7 layers, more or less

My dog was recovering nicely until on Sunday he ate some bacon-grease infused paper towels, which is bad for his pancreas. Did you know a dog can get pancreatitis? Mine does. He's better again now.

My small group at church needed to provide dinner for the Jesus Gathering in downtown Bellingham that is part of Envision Ministries. I was committed to make a salad, so I made a layered salad. This is sometimes called a 7-layer salad, but I freely add and subtract layers according to my personal taste. Here's how my salad went down:

• Lettuce (Romaine; when I make a salad I cut lettuce with a sharp knife into small strips because I hate sticking a fork into a salad and coming up with half a head of lettuce)
• Green onions (cut up, of course)
• Frozen young peas (thawed out)
• Sliced water chestnuts (from a can)
• Mayonnaise spread über alles
• Sugar sprinkled on the mayonnaise
• Then seasoned salt
• Then garlic powder
• Then put it in the fridge over night
• Then fry some bacon and boil some eggs (this is where the bacon-grease infused paper towels originated)
• Cut up the bacon and sprinkle it over the top of the salad
• Peel the boiled eggs, then chop them up and sprinkle them over the top

Now you're done. It was a very popular salad at the buffet. People came back and asked for seconds. Even people from my small group who had brought other salads wanted this salad.

Meanwhile, when I came home and I was in the bathroom (never mind doing what) my dog went nosing much further into the kitchen garbage than I thought he could ever reach, pulled out the grease-infused paper towels, and ate the grease-infused portions of them. He was still pooping shreds of paper towel this evening.

Stop me before I eat something that will make me sick.

Hooray

My dog is home. I do have to give him an antibiotic every day, and that will be a challenge. And on Monday I have to bring him in just to get blood drawn, so they can make sure his liver enzyme (ALT) continues to go down. It's not in the normal range yet, but because it's going downward I was able to take him home.

Saturday morning

This morning, I woke up between 6:30 and 7:00. On Saturdays, if I'm awake in time, I like to watch The Victory Garden and P. Allen Smith's Garden Home. So I put on that PBS station, got comfortable in my recliner, and promptly went back to sleep, waking up shortly after both programs were over.

After eating breakfast, I actually did some housework! Exclamation point! It helps that the weather is cooler. We even had rain yesterday, after a hot, dry July.

At 10:00, I called the vet's office to ask if I can take my dog home. The vet was with another patient, so they asked if I could come in at 11:30 so he can talk to me. Okay. I hope this means he just wants to talk over my pet's condition and maybe give some advice for taking care of him at home, not that they still want to keep him there.

I love you, Tomorrow

Pup's liver enzyme count is down. If it's down some more tomorrow, he can come home. Please come home, sweet doggie of mine.

Missing you

Liver enzyme count was even higher today. The vet says there's just some toxin in his system that his liver is processing. There's no way to speed the process, just support his system with fluids and antibiotics while it's happening.

The vet assured me that he's getting lots of attention from the staff there and doesn't seem mopey or depressed. He said it would be fine if I came to visit for a while, but because I work in Bellingham I would have to leave work early to get there before the vet's office closes.  I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll have to leave work early to pick the pup up and take him home, so I didn't go today.

Each day they draw blood and check the levels. I won't know till about noon tomorrow whether he still has to stay or whether he can come home.

 

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does. 
- Christopher Morley

Lonesome

My dog is spending his second night in the doggie hospital (also known as Lynden Veterinary Hospital). His liver enzyme count is high.



When my alarm went off this morning, no fuzzy face thrust near my own reinforced the message that it was time to get up. When I came home from work, no hysterical barking met my ears. No dog leapt madly about me until I leashed him up and took him for a walk. When I get up and walk around the place, no little dog comes tickety clicky with his little toenails following me from room to room. When I lay me down to sleep, no warm, furry little body nestles next to mine.

I miss him.

Laughs and titters

Last night, after posting, I was still amusing myself with the blogging/blobbing typo and I thought I would like to ask people, "Have you perused my blob?" I thought this was truly funny.

Later in the evening I literally (and I know what that word means) laughed out loud when I read the following in the Wimpy Catholic's blog about attending a discernment retreat (to see if one is called to enter a religious community):

The retreat ran from Friday evening through Sunday morning. I bunked with the recovering addict and the drooler. Both nights, I was the last to fall asleep. Both nights, as I lay awake in that dark room, farts like a camel’s lowing blared from the drooler’s bed, filling me, to my surprise, with an almost paternal tenderness.

I am in my early 50's, but my sense of humor has never matured to the point that I can refrain from prolonged laughter at flatulence (also belching). Any by prolonged, I mean much longer than anyone else would continue to laugh, even 6-year-olds. I just can't stop.

The unbearable lightness of blogging

Well, my blogging has been light lately, so light as to be weightless, due to its non-existence. I am resolved to be more diligent.

I almost typed "blobbing" instead of "blogging." What would it be like to have an online blob and post new blob entries? I've been blobbing about my life.

It's a whole new paradigm, as Dilbert once said.

Ad infinitum

Today I bought my dog some flea-killing medicine (rather spendy, by the way). The poor thing has been scratching and biting himself excessively lately. We had a mild winter and are now in the hot days of summer, so it's a flea-palooza extravaganza.

When I asked at the vet's office for a flea treatment, I was expecting the oily stuff in a little tube that you put between the dog's shoulder blades (so he can't lick it), making sure it gets in contact with the skin and doesn't just sit on top of the hair. But this time they sold me pills -- one per month, and they sell six months at a time.

In the past, when my dog was supposed to take antibiotics, I never could get a pill down him. I'd put it in his dish with his food, and he'd eat the food but leave the pill. I'd try to jam it down his gullet with my fingers and, after considerable struggle, just when I thought I'd succeeded, I'd find the pill, half-melted and covered with slobber, on the floor somewhere.

So I was a little dubious about the flea pill; however, the young women staffing the vet's office said it was not a pill but a chewable tablet, and they recommended putting it in with his food, perhaps even breaking it up in the food. They said he did need to take it with a meal.

This evening I put half his food in his dish, then crushed the pill between two spoons and added it to the food, then put the other half of his food in the dish and fed him. He gobbled it down and licked the bowl, as is his usual practice, so this time I think it worked.

I'm so cute, even vermin love me.

Supposedly within half an hour of his taking the pill his fleas should start dying. He's poison now to fleas -- for a month.

Since I had fleas on the brain, I hunted up the famous couplet:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

Lord love a duck

In the evening when I get home from work, I take my dog for a little walk around our back yard, where there are plenty of trees for him to pee on. I like to look at the creek, so we head there first.

This evening, I was fortunate enough to see a duck in the creek. She was floating/swimming downstream and simply passed me by.

Ne'er so well expressed

So on my lunch hours, I'm working my way through The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, by Stephen Fry. It's great. He's humorous and witty, in that great British style, and he really does explain things clearly, then gives an exercise that lets you write practice lines of poetry using the concepts he just taught.

Strawberries

Last year I put together a hanging basket of strawberries for my dad, with four strawberry plants in it. Two made it through the winter, so I hung the basket up again. A week or two ago, I added some pale blue bacopa, just to fill in the basket a little and make the arrangement pretty as well as fruitful.

One berry is very ripe, another is pretty ripe, and other are ripening.



As the summer progresses, Fishtrap Creek drops in depth. A sandbar (is it a sandbar?) appears that is covered by water in the winter.



Yesterday my great-niece was down there, doing "catch and release" with water bugs, when she started screaming in terror. Her older sister ran to the rescue and I heard the little girl say that a lobster almost got her toe.

If there's one thing more sure than another, it's that there are no lobsters in this creek. Her older sister reported that it was a "crawdaddy." I didn't think there were even crayfish in this creek, but then I'm no naturalist.

Buy this book!

I'm loving it.

Nicotiana

Recognition

I was on a website a few minutes ago that had instructions how to clean silver. At the bottom of the page I momentarily thought I saw some religious symbols. One was obviously a symbol of the Holy Spirit and the other of the Son. Then I moused over them and realized they were not a cross and a dove but rather:

the google + logo

and

the twitter logo.
 

Hey, thanks!

Earlier this evening I told myself I really should water my plants, if not fertilize them, as today was a rather hot day (by Western Washington standards). But then the heavens did the watering for me.

The longest day of the year

This was the western sky over my neighbor's roof at 9:45 p.m.



This is the reward that makes up for the sun going down shortly after 4:00 p.m. around winter solstice.

Wednesday

Well, thank goodness that's over with.

In other news, the weather was highly changeable today, as it often is here, especially in spring, I guess. Anyway, it was sunny and pleasant when I walked my dog at around 7:00 a.m., but it was rainy and chilly when we left for the doctor's office at a little past noon. Then it got nice again in the evening.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here's a picture from this weekend of my purple petunias.

You don't want to know

Colon prep.

Begonias

And nothing but begonias.

Flora

I haven't posted pictures of my flowers yet this season. I'm preparing my sermon today, so when I need a break, I'll put up some pictures. Here are the first two:

Very young strawberries

Red and yellow nicotiana

Preparation

This coming Sunday, I'm going to preach at Hope in Christ Church, in Bellingham. I took my passage from the lectionary, the Gospel passage, which is Luke 7:36-50.

I'm feeling a bit of time pressure. I did do some studying and thinking even during my brother's visit, and even made some notes. This weekend on Friday evening and Saturday during the day, my own congregation, at Third Christian Reformed Church of Lynden, is having an important conference for church members, and I do plan to attend. So I would like to have my sermon as done as possible before the weekend.

Tonight I am sitting down to it. I am working my way into it by blogging about needing to prepare. Hopefully that gets my mind turned toward my message.

How good and pleasant is the sight

Me and my brother Saturday night.

Psalm 133

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
for brethren to dwell together in unity!

It is like the precious ointment upon the head,
that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard:
that went down to the skirts of his garments;

As the dew of Hermon,
and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion:
for there the Lord commanded the blessing,
even life for evermore.

Or as the Psalter would have it:

How good and pleasant is the sight
When brethren make it their delight
To dwell in blest accord;
Such love is like anointing oil
That consecrates for holy toil
The servants of the Lord.

Such love in peace and joy distils,
As o’er the slopes of Hermon’s hills
Refreshing dew descends;
The Lord commands His blessing there,
And they that walk in love shall share
In life that never ends.

Fragrance

Today, two of my co-workers brought in bouquets from their gardens at home with great big peonies and roses. They smelled heavenly.

Preparing a room

My guest room is ready for my brother to visit.

My brother and me a little over a year ago

A good tired

Finally a dry weekend. Went to the Farmers Day Parade on Saturday, and had coffee with my folks in the afternoon.



Today I had coffee with some cousins, bought groceries with my brother's upcoming visit in mind, and planted flowers. I planted flowers well into the evening. The days are nice and long now, as we are only three weeks from the longest day of the year. I am so tired now that I need to head to bed, so I'll just say: Begonias, petunias, lavender, and nicotiana. With a little bacopa here and there.

Lots of rain

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Nightmare on Boring Street

Last night, I foolishly stayed up late (just fiddling around on the web--not, of course, accomplishing anything useful, just wasting my time) and then I woke up early this morning and felt irritable all day. I finally took a little nap after my dog's evening meal and walk (for which he had been agitating for hours, apparently believing that because I came home and let him out of his box at about 1:00 in the afternoon, it still meant food and a walk, like it does when I come home from work at 5:30 on weekdays--I was so cranky that when we came in I crabbed at him, "Now you're good for the night and you don't have to bother me any more"; he looked up at me so puzzled and with such big eyes that my annoyance became tinged with remorse and I petted him a little to try to make amends).

"Are you implying that I could ever be a bother?"

While napping I had a stressful dream. I dreamed my brother, who lives nearly 3,000 miles away but who is coming to visit soon, had made an appointment for a hearing at the local district court and had asked me, because I am a paralegal, to submit the correct forms and make sure everything was lined up. I dreamed I had assumed he submitted the correct forms but I was realizing I may have needed to check and correct them and that I might have needed to confirm his hearing with the district court clerk's office, but had thought I didn't need to. My co-worker was in my dream, helping me try to figure it out, and I realized my brother had scheduled his court business for two days but that one of the days was Memorial Day, so he would either have to reschedule or only have the second day. I was looking through calendars and court rule books. It was about then that I woke up on my living room couch, feeling overheated and worried.

In waking life, my brother's visit is not for a couple weeks yet and he has no business to conduct with any court while he's here (as far as I know), and there is nothing I need to confirm, correct, or reschedule. The dream was a mishmash of home and work anxieties,  with that dream effect that wherever you look for information or help is the wrong place. Phew. It took me a few moments to convince myself that my anxiety had no basis in reality.

Re-reading the story of my dream above, I realize that the nightmares of a legal assistant, while terrifying to experience, come across as rather boring in the telling. No monsters, no violence, just calendars and court rules. Any other person would fall asleep during that dream.

Bunny tale

A week ago or so, I saw a bunny in someone's front yard while I was walking my dog. A couple days ago, I saw two bunnies in someone else's front yard, just a few houses away. I wonder if in a few more days I'll see four bunnies, then eight, and so on. That is the reputation rabbits have.

My dog, who ignores squirrels, would have been willing to chase the rabbits if I hadn't had him on a leash.

Nimrod

Pleasant lines

Feeling good today! I fulfilled my springtime ambition and visited Hi Hoe Nursery this afternoon. I didn't have my camera, but I took a few pictures with my phone. After I got home, I was e-mailing the pictures to myself when my phone battery died. Here are as many as I received from myself so far.

A little bridge in the "Hydrangea Walk"

Remarkably large hostas (bear sculpture in the background)

Sweet mossy bench

Shrubs and trees for sale

A week ago Friday, I stopped at the Garden Spot on my way home from work, so I have two nursery visits of plants to get in pots. I was working on my deck this evening and was delighted by the contrast between how I felt today and how I felt a couple weeks ago. Then when I even moved a couple flower pots from here to there, I had to sit and rest because I was exhausted. This evening I was moving things not only from here to there but also hither and yon, and not getting tired at all. In fact I'd still be at it now if the sun hadn't gone down.

When I came back from my evening walk with the dog, I looked at my house and yard and thought about the job I like so much and tried to recollect the line of the Psalm: "My lines have fallen in pleasant places." Actually it's "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage" (Psalm 16:6). It's true!

Cottontail

While walking the dog this morning, I saw a bunny rabbit in a neighbor's yard not too far from here. It sat perfectly still, and my dog did not notice it. I wonder where it lives.

Spring fever

It's been a rather sickly spring for me. Around March 15th, I believe it was, I started to have nasal congestion and related issues. Since then, I really have not been without them. Sometimes it's worse and I think I've got a cold and sometimes it's better and I think I'm getting well, then it gets worse again. This week, my doctor has decided to treat my allergies aggressively. I am using fluticasone, a steroid nasal spray, and taking a week of Prednisone, also a steroid.

Steroid suppress the immune system and, since allergies are basically the immune system gone wild, that makes sense.

Yesterday and today, I've had some crazy coughing fits that tire me right out, so I hope that stops now.

What's particularly frustrating is that this weekend we had beautiful warm weather and I really wanted to make my first big outing to Hi Hoe Nursery, but I just didn't have the energy. I have barely started to clean my deck up.

A little at a time, I am scraping the moss from between the cracks...

...and sweeping it into a pile, then disposing of it.

I have straggling and dead plants from last summer that I need to trim or get rid of.

I am hoping to have it at least neat and clean, if not blooming, by Sunday, Mother's Day. I traditionally host our family's Mother's Day celebration so that the mothers can relax. If the weather's nice, we could sit out there a bit.

I just looked at the 7-day forecast, and it says it will cool down and rain by next weekend. At least that would take the pressure off needing to be ready for outdoor entertaining.

We'll see. Those longer-range forecasts are not always correct.

Below, my dog demonstrates how to enjoy a deck.

First, relax.

Next, doze.

And that's really all there is to it.

Fragrant, fleeting lilacs

Well, my major preoccupations this week have been my sinuses and the weather, two topics I blog about too much, so I'll spare you.

Spring is making progress, however. Sunday night at a Bible study we were commenting that lilacs were already starting to bloom. That was a smidge early. I believe my sister-in-law says that every year but one her lilac has bloomed by May 8, so it was perhaps a week early to have it start April 28. We also discussed how quickly the lilac bloom season is over. They are always past their best by Memorial Day. I know that because I have sometimes thought it would be nice to put some lilacs on my flower-loving grandma's grave on Memorial Day, but they are never good enough any more. On the other hand, my sister-in-law often brings me a fragrant vase full of lilacs on Mother's Day, when I host the Mother's Day lunch for our family so that the mothers don't have to fix the food.

From Spring 2012. This year's blooms are not quite this full yet.

So early Tuesday morning

Hm. Tuesday. What can be said about it? It's after Monday and before Wednesday. Not the first day of the workweek. Not the middle, "hump," day.

I think in the old nursery song, it was the day "we iron our clothes." I don't own an ironing board at this point in my life. I figure wrinkles will fall out of my clothes as I wear them.

Coffee is brewing as I write. Oh, coffee, wonderful coffee. Meanwhile I must put on my dog-walking clothes and walk the dog.

According to the weather forecast, it will stay cool today, but get warmer every day, and be downright hot by the weekend.

Flowers, please

The last couple Saturdays, I've been disappointed when -- up in good time to watch P. Allen Smith's Garden Home on KCTS (a local PBS station) at 7:30 a.m. -- instead I see P. Allen Smith's Garden to Table. I like to see shows about flowers and landscaping and, while I don't precisely dislike cooking shows, I am less interested in them. Yesterday the Garden to Table show featured a recipe for kale soup, which is something I am very, very unlikely either to make or to eat.

There is a serious shortage of gardening shows in this world. I am down to two: P. Allen Smith's Garden Home and The Victory Garden. The Victory Garden also spends time on vegetarian recipes that don't interest me. "Chef Michel" always cuts up a bunch of vegetables and cooks them into fare that does not appeal to me in the least.

What can I say? I like red meat.

And when I tune into a gardening show I want to see gardens.

No rift in the lute

This week at bedtime I've been helping myself relax by finding long-playing sets of Renaissance instrumental music at youtube, particularly lute music.  Here is just a two and a half minute sample of the kind of thing I like.

Special occasions

Today the weather felt like spring! It was great.

Today was also Administrative Professionals Day. Once upon a time, that was Secretaries Day, but for some reason the term "secretary" has gone out of fashion and been replaced with "administrative assistant." My job title is "Legal Assistant." I fancy at one time "legal assistants" were "legal secretaries." Call me what you will. Just don't call me late for dinner.

My kind co-workers gave me and my fellow legal assistant each a card, signed by everyone in the office. I am touched to receive that kindness.

The other occasion, according to my sister's book blog, is that April is National Poetry Month. This spring, as the trees have leafed out, their yellow tinge kept making me think of the Robert Frost line, "Nature's first green is gold."

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

1923

All flesh is grass

Here is a picture from last September of my calla lily, including a ceramic fleur-de-lis on the table next to it.



Today I found the fleur-de-lis broken. Perhaps the wind blew it over. Maybe a cat, possum, or some other creature knocked into the table and made it fall. Perhaps a small child is the cause. Oh, well. The wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.



In other back porch news, the honeysuckle has filled out with leaves and even is getting buds. I almost wrote "blooms," but they are "pre-blooms."



The honeysuckle picture is from Saturday, when it was rainy. Today was sunny. I was home from work recovering from my cold or flu or whatever it was. It was beautiful outside all day.

I do feel better. I think I was wise to stay home and rest, and I anticipate that I will return to work tomorrow.

Wordless

Tweet of the week

THIS. “This week is so bad that an Elvis-impersonating conspiracy theorist sent poison to Obama and THAT'S LIKE THE TENTH BIGGEST STORY.”
— Laura Mitchell (@ljmabouttown) April 19, 2013

Like a faucet

Well, I guess it was about a month ago that I started a cold, and only a couple weeks ago that I had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic I took for an ear infection, and now my nose is running and my sinuses are congested again. Ugh, yuck, and bleah.

Reading

Reading Introverts in the Church. Liking it.

A day in the life

Worked. Read. Walked the dog.

Partly sunny, partly cloudy. Cool but not cold. A bit windy at times.

Now, sleepy.

Boston massacre

Prayer, sympathy, and sorrow for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing and their families.

Like a duck

Took this through the windshield as I left for church Sunday morning.



This blog is becoming just ducky!

The bouquet residence

On the already cluttered top of my dishwasher, I have three hyacinths.



The empty pop tart box is there to prop up one that is starting to fall over. That is a thing hyacinths seem to do.

They're pretty enough, but I didn't buy them for their looks but for their fragrance. A couple years ago when I went to the Home and Garden Show in early March, I was longing for spring at the tail end of winter -- February is a hard month, and the Home and Garden Show is usually the first weekend in March, sort of the first sign of spring.

Anyway, when I walked into the garden section of exhibit, such lovely colors everywhere and -- heavenly -- a fresh, sweet fragrance. I tried not to be obvious in sniffing around various blooms to try to find the source, and it turned out to be some hyacinth.

So a week or so ago when I saw hyacinth at Safeway I picked up a few and brought them home just to make the place smell good, and it worked. They're starting to fade a bit now, but for a week or so I would come home to a lovely fragrance in my house.

And, of course, no mention of hyacinth is complete without:

Spring weather report

Windy, cold, rainy.

Cold and damp

So today I took my camera along when I walked my dog, thinking maybe I'd see that funny looking duck again. I did not see it, although I did see the pair of mallard ducks I usually see.



As you can see, it's a rather wet morning here in the great Pacific Northwest. Fine weather for ducks, as they say.

Because I was looking for a webbed-footed fowl and because it was kind of chilly and rainy, I had running through my head a silly song I learned when I was a little girl:

Be kind to your webbed-footed friends
For a duck may be somebody's mother.
Be kind to your friends in the swamp
Where the weather is very cold and damp.
Now you may think that this is the end.
Well, it is.

It's sung to a fragment of the John Philip Sousa march, The Stars and Stripes Forever.

Today, I am the friend where the weather is very cold and damp to whom you should be kind. :-)  But my feet are not webbed. Yet.

Quack

This morning, while walking my dog, I saw, as is my wont, a pair of ducks. They were the typical ducks we see around here a lot, called, apparently, mallard ducks.


This picture was realized by Richard Bartz by using a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

But they were accompanied by a larger fowl. At first I thought it was a bigger duck, from the way it waddled (if it walks like a duck, etc.) and shook its tail, but when I saw its face with red skin surrounding the eyes, and its mottled gray feathers, I though maybe it was some kind of turkey or chicken that had escaped somebody's keeping. I could not see its feet because it was in the grass of someone's lawn.

When I was came by the birds on my way back home, they were in the street (fortunately a quiet, low-traffic residential area), and I saw that the big one had webbed feet. Later in the day, when I had time, I looked online to try to identify it and decided it must have been a type of Muscovy duck. The picture below shows the kind of face it had, although the one I saw had a more dappled gray feather pattern.


CC-BY-2.5 / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

In other news, I took my dog to the groomer for a hair cut. He went in shaggy and came out smooth and short-haired. Visually, he shrank in size. What had appeared to be his bulk turned out to have been fuzz.

While he was having his makeover, I went to Bakerview Nursery and picked out a small dieffenbachia and some creeping fig, along with a ceramic pot to plant them in. I plan to take the pot to work and adorn my work space.

Strange new worlds

I don't watch that much TV but tonight for some reason I channel-surfed a bit and found Star Trek: Nemesis, the last movie based on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I never got around to seeing it in the theater, so I watched it, and it was okay.

In my mis-spent youth, I was something of a Trekkie. Until I was in my mid-20s, there was only one Star Trek, and that was the original series. I was too young to watch or remember seeing it when it was new, but re-runs of it were constantly on TV while I was growing up. Since the original series was only three seasons long, I saw every episode many, many times.

When I was in 9th grade, every movie we were shown in my science class started with a space motif, so I would always mutter to my friend:

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Occasionally I would top that performance with some Ooo-OOOO-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo musical effects. And sometimes the teacher would send me out into the hall.



By the time I was in college I pretty much knew the series by heart. My senior year, Star Trek was on late Sunday night, and I would turn it on and watch the first line or two of dialogue, and then I would know which episode it was and decide whether to watch it.

When The Next Generation started, I don't think I watched it right away, but eventually I did watch it and liked it. I never got to know it by heart, like the first one. And when they had the series (serieses?) Deep Space Nine and Voyager, I only watched them occasionally, and I saw the most recent, "prequel" series, Enterprise, only once that I recall. So my Star Trek enthusiasm tapered off as the number of Star Trek storylines multiplied, but I still have a soft spot for Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Scotty, and the rest of the original gang.

Maundering*

I saw a church sign last week in Bellingham with a list of Holy Week services, including one for "Maunday" Thursday. I remember the first time I heard anyone say "Maundy Thursday"; I thought they were saying "Monday Thursday," which made no sense at all. But the word "Maundy" is never heard in any other context, so it's no wonder it's unfamiliar. Wikipedia says "Maundy" either derives from the Latin mandatum, as in Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos, meaning "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you," which Jesus said to his disciples at their seder supper, or else it's from the Latin mendicare or French mendier: to beg.

Which brings me to my point. Actually, I don't have a point.* I just find etymologies interesting.