The Aerie
Sitting here at church two-thumbing an entry. Spectacularly rude of me, but I don't care.
I like being part of this church, but I don't like going to services, for several reasons. I'm not a big fan of our ministers: I find both of them too intellectual, their sermons rather dry, unemotional, and academic. Others would disagree with me, I'm sure, but it doesn't make me want to sit through their services.
But it's a good church, with a good religious education program despite its challenges, and I'm glad we can send our kids there. I usually feel too busy to want to go to church myself, but after spending the last several weekends cleaning the basement I'm taking it easier this weekend: sort of a weekend-weekend. So I'm sitting here at the service, rudely thumbing a journal entry on my cell phone.
See, here's what I'm talking about: today's sermon seems to be about 'naming' and the meaning of names. The minister read a delightfully patronizing commentary by James Luther Adams about how an atheist's faith in their atheism is their way of worshipping God. I'm sure it's only going to get more abstract from there... 'This radical openness is the subtext of the entire mystical tradition.' Why am I here listening to this nonsense?
Yesterday was fun, and much more concrete: Keith and I took my eldest son out for his first Geocaching trip. It was a ton of fun. We visited three sites. The first one on the river bluffs near our home was one that Keith and I had visited unsuccessfully before. We had no more luck this time, but spent a good hour climbing up and down the icy cliff faces. I scaled the bluffs twice, which made for a good workout.
We found a curious series of fire-pits down there too. We couldn't figure out whether they were hobo camps or not: some clearly were, sheltered fire pits surrounded by trash. Others were not sheltered, and seemed to be built of green wood cut by chainsaws. Hobo's with chainsaws? It was hard to tell.
The second cache was a 'virtual': rather than finding a hidden jar or box, you have to find and report on some clue that already exists. In this case it was an odd half-bell monument on Nicollet Island that had a plaque bearing the cache keywords.
We went for lunch at Kramarczuk's since we were in the area, then went in search of the third cache, which was way down in Veteran's Park by the airport. That was a very good cache, easy to find but tricky. I have to admit that I was so excited about finding my first actual cache that I forgot to let my son find it! Next time for sure!
We headed home, I got some wash going and got my ironing done. My friend Gio says I'm the only person she knows who irons clothes. Watched "To Die For," which was a lot less funny than I thought it was supposed to be, and a lot more about the abuse and neglect of children than I would have expected. It was the first of many movies this weekend, more movies than I usually watch in a month.
After "To Die For" I still had some shirts left, so I loaded in the first half of "To Have and Have Not." Lauren Bacall could teach some of the people in Hollywood how to act.. and this was her first screen appearance! Va-va-va-voom! And the writing - it was subtle, understated and witty! Wow. It really cast a pall over everything else I saw during this long weekend of movies. Bogey, now, it was interesting, he looks great in every grim scene, but when he tries to smile it's downright scary.
So that was fun, and then last night my wife and I braved the cold to see 'I 'heart' Huckabees', which was easily the wierdest film I've seen in years. What else can you say regarding a movie about two competing teams of philosopher-detectives?
Today, church followed by breakfast, meaning that we didn't get home for four hours. Then laundry washing and sorting (fortunately no more ironing), followed by a late dinner. Watched the rest of "To Have and Have Not," which ended abruptly about what I would have thought was 2/3rds of the way through the movie.
One amazing thing about TH&HN were the constant parallels I saw between Bogart's character and Harrison Ford's "Han Solo." Both were recruited into a fight they were trying to avoid... and both end up shooting a bad guy through a table.
Some final laundry sorting to do, and we tossed "DareDevil" into the VCR. Astonishingly dark and brutal movie, lots of death, very grim.
So that's the weekend. If you've read this far you clearly got a good night's sleep last night, so you're ready for the week ahead. Me, I so don't want to go to work today, I can hardly stand it...
Posted by Albatross at January 9, 2005 9:30 PM