New part-time job! plus other bits and pieces
I've had a wonderful bit of serendipity happen to me recently. A couple of weeks ago, I was down in San Diego's South Park neighborhood--not to be confused with Trey Parker's and Matt Stone's "South Park," this is an old neighborhood of cute little restored Craftsman homes and funky shops favored by artsy creative type folks. I happened upon a particularly cute funky shop, given over to world crafts, incense, candles, aromatherapy products, and lots of Laurel Burch stuff. I was just about to enter the shop anyway, when I noticed a sign in the window advertising part-time job openings for both the brick-and-mortar shop and its Internet operations. So I zipped inside, filled out an application form, went on an interview ... and voila! A new part-time job!
The shop is transitioning its name from Triptych to the more memorable The Zen Merchant, and I do invite you to check out either its real-time or Internet versions. Who knows? Maybe I'll be the one to personally wait on you or ship your on-line order!
Meanwhile, I continue to work at my new little side-gig of writing restaurant reviews. The website I'm doing these for has not yet gone live--they're still chasing the last couple of bugs out of the PHP in the site's backend--but I'm actually starting to get paid for this writing! Not a lot, mind you; at this point, it's mostly subsidizing my dining-out adventures. But especially as I was able to get as my review beat the cheap-but-good hole-in-the-wall joints I so love, this is turning into a very good deal as far as I'm concerned.
Other stuff going on: I sang my first concert with the San Diego Women's Chorus the first weekend of December--it went really well. The chorus has several additional "community outreach" gigs throughout December--we've done two already, and have a few more in the next couple of weeks. As a community chorus, the SDWC doesn't necessarily tackle the most technically complex works--but they are gifted with some excellent voices that make a really lovely blend, so it's a musically satisfying experience. Plus the more I get to know these women--and their humorous gay male artistic director--the more I'm grooving on them all. It's definitely a cross-section of the community--the youngest member is 14, the oldest is in her 80s, and they represent every walk of life and a variety of sexual orientations. My kind of mixture!
Oh yeah--I continue to stay majorly busy with the UU church of which I am a member, and things have only gotten busier as we slide into the holidays. The funnest thing I'm looking forward to: taking a role in the Winter Solstice Celebration. First UU Church of San Diego has an extremely active pagan/Wiccan/Earth-centered spirituality contingent, which for the past several years has put on an elaborate Winter Solstice observation that's more of a theatrical production than a ritual, like a full-on pagan version of a Christmas Revels. I'm to play the so-called Blessing Priestess--as people enter the church campus heading toward the Meeting House where the Celebration is to be held, they will pass my throne, where I will greet them and waft sage smudge in their general direction. This should be extremely cool! I've worked out some garb that will be suitably festive while protecting me from freezing my butt in the winter-desert chill--I'll see if I can get some photos.
If only the rest of the world were being as mellow as my little part of it. I was deeply bummed to hear that the wonderful woman who was going to be our church's new associate minister until she was diagnosed with cancer, lost her fight with that disease last last week. I found myself thinking, Damn, Goddess, now that was really unfair--she had so much to offer the world, and should have had a lot more years to live. But she did have beautiful support from a caring family--as deaths go, that was a very peaceful one.
Another member of my circle of church friends, an older gentleman, is not doing very well healthwise either. He has been struggling with creeping vascular dementia for the past couple of years or so, and alas a few weeks ago the dementia took a new leap forward. After a couple of bouts in the hospital, it became apparent that he really couldn't manage at home by himself, so now he's in a nursing home. I am seriously bummed that his insurance or whatever couldn't be persuaded to set him up with home health care--I can't imagine that even the round-the-clock watching he now needs could be more expensive than a nursing home, plus he's made his home into such a beautiful refuge. Plus getting to this nursing home is a bit of a shlep up the traffic-ridden I-15. I hope they'll let him come home with caregivers eventually. In the meantime, people have been taking turns visiting him; I'd have been up there today if my knee hadn't tried to blow out on me yet again.
Oh yeah ... and then there's the current political scene. Goddamn George W. Bush--what a slow learner! Even after the drubbing of the election, crappy poll numbers, and all sorts of experts telling him the Iraq war is an irretrievable mess and we should get the hell out of there, he's *still* talking about "victory" and seeking one more expert to talk to in the hopes he'll be told what he wants to hear. Give it up, Georgie Boy--you're not going to find anyone telling you to stay the course anymore because only you are still willing to ascribe to that delusion. My one hope here is that his continued intransigence will provoke Congress to grow some balls and impeach the idiot. Yeah, I know these are distinctly un-Christmassy thoughts compared to everything else in this post, but I'm still on topic for the peace-on-earth aspect of things.
The shop is transitioning its name from Triptych to the more memorable The Zen Merchant, and I do invite you to check out either its real-time or Internet versions. Who knows? Maybe I'll be the one to personally wait on you or ship your on-line order!
Meanwhile, I continue to work at my new little side-gig of writing restaurant reviews. The website I'm doing these for has not yet gone live--they're still chasing the last couple of bugs out of the PHP in the site's backend--but I'm actually starting to get paid for this writing! Not a lot, mind you; at this point, it's mostly subsidizing my dining-out adventures. But especially as I was able to get as my review beat the cheap-but-good hole-in-the-wall joints I so love, this is turning into a very good deal as far as I'm concerned.
Other stuff going on: I sang my first concert with the San Diego Women's Chorus the first weekend of December--it went really well. The chorus has several additional "community outreach" gigs throughout December--we've done two already, and have a few more in the next couple of weeks. As a community chorus, the SDWC doesn't necessarily tackle the most technically complex works--but they are gifted with some excellent voices that make a really lovely blend, so it's a musically satisfying experience. Plus the more I get to know these women--and their humorous gay male artistic director--the more I'm grooving on them all. It's definitely a cross-section of the community--the youngest member is 14, the oldest is in her 80s, and they represent every walk of life and a variety of sexual orientations. My kind of mixture!
Oh yeah--I continue to stay majorly busy with the UU church of which I am a member, and things have only gotten busier as we slide into the holidays. The funnest thing I'm looking forward to: taking a role in the Winter Solstice Celebration. First UU Church of San Diego has an extremely active pagan/Wiccan/Earth-centered spirituality contingent, which for the past several years has put on an elaborate Winter Solstice observation that's more of a theatrical production than a ritual, like a full-on pagan version of a Christmas Revels. I'm to play the so-called Blessing Priestess--as people enter the church campus heading toward the Meeting House where the Celebration is to be held, they will pass my throne, where I will greet them and waft sage smudge in their general direction. This should be extremely cool! I've worked out some garb that will be suitably festive while protecting me from freezing my butt in the winter-desert chill--I'll see if I can get some photos.
If only the rest of the world were being as mellow as my little part of it. I was deeply bummed to hear that the wonderful woman who was going to be our church's new associate minister until she was diagnosed with cancer, lost her fight with that disease last last week. I found myself thinking, Damn, Goddess, now that was really unfair--she had so much to offer the world, and should have had a lot more years to live. But she did have beautiful support from a caring family--as deaths go, that was a very peaceful one.
Another member of my circle of church friends, an older gentleman, is not doing very well healthwise either. He has been struggling with creeping vascular dementia for the past couple of years or so, and alas a few weeks ago the dementia took a new leap forward. After a couple of bouts in the hospital, it became apparent that he really couldn't manage at home by himself, so now he's in a nursing home. I am seriously bummed that his insurance or whatever couldn't be persuaded to set him up with home health care--I can't imagine that even the round-the-clock watching he now needs could be more expensive than a nursing home, plus he's made his home into such a beautiful refuge. Plus getting to this nursing home is a bit of a shlep up the traffic-ridden I-15. I hope they'll let him come home with caregivers eventually. In the meantime, people have been taking turns visiting him; I'd have been up there today if my knee hadn't tried to blow out on me yet again.
Oh yeah ... and then there's the current political scene. Goddamn George W. Bush--what a slow learner! Even after the drubbing of the election, crappy poll numbers, and all sorts of experts telling him the Iraq war is an irretrievable mess and we should get the hell out of there, he's *still* talking about "victory" and seeking one more expert to talk to in the hopes he'll be told what he wants to hear. Give it up, Georgie Boy--you're not going to find anyone telling you to stay the course anymore because only you are still willing to ascribe to that delusion. My one hope here is that his continued intransigence will provoke Congress to grow some balls and impeach the idiot. Yeah, I know these are distinctly un-Christmassy thoughts compared to everything else in this post, but I'm still on topic for the peace-on-earth aspect of things.