Yesterday was another busy day. There was the time change, and then church, where I very much enjoyed the early service soloist. Then I went to discuss next week's music (I'm the soloist) with the pianist and learned that she was going on vacation.

Now, I had gone through a bit of a struggle over the Palm Sunday music. For one thing, the original soloist wasn't ready in time. Then there was a bit of theological discussion about the appropriate music. Then I had all those health issues and couldn't sing the high notes on the pieces that spring to people's minds ("Les Rameaux" and "The Holy City" were springing to people's minds around here, in case you're wondering). Then there was the question of whether the congregation would be happy with pieces sung in foreign languages.

Well, I dropped by Sunday School to tell the ladies that I had agreed to serve as a Rocker in the nursery, and went to the nursery to say that I just needed to speak with the sub piano player and would be right back. The sub immediately vetoed all classical pieces on the very reasonable grounds that they weren't in her repertoire and she couldn't get them ready in a week. She had a Spanish alternative to suggest, which I vetoed on the less-reasonable grounds that a) we weren't at all sure about foreign languages for this congregation and b) practically the whole song is on one note, so it wouldn't be fun to sing. We settled on a simple hymn in English.

But during these negotiations, it was gradually borne in upon me that the bell choir was setting up.

People standing around with bells and music on stands -- that was the main clue. I had entirely forgotten that the bells were playing.

I raced back to the nursery, where fortunately there were no babies to be rocked, grabbed my purse which I had left there, pounced on a couple of possible singers in the hallway to fill up the April special music calendar, and got back to the bells in time for practice. Then was the set-up in the sanctuary and back to the choir room for the choir run-through, and then another church service.

We heard that every Sunday in Lent is a little Easter, so I took some time, after I got home and made lunch and got some business done, to read a novel in the lovely spring weather on the porch. Actually, it was too cold to sit in the lovely spring weather, so I had a bit of a walk instead, and then read a bit indoors.

Then came the worship task force meeting. We had some discussion about Whither Modern Worship, and determined a direction, some good resources, and a Next Step goal: to plan a cool, different, new, multisensory service for Pentecost and see how appalled people are.

The media guy and I have a little difference of opinion. I like him, and I don't think he dislikes me, but he seems to feel that we are in need of plenty of electronic stuff to please "the X-ers" and "the millennials." He is the first person I've met who actually says those terms. I feel that, a) nobody that age is going to get up early enough to be in church at 8:45, and b) the young people aren't as impressed by stuff on screens as he is, being as how they spend their entire lives in front of screens. They might like something more IRL.

I forced the issue a little bit. We discussed the average age of the current early service congregation -- 30s, he thought, but when we began listing people, we had to go with a range of 40 to 70+, with an average age of about 60. The teens and students are sleeping at 8:45, and the people in their 20s and 30s are getting the kids ready for church. The people who get to church at 8:45 are older folks who want to finish church early either so they can get to the golf course or the lake, or so they can get back to the Senior Center to rest before lunch.

The media guy felt that we could change that if we were groovy enough. The pastor assured us that we were saying Whither Worship for both services. It seems to him that the early service has been fixed and people are now equally happy with both (no doubt you recall that the fixing of the early service was the initial goal of the committee), so we can move on to post-modern worship for all.

Accordingly, we are planning to have some cool elements in the Pentecost service.

This is slightly complicated by the fact that Pentecost this year is on Mother's Day. Last year, the UMW designed a service focusing on women -- a woman preaching, an anthem sung by just the women of the choir... I think that was it.

The pastor was astounded to learn that the UMW was planning to do the same this year. He vetoed the woman preaching part, since he was planning on preaching something pretty snazzy for Pentecost. I suggested that we sing Pentecost hymns written by women. I don't know about the anthem, but I was able to find half a dozen nice hymns that fit the bill. We also thought about liturgical dance, woodwinds, a multilingual recitation of The Lord's Prayer, and a bit of drama.

Some people hate change. Even good change. I am like those lab animals which will do things differently just for the sake of change, whether they get any extra kibble or not. This is one reason that a lot of churches have two services: one for those who like change and one for those who hate it. I argued that we have already done a number of multisensory, multicultural, participatory (current buzzwords in postmodern worship) things, and people have kind of liked it.

We'll see what happens.

Daylight Saving Time today, so I am feeling a bit disoriented and probably will continue to feel that way for a day or two.

Yesterday was a very busy day, but enjoyable. I got to talk with all of my kids, at one point or another. I got the grocery shopping done (see the refilled jars at right), baked some bread from a new recipe my mother sent me and made some spicy soup with elegant French green lentils. My friend The Chemist and I made a plan for organizing the music, though we had hardware troubles that kept us from really getting started on it. You should have seen us there in the choir room, staring at the antedeluvian computer like paleobiologists who had encountered a live dinosaur. I finished the sleeve cap of Erin while watching yet more election news with my husband. He does not get bored with this stuff. I spoke on the phone with all my hostesses. I ran through some songs. I did my Amazon reviews and a myzip.net post.

There were also things I did not get done. I got to the post office too late to mail the stuff I was supposed to have mailed. They close at 2:00 on Saturdays, it turns out, and then they have a huge banner outside saying to try the automatic package machine, which is matched with a big sign inside saying that the automatic package machine is out of order.I did not get any housework done. I did not fit in a walk. And while I did call my hostesses, I did not call any of the rest of my customers.

Probably the most interesting family event yesterday was that #2 son won a Voodoo Crash Pad, an item for climbing which he could never have afforded. Fortunately, we are a very lucky family and frequently win things. You know how people win things and say, "I never win things"? That's not us. We win things all the time. I don't know why this should be. It is possible that we are insanely optimistic people and only remember all the wins, while those other folks actually win things as well, but never remember it. But the crash pad joins the mountain bike and the go-kart in the hall of cool stuff the family has won.

I must try to wake up in time for early church. I am not singing today, but I think I must go anyway, for reasons which almost escape me right now in my time-change-induced disorientation, but I know they include wanting to hear this morning's soloist.

Onward!

Happy International Women's Day!

This picture really has nothing to do with International Women's Day. I am not certain that the goddess here would feel very liberated with that tin corset, sword, and shield restricting her movement as she cycles, not to mention the wind chill factor involved in cycling topless. And her hair might get caught in the spokes, too.

But this picture does remind me of the very interesting fact I just learned: a rubber tire is one molecule.

Are you as totally amazed by this as I am? Here is a page explaining it.

I learned this from The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, the book I have been reading in alternation with the Napoleon biography. I have given up novels for Lent, you see.

The World Without Us begins with the idea that all humans are gone. It doesn't speculate too much on how this might happen, and is therefore able to be pretty cheerful about the whole thing. The humans have taken off for other planets, been caught up in the clouds with Jesus, robots killed us all -- doesn't matter. We're just gone. This happened where I live.There were some prehistoric people here, but now they are all gone. No one actually knows what happened to them, though there are lots of speculations. By the time anybody was writing stuff down, some new people (whom we call "Native Americans") had moved down from the Ohio River Valley, but the first ones had simply disappeared. Weisman starts out by supposing that the same thing happens all over the earth.

He can then dwell lovingly on how the subterranean water would take back New York City, with a river running down Lexington Avenue within about a week, and how Texas would explode and burn but then the Brazos and the sea would reclaim it, with the help of oil-eating microbes. A nuclear winter might envelop the Gulf Coast for a while, but eventually happy mosquitoes would find it a wondrous playground.

Our buildings would decay pretty quickly, especially modern structures. Nowadays, engineers use computers to figure out just exactly how flimsy they can make a thing without regretting it very quickly, and that is how flimsy they make it. In the past, people just figured they had better make things really strong, in case, so the old stuff would last a bit longer. Plants would get busy, though, and most of our things could be eaten, so our empty spaces would refill after a while.

The trouble would be with plastics. Until plastics, stuff generally would get eaten (by some creature, including microbes, which is what we mean by "biodegradable") or reused eventually. Plastic is different. Every single bit of plastic that has ever been made is still in existence. Lots of it is hanging around in its original form, but lots more gets weathered just as rocks do, and our world is filling up with plastic sand. Sea creatures and birds are now full of little tiny bits of plastic, because they eat it. Some die from it. Some don't, or haven't yet. We have no idea what the eventual result of this will be.

Some of the folks who study this figure that microbes will evolve to eat plastic, and all will be well. Others figure that geologic pressures (you know, the stuff that turns old dead things into diamonds and oil) will do something, but we don't know what. Some think that plastic is probably permanent, while others assume that it will break down eventually and then will release further toxins into the environment.

We have also filled our soil and water with poisons and heavy metals, some of which we mined and released and some of which we made all by ourselves. This is in our soil now (there is a set of test gardens in England where they've kept records and samples since 1843, so there is excellent evidence for this point), and so of course also in our food and water. Again, this is all so recent that we don't know what effect this might have in the long run.

But if we all left for some reason, and then something else sentient came along, they might think that we had set out to poison ourselves.

Which reminds me that I need to go buy food now. It is better not to think about the lead concentration in soil, not to mention plutonium and PCBs and DDT, when you are heading out to do the grocery shopping. I must also get to the post office and do some housework, and in the afternoon I will be joining The Chemist to figure out how to organize the music at the church with computers and file drawers.

This will be in the nature of an archaeological dig, I think. As far as we know, no one has actually turned those computers on in years. We don't know what they have in them. I have a new bit of Microsoft to review for Amazon, which I plan to take along. We have someone who has offered to input data for us, but of course we have to have compatible software in order to be able to carry disks back and forth. And the offer to type stuff doesn't include coming to the church to type it, so we will have to have not only compatible software, but some way to get the data that needs inputting to the volunteer in question. The file drawers were organized by a very idiosyncratic system long ago, and have been gently devolving ever since.

It should be an interesting project.

And I am still knitting sleeves for Erin. I am knitting backwards from directions in The Handy Book, which I am hoping will fit the changes I made to Erin in order to vitiate its refrigerator-like look. I do not know how this will turn out. Unlike arsenic in the topsoil and plastic pellets in the ocean, however, I can undo it if it turns out to be a mistake.

See those buds? Spring will be here when it gets darn good and ready.

This picture is from yesterday's walk. Other things I did yesterday included trolling for links, reading and listening about racism in 18th century missionary hymns, writing about my zip code, and tidying up the store blog.

Then it began snowing.

I am about to write about agoraphobia. If you haven't been around for very long, you're going to wonder what I'm talking about. In order to avoid boring those who have been around for a long time, or who know me, I will recommend that you check out the "agoraphobia" tag at left if you feel lost right now.

I Overcame Agoraphobia a couple of years ago, using the well-known Snap Out of It! method of treatment. I have been doing very well. Not only do I answer my telephone nearly all the time, but I have been driving to unfamiliar places alone at night. I have driven in winter weather several times. I drove on the freeway once. Admittedly, I made a wrong turn when coming away from a workshop, and thought I was going onto a frontage road, but I did not panic, and I was able to drive on the freeway to the next exit without any significant suffering.

I have not even felt the need to mention these amazing accomplishments in my blog, it has become so commonplace for me to do things on my aversions list.

But last night I had to drive a long way, to an unfamiliar place, in the dark, in the snow. That is a whole bunch of aversions piled up into one. I was panicking a bit.

I talked to myself a lot on the way. I reminded myself that I had checked the road before I began driving.

Yes, I did. I stooped down and touched the road to assure myself that it was wet, not icy.

I pointed out to myself that I had a cell phone. If perchance I found myself unable to drive home after the show, I could call someone to come and rescue me. I reminded myself that I would be likely to know my way home, once I figured out where the place was. I told myself that I could cry on the way home if necessary, though of course I could not do so on the way.

If someone shows up at your house prepared to cook food, and carrying knives, you do not want her to have been crying because it was snowing on the drive over and she fears that she will not be able to drive home, but will have to move into your house until spring. Just as a general rule, we do not want mad people cooking for us.

My family, however, would not be alarmed at all if I got out of the car with mascara running down my face, because they know what driving is like for me sometimes.

The show went well, and was lots of fun. I believe I will meet my sales goal for it, when all is said and done and added up. I walked outside and packed up my gear and (once the hostess was safely back indoors) stooped down to make sure that the road wasn't icy yet.

I was driving my husband's car. He repaired mine, after fooling around with it for several months, by cutting up hoses and using them instead of the actual part, which he felt was too expensive. I have therefore continued to drive his car, and he drives mine. Anyway, his car has a temperature announcer in it. It helpfully said "ICE" last night, but actually the main roads had been driven on quite a lot and were fine. I told myself that all the way home, along with other useful announcements: "You are not sliding. Other cars are not sliding. There is ice by the side of the road, but the part you are driving on is clear. You know the way home from here."

The book I used to help me Overcome Agoraphobia recommended providing yourself with index cards that say that kind of thing, beginning with one that says, "Don't go home." I don't remember whether I ever used index cards, but I know that I find it helpful to announce things to myself in a firm voice.

On really terrifying roads (and there were none on the journey last night, praise the Lord), I say clearly to myself, "Keep driving. Do not stop driving" until I get beyond the terrifying bit.

This morning the roads seem quite clear. #2 son will be disappointed not to have a snow day from school, but I am very happy, since I will be driving up to the store today.

I also had some products for review arrive yesterday from Amazon, including a couple of books I haven't yet read (one is nonfiction, but not actually about the end of the world, so it will be a bit of a change), and the other will have to wait till Lent is over. There was also Ecco Bella Flower Color mascara in brown. It was quite ordinary mascara, with no special properties or problems, as far as I could tell. I did not in fact cry on the drive home, so I can't say how well it holds up to crying. I will have to watch a sad movie to test it fully before I can review it. It washed off nicely in the shower and I did not end up with panda eyes. No one said, "My, how lush and gorgeous your lashes are -- what brand of mascara do you use?" But there is one very special thing -- the bottle has a mirror on it. This means that, should you leave your house without putting on mascara, you can fish this package out of your purse and apply it whenever you remember.

Not while driving, of course, and not at the table, because we have to keep some standards. But if you, like me, sometimes fail to get properly dressed like a grownup before leaving the house, or if you go straight from the gym to work, you will find it useful to have this stuff in your purse.

I may go straight from the gym to work today, or I may take a walk again. Some of the ladies I met last night at the show (it was a girls' night out kind of show, all women) have a very organized Friday morning walking club. They walk one of the local trails each Friday for a month and then move on to the next one. They are connoisseurs of the local trails, as you can imagine. Or connoisseuses. They mentioned a couple that I haven't tried yet. I can go look for further signs of spring.

I got back to the gym yesterday at last, and am now rewarded with sore muscles, although I never did get a chance on the lat pulldown machine. The fellow using it was not only doing straight sets for ten minutes, and leaving the bar swinging in between times -- yes, swinging; I'd never seen that before -- he was also changing it out to different shapes of handles repeatedly. "Handles" is probably not the word. Anyway, he seemed pretty intense about that machine, so I skipped it.

I continued to receive cards and presents, including this extermely cute thing from Central Office, which is in no way related to my birthday. However, I put into its Dr. Suess cheerfulness the little pyramid boxes of tea which Janalisa gave to me, and aren't they pretty?

I also have an unprecendented number of birthday cards on my mantelpiece, which is where we always put birthday cards chez fibermom.

I worked on SEO and curriculum design, and learned from #1 daughter that there are people (including the secretaries in her office) who think that Obama is the antichrist. That link takes you to a summary of this position with links. It is not respectful of the view (or, indeed, of anyone), but it does seem to capture the position overall. Apparently, the world is going to end in 2012, too. My coworkers never talk about things like these. It made #1 daughter feel as though she were in a loony bin, so I guess I shouldn't envy her or anything.

I coughed all the way through choir. This was, I am sure, irritating to my fellow choristers, and unpleasant for me, too, of course.

On the other hand, I got through the bells practice fairly well. I wouldn't call it music, exactly, but I can, on a level 1 or level 2 piece, play the notes at the right time fairly consistently. My expectations for myself in this area are low.

The dogs had a better way to spend the day.

So, after all that, I went to my new blogging gig. I figured I could do a few posts with photographs I already have on my computer. I wanted to get something up quickly while I figure out just how I want to approach the task.

I found that I am surprisingly unfaithful to my zip code.

I live in -03, and just about all my nice pictures are of -01. The farmer's market is in -01. The arts center is in -01. The cool architecture, the university, the good coffee shops, the fun stores, and the pretty gardens are all in -01.

Clearly, I need to determine the exact boundaries of -03 and begin spending more time there. Um, here.

I think that mostly people live in -03, and the entertaining parts of the town are -01. We have an -04, but I don't know what they do over there; I think it all used to be forests and fields but is now developments with names like "The Oaks" in memory of all the oaks they cut down.-02 is just the post office. If you live in -01, are joining the cause, and want some pictures, you just say the word and I'll email mine to you.

Yesterday, there was snow and leftover birthday cake. My workshop was canceled (it was at a school, and teachers do not go in for a workshop when it snows), so I stayed at home plying the Dark Art.

If you don't continually work for links and rankings, you slip down. Does it matter? I have no idea. There was one day when the store blog had an amazing and completely unforeseen spike of traffic from having amazingly and unforeseenly popular content. It was fun to watch the climb on the front page of Google, and I certainly did wish that that particular post had linked people to some expensive item in the catalog or something, but the leap in traffic did not actually result in a leap in sales. Nor is it likely that I could replicate that occurence. Usually it seems that all you can do is slog along harvesting links and hope there is some effect on the traffic, and that the traffic has some effect on the bottom line.

I also spent some time with my planner, developing goals and plans for the future in a spirit of post-birthday insouciance.

I took inspiration from fellow xangans.

Dexter had a link to DIY planner, where I found some excellent printable pages for my planner, and I went ahead and processed my Ubiquitous Captures into a collection of projects, with Next Steps and everything. (Do you hate specialized jargon? Does it feel as though you're being excluded, unless you are willing to go look up the Special Words? Sorry. I still haven't read that book, but I think the terminology is cute.)

Canadian National told us about a little gig she got at myzip.net, so I went over and applied, and I got the job, too! So did Chanthaboune! $50 a month is not riches, but the work sounds fun and easy, and even public-spirited. Maybe you would like to do it, too. I think they have lots of openings.

I also got a phone call asking me to help with a regional presentation on the history of hymns. Mid-1700s to Mid-1800s, and the caller said she and the rest of the committee had found the information a bit dry. They were hoping I could help them jazz it up.

Very likely she and the rest of the committee were expressing themselves more forcefully, in private there, when someone said, "You know, fibermom loves that stuff."

"You're kidding," someone must have said.

"Oh, no, I'm not!" the first would have protested. "You should hear her telling the entire ---YAWN -- history of 'Rock of Ages.' You just can NOT shut her up about it."

Someone else might have mumbled that I could also get pretty carried away about the megafauna of prehistoric North America, but she would probably have been quashed by the chorus of people suggesting that someone get me to do the presentation.

I'm looking forward to it.

I agreed to help plan the Mother's Day service at church as well.

All I can say is, it's a good thing no one came to my door selling vacuum cleaners yesterday.

So I ended up having quite a festive birthday yesterday, and it was a complete surprise.

My husband did say rather repressively that I was too old for birthday cake, once he saw that I had two, but he ate some.

And many thanks to my xangan neighbors who wished me a happy birthday, too.

It was especially fun to think that most of the people I celebrated with yesterday I did not even know a year ago. In fact, my life has changed quite a bit, one way and another, since a year ago. Last year at this time I was feeling a bit alarmed about the possibility of changes, since I had such a nice life, but the changes have turned out to be good. I still have quite a nice life. I could make more changes and continue to have a nice life.

I plan to make a new goals list. Not that there is anything wrong with my current goals, but I like the Ubiquitous Capture part of the GTD system well enough to try adding the Projects List. "Ubiquitous Capture" could be a good name for a band or a pet, while "Projects List" is not very cool at all, but it could be useful. Most of my current goals are finishing up kinds of goals, and I think I will add some striking out kinds of goals to the list. Since the GTD defines everything with more than two steps as a project, my typical three to ten projects or goals would be only a starting point. The ladies at yesterday's little party, some of whom are older than I am, had all kinds of projects going on.

CD is completing her counseling degree, and she kept asking me personal questions. I don't usually answer those questions, let alone tell stories of my youth, and I did both yesterday. She must be good at that. Frankly, my youth sounds altogether too strange and eccentric when said out loud.

In the evening, I watched the election news with my kids, one of whom is voting for the first time this year, and my husband, who is not a citizen and therefore takes only an abstract, though intense, interest in American politics. I also read about the vanished megafauna of North America.

I knew about the giant sloths, and about Thomas Jefferson's conviction that there were mastadons and things roaming around the interior of the country (a major reason to send Lewis and Clark out), but I had no idea that we ever had armadillos the size of Volkswagons.

Coughing was another major feature of yesterday. I don't know whether it is allergies or a lingering virus, but I am sick of it. I have stayed away from the gym and taken things easy, and still I keep being under the weather. It's making me cross.

The weather is odd, too. It snowed last night, and there is quite a bit on the ground. I have a workshop scheduled today, and the rest of the day in the store, but the workshop is at a school, so they may not be there today, in which case I might not attempt the drive. Yet, the weather has been so warm that the roads might be clear. When the sun comes up, I'll check on that.

I would be completely in favor of a snow day.

And then The Empress came and picked me up to go check proofs for the new catalogs -- and actually we went to a restaurant where Janalisa and some of the ladies of the choirlet were waiting with balloons and presents and further cake.

And Janilisa said maybe I would put pictures of these things on "the blog," and so I have.

This is really pretty amazing. I have not had this kind of celebration of my birthday since I was a child.

And all my distant family members have called or emailed to say happy birthday, too, so I feel pretty thoroughly celebrated.

Thanks!

My kid arranged this for me. It was delivered to my door by the handsome baker. Pretty nice, eh?

We had a little excitement yesterday morning in the choir.

The first service's little ensemble had gone pretty well, and we were well into the second service. It was time for communion, in fact, and the choir had been given a list of hymns to sing. A list of numbers, actually, but we had been told they were familiar tunes.  "First and second verse of each," Bigsax told us, "Sing it twice if there's only one verse. If you get to the bottom of the list and there are still people taking communion, just go back to the top."

We felt ready.

So it was a little alarming when we all opened our hymnals confidently to #297, "Beneath the Cross of Jesus," and the organist launched into "Let Us Break Bread Together." Some of us started singing along, others flipped to the index and started whispering the correct number to the rest, and we tried to give the impression that we knew what we were doing.

After two verses of that, we had a moment of suspense while we waited to see what the organist would do next. By the third hymn, it was clear that he was going through the same list we had, but from the bottom up, so we were singing confidently.

We had a potluck dinner last night. I like potlucks. You never know what you will find there, but it is pretty sure to be something I wouldn't usually make at home. Then people begin to roam around the group trying to find the person who made their favorite and begging the recipe from them. There is widespread mingling, and often you get to talk to people you don't already know very well.

It was 73 degrees yesterday, for these jolly adventures. Today we are supposed to have an ice storm, and six inches of snow overnight. I'm supposed to be at the store today and tomorrow.