2006-11-28

Our lovely spell of warm weather continued today, cheering us with sunlight and falling willow and honeysuckle leaves. Those two species are the last kinds of leaves to fall around here when the frost begins to bite. In a week or so, all the leaves will be down except for a few stubborn oak trees and the very tops of the tulip poplars, which tend to wear a crown of yellow for the early part of the winter.

After Morning Offering Jim set out to do a variety of chores for his customers, a very full day. I tackled details. First, I wrote Jean-Claude, both about the offer to match funds for donations until the end of the year, and then about his web site idea. Overnight, Ian had placed the announcement of this offer on the web site, front and center. Amazingly enough, we received our first donation already! It is a good omen, for it is a $1200 donation. That is a great start on the $5,000 for which they will match donations.

Jean-Claude talked about being an emissary from the great central sun. I remembered that the Ra had mentioned the central sun in talking about the nature of unity, so I hunted up the quotation and sent that to him with some thoughts on the subject. I think it expresses, far more elegantly, the refrain of the Blues Brothers: we are all on a mission from God.

Jean-Claude had asked me to contact Sandie Sedgbeer, whom he also wants involved in the web site planning, so I wrote her. We have not been in contact for a while, although we have twice tried to make a lunch date. My illness and her personal duties have kept us from succeeding. I hope we may do so soon, as Sandie is the best company and a good girlfriend, full of insight, support, encouragement and giggles. Bless giggles! They help me out a lot.

I spent some time with Ian’s needs for the Book of Days. He had some final text questions, all of which proved to me that it is always a very good idea to have one’s editing checked by a second pair of eyes. We talked about the cover image some more. The darkness of the background of our image concerns him, as he feels it may muddy and blur under the Xerox-type production of Print On Demand (POD)-type publishing. I forwarded to him the artist’s assurance that she would be glad to work with us until we had a good image.

And I passed on to Gary Ian’s request that we get the price quote from lulu.com and all the details of their offer ASAP. We want to compare that with a Canadian POD company, Blitzprint. It is incredible, but at this point, with my Preface written and many details decided, we are very close to printing A Book of Days! At last! I am so excited!

It was lunch time, and Jim arrived home to share it with me – an increasingly common treat these days, as his busy season winds down. He noted that he now has finished work for all of his customers outside our little village of Anchorage. There is no more need for him to travel for work this winter – great news and one of our personal landmarks in the year’s rhythms of work.

We stretched before he left to cut, clean and mulch one of his customers’ homes, which is being shown in a garden tour-type fund-raiser for a local charity this coming weekend. He came home in time to finish the Christmas lighting here at Camelot. We now have the entire roof detailed with lights, plus the front windows and porch. He even outlined our chimney. It is a pretty sight. Because of our house’s situation, you can see the cheery lights twinkling along our back roofline from far down the roadway coming up to our little street

I was intent on clearing all the bits and details on my computer table and desk before leaving for Nebraska. I spent some time answering Terry H’s questions – again – and this time the tape recorder worked; a blessing indeed.

Rick C needed some information from me before he could go further with remastering our recordings before changing over from audiocassette tapes to CDs. He has done a wonderful job with the two music recordings which he has tackled so far.

I scooted over to St. Luke’s to give the office all the remaining money I had collected for our choir CDs of our concert in Washington DC last May at the National Cathedral. I took time to admire Jim’s handiwork there. The church never looked better!

Rick C’s wife, Diane, had some advice for me on healing interstitial cystitis, as did Joan M, and I thanked them both.

Dianne S sent me an insightful article on Donald Rumsfeld by Amy Goodman, whose work I greatly admire, and I thanked her for that.

And I worked with a couple of Admin Gary’s notes to finish my run through details, details. While Chloe pulled down an entire row of books from our archive shelves and then went across the office and pulled down two stacking file baskets and their contents – Chloe gets jealous when I work at the desk and do not pat her – I sat down at said desk and cleared away a good stack of items, reserving the snail mail, now, for Nebraska and filing away or taking care of the rest.

Late in the afternoon, Dr. Aboud called with instructions to call the Digestive Health Center and schedule another colonoscopy. She is responding to the lab tests showing that I have become quite anemic in the last month. I have certainly had enough discomfort and other symptoms to know that this is a correct diagnosis, but I have no idea why I should be anemic, unless my body has decided to stop absorbing nutrients, which it has done previously on occasion, not to my benefit! I got hold of the Digestive Health Center and they promised to call me back with an actual appointment for the week after I return from Nebraska. I shall have that to look forward to, indeed!

After a good whirlpool, Jim, Gary and I enjoyed a quiet evening. Gary and I read most of the night while Jim worked on his e-mail and book orders, doing his own version of catching up details before leaving town. Gary offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation and we said good night around 11 PM.