:: in a mirror dimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

When faced with the possibility of actually paying cash, money that we have worked hard to earn, for a CD of Christmas music my wife and I found that picking out a quality collection of Christmas songs is far more difficult than we could have imagined. While the songs are mixed on a radio, there are hits and misses, and even the classics have a wholly pleasant ring for the two or three minutes they are crooned by an old standby such as Crosby or Sinatra.

All of this changes at the prospect of purchasing a whole CD with nothing but ONE KIND of Christmas music.

Perhaps I aim too high, but if I’m spending money on a CD, I want to enjoy at least half of the music. A quick scan of the titles selected for most CDs ends up in classifications such as too sappy, too traditional, too brainless, too ditzy, and the list goes on. I’m like Goldilocks looking for a CD with the right musical temperature.

I have to confess that I just can’t stand Silent Night. There I said it. If you drag me into a church, stick a candle in my hand, and wave a flame in front of my face I may get into the spirit, but don’t count on it. Julie and I don’t mind the Christmas classics, but we still could not stomach the thought of sap poured out in such quantities. We initiated an all-out search of Amazon.com.

We searched and found that Christmas music can be classified in the following categories:

- The aforementioned classics.

- Pop Christmas music by today’s “stars” who are probably forgotten by the time the CD is released. These are the inexcusable compilation CDs with tons of “contemporary” holiday music that could make a cat gag (or a rabbit in our case).

- Twilight albums by former stars. Once a performer runs out of gas, a Christmas album is produced on fumes. Johnny Cash, who had two or three twilights in his roller coaster career, produced nine Christmas CDs. Not counting live and studio albums, U2 has only produced eleven records…period. No Christmas CD yet.

- Instrumentals with all of the great tunes, but none of the lyrics. I think this may be the only way we can enjoy Christmas music on a regular basis in our home.

We ended up purchasing a collection of 20 Celtic Christmas Favorites. It’s not bad. There is a blend of older Christmas songs and some from the past 100 years or so. I played it while washing the dishes last night and it worked. We’ll see if I’m still saying that three weeks from now.

Of course the obvious solution is to listen to Christmas music over the radio … oh, but we don’t get decent reception of ANY radio stations in our little mountain valley. Ah, but there is always internet radio? Yes, but there is no high speed internet infrastructure in our neighborhood. We have satellite internet and online streaming there is about as efficient as writing on a slab of rock.

And so, we are stuck with our Christmas CDs.

I got up on Saturday morning and started painting and I did not stop save to hike 2.6 miles up a really steep mountain in nearby upstate, NY this afternoon in light flurries.

Because of hunters I wore an orange vest over my puffy layers of jackets, a glowing freak of nature with a huge upper-body and pencil-thin legs. But I’m off track now, back to painting.  

I am proud of my ability to paint, in fact Julie often marvels at my skill: how straight I can cut in a line, where to cut corners, and how to pick the right paint for the right spot. I spent quite a few summers during high school and college painting, not to mention the odd job here and there since. Oh, and we always live in handyman specials that need to be renovated and, you guessed it, painted. We’ve painted so many houses that Julie has gotten really good at it too.

So my pride and credibility took a big hit this weekend. Really big hit. First of all, I got my semi-gloss and high-gloss trim paint mixed up. But hey, haven’t we all done that at one point or another. Not a problem.

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Whenever I try something new, you can bet it will take 2-3 times longer than it probably should. Such was the case today when I attempted and pretty much succeeded to install a new storm door in our front entry.

I have a few things working against me:

• I hate following directions. Really. I only cook things that I can do without a recipe.
• I am horrible at figuring out diagrams.
• I am not very good at improvising.

Clearing the garage for Julie’s car is a project on the horizon for us, and so the large storm door had to be removed from storage and stuck in its proper place. I really wasn’t looking forward to this, especially with a high of 40 degrees and high winds…

I started off by glancing at the directions and screwing in the top part. It felt good to just pop something in to the door frame. I felt like I was getting somewhere. Step two almost stopped the whole enterprise cold.

I needed to put the hinged part of the door frame onto the door. It is essential to make sure the door can actually open. I looked and looked at the diagrams and the door and I just couldn’t figure out how it was going to work. Even when I had the hinge system figured out, none of the holes lined up as the directions said they would.

Keep in mind, I have every confidence in my ability to mess things up. I could not believe that the directions were wrong. I almost gave up. Finally I just drilled the holes, chopped off the extra door frame, and slapped it all together. It worked fine, the directions were wrong. I won.

Actually getting the door in place was another challenge by myself. I used a cinder block and chunks of wood to prop it into place, furiously trying to drill holes with screws that didn’t like boring into wood. Though things continued to go slow, I eventually got the door attached with the frame in relatively good shape. I even had the latch side spaced out correctly with some ingenious use of wood scraps.

At that point I was ready to be done, but I still needed to drill holes (with the bits I had that were too small) for the latch and door knob assembly. While doing this there were three separate occasions when the door closed with the partially assembled latch and I had to spend 5 or 10 minutes opening the door.

When I could safely open and close the door, I gave up. The spring that closes the door will have to wait. I also couldn’t line up the metal plate that the latch goes into. Oh, and that piece I screwed in at the beginning? I should have measured first. The door now has a 1 1/2 inch gap between the threshold and the weather stripping.

All of that will have to wait until next weekend, further delaying the garage project. Sigh.

We had eight trick or treaters come to our home tonight for Halloween! This is a fantastic record that smashes the previous tally of three at our in-law-style apartment in Doylestown, PA.

Even with our dark dirt road located ten minutes out of town with houses spread along a two mile stretch before they are concentrated in any kind of way, eight brave souls literally traveled over the river, through the fields, and along the woods to our door step.

We rewarded them with cheap candy.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I should add that we had 7 actual children who received candy. One of those kids in costume was held by his father (who was not in costume). But his mother gladly put forward a bag in place of the boy who clung to his dad. The mother was decked out in a  little leopard outfit complete with high heels and kitty cat ears. So the official tally is 7 candy eaters and 8 dressed up in costume.

The highlight of our evening was the lady who brought her two daughters down the two-mile stretch of road with one on a horse and the other on a pony. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen for Halloween. They also brought along their teenage exchange student from India who was really enjoying the spoils of her first Halloween.

I saw them working their way up someone’s driveway on my way home, but I didn’t notice which way they were going after their stop. While tapping away at the computer, Julie heard them coming up our driveway and walked out to meet them. After passing along the candy Julie got to pet the horses.

But alas, that was both the climax and end of our low-key Halloween. I spent the rest of the evening working on one of the study guides for my theology book, while Julie laid on the couch trying to read in the midst of Baxter launching herself from the floor onto Julie’s chest. Judging by Julie’s yelps, Baxter also bit her a few times … we need to work on that.

Baxter is the fourth rabbit to enter our home and the youngest one yet. After having 3 rabbits indifferent to human contact, we were determined that things would be different with her. She was going to learn how to be a “lap bunny.”

A lap bunny is a rabbit who calmly sits on you lap and lets you pet her or just sits serenely. It’s really all we’ve ever wanted from our rabbits. None of them have done very good in the serene department.

Therefore, Baxter has been held on a regular basis and brought up on the couch. We sort of pinne her down a little and pet her before she scampered off. After a few weeks of this, bunny magic happened. She actually sat with Julie.

And then she became insanely attached to me. I could not walk in the house without her scuttling about my feet. It feels like cowboys and indians as she runs around my feet, zig zagging in between my feet. I sometimes have to shuffle around the house.

All of this has been well and good. In fact, I thought we had a major breakthrough yesterday, as I laid down for a little nap and she laid right next to me for a long time letting me pat her head.

And then there was today.

After spending a good bit of my afternoon writing, I just wanted to sit and read the latest Rick Atkinson book. Baxter would not permit this. She hopped onto the couch, nipped at my knee, and climbed all over me. I could briefly pacify her with a little petting, but for the most part she wanted to either chew on me and climb on me. The couch also sustained some damage.

I can only hope this is a passing phase.  

Rabbits are cute little creatures. We love all three of our rabbits. Each has a wonderful quirk, an endearing superpower if you will. Baxter follows me around like a dog and will gladly sit in our laps to be pet. Eva loves to be pet and will sit for hours provided you leave her on the floor. Evan will lick your fingers if you can stand it.

And after they’ve done all of these cute things for you, one rabbit decides, “I’m sick of my toys, I’m going to chew on the coffee table.” We hear scraping in the general direction of the coffee table, snap our fingers and yell, “No!” but the process of destruction has begun.

Once ONE rabbit has decided something is interesting, you can rest assured that every rabbit will agree. Each rabbit leaves a scent, and so the next rabbit in the room must carefully inspect EVERYTHING, re-scenting each defiled object. While in the midst of the re-scenting program, they have this amazing ability to recognize the genius of the other rabbit. “Hey, this table really is a great chew toy!”

Repeat gnawing, snapping, yelling, and sometimes chasing sequence. This goes on and on. Sometimes it takes a month or two for rabbits to leave a piece of furniture alone. In the case of our nibbled coffee table, months have passed and even this evening Eva took a chunk out of it.

The most galling destruction was accomplished by none other than our adorable Baxter, the female bunny that we originally thought was a male. I was just about to tell Julie how good she’s been, when that jerk ripped a piece of sheet rock from a corner. This top layer of the sheet rock had the beautiful green paint that I so carefully applied last May. Now a huge gash remains in the wall.

The next rabbit out after Baxter was Eva. It took her a while, but soon she contributed to the growing bare spot on the wall. At this point I’m not sure if I should repaint it or let them run their course before touching it up.

Rabbits are jerks.

I have a large tote bag full of apples that I gathered from the apple tree at my place of employment sitting in our kitchen. With the intention of making applesauce, I’ve had a large pot sitting on top of the bag waiting for the right time.

The weekend passed, and so I decided that Tuesday night was going to be applesauce night. I even told Julie about my scheme and we planned out the entire evening. And then while in bed last night I remembered: I’m throwing a huge party at work on Tuesday night for about 100 people!!!

Rest assured I’ve been planning for this big event over the past 4 weeks . . . and perhaps that makes it worse that I momentarily forgot about it. So while I have most of my plans in place for tonight, I don’t quite see how I could have forgotten about it so completely yesterday.

The whole thing has me a bit creeped out. Am I that distracted? I’m just imagining myself pulling out of work tonight at 5:00 pm to the utter consternation of my co-workers.

On the plus side I did manage to finish my first draft of the my theology book yesterday. Now I’m officially freed up to work on the study guides. Maybe I’ll work on them tonight since I’m not doing anything important . . .

As a Philadelphia sports fan I have been especially bred for skepticism. If there is a way to mess things up, rest assured that a Philadelphia team will find a way to do it.

In the world of baseball many eyes were turned to the Phillies today. With one win they could almost assure themselves a play off spot. I figured it would be too good to be true, and expected a big loss.

Without cable TV at my disposal I checked up on their game throughout the day, and I’ll be darned if they didn’t win. This wasn’t a nail-biter, see-saw battle. The Phillies won in a big way, strutting into the play offs as if they belong there, as if they aren’t really a Philadelphia team.

This is a shock to my system. A Philadelphia team just won a big game, and I don’t know how to handle it. I mean, I’m sure they won’t win the World Series or anything that big, but still . . . I can’t wrap my brain around it.

Philly has this tradition as of 1983 for having horrible sports teams who cannot win championships. It’s our own secret little identity, and we like suffering quietly while others rave about the poor Cubs who can’t buy a World Series, unlike the Red Sox.

Now I need to cope with success and frankly I don’t know what to do about it. Skepticism exercises its grip, telling me that it can’t last. It has been my friend for so long. How far should I let myself enjoy the success of my home town’s sports team?

Our rabbit Baxter is as cute as they come. Small (about 2 pounds), brown, soft, and endearing as all get out, he is a real joy in our home. We are always amazed at how brave/stupid he is.

He thinks nothing of jumping on top of his cage and hopping around while his feet become entangled in the wires. Not only will he jump onto the couch, he’ll climb to the top of the couch and then on top of the pillows on top of the couch, typically falling onto the couch. He loves scampering behind the book cases (and we have many) on top of the small base board heating unit.

His latest trick is wiggling underneath the baseboard heating unit BEHIND a book case. It’s such a tiny space, but he can pull it off somehow. The problem is that we have repeatedly attempted to block off this part of his room (we keep him in a 4 foot by 4 foot play pen) only to find him behind our barriers chewing on the edges of the area rug.

Carpet is harmful for bunnies and the rug in his room is just a temporary measure. All the same, no matter how we arrange his play pen, boxes, gates, and anything else, whenever out of his play pen to run around he always, always, always manages to make it behind the play pen and into the world of carpet fringes and the dark underside of heating vents.

I stepped up my efforts this morning with a seemingly impenetrable set up. Before I was done my other blog post he was back there. How does he do it? I have a few theories, but none of them are very satisfying. He’s like a little mouse that wiggles through impossible spaces.

The problem is a bit complex because we can’t let him out without providing a way for him to get back into his room, and to the carpet edges that we have failed to block off. Rabbits get freaked out when they cannot run back to home base. So it looks like I’ll be spending my weekend creating some kind of Baxter barrier. It’s not the first time I’ve made an elaborate barricade for our rabbits.

It’s not quite a vacation. It’s not just attending a wedding.

My wife and I will be in Ohio this weekend to help prepare for her friend’s wedding on Saturday. We’re making the food for the small reception after the ceremony. No, we are not professional caterers, so don’t get any ideas about asking us for our rates.

We have both been in the grip of the busiest month we’ve had in a long time. My job is tied to the tourist season, and fall is a popular time for visiting Vermont, while Julie had grad school and the regular grind of being in the overworked profession of special ed. where 12 hour work days are pretty typical. So oddly enough we’re kind of looking forward to being tossed into a church’s kitchen to cook all day. It’s a welcome disconnect from the pace of our recent lives.

I’ll be catching a flight tomorrow night after work to meet up with Julie in Ohio. We’ll spend Friday and part of Saturday working on the food. We’re hoping to also catch some time together at our hotel, as I don’t know what else there is to do in our nation’s heartland (a title Ohio claims for itself). 

I’ll have to admit that Ohio is just about the last place I’d think of for a vacation. Road construction, underachieving football teams, and farms . . . they all fit a little better with the Ohio mystique I’m thinking of. On the up side, I did know a guy who had an apple farm in Ohio and it was a really great place to hang out.

It seems that most hotels these days have wireless access, so if that is the case, I’ll be happily blogging in my new-found spare time. If not, things will be quiet around here until Monday.

My morning was shot when I noticed that my sister had joined a Facebook group called: “It ain’t a cheese steak unless it’s from Philly.” I had to join of course. The best steak sandwich I’ve had in Vermont (note the careful choice of words) was at a cafe in Poultney. Though nothing like a cheese steak from Pat’s or Geno’s in South Philly, it was a great sandwich.

Of course one group leads to another. So I found this group called: “You know you’re from the Philly burbs when. . .” or something like that. I fit most of the stereotypes as a former resident of the Philly burbs, but these two made me laugh out loud:

“When every year a Philly team makes it close to or to the post season and yet every year you still find your self saying I know how this is gonna end…there’s always next year.” How ’bout them Phillies?

“If you never took a field trip to anywhere other than the Franklin institute, the zoo, the art museum, or the museum of natural science.” Two class trips to the zoo within five years of one another: lame. Though I think they need to add Independence park to that list, as we doubled up on that trip as well.  

I have officially moved inamirrordimly onto it’s fourth major theme in its 2.5 year existence: minyx 2.0 light. I hope that each time I make this kind of switch it’s a move toward greater simplicity and ease of use, which I think is the case with minyx.

There are still some Google ads floating around at the bottom of the sidebar, but overall I’m pretty pleased with the Minyx theme. I feel like I can put a lot of stuff on the page without it feeling too cluttered. I’m especially into white backgrounds of late and ensuring that the main content is off to the left in a good position for reading.

Of course if you’re reading this via a feed, these changes mean absolutely nothing to you, but at least it keeps me out of trouble . . . or from getting a good night’s sleep. I have the solace that Todd Hiestand, a friend, web designer, and online chia pet, gave this theme his blessing.

If you’re going to live to please others, you may as well be selective.

As always I’m behind in the times, most recently evidenced by my “johnny-come-lately” joining of Facebook. Though blog father Andrew Jones questioned the usefulness of Facebook, I’m impressed so far.

For one thing, the interface is cleaner and easier to use than goliath My Space. Even if the pages don’t offer the same customization options, I’m thinking that a standard white background with simple black Arial font is a good thing.

The networking functions are pretty good so far and the ability to integrate other online tools such as blogs and flickr are great. I’m not interested in maintaining a completely different space, but I will gladly set up a space that puts them all together in one spot.

Of course people with a lot of contacts can be weighed down by all manner of friendship requests, the complaint of Mr. Jones, but for those of us with a modest collection of friends Facebook is perfect. I’ve already reconnected with some great people and even contacted a few by chance who share similar interests.

Somewhere in Vermont or Eastern NY state there is someone with a huge decorative fireplace that used to be in our house. The previous owners of our home left it sitting in the living room; a full-size fireplace made for decoration only and sporting a nifty light bulb somewhere inside to give off some semblance of a glow.

It’s a truly ugly invention that I cannot imagine purchasing. Though the wood on the sides is in good enough shape, the rest looks fake, and the time it spent outside our house these past 3 months did not leave it looking all that flattering on the top.

I’d been trying to work up the gumption to take it to the dump, when the wise words of my father-in-law came to mind. “If you ever want to get rid of something, stick a ‘free’ sign on it and leave it by the curb. People can’t resist the ‘free’ sign.”

So I stuck a free sign on the fireplace after Julie and I hauled it to the road side. We live on a relatively quiet dirt road since it runs parallel to the main road, but we strategically waited until the weekend of Arlington’s town-wide garage sale.

All Saturday no one took the bait, though several cars slowed down to give it a look. On Sunday morning we left for an overnight trip at the family camp up at Lake George, returning on Monday evening.

We pulled in as usual and then Julie asked me, “Do you think the fireplace  was moved to somewhere else on our property or did someone actually take it?” Sure as shootin’, the fireplace was gone. I felt triumphant. The sign worked! Not only did we keep that hideous thing out of the land fill, we saved the cost of dumping it.

While some people I know are having kids or adopting from as far afield as Guatemala, we’ve been adding a different kind of member to our family: a new pet. I’ve already mentioned that we don’t do moderation well, and now I’ll prove it once and for all.

We stopped by the feed store for bedding and pellets on Sunday, right before we hit the berry fields. Julie went straight to the bunny section. Though interested, I thought to myself that it would be neat if they had a brown bunny . . . and they did.

This wasn’t any brown bunny though, this was a really cute brown bunny who settled down by the side of the cage and let me pet him for a long time. Of course I was completely at his mercy. Julie tried to push on to the practical matters at hand, but all I could think of was the brown bunny.

We already have two rabbits (Eva and Evan), but they don’t get along. We have been hoping that we could find a friend for Eva, but Evan, her current prospect, has this habit of biting her, and she happily returns the favor. So I was wondering if some fresh blood in the house would be just the thing for her. Of course that was all a front for my true motivation: I wanted to take home the cute brown bunny.

Our decision was to wait, but we asked for him to be held for a day. Though we wanted to sleep on it, we already had a name picked out within three hours of meeting him: Baxter. We did pray about it and felt peace so long as we recognized he’s God’s gift to us because in a sense we don’t “own” anything in this world.

So I’d like to introduce Baxter, our brown mini-rex rabbit. He’s currently residing in the guest room, but that’s only because we don’t have room in my office/rabbit room. Pretty soon he’ll move in to Eva’s play pen.

He’s a spunky little guy who loves laying on his towel. I dare you to look at some more pictures of him at our flickr account.

So now you know what happens when I go to the rabbit section of the feed store. Over the next couple days we hope to introduce him to his roommates. I’m sure it’s not going to go well.