The Lord of the Rings, done in the style of The Princess Bride. Parts of it are absolutely hysterical. A few excerpts:
STRIDER: I am waiting for Gandalf! You told me to go back to the beginning, so I have. This is where I am, and this is where I’ll stay. I will not be moved.
[...]
STRIDER: I do not mean to pry, but you don’t by any chance happen to have a Ring of Power on your right hand?
FRODO: Do you always begin conversations this way?
[...]
HOBBITS: Who are you?
STRIDER: No one of consequence.
HOBBITS: We must know.
STRIDER: Get used to disappointment.
HOBBITS: Okay.
ELROND: Aragorn, Arwen is dying.
ARAGORN: She’s immortal. She can’t die.
ELROND: Whoo-hoo-hoo! Look who knows so much, heh? Well, it just so happens that your love here is only mostly immortal. There’s a big difference between mostly immortal and all immortal. Now, mostly immortal is slightly mortal.
[...]
EOWYN [at the entrance to the Paths of the Dead]: You’ll never come out alive!
ARAGORN: Nonsense! You’re only saying that because no one ever has!
PETER JACKSON: Frodo and Sam don't get burned up by the lava.
AUDIENCE: What?
PETER JACKSON: Frodo and Sam don't get burned up by the lava. I'm explaining to you because you looked nervous.
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I had an odd series of dreams. I'll try to write down what I remember...
My parents and I were getting ready to fly somewhere. Mom had either bought or was looking at some new luggage. I started playing with a small rolling suitcase, and was quite pleased with the number and diversity of pockets (a crucial factor in my luggage preferences). One narrow, long pocket ran clear along the outside. First when I opened it, I was wondering whether I could fit a paperback book or two in it. Maybe at the bottom, where it was wider, but it was too narrow at the top. Then it occurred to me that it might be perfect for my taiji practice sword. But the sword was a bit too long, and my dad started yelling at me about trying to bring that on a plane anyyway (which shouldn't have been an issue, since the suitcase was too big to be a carry on).
Then I sort of "wake up" at a hotel, and decided I want to write the former dream down. For some reason, I don't have my laptop with me, so I wander down to the lobby. There's a strange computer terminal there. It was made like a motorcycle side car, with the monitor built in across from the seat. I climbed in and tried to figure out how to get the thing working. I tried to close out a program that looked like it was eating up all the memory, and the whole thing shut down. So I started it back up and let the program run (I think it was a computer television feed), and started typing something (no memory of what I typed).
Then I climbed out of the computer booth and went over to what seemed to be the gift store. Here it gets weird. The store looked like a cross between a Borg-cube, the set of the Matrix, and the Jawa transport vessel full of robots in Star Wars. Only it wasn't a store any more. I'm not sure what it was, but there was no way out of the techno-melange. There was something about looking for "the One" ala the Matrix, but if there was any detail, I've forgotten it. I remember going into a bathroom and being surprised at the "new" cabinet inside. It had double doors that folded in the middle, and seemed to be used for storing toilet paper (not deep enough to hold much else). It was perhaps six feet long and three feet high, and mounted on the wall across from the toilet. It had been covered in ceramic tile in varying shades of green. Dark green at the bottom, and fading to almost white at the top (Now I recognize it as the same color scheme as a basket that I have in my upstairs bathroom). There's some fuzziness here, but my next clear memory is of walking down a rather crowded hallway, and noticing that the little robots who lived in the walls had constructed another cabinet further down the hall. I opened it, and found a refrigerator case for storing medicines. It was full of round vials, like ones that could be connected directly to a syringe. I was pleased that the little robots had cared enough to make it.
After I woke up (for real this time), I decided that the little robots were probably inspired by Stargate replicators. These are NOT friendly. The ones in my dream were mostly helpful, though.
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I've had a good day of writing. Well, half a day as the other half was spent grading tests and entering grades (ALL done now). It's so awesome to finally get to write some of the scenes that have been in my head for years. One of them was a bit anticlimactic, but the major details had already been dealt with. This next bit, though, will be quite enjoyable. See, I've got some mixed blood human/vampires in my story. Trying to make them into full vampires is a bad idea, as they tend to go too far the other direction (not enough humanity left). However, there are ways around this as my primary "halfbreed" is about to try not to discover. But I don't think I'm coherent enough to write it right now. So right now I'm going to go right down to bed, right? (Yes, if I'm tired enough to find that amusing, it's definitely time for bed)
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Well, three episodes of S5 Buffy later, and the Math015 tests are graded. Also grades computed and submitted. That leaves Math123. Then I can leave on Friday with no worries. :^D
ADDENDUM: All grading finito. I just need to go up to the office one last time to get Math123 grades calculated and submitted. YAY! Oh, and to give the office a copy of the Math123 final I gave.
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I got the Math025 finals graded while my Math123 students took their final. Got grades recorded and submitted as well. Which leaves the Math015 finals and the Math123 finals. Math123 won't take very long. There were never very many students in that class, and a few dropped along the way. I think ten people showed up to the final, with one person taking it early due to a conflict. Math015... *sighs* There's probably about 25 tests. I think 36 are still registered between the two sections, but some I haven't seen in a long time. For the last in-class test, a few people showed up who hadn't been coming to class. One did reasonably well, so she'd been working on MathXL and getting stuff done. Another flopped miserably, and got a note on her test "Maybe you should have been coming to class..." Since she never showed up to pick it up, it's unlikely it did much good.
I supppose I'll grade Math015 when I get back from giving my mom ride home from the car place. See, Grandma wanted her friend Beula to have her car after she died, only Mom decided she was going to keep that car, and offered Beula HER old car instead. Beula was a bit shocked but accepted, so Mom's taking Chong Wen for an oil change and to get cleaned up. (FYI, Mom has never accpeted Chong Wen as her car's name, but Chong Wen told me he liked that name ;^) Which means I'll have to come up with a name for Grandma's LeSabre. I tried brainstorming with my mom, but it turns out she hates every name I come up with, so I'm just going to find a name that fits.
On a related note, we're going to Colorado for the weekend. Mom's somethingth high school reunion is in Akron, and I'm tagging along to get out of town for a while. I'm not going to the actual banquet, as it's unlikely to contain any edible food. At Grandma's funeral, we actually brought some ham down to supplement the after-funeral-lunch, since there was nothing there I could eat either. *mutters to herself* Anyway, I'm hoping to find a black geometric shelf to hang on the wall in my soon-to-be tearoom while we're in Fort Collins.
We found out from my Aunt Sandra that my Uncle Kip (Dad's brother) had a heart attack not too long ago. Kip is Dad's younger brother. His older brother Darwin died of a heart attack when I was a junior in high school, and that's what set off Dad's worst schizophrenic outburst. Kip survived, largely because he got very quick medical treatment and because techniques have advanced quite a bit.
Aaaand there was the phone. Time to go rescue my mom from the evil clutches of the car place.
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I did find the event I needed. It seems so obvious in retropsect. It's a scene that was originally part of Erika's entry into Devil Falls, but got discarded because it made no sense there. Here, it makes sense and will even tie off a minor loose end.
I also got the Math123 final written. I always like to put a weird extra credit on the final. In Stats it's usually "How many statisticians does it take to change a light bulb?" This time, since we'd been discussing the normal distribution, I gave them one that asks about the middle 68% of a distribution (within one standard deviation of the mean). However, I told them that the mean was blue and the standard deviation was yellow. :^D I expect "green" will figure in many answers. We shall see.
One question on there turned out to be more difficult than I'd intended. We'd discussed choosing things with and without order mattering. I put a Yahtzee question on, about how many combinations there were if order did not matter. It's not that hard to figure out if you take some time, but it didn't test the concept I'd intended to test and it's too hard for a Math123 final. So that one will be an optional extra credit. There are a few people in there who might be able to get it. Most of them I wouldn't expect to, though. I figured out the answer last night, then decided to play around on Excel and find a way to list them all without typing them all. "Concatenate" is quite a useful function for that. I don't quite have them all yet, but I've got most of them. Then I'll try sticking them all in one column and put them all in order. Why? I don't know. I just do these things sometimes.
But I've got all homework, etc, graded in every class now (many of them simply 20/20 for turning it in), so I just need to get it recorded, get finals graded, and I'll be done.
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First, there's a bunch of Les Mis quizzes here, but the only one whose result I identified with was this one:
| You're... "One Day More" |
|---|
Another day, another destiny / I did not live until today / One more day before the storm... You are deep, complex, varied, and wonderful. Although at times it's hard to figure out what you're talking about. What's Your Les Miz Themesong? |
It's not my favorite song from Les Miserables, but it is a style of song that I particularly like. That is, you get a whole bunch of intertwined voices and ideas, all working together. A similar one from Jekyll & Hyde is "Your Work and Nothing More." You can find the lyrics written as you hear them on CD
here, though it works better on CD than as written text. They need to use different fonts for the different voices or something. :^D
Okay, back to test-writing. "One test more! Another test another grade to tweak! This never-ending road to Finals' week! These students who take up my time must come in for this one last time. One test more..." ;^D
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Remind me not to watch cliffhanger Dr. Who episodes right before bedtime. Especially not creepy cliffhangers. I only started watching recently (and I haven't seen any of the older versions, just this new one). There's a wide variety in plotlines, but every episode has been interesting so far. Just...there's a creepiness factor that creeps in when I'm tired.
In this one, they've gone back to London, 1941, while the Germans are bombing it. I missed the very beginning, but it seems they were following something else that landed there. Anyway, as a result of the something else, people are turning into zombies. Anyone who touches them also become a zombie. Each one has a gas mask fused to his face, and clinically seems to be dead, except they can all still move around. The first zombie was a little boy hit by the time-debris. He wanders around calling out for his 'Mommie' in an extremely creepy voice. Anyway, I suppose I'll find out what's going on there on Friday. Meanwhile, I expect to have creepy dreams. *sighs*
Note: Sometimes the effects and acting are quite cheesy on Dr. Who. This is not one of those times.
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Hmmm... I need an event. I've got two scenes worked out, which make great sense on their own, but there's something missing in between. I'm not sure exactly what needs to go there, except that it needs to draw two characters closer together. *sighs* I'm probably going to need a few more of these right after the scene I'm working on as well. Otherwise the timing is going to be all screwy. *sighs* I have a few ideas for what sorts of events I can use. Basically, the one unifying theme for the section I'm currently on is a series of murders. So I can expand on that. Another option is to plant some seeds for future plotlines. Problem is, those plotlines don't involve the characters I need to bring together. Ah well. I'll figure it out.
Other writing-related news... James from my Saturday taiji class also writes. I found this out yesterday during push-hands (which means we were talking too much, but Don worked us both hard to make up for that). He acted a lot like I do when mentioning my writing to people I don't know very well (shy, a bit embarrassed, not sure he should be talking about it). So I immediately had to ask, "Do you get stories that stay stuck in your head until you write them down?" He does. We both agree it can be annoying at times.
If you've never experienced this, imagine that you have a series of events running through your head. When you're directly concentrating on something, they'll recede into the background for a while, but in every quiet, unoccupied moment they come creeping back into your awareness. Sometimes they're a complete story in and of themselves. Sometimes they're just a scenario, begginng to be completed. But until they get written down, they just stay there in your consciousness, and won't let you think about anything else without a great deal of effort. Don says that's the sign of a true writer: when you can't not write.
A side effect of this (for me at least) is an instant ability to come up with backstory for a character who only appeared in the story as a convenience to further an unrelated plot. Which sometimes means I have to start over, as the character's backstory doesn't mesh with anything else. It can be very strange, though, to leap from "Hmm... I need a female character in this scene" to "Ah, yes. She's one of the Brethren who came over with Valdren's father." Further details emerged from there, and somewhere along the way she named herself "Hannah." Fibonacci helped me work out some of the consequences of the backstory she came with.
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(1) Drinking yerba mate tea in the morning makes me less hungry, but then the lack of food also means I have less energy.
(2) The automatic sprinkler system at my Grandma/Mom's house has no useful control mechanisms to adjust how often it comes on.
(3) My mom is a lightswitch neat freak (insists that two switches controlling the same light must both be down when the light is off, thus negating the usefulness of having two switches)
(4) The people who wired my Grandma/Mom's house were lunatics (not new, but it keeps extending; this time, a dual switchbox upstairs was placed so that it was impossible to get a lightswitch cover on it)
(5) There are still some rough spots in Parsival's Test to be smoothed out (okay, somewhat useful, as I can now FIX them)
(6) I am also allergic to the bushes at the front of Granmda/Mom's house (we discovered a few years back that I'm allergic to the one in back; nothing major, just a nice crop of hives) - - SIDENOTE: If I'm not careful, Christmas wreaths generally give me a rash as well.
(7) My mom does not like it when I have no opinion on a question she asks, ever. Tonight it was "How do you think it would look if I put plastic strips in the chain link fence back there?"
Me: "It would look like there were plastic strips in it."
Mom: "But would it be an improvement?"
Me: "That depends on whether you like the look of plastic strips. I have no opinion on the matter."
Mom: *sighs*
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I usually try to wait until after school stuff is all done, but my hair was driving me nuts. So I got out my clippers and took a bunch off on Tuesday. I realized I'd missed a few spots, so I tidied it up (and made it even shorter) today. I got the clippers when money was tight, and I didn't feel like paying $10-$20 for a haircut. The clippers were $40, so with the price of the place I usually went to, they paid for themselves after three uses. I generally just use them in summer, because I can't get much finesse on my own. But this way I can keep my hair short and manageable without paying through the nose. I'm sort of tempted to dye it blond this summer. I've done black and red, but never blond. It will grow out pretty quickly if it looks horrible.
I had long hair once. It was a pain. I hate having dirty hair, but when it's long it takes forever to dry after washing. So I keep it short. That way I just wash, comb, and go. My mom keeps her hair short as well, though longer than mine, but she insists on perming it and teasing it and all sorts of other ruddy nonsense. She gets very irritated with me when she asks how it looks, because unless there's some obvious problem, I answer, "Huh? Oh, fine." You'd think she'd learn not to ask for my opinion, since I generally don't have one. (She also does this when picking music to play for church; I invariably tell her to play "One Last Shot" from Pirates of the Caribbean, or "Imperial March". Yet she continues to ask.)
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Four more lectures to go, one for each class. And, really, all that's left is review for all of them. In Math015, I had to quickly go over percentages on Monday (because somehow chapter 7 hadn't made it onto the syllabus), but I just presented them as another type of proportion problem. The book also goes through the more usual method of decimal multiplication, but as I was short on time, I wanted the material to have as little new stuff in it as possible. Hence, I showed them how to do everything as proportions. But today we can just review.
In Math025, we started reviewing Monday, and made it up to polynomial arithmetic. In Math123, we finished up the chapter on the normal distribution last night, and then I did a brief overview of that chapter. On Thursday we'll review the probability chapter. Since that class isn't a prerequisite for anything, I chose not to do a cumulative final, so their "final" exam is just over those chapters. Much to my surprise, I've enjoyed teaching that class. It's a fun mix of topics. My only frustration is that the students really don't have the math background to appreciate some of the topics.
I think between my grandma's death and everything else that's happened this semester, I'm just burned out. Especially on grading. I've been spending most of my extra time writing, and once again I'm getting plot elements to mesh (including one that I'd more or less discarded as extraneous; it turned out to be the key in making two other plotlines fuse together). This weekend, I plan to get the Math123 final written, but then I think I'll read through Parsival's Test again, and then see about getting Kinkos to print it for me on nice paper. I would like to get it submitted sometime soon. Fibonacci pointed out one place where the reasoning behind a character's actions is not clear. It wasn't supposed to be crystal clear, but it looks like I need to do a touch-up so that it's not completely obfuscated.
The differences between projects can be rather amusing at times. Parsival's Test is nearly all from the POV of only two characters. The sequel that I'm working on now does not have a primary POV character, or even characters. There are three intertwined plotlines that will soon collide, then there probably will be a more unified feel, since all but one of those will be resolved (for the purposes of this project) at the collision. Anyway, I need to get a Math015 test changed up enough for a student to take it this morning. So I've got a slightly different writing project to work on.
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Okay, this is just cool. They've found a way to channel the random molecular motion of water, so that it goes in the general direction they want.
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Over at Pharyngula, PZ has an excellent post up. I'll admit that PZ is sometimes a bit too militantly atheist for my tastes, but I agree with him on this one. He's discussing the difference between maintaining a secular government and forcing society to be secular.
He's reacting to an earlier article (linked to in the post) which defined secularism as, essentially, equivalent to atheism. It's sort of amusing, to me, to read articles of this nature, because they've got this black/white spectrum going, and I'm on the green axis instead. I don't care for the extremists on either side.
On a related note, Positive Liberty has one contributor who regularly posts about the beliefs of the founding fathers. The most recent post is less overtly secular, but is very critical of anyone who justifies theocratic tendency with the "Christian Nation" rhetoric.
What's my take? Sometimes secularism is taken to an extreme. I have never seen the point of removing, for instance, the ten commandments from public property. They are a historical example of a set of laws. Also, most of them are abrogated by our own Constitution's first amendment, so I find it pleasingly ironic to leave them where they are. Even during my brief stint as an atheist, I found the notion of removing them to be a bit silly. I have no problem with public Christmas displays so long as they do not deliberately marginalize non-Christians, and so long as public displays of non-Christian holidays are allowed.
I do have one major holiday pet peeve with the Christians. It happens every seven years or so (sometimes jolted off or on by a leap year). It's when Halloween falls on a Sunday. They make all sorts of lame excuses (it's a school day being favorite), but what it really boils down to is that they can't tolerate having a semi-pagan holiday celebrated on their holy day. If it was really about the next day being a school day, the same arguments would come up when it fell on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. But no. It's only Sunday that's the problem.
This may not seem like a large issue. And in some ways it's not. But one year when this happened, we gave out candy on the designated Saturday, and had the light on Sunday night as well (the true Halloween date). We got one ring at the doorbell. One little girl and her father. I gave out the candy, and the father gave me a pathetically grateful "Thank you." I don't know what had happened at other houses, but just based on his facial expression and gratitude, I am certain it was NOT pleasant. Ever since then, I've despised the paranoia that far too many Christians have about Halloween falling on Sunday.
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Relinquish
It was just Mark and I in Don's taiji class this morning. Which was quite good, actually, as it meant that Don focused on some more advanced stuff that he wouldn't have even mentioned if Joe or James had been there (Mark and I are his most advanced students at the moment). Also, I got him to use the marrow-washing/qi-pouring qigong as a warm-up. That's a favorite of mine.
Anyway, the advanced stuff. The first exercise was a "simple" one, in that we weren't trying to do anything specifically, just trying to maintain attention on the feet and the hands throughout the form. I'd done this paying attention to both hands before, but never with the feet at the same time. It was quite instructive. When I actually maintain attention on all of them, it's like being in stereo vs. mono. I can "hear" information coming in from all four places. Then Don added an extra piece on, and had us concentrate on filling the hands with qi as we got to a posture, then allowing them to empty again during the transitions. Whether you acknowledge the existence of qi or not, you can't fight effectively if you're attention is not in what you are doing, and where attention goes, qi goes. That was a good exercise.
Oh, and in push hands, I actually pushed Don out once. Once. Since this is a very rare occurence, I was quite pleased.
Inquire Further
Relinquish
