(no subject)
*yaaaaaaaawn*
Dropped mom-in-law off at the airport yesterday. When we got home from vacation, I walked in, took one look at my house, and said, "I don't know whose house this is, but it's not mine!" I like my house to be neat and clean, yes. I don't want my house to be so clean I'm afraid to even sit down lest I shed a few skin cells and ruin everything.
But yay! So far I'm not looking frantically everywhere for things she's put away in places that I never put them in. That's something I won't complain about. Usually when either my mother or mom-in-law comes over, I spend the next two weeks hunting down all my pots and pans and assorted dishes.
So she's gone, but mini-me is still on spring break. (And oh, thank God we took our vacation the week before spring break. The teenagers flocked into the hotel the day before we left, and if we'd had to spend an entire week with stupidly drunk eighteen-year-olds, someone wouldn't have made it out of there alive.) But she goes back to school on Monday, so then I'll have my days to myself again.
I've made good progress getting through the scuba gear. All the wetsuits are washed, my weight belt, the BCs, the gloves and booties and masks and fins. All of the major stuff. I think there's still a few little things, like my dive knife and hubby's spare wrist computer, that still have to go through. But that's it. A lot of it is already dry, too, though the booties will probably be sitting out for a week before they dry. If there's a way to quick-dry booties that doesn't involve a hair dryer, I've never heard of it.
Finished Stover's Iron Dawn in Cozumel. Fun book. Not a fantastic amazing work of art, but still fun. It's like reading a role-playing game. (A circus bear rampages along the city streets. One character actually hits the bear in the balls to bring it down. And it works, too.) The only thing is, he's got this bad habit of switching to present tense any time he goes into scene description. Like, he'll have Our Heroes walking into the city of Tyre, and that's all past tense. Then he'll start describing what Tyre's like, and it's all present tense, as if the city and the era is still around. I'm sure it's an artistic decision, but it really does not work for me.
Started the sequel, Jericho Moon, as soon as we got back. It's a better book than the first one. I think my favorite scene so far is a flashback from Joshua's point of view in which Moses tells him that his job is not to lead the people of Israel. That's God's job. Joshua's job is to protect the people from God. Very interesting stuff, especially when it talks about why the Israelites keep turning to other gods, even when Yahweh has specifically instructed them not to. They keep turning to other gods in the hopes that those other gods will protect them from Yahweh and be easier to follow than Yahweh. Not out of disbelief, not out of disappointment, but from fear and desperation.
When I started the book, I wondered how Stover would accomplish the book without getting tangled up with anti-Semitism, but he does it. The trick is, Joshua and the Israelites aren't the bad guys. Joshua is actually a protagonist of sorts (even though he's the main characters' enemy). The major bad guy is Yahweh. The story is literally turning into a battle between gods, more than between people. And of course, I'm loving every minute of it. There's plenty of the attitude of arguing and wrestling with God that comes from classical Judaism. (Think of Job, of course. But also remember Jacob wrestling with God in the night. God gave Jacob the new name of Israel, and the practice of wrestling with God continued from then on.) The idea that the Israelites had to be protected from God is a new one (for me, at least; dunno whether it's been done before), but fits in with the overall theology; being the "chosen people" isn't a benefit or something to brag about--it's a burden sometimes too heavy to bear.
Good stuff. Enjoyably dystheist.
Dropped mom-in-law off at the airport yesterday. When we got home from vacation, I walked in, took one look at my house, and said, "I don't know whose house this is, but it's not mine!" I like my house to be neat and clean, yes. I don't want my house to be so clean I'm afraid to even sit down lest I shed a few skin cells and ruin everything.
But yay! So far I'm not looking frantically everywhere for things she's put away in places that I never put them in. That's something I won't complain about. Usually when either my mother or mom-in-law comes over, I spend the next two weeks hunting down all my pots and pans and assorted dishes.
So she's gone, but mini-me is still on spring break. (And oh, thank God we took our vacation the week before spring break. The teenagers flocked into the hotel the day before we left, and if we'd had to spend an entire week with stupidly drunk eighteen-year-olds, someone wouldn't have made it out of there alive.) But she goes back to school on Monday, so then I'll have my days to myself again.
I've made good progress getting through the scuba gear. All the wetsuits are washed, my weight belt, the BCs, the gloves and booties and masks and fins. All of the major stuff. I think there's still a few little things, like my dive knife and hubby's spare wrist computer, that still have to go through. But that's it. A lot of it is already dry, too, though the booties will probably be sitting out for a week before they dry. If there's a way to quick-dry booties that doesn't involve a hair dryer, I've never heard of it.
Finished Stover's Iron Dawn in Cozumel. Fun book. Not a fantastic amazing work of art, but still fun. It's like reading a role-playing game. (A circus bear rampages along the city streets. One character actually hits the bear in the balls to bring it down. And it works, too.) The only thing is, he's got this bad habit of switching to present tense any time he goes into scene description. Like, he'll have Our Heroes walking into the city of Tyre, and that's all past tense. Then he'll start describing what Tyre's like, and it's all present tense, as if the city and the era is still around. I'm sure it's an artistic decision, but it really does not work for me.
Started the sequel, Jericho Moon, as soon as we got back. It's a better book than the first one. I think my favorite scene so far is a flashback from Joshua's point of view in which Moses tells him that his job is not to lead the people of Israel. That's God's job. Joshua's job is to protect the people from God. Very interesting stuff, especially when it talks about why the Israelites keep turning to other gods, even when Yahweh has specifically instructed them not to. They keep turning to other gods in the hopes that those other gods will protect them from Yahweh and be easier to follow than Yahweh. Not out of disbelief, not out of disappointment, but from fear and desperation.
When I started the book, I wondered how Stover would accomplish the book without getting tangled up with anti-Semitism, but he does it. The trick is, Joshua and the Israelites aren't the bad guys. Joshua is actually a protagonist of sorts (even though he's the main characters' enemy). The major bad guy is Yahweh. The story is literally turning into a battle between gods, more than between people. And of course, I'm loving every minute of it. There's plenty of the attitude of arguing and wrestling with God that comes from classical Judaism. (Think of Job, of course. But also remember Jacob wrestling with God in the night. God gave Jacob the new name of Israel, and the practice of wrestling with God continued from then on.) The idea that the Israelites had to be protected from God is a new one (for me, at least; dunno whether it's been done before), but fits in with the overall theology; being the "chosen people" isn't a benefit or something to brag about--it's a burden sometimes too heavy to bear.
Good stuff. Enjoyably dystheist.