The power outage is a lie
9 June 2008 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3rdragonThose of you who have been reading your Smith e-mail this past week will be aware that there was supposed to have been a power outage at 5:00 this morning, with power back on at 5:30 and lots of other stuff (like internet) down throughout the day as we update to co-gen.* My alarm clock has a battery so that it doesn't reset in instances like this, and I didn't notice anything unusual this morning. Turns out, the word on the street** is that whoever was supposed to turn the power off at 5:00 this morning didn't show, and so the whole thing has been called off. And while I'm glad that there aren't going to be freaking out people on my shift this morning, there will still be freaking out people at some point in the future, and since we did all the anticipating for today, it would've been nice to just go through with it and get it over with.
Ah, its/status says that it was canceled due to a family emergency.
It is officially summer. I took my first cold shower this morning and it was marvelous.
It's been quiet today, aside from the lady who wanted to print something and couldn't because the pay-for-print computer was having problems. Either she the computer was asleep and she turned it off instead of waking it up or someone turned it off over the weekend in preparation for the power outage. Either way it won't reconnect to the Pharos server, and the lady was not happy about it. I have to say that I'm really puzzled by these people who come down to print and say that they're in the middle of class and just ran down to print something. I mean, printing doesn't take that long if everything works, but it's still longer than I'd want to step out of class for. Of course I must admit that on at least one occasion I've cut my printing pretty close too, but I managed to be in class with my paper by the time class started.
I finished The Arm of the Starfish yesterday.
One of the things I really like about this book is the way it addresses the moral issues associated with - well, being on the side of God and the angels, to use a very L'Engle turn of phrase. Or being the good guys, if you like that better. Whatever. Those who try to heal rather than hurt. And not just the traditional Hero's Dilemma about killing the antagonist vs. not killing the antagonist, but that gray area of inaction and choice; can you love your enemies enough to save their lives?
I think one of the things that I really like about L'Engle's work is that she tackles the hard questions, and that I never feel like her answers are pat or contrived. Her characters face hard questions, and not only come to the conclusions that my intuition tells me are right, but do so in a manner that feels natural, realistic, and entirely believable (to me, at any rate; I can't speak for everyone).
I'm quite fond of the fall of the sparrow imagery throughout the book. It's one of my favorite bible verses (actually two; it appears in both Matthew and Luke in slightly different wording; I like to mush the two), along with, "Look to the lilies of the field. . ." Not, mind you, in the God-will-provide sense - that may be a worldview that works for my grandparents, but I look at the world and see a lot of people for whom God hasn't provided, people who are just as much children of God as me or my grandparents - but as a reassurance that we are loved and cared about. That God is paying attention - to people and to birds and to flowers, and so, by extension, to everything else as well. It never promises that we will be caught when we fall, but that we will be cared about, yes. "His eye is on the sparrow, and he watches over me."
On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm currently trying to remember the tune to the Tallis Canon. Is it the Doxology? I don't know why I'm asking this group of people. Well, I suppose two of you have a halfway decent chance of knowing.
Amazon, which is usually my source for remembering songs I've forgotten, is being uncooperative. I suppose that I could restart into Windows, but that's a terrible lot of work. Besides, the consultant computer in Wright is already a windows; I could just wait until this afternoon.
Next on my reading list: A Ring of Endless Light and And Only to Deceive.
Pharos is working again. Whoot.
Em and I went canoeing yesterday, but turned back almost immediately because it was thundering ominously.
I think that's all for now.
*I would like to state that while I entirely approve of co-gen, I fully expected today to be hellish because people often don't check their e-mail/don't think ahead and then bad things happen and they freak out at the nearest person who looks to be vaguely in control of anything: probably me, since I have a shiny nametag and sit at a special desk.
**And by, "word on the street," I mean, "as I was told this morning by the chatty library lady who gives me my keys every morning and whose name I don't know and should probably ask sometime."
Ah, its/status says that it was canceled due to a family emergency.
It is officially summer. I took my first cold shower this morning and it was marvelous.
It's been quiet today, aside from the lady who wanted to print something and couldn't because the pay-for-print computer was having problems. Either she the computer was asleep and she turned it off instead of waking it up or someone turned it off over the weekend in preparation for the power outage. Either way it won't reconnect to the Pharos server, and the lady was not happy about it. I have to say that I'm really puzzled by these people who come down to print and say that they're in the middle of class and just ran down to print something. I mean, printing doesn't take that long if everything works, but it's still longer than I'd want to step out of class for. Of course I must admit that on at least one occasion I've cut my printing pretty close too, but I managed to be in class with my paper by the time class started.
I finished The Arm of the Starfish yesterday.
One of the things I really like about this book is the way it addresses the moral issues associated with - well, being on the side of God and the angels, to use a very L'Engle turn of phrase. Or being the good guys, if you like that better. Whatever. Those who try to heal rather than hurt. And not just the traditional Hero's Dilemma about killing the antagonist vs. not killing the antagonist, but that gray area of inaction and choice; can you love your enemies enough to save their lives?
I think one of the things that I really like about L'Engle's work is that she tackles the hard questions, and that I never feel like her answers are pat or contrived. Her characters face hard questions, and not only come to the conclusions that my intuition tells me are right, but do so in a manner that feels natural, realistic, and entirely believable (to me, at any rate; I can't speak for everyone).
I'm quite fond of the fall of the sparrow imagery throughout the book. It's one of my favorite bible verses (actually two; it appears in both Matthew and Luke in slightly different wording; I like to mush the two), along with, "Look to the lilies of the field. . ." Not, mind you, in the God-will-provide sense - that may be a worldview that works for my grandparents, but I look at the world and see a lot of people for whom God hasn't provided, people who are just as much children of God as me or my grandparents - but as a reassurance that we are loved and cared about. That God is paying attention - to people and to birds and to flowers, and so, by extension, to everything else as well. It never promises that we will be caught when we fall, but that we will be cared about, yes. "His eye is on the sparrow, and he watches over me."
On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm currently trying to remember the tune to the Tallis Canon. Is it the Doxology? I don't know why I'm asking this group of people. Well, I suppose two of you have a halfway decent chance of knowing.
Amazon, which is usually my source for remembering songs I've forgotten, is being uncooperative. I suppose that I could restart into Windows, but that's a terrible lot of work. Besides, the consultant computer in Wright is already a windows; I could just wait until this afternoon.
Next on my reading list: A Ring of Endless Light and And Only to Deceive.
Pharos is working again. Whoot.
Em and I went canoeing yesterday, but turned back almost immediately because it was thundering ominously.
I think that's all for now.
*I would like to state that while I entirely approve of co-gen, I fully expected today to be hellish because people often don't check their e-mail/don't think ahead and then bad things happen and they freak out at the nearest person who looks to be vaguely in control of anything: probably me, since I have a shiny nametag and sit at a special desk.
**And by, "word on the street," I mean, "as I was told this morning by the chatty library lady who gives me my keys every morning and whose name I don't know and should probably ask sometime."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 9 Jun 2008 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 Jun 2008 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 Jun 2008 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 Jun 2008 12:38 am (UTC)I'm all about the bit of Frost......
and re: tallis canon, basically, yes. http://www.missionstclare.com/music/w167.html
(I spent a LOT of time in church choirs and alter service when I was.... under 12ish.)
no subject
Date: 10 Jun 2008 12:29 pm (UTC)It's a good poem. And she uses it very well.
Thanks. You weren't one of the people I was expecting to possibly have an answer to that question, but I won't look a gift answer in the mouth.