2006-09-29

After Morning Offering, Jim set out to accomplish a Friday mowing schedule reduced by three lawns which do not need cutting in this fall spate of rain and coolness. I came upstairs to work on Chapter Two of the Choice 101 project. By lunchtime I felt that I had done as good a job talking about the service-to-self path as I could. What a good feeling!

After lunch with Jim and some stretching, I worked the snail mail from our mailbox, filing everything and recycling the growing piles of catalogs – you can gauge how far away Christmas is by measuring the rise in inches per day of catalogs - before coming back up to the office. My mouse has been ailing and today it was so cranky that it was nearly unusable. I went up to the office supply store and purchased a new mouse. However when I got it home, it had this little statement – that it was fine to install this mouse if I did not already have a mouse. Did the instructions go on to say what to do if you DO have a mouse already installed? Yes, even if it is almost a dead duck? Heck, no! I quietly piled up the mouse, the CD, the “How To Get Started” booklet and my double-A battery and decided I needed to wait for Romi.

Back at the desk, I fielded a request from Larry at UPI to send him a 100-page blurb. They are revamping the Religion & Spirituality department’s look at their UPI.com site. Soon everyone will have a photo and this blurb, plus people will be able to send comments about the articles. It took a while to get the 100 words that really wanted to be there. It is interesting to see what stays and what goes when you have to say it all about yourself in 100 words. The cats did not make my 100 words, but I made sure Don Elkins and Jim McCarty did, plus our web site address and a few other tidbits.

I answered all mail from my web guy next, that being a top priority as he accomplishes so much on our behalf and does need the communication more than anyone except Gary. Which reminds me – I have quite a bit of mail from Gary, generated before he left. I shall need to answer that tomorrow, as he will be rolling in sometime around dusk tomorrow. I have missed Gary! It will be good to be with him again and hear his saga of New York City, the Omega Institute and Stanislav Grof’s workshop.

There have been lots of changes in our on-line order form – not the full treatment yet, as we eventually will install a PayPal feature so people can use their charge cards on-line with us, something they presently cannot safely do as we do not have a secure site. The new tee shirts are all listed now – and we have such nice new ones, so that’s just great. We changed all the prices; a long overdue change as our costs of acquiring the books has skyrocketed.

We also talked about the Aaron/Q’uo sessions I have begun to edit. He was a participant in many of those A/Q weekends here, back in the nineties, and is tickled to see my progress. He asked me if Barbara wanted to see these edits before he got started producing them for a book and I wrote to tell him that our arrangement was that I would send her any passages where I felt she and Aaron, her channeling source and inner guide, might want to look at them with an eye to reducing the number of examples given by Aaron, or any other concern I saw there. Barbara and Aaron agreed totally. This is because Barbara, in addition to being profoundly deaf since an accident in her youth, is now struggling with her eyesight as well and finding it fiendishly difficult to read. So far, I have had no passages where I wanted Aaron to slim them down, so I gave him the go-ahead to start producing what we already have, which is the first two groups of sessions out of a total of nine. He is right to be excited, as it is wonderful material and I am also very glad to be getting to the editing of it after all these years. Back when I had the bookkeeping and admin duties, I never, ever got any time free for this kind of good work.

I wrote Melissa to offer her an update on the bookkeeping situation. I promised to have a good talk with Carmen tomorrow, as if she does not want the job, I shall need to hire someone else as soon as possible.

This work took me to 5 PM and I went downstairs to Growler, our financials computer, and spent the rest of the work day reconciling our household charge card statement. It has taken me two days to do that, but it is very satisfying to have it accomplished so that when Lynn arrives tomorrow, she will NOT have that ahead of her, but only the Jim’s Lawn Service monthly statements, which in itself is a really substantive job. I’ve been pleased to see that my work at the end of the day does cut down on what Lynn must do. I shall persevere with this plan until we’re settled with a new and competent bookkeeper!

It had been glorious, cool but sunny and dry, when I went out for my mouse, but around six it started sprinkling and soon we were again awash. I was sorry to see that indeed, as the Rolling Stones were singing tonight at Churchill Downs. This is an outdoor venue, being the place where the Kentucky Derby is run. I personally know four people who got really soaked! However the concert went on regardless of the raindrops falling on their heads. I know it was worth getting wet, though. I have watched the Stones in concert both live and on Imax and it’s a treat to hear them play, period.

Jim came in with our groceries for next week, full of good Friday Night energy, and we went upstairs to cuddle with Sedgie and have a good coze while we listened to World Music. Like the old fogies we are, we both fell asleep and had to rouse ourselves to go downstairs and enjoy a small dinner and then the Gaia Meditation. I offered the ending prayer. We had a world-class snuggle with all the kitties and said a most fond good night around midnight.