7 Quick Takes (XVI)

1. I did not go to a Hallowe'en party on Saturday night. Instead, I worked on my UBC application until I burnt out, and then I watched Cape Fear on the telly. That's not a bad movie, by the way. I wouldn't say it's scary (though obviously it's supposed to be), but not bad at all. I had one of those unique experiences where I could recognize that that was Robert DeNiro, but he wasn't just an actor. I often feel that way, that the character is overwritten by the actor (when the actor's famous). Though DeNiro could come quite close to doing that, he didn't. The accent helped.

2. On Sunday, I stayed after church for server training. Servers are similar to acolytes. (Well, properly, an acolyte is a server who is at that moment performing a specific function, that is, carrying and lighting the candles.) The other two server trainees were kids, just above the age eight, I'd say. I felt a little silly. The call for servers said you could be between 8 and not dead (or, later, that was refined to between 8 and 108). The three servers St. Thomas' has now are I'd say around fourteen. I think I mentioned one of them before. That one turns out to be named Becky.
Anyway, the training was very informative. The format was a bit kiddish, but I did get along with the two kids. The one was the daughter of a sometimes lay-reader, who I also mentioned here before (she noticed I had paint on my hands), and the other was the son of the priest. (I wrote 'minister' and had to change it to 'priest.' Though the Anglicans do not hold Catholic theologies about the roles of clergy, the terminology and hierarchy remains the same. It will take some getting used to.)
Though the other two will be paired with the current fourteen-year-old servers, I am going to be sent in on my own right off. The priest is confident in my ability to jump right in.
As a sign-up gift, we were each given a new Bible--God Sightings: The One Year Bible. It is NLV, which I'm not the biggest fan of (give me the King James or the NRSV), but I'll manage. What is cool is the format. It's not arranged in canonical order but rather into day's readings. So at the beginning we get "January 1," which is Genesis 1-2:something, Matthew 1, Psalm 1, and Proverb 1. Each day has an Old Testament reading, a New Testament reading, a Psalm, and a Proverb, such that you complete each of these within a year. I will continue my strict OT readings until January, when I will get cracking on this new program.

3. Wednesday night, I sent out my UBC application. It is done at last. 25 pages of a YA novel, 25 pages of last year's fiction, 25 pages of polished blog posts to fulfill the Creative Non-Fiction component.
I burnt out doing this.

4. And I mean that. I'm sick again. Yessiree. I'm aching and stuffed up and coughing and have chills.

5. Some of those aches and weaknesses likely come from the fact that I dug out a trench on Monday. It's a longish story, but I spent around three hours digging out rocky earth in the snow. All in all, I'm glad I did it. I somehow feel vindicated by doing manual labour that no one else at work will (those who would have were absent). But I was sore afterwards.
Here's how it happened: the boss asked me to talk Keith (a gas-line guy from the gas-line company) about a trench that needs to be dug. I said, "I don't think that's his job, though." She said, "I know." And that's when I clued in.
I got very dirty, I can tell you.

6. Today I found out that my homeschoolers program at work is going to be attended by about one family. Which is a bit disappointing, to say the least. That's two kids. We had no idea what to expect, but we'd thought more than this. In the long run it doesn't matter to me, since I'll still get what I need out of it. It's just a bit of a shame that a program I'd been working on (or trying to work on, but kept getting called off for miscellaneous other stuff) for weeks isn't going to be received by as many as I'd hoped.
Anyway, they come on Monday, and I went in to work today only to prepare for this program. Once I'd had the room set up, the worksheets printed off (I liked making those), and all the artifacts set out, I caught the bus home. Boss' orders.

7. And then I watched something like 5 hours of Battlestar Galactica. The first season, that is, since that's the only one I own at the moment. I should be getting the next season for Christmas.