I finished my Project! \o/ Okay, okay, it turned out there's a bunch of stuff built into the system that automates what I thought I would have to do manually, but I'm still pleased with myself. I am also proud of me for stopping during working on responding to an LJ comment to make myself actually do this thing. (LJ discussions are shiny, and I sometimes seem to have the attention span of a goldfish.) Okay, I had the discipline to do this largely because I had said I would finish the Project by lunchtime, but still.

I am also tweaking my GoogleReader. I think I may unsubscribe to any feed where I have to click through to get the full entry. I am also considering signing up for Twitter just to follow the friends who aren't on LJ much, because getting an RSS of all the tweets is not so useful. I'm also open to suggestions of blogs I shouldn't be following 'cause they're problematic and/or blogs I should be following.

[I am also trying to actually do something with the interesting blogposts I read -- I keep just starring them in my GoogleReader and never going back to them, so I've gotta start at least putting them in my delicious even if I don't go back and actually blog about them.]

I cannot deal with people talking about having lost weight as if it's an inherently good thing.

I wince every time someone colloquially says "you guys" or "lame."

Today was the second day in a row I had almost nothing to do at work.  (I have a Project for tomorrow, though.  \o/  )  I worked on my sermon and did a lot of blog reading/skimming -- esp. lots of disability blogs.

One of the things I read was "What We Talk About When We Talk About Language" (by meloukhia on FWD/Forward).  I have posted about this before, but she says some really smart things I hadn't quite thought of in that way before but which really resonate for me.

when we talk about language, we don’t talk about what it used to mean, or what it is supposed to mean, or what you think it means. We talk about how society uses language, right now.  [...]

One of the most common defenses I see of ableist language is “well, it doesn’t mean that anymore.”

So, my question is, what does it mean?

One of the things I like to do when I am illustrating why language is exclusionary is I plug in a commonly-known original meaning of the word in question into a sentence. Let’s take “lame,” which is generally taken to mean “has difficulty walking” or “limps,” although the original use was actually just “broken.”

So, if someone says “this television show is lame” and you turn the sentence into “this television show has difficulty walking,” it doesn’t really make sense, right? Just like when you say “this social activity which I am being forced to do by my parent is a homosexual man,” it doesn’t really make sense. And this should tell you something. It should tell you that the word you are using has an inherently pejorative meaning.

Which means, actually, you’re totally right when you say a word “doesn’t mean that anymore.” In fact, it’s gone from being a value neutral term used to describe a state of being to being a pejorative. A pejorative so universally accepted that you can expect users to understand exactly what you mean when you say it. When you say “this television show is lame” you mean it’s bad, not worth your time, boring, etc., and here’s the trick: People understand that meaning and they derive it from the word that you have used, because that word is universally accepted as objectively bad.

[...]

Using inclusionary language is actually fun. You get to explore the roots of words you use, you get to find new and exciting words to use, and you get to learn more about the structure of a language you speak every day. It constantly amazes me to see how quickly exclusionary terms trip to my tongue when I’m in a hurry, because they are so ingrained as appropriate pejoratives. I’m actually relishing the process of eradicating them from my spoken and written language, because I love words and language play.

And I loathe essentialism. I loathe “well, it’s a value neutral term.” No, it’s not. If it was value neutral, it would not be in use as a pejorative. I loathe “no one really means that anymore.” Yes, they do, because if they didn’t, they would use a different word. Just like no one calls a “train” an “iron horse” anymore.

You know what helps with getting up on time in the morning?  Setting your alarm.  I woke up 45 minutes after my alarm was supposed to go off, with no memory of having turned off my alarm.  I could have taken a really quick shower (and in fact did because the water got colder, not warmer -- after I got dressed I went downstairs and turned the boiler back on) and gotten to the gym on time (esp. since today would have been a weight room day, which takes ~10minutes less than a cardio workout, so I have more of a cushion for leaving my house late) but I have no good feelings about rushing like that.  So I have now eaten breakfast and mostly caught up on the Internet (there is not as much as I thought there would be given that I went to bed at like 9pm) and will be early to work.

The cars and the fields were covered in frost when I was walking to the T this morning (~7am), though my hair didn't freeze.

Monday evening, Ian's facebook status was, "just made potato leek soup for the first time this winter," and I sort of laughed that he was saying it was winter (Sunday and Monday were quite unseasonably warm, recall) and then I remembered that we're in mid-November.

When on Sunday Liz C. said, "This week I'm working on a conference, and next weeks is the holiday," I was like, "wtf?  How is Thanksgiving that soon?"  Now I am expecting it to be in like two days, though, because Rest and Bread finished its three-week series on "thanksgiving" and doesn't meet the day before Thanksgiving, so tonight was all about looking ahead to the Thanksgiving holiday (family, etc.).

I didn't go to the Harvard Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer Women's Lunch today -- both because I am antisocial and because I am overly committed to my job (I have a wicked "Just in case").

***

Yesterday afternoon, Jeff emailed the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance book group:

Hey everyone!

    Greetings after such a long break! I think we've been apart for too long, and even though the trans day of remembrance vigil is friday, let's get together for our next installment of zen.  Let's read at least the next two chapters and go from there. See ya then!

Jeff

Sent from my iPhone

sage_theory: This is why I don't watch Heroes anymore...
seeksadventure: [links] feminists and disabilities links
fox1013: If you're on Heroes, I GUARANTEE your Christmases will be white! Also male. JSYK.

[Yes, I know this is basically two sermonettes.]

Pentecost 24 (Year B) - November 15, 2009

1 Samuel 1:4-20
1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:11-25
Mark 13:1-8

"A queer archive must refuse [...] faith in information as a retrievable commodity."

From page 2 of the pre-circulated paper ("Emotional States: Jill Johnston’s Lesbian Nation as Affective Cartography," Sara Warner, Cornell) for a talk I'm not going to: ( excerpt from the paper )( blurb for the talk )

I have a shiny new computer at work.

Outlook loads almost immediately -- instead of taking like 20 minutes.  Which is really what I wanted out of this upgrade.  Though mail searches take a long time, which didn't use to happen.  I'm hoping that's temporary.  I forgot that I have to redo all my settings -- and my new keyboard feels not quite responsive enough or something -- but I'll live.

Catching up on all my email etc., I was reminded why I don't like taking time off from work (not that I didn't already know this -- not like I wasn't already feeling uncomfortable about taking the day off, even though it had been a slow week and I knew it would be a slow day and I didn't check my email at all after I left the office Friday morning and I didn't stress about that almost at all).  I mean, I definitely had time to do stuff like talk to Scott, and a lot of what I was doing was new work that had come in today, but I also kept going back to take care of the stuff I had flagged as "Can wait until later" from my first pass at my email this morning.  (I also felt inherently unmotivated and stressed out by a bunch of the tasks on my plate, which is never good, but hopefully I can push through that and it will pass.  Getting enough sleep tonight will probably also help with the lack of focus and energy.)

***

In re/scheduling with 3+ different (sets of) people today, I was struck by how -- despite the fact that the only recurring appointment I have is Wednesday evenings -- I have almost no free evenings.

11/23, 11/24, 11/30, 12/1, 12/8, 12/10 -- and I stopped scheduling at that point.

Okay, I am also free tomorrow evening, but my plan for tomorrow night is grocery shopping and bff phone call -- esp. since I'm planning to go to the Harvard Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer Women's Lunch.  (I am also free the afternoon of the day after Thanksgiving.)

I have started to be routinely double-booked -- and not just, "I have four events on my calendar for this night, any number of which I have some minimal interest in," but "There are two things this night, each of which I would quite like to go to."

***

Roza will be out of college 2 years this spring.  I will be out 5.

She lives with friends from college, and most of them are still only friends with people they know from college -- whereas she is going out and meeting people at Sacred Eros and SCA and all that.

It continues to surprise me that I'm not actually friends still with most of the people I knew in college.

What particularly struck me tonight was how difficult if was to call to mind the people I'm friends with now whom I know from college ... because they're so enmeshed -- like, Cate is part of the overlapping life I have with my housemate, so I don't immediately think of her as someone I know from Smith; I think, "Cate knows Melissa, and Jason, and has met some of my HBS people."

Like, this Saturday Melissa asked me if I was going to this thing that Rachel was organizing, and I was like, "Um, given that I have no idea what you're talking about, that would be a no."  I thought about saying, "You know Rachel and I are not actual friends.  I mean, I don't dislike her, but we only ever interact at parties or whatever; I'm not on her social distribution list or anything."

I like that my circles of friends don't feel compartmentalized -- I mean, most of my friends aren't actually friends with each other, but I feel like they can all mingle easily at a party.

Monday

I had my six-month dental appointment.  When the cleaning was done, Comedy Dentist said "you're free as a bird" and then said that he recently had a patient who had "free bird" tattooed on the inside of one of her fingers.  He said he didn't ask her about it, 'cause it was their first session.  His assistant was like, "Really?" and he said, "Actually I was running late, so I was pressed for time."  We were both like, "Oh, that makes much more sense."

Tuesday

I had Sara and Kate over for dinner.  They both helped cook (this -- which was Sara's idea).  I kept saying I felt like I should be thanking THEM and they were like, "But cooking is fun."  Clearly a value creating endeavor :)

And Sara brought cupcakes from Sweet (I had the chocolate one, and it wasn't bad, but I was unimpressed), and Kate brought half a Carvel turkey ice cream cake (which my housemate helped us finish off).

Thursday, Sara got me a thank you gift -- Godiva dark chocolate covered cherries and a card that just says "happpiness" on the front, under which she had handwritten "= pasta with butternut squash and a turkey-shaped ice cream cake..."

From conversation with la bff later that night: TLGN knew when Advent begins this year thanks to me.  *squees*

Wednesday

Tuesday night, Molly emailed the listserv saying (in part), "Some of you have tomorrow off, and said you are coming to office hours at the Diesel! I'm so glad. We'll be a big First Church caffeinated jamboree. I'll share my earl grey with you. Look for me in the 3rd booth. It's so nice to have a booth, the way y'all get pews of your own."

I hadn't even bothered to put her Wednesday morning Diesel office hours on my calendar because really, 8-10am on a Wednesday...  But hey, I did in fact have that day off.  I spent about a half an hour there.

Then I went to the gym.

I came in just at the end of Act 2 of "The Short List" (The West Wing 1.09).  My heart just about burst at how THEY ALL LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH.  (Okay, also I facepalmed because there is no "freedom of expression" enumerated in the First Amendment.)  Which makes me think of chosen family, which makes me think of Buffy and Angel and also the queer community and then CWM (and so then also church).

And they love what they are doing so much.  Which is again reminiscent of church.

( excerpts from the episode )

BARTLET: You have a best friend?
ROGER: Yes, sir.
BARTLET: Is he smarter than you?
ROGER: Yes, sir.
BARTLET: Would you trust him with your life?
ROGER: Yes, sir.
BARTLET: That's your chief of staff.

[source]

from "What I Learned From My Mother" by Julia Kasdorf:

I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.

Salvation Through Relationship

Pentecost 23 (Year B) - November 8, 2009

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Psalm 127
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

( Read more... )

Lorraine asked me to post a writeup of Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity, and I was going to maybe work on that at work and I may yet, but tonight (after ~2.5hrs on the phone including a ~4mi walk) I am being a good girl and reading for class. 

In Encountering God Diana Eck talks about the oft-invoked line from the Gospel of John attributed to Jesus saying "I am the Way..."  She points out that Jesus is answering a question.

However, "I am the Way" is not the answer to any question one might wish to ask.  It is the pastoral response to an anxious question.  It was poor uncertain Thomas who asked the question that night, as John tells it.  It was the last night Jesus spent with his disciples.  After having washed their feet, he spoke to them in words of farewell: "I am going where you cannot follow, not just now.  I am going to God's house of many rooms to prepare a place for you, and you know the way where I am going." And what did Thomas ask him?  [...] on that night of uncomrephending uncertainty he asked, "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?"  And Christ answered, "I am the Way, . . ."  It was a pastoral answer, not a polemical one.  It was an expression of comfort, not condemnation.

-p. 94

The language of faith is the language of affection, of affirmation and commitment.  [...]  It is, as Bishop Krister Stendahl puts it, "love language," analogous to the language we use when we say to someone we love, "You're the only one in the world for me."  It does not mean, "I have systematically surveyed everyone in the world and have chosen you."  It means, simply and powerfully, "I love you."  Faith requires the cherishing and deepening of commitment that is fundamental to any relationship.  And the language of faith is the language of love, not of judgment.

-p. 95

who is this "I" in the Gospel of John?  "I" is not simply I, Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate.  John's nativity story is cosmic and makes no mention of Bethlehem.  It is a very "high" Christology.  "In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God---through whom everything was made; without whom nothing was made."  It is a world-spanning Christ who speaks this "I."  To see the Logos, the Word, is to see God.  The disciples did not yet understand.  Phillip asked, "Show us God and we shall be satisfied."  Christ answered, "Have I been with you so long and yet you do not know me, Phillip?"  Christ is the Logos, the Word, the divine intention to speak, to disclose, to reveal.  There is no "way" to God: God is the Way, the Truth, the Life.

-p. 95

    Far from insisting on the importance his continued personal presence, Christ said to his disciples, "It is good for you that I go."  And Christ has gone.  He is far up the road, out ahead of us.

-p. 97

work to home: (outdoor-)door-to-door walk = 1 hour and 8 minutes [~3.7mi, rly?, which is an ~18min/mi]

Edit: Were I to take busses from Fields Corner to Harvard (so as to have cell phone signal the whole time) it would only take me little over an hour, depending on what time of day it is (ten minutes on the #19 to Warren St. & Quincy St. [which is *checks* ~1.8mi from Fields Corner, and I'm starting ~1mi from Fields Corner in the opposite direction], #28 to Dudley, #1 to Harvard).

In a (locked) post on a community today, someone talked about considering joining her faith community in a more formal capacity and spoke of her resistance to joining things, to putting her name on membership lists, and solicited thoughts on formal and informal membership.

Having put together my reply, I thought it might be of interest to regular readers of this journal as well.

my autobiography is probably not a helpful comment (but here it is)

I grew up with Honesty and Intentionality and Consistency being hugely valued, so I often have a really difficult time labeling myself as a member of a group.  (See also the fact that I tend to feel sympathy/connection to a variety of, if not mutually exclusive then at least not wholly overlapping groups, so I feel not only more at home on the borderlands but also feel that is a truer statement of my identity.)

I grew up in a nondenominational Protestant church, and at some point during my teen years the pastor asked me if I wanted to get confirmed.  I said no, because I didn't know what I believed, nor did I know what I was supposed to believe in order to become a member of this church.  (My mother brought me and my brother to church every Sunday of our childhood, and I continued to attend until I left town for college -- but the pastor's sermons put me to sleep, so I usually helped with childcare rather than staying through the service; I never felt like I wasn't a part of that church family, though.)

The church I attended almost every Sunday my sophomore through senior years of college (two hours away from the town I grew up in) I was never invited to officially join as a member, and I would have said no if asked.

The year after college I lived with my parents and church-hopped some (though I spent most of my Sundays at the Congregational church), knowing I would be leaving town soon, so I saw it as more denomination-shopping than congregation-shopping.

Some months after I moved out of my parents' house (and moved a half hour closer in to Boston) I started church-hopping again and began accumulating church communities.  Two and a half years later, it's almost a stubborn point of pride that I attend regularly (read: weekly) at a number of different churches (two Sunday worship services, one Wednesday night worship service, one Sunday discussion group) but am not officially a member of any church.

I've been referring to Cambridge Welcoming Ministries as my "primary" or home" church for probably close to a year now and Tiffany (the pastor) sometimes invites me to officially join the church (this year I'm on Finance Committee, so I'm not uninvolved), but that means claiming not only CWM but also the United Methodist Church.  In looking at lay speaker certification recently I actually felt a willingness to officially join the church/Church -- though I'm still not ready to do it (yet).

In writing this up, it also occurs to me that because I'm involved in so many church communities, to claim one "official" membership feels problematically exclusive -- even though in some ways it shouldn't since I'm very clear that CWM is the church I feel most at home in, the church that most teaches me how to be church, the church that best embodies how I think church should be, the church that most nurtures my gifts and graces and challenges me (in a growing way rather than a frustrating way -- it does the latter, too, but less so than some of my other church communities), the church I prioritize and privilege over all others.

In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives! -- Parker J Palmer, 1977, Quaker Faith & Practice, 10.19

The Parker Palmer quote [from the OP] definitely resonates with me as often my resistance to claiming a group identity label is very much connected to my resistance to being officially linked with certain other members of that group (political affiliation, church denomination, etc.).

[Yes, I wrote this as if I were preaching it on November 1, despite not finishing it until the next week.]

All Saints Day 2009 (Our God is a God of Life)

Pentecost 22 (Year B) - November 1, 2009

Ruth 1:1-18
Psalm 146
Hebrews 9:11-14
Mark 12:28-34

( Read more... )

***

( edited to add: DVD commentary on the writing of this sermon )

I have mixed feelings about the whole ExpediaFail 'cause I mean, the agent tells you you don't need a visa and you're skeptical and the agent assures you and you don't do a quick Google search to double-check?  That said, I can't help but be impressed by the power of the Internet.  (I'd been following this story because I have yuki_onna on StalkerPin; no one on my actual flist posted anything about it.)

I finished reading Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, so I'm actually a wee bit ahead of the game for reading for class (the last chapter is part of next week's reading) though I am not inspired by the discussion questions for this week.

Thanks to when love comes to town, I am listening to Carrie Newcomer's "Holy as a Day is Spent" over and over (album: The Gathering of Spirits).

Dinner with Scott opened with him asking if I had fun anecdotes from the week.  I said I felt like I'd been getting work done fairly steadily this week but no anecdotes sprang to mind, and I said I'd finished writing a sermon today, and we talked about that.  He said I should actually -- I don't think he said "preach" but, yanno, deliver a sermon, and I said Tiffany had told me Cambridge Welcoming's pulpit is open any time I want, and I said I'd probably wait until the new calendar year (i.e., after Advent et al).  He was asking me where my church is, and I think this was disconnected enough from this conversation (we tangented a lot) that the connection literally didn't occur to me until he said, "because if it's close, then I could come hear you give a sermon."

He was surprised that I didn't know Zac's gay -- and that I haven't met Zac, or Sonia.  He may come to this Wednesday's seminar and sit in the back with me and Sara :)

At one point I said something about the fact that everything becomes my job because I'm the most competent staff person on the floor -- and then I hastened to caveat that I love Katie and she's totally the second most competent staff person on the floor and he said it's a wide gap (with no offense to Katie) and I was like, "Aww, heart, thank you," and he was like, "Um, I'm happy to state obvious facts in front of you."

We went to Keith's birthday party -- and did not get lost.  We also passed the be-spiderwebbed houses on Russell Street I had seen before Halloween.

At the party we watched the first three episodes of ALF (thanks to Netflix).  Wow, this show ran from 1986-1990.  (And I totally watched it as a kid.  My preschool school picture I'm wearing an ALF sweatshirt.)  It is not a high-quality show at all.  But we had so much fun watching it tonight.

I love how one-of-the-guys the daughter was in the pilot episode, so I was sad that in the third episode she has a boyfriend.  [Edit: Not that you can't be "one of the guys" and also date a guy; I was just enjoying reading her as a babydyke. /edit]

From episode 2: "May I suggest a murder-suicide?"  People frequently commented on stuff that you couldn't do on tv nowadays, but I didn't know there was ever a time you could say that.  It was funny, though.

In episode 3 one of the guys who works for the President actually uses the phrase "commie pinko."  (Though the moral of the story turns out to be about nuclear disarmament.  I think.  There was a lot of peanut gallery talking over the episodes.)
"Air Force One, how may I help you, Sir or Madam, as the case may be."  I wanna start answering my work phone that way.

[First Sunday of Advent is actually November 29.]

At Harvard T last night, a busker was playing "God of Grace and God of Glory" ("cure thy children's warring madness...").

Later, I also had "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" in my head ("Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die.").

This morning, I had "O Come, All Ye Faithful" ("Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning...") and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" ("Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.") in my head.

Is it bad that most all these songs blur together when I'm singing them in my head?  (Not so much "O Little Town of Bethlehem," but...)

+++

Yesterday I read a Magpie Girl post on The Imposter Syndrome, and one thing that struck me from the "Treatment Plan" was:

Trust the fear. I know this seems contradictory, but here’s what I mean: The more persistent that nagging voice is that’s calling you a con-artist, the more likely it is that you are actually doing exactly what you are meant to be doing. Know that the voice will get louder before it dies down, especially if you start ignoring it, but it will, in time, begin to give up the fight and let you do your work in this world fully and without doubt, second-guessing, and insecurity. Marianne Williamson said it most famously: “We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?…Your playing small does not serve the world.”

Being pregnant has been endlessly fascinating. Already it's has shifted my spiritual practices. My weekday prayer practice has morphed: I'm less likely to get out of bed and daven a full shacharit these days, but much more likely to make brachot at random moments of the day. I say a blessing every morning when I give myself an injection of blood thinner, and when I feel my son moving inside me. I wonder what bracha I'll make over breastfeeding, and whether I'll be able to sustain gratitude when I'm changing his diaper at 2am.

I talk with him constantly when I'm alone in the car -- I tell him about my day, about how I'm feeling, about the world we're bringing him into. In that sense, being pregnant feels a bit like I'm praying all the time, because the other figure I talk to when I'm alone in the car is God. Lately I find that I shift back and forth between words intended for the baby and words intended for the Holy Blessed One without making much distinction between the two.

Being pregnant has shifted my relationship with the liturgy. I've known intellectually for years that we call God ha-rachaman, The Merciful, but I hadn't considered what it means that the root of that word for merciful is the root of rechem, womb. I get distracted while davening prayers I've known by heart for years: one mention of God's mercy and I'm liable to be caught in contemplation of what it means that God is the womb in which creation is nurtured. It takes conscious effort to set aside those meditations and move on with the service sometimes.

It is Ari's birthday, which means it also the anniversary of our mutual LJ-friending.

We have now been friends for FIVE YEARS.  So it has actually been A Long Time, as opposed to it just feeling like forever.

We had been friends for less than 2 years the first time someone told me they thought we were dating (WriterCon 2006).

In March of 2005 [tag], over the course of about 24 hours I made the decision and finalized the plans to fly from Massachusetts to Virginia five days later (I always say nine days when I'm telling this story, but apparently that's wrong) to meet her and sk8eeyore (at which point I had known Ari less than six months -- though I had known Sarah for much longer).

We started daily check-in phone calls sometime last year, and now I feel like there's something wrong if we haven't gotten to talk for a few days.
We have such companionable silence that we can get disconnected and not notice.  We are also grateful that we can talk on our cell phones while they charge because we sometimes talk SO MUCH that we exhaust a fully charged battery in a single conversation.

I trust her assessment of my interpersonal dramas more than anyone else's because she knows more of the details than anyone else.

We challenge each other on the language we use, on our theology, on all of the stuff that makes up how we live in the world.

From her 2007 birthday card to me: "you are my gen BFF, my sometimes brain twin, and always my trustest friend.  Thank you for listening to my obsessively detailed anecdotes and for trusting me with yours."

I don't think I could sum it up better.

( gym: Oct. 19-23 )

***

( gym: Oct. 26-30 )

***

( Halloween weekend )

***

Monday

Ian: "It's 4:45 and it's dark out."
me: "Max just said the same thing to me five minutes ago -- "It's 4:40 and it's already dark out."  I said, "It's lighter out in the morning."  Max doesn't think it's a good tradeoff."
Ian: "Neither do I."
me: "I do.  Because I actually have to get up in the morning.  Unlike you all, who can come in late."
Jean: "I don't think you're converting them."
me: "Yeah, I know."
Jean: "I think you should keep trying, though.  Tell them their organizational lives depend on it."
me: "I don't officially work for Ian or Max, which gives me less leverage..."

Not gonna lie, I was surprised by how light it was when I got up this morning.  Not gonna lie, I was surprised by how dark it was when I left work this evening.

( cut for length )