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LovelyDaughter and I are off for a girly day out. We're going try on dresses, and talk, and look at shoes, and talk, and look at jewelry, and talk.
And talk.
This is going to be fun.
We had a great weekend. Not like some of you, but pretty good nonetheless.
Saturday Hubby and I made a day of it. We were invited to a homeschool highschool graduation, and also a wedding, so we decided to leave everyone home and take our cute little Z3, just the two of us.
We left in the morning, because I realized that I had nothing appropriate to wear to a wedding. We attend a very casual church, so I own three casual skirts, and nice jeans, and one pair of slacks-- but nothing exactly dressy. With that in mind, we decided to go shopping first, and find something.
I told God I wanted to walk in to the store and find a nice dress on sale, and get out. Which is what happened. So very, very cool. By the time Hubby got back from the restroom, which he headed to the second we got in the door, I had a dress picked out. It fit, it's nice enough for a warm weather wedding, but casual enough I can still wear it to our casual church and not feel conspicuous. And-- it was on sale for twenty bucks! Can't beat that.
Then we just had to find a place to change clothes. I had brought several Shade shirts along and three pairs of shoes, since I didn't know what I would find, and therefore what I would need to make the dress an outfit.
So-- off we went, and had a good time, and I enjoyed my new dress. I haven't had a new dress in so long I can't even tell you the last time I bought one. (Wait a minute-- yes I can. Two years ago I bought a dress for my niece's wedding. But I had since then cut it off to make a cute shirt out of it, to make it more useful.)
The graduation was held at sort of old-fashioned church with wooden pews and the first forty-five minutes was taken by a speaker who spent quite some time telling us all about how Jewish young people were taught and discipled. He would say something like, "And they all were required to learn the five books of the Torah, by heart!" and I would think, "This bench is hard." Then he would tell us about the kinds of questions the rabbis asked their students and I would think, "This bench is really hard." Then he told us that Jesus disciples were probably mostly teenagers, rather than grown men, and I thought, "How interesting! And this bench is the hardest bench I've ever sat on!"
The wedding was in another church in another town, with nicely padded pews. I told Hubby the bride's dress was beautiful-- too bad most of it was on the floor.
After the wedding and wonderful wedding supper, we stopped to visit friends who happened to live in the neighborhood. I felt so decadent and free, leaving the kids home to fend for themselves. Whoowee! Are we getting crazy or what?
Actually, only GuitarGeek and DrummerDude were home, because LovelyDaughter and MB3 were on a little trip of their own and had been gone for a week. They got back last night, and I'm very glad to have them home again.
Today we're all being lazy, since we were up very late last night hearing all about their adventure, and Swede is here, as well as J, our new friend, whom I'm going to call JD from now on.
At noon the eight of us ate outside at the picnic tables. We grilled varscht (home butchered and smoked pork), and made waffles over the campfire.
And now it's time to think about supper.
It feels like a great start to the summer season.
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Well, last So, once again with the help of the American Heritage Dictionary, here we go. H stands for.... 1...Hair. Twice I let my hair grown down to my tailbone, and both times, I cut off the braid for Hubby to keep. 2...Hamburger. Something I use a lot of, cooking for six or more people as I do. 3...Hamster. A pet we've never owned, and probably never will. Cats are enough. 4...Hand, small. I have small hands, the smallest in our family. My ring size is 5. 5...Hand-me-downs. Something I've gotten a lot of over the years, both for my kids and for myself. In fact, I myself often get hand-me-downs from teenagers. It's not just my hands-- the rest of me is small too. 6...Harangue. What my kids think I do when I get upset. (GuitarGeek says, "it's not what we THINK you do, it's what you DO"... so who are you going to believe?) 7....Harmony. What I like to play on my violin. Also, what I encourage in my family and household. 8...Hurry. What I'm always in, because I procrastinate, and then have to catch up. 9...Hastings. "A city of southern Nebraska, Population 21,000." Yup. It's about a 45 minute drive from here, and I only put it on the list because IT'S ACTUALLY IN THE DICTIONARY, FOLKS. Pretty cool, huh. 10...Hosiery, as in pantyhose. Something I never wear anymore. I don't believe in pantyhose. *smirk* 11...Highfalutin. Something I am not. I think I'm ordinary, friendly, loving, accepting-- at least I try to be, when I'm not having an introvert moment. 12...Hyperbole. Something I use a ton of. At least, in conversation. I probably tone it down when I write. 13....Hereafter. Something I think about more and more, as in, I walk to another room for something, and when I get there I think, "Now, what am I here after?" |
There are things happening here at the house of Huebert, things that are, and will be, changing our life, but I can't tell you about them yet.
Now I've made you curious, I know. But telling you this much lets you know the following:
1) I haven't fallen off the face of the earth,
2) why I'm a little strung out
3) why I'm having a hard time finding something to write about. Something ELSE, besides what I can't tell you. *SIGH*
And now a random observation.
Grocery shopping has become exhausting and discouraging lately. Has anyone else noticed the sudden hike in food prices? It's horrible in our corner of the cornfield.
I can prove it to you. I can get two hundred dollars worth of groceries in the trunk of THIS:
And believe me, it's not because the trunk is so spacious! (Although I will admit the trunk holds an amazing amount for how small it is.)
Pretty soon, I think I'll have to fill the trunk with money first, in order to bring it home full of groceries....
That is, if I have any money left after filling the gas tank. (And not because the gas tank is so big!)
Once again last weekend we were at a conference in a town over an hour from home. A very small one, as far as attendance goes, but we were one of three worship teams invited. Our slot was the Saturday afternoon session.
There were a few minor glitches, like when we found out that the songs we had emailed to them, upon their request, somehow didn't get received. (The guy admitted he probably deleted the email without looking at it, not realizing what it was.) This was important, because the organizer wanted all the song lyrics displayed via PowerPoint. So there was a bit of a delay while we all scrambled to get it together. Fortunately, I Hubby had brought my laptop with all the files, so the situation did get resolved reasonably quickly.
Also, they had a "changing of the guard" with the sound guys, and the sound guy who helped us set up, was not the sound guy who was running our sound, which ended up with a confused situation where we on stage thought we were doing a sound check, and the guys in the sound booth-- well, we have no idea what they thought they were doing. However, we did eventually get up and running.
In spite of that, we thought the music went pretty well, and we actually enjoyed doing it.
But I noticed something interesting. Something that has been around a long time, but I never really noticed.
There is a mindset in these kinds of conferences that goes something like this: If the meeting starts late, for whatever reason, or is running a little late, the worship team gets cut short. No matter if they've driven many miles, and spent hours preparing music, and practicing. The speaker NEVER gets cut short. In fact, the speaker can prettily beg for more time at the end of an overtime service, and always get it. No matter that it means the whole conference schedule then gets put out of whack. Which means the worship team at the next session gets cut even more short. Because, what's important here?
I guess I can't really answer that. After all, I am admittedly biased. I'd love to see the worship teams get a little more respect, partly because I'm on a worship team.
But aside from that, just think about it. What if our general mindset was different? What if it were the other way around? It might look like this:
The worship team gets to finish their music set, no matter how long it goes.
At an arbitrary spot in the speaker's message, the meeting organizer stands up and says,
"Well, thank you, Mr. Special Speaker, we are so blessed by what you've been saying, but I think we really need to cut this short and turn it over to the worship team now and get into what God has for us during ministry time."
Afterwards, there is a special offering taken for the worship team, in addition to the honorarium. The speaker gets a token amount to cover gas money (or nothing).
Actually, I wouldn't want it to be that way. That's like thinking white people should be enslaved for a few hundred years to make up for black slavery. Ridiculous, and unhelpful to anyone.
But I would like to see more equal respect. Especially when you consider that the music team probably has more money, time and commitment into the conference than the speaker. The speaker just has to show up with his notes (which I'm sure take lots of time and thought-- I'm not saying there's NO effort involved). The music team has money and time invested in instruments, sound gear, practice time, planning of song lists-- as well as travel expenses, just like the speaker.
And while we're at it, I think we could include sound guys, or "technicians." (Although, truthfully, most Christian organizations, at least around here, have not attained to the level of technicians, and just have "sound guys.") The sound people put in a lot of effort as well, and it would do well to at least recognize their work, and if they come from somewhere else just to run the sound system, I think they should be reimbursed.
Now, I'm not decrying the benefits of volunteer work. It's wonderful, and we've done a lot of volunteer (read: unpaid) music, and been blessed, and been a blessing.
But who ever heard of a "volunteer" special speaker? Hmm?
Okay. I just have to do a little ranting.
Everywhere I turn these days there is talk of the presidential candidates. But I only hear about two of them: Obama and Clinton.
Tell me. Has the whole country gone Democrat?
Where are the Republican candidates? And why is there no mention of them on NPR, or in the blogs?
Once again this morning I am frustrated by this. So, according to all the news we get, we only have two candidates for President this year, and both are from the same party. How is that even American?
I've been in bed by eleven for TWO nights running, and I'm feeling much better. Which, believe it or not, is a whole lot earlier than one o'clock.
