Yesterday I decided that it had been far too long since my car was actually cleaned inside and out. So this morning we drove into Davis and had our customary breakfast of cornmeal waffles with pecan butter, but then passed on the regular jaunt over to the farmer’s market in favor of joining the long line of cars at the car wash downtown in order to rectify the situation.

My car is now sparkly clean and dirt free inside and out. Well, mostly. While they oh-so-carefully detailed the dashboard and the windows and vacuumed all the seats and floors and mats, for some mysterious reason they left the cup holders alone, leaving behind a thin layer of grit and a few ancient coffee spills. I suppose if they had to leave anything at all it’s better they left something small but still, it strikes me as odd that they didn’t even vacuum them out.

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Every year around this time since I moved to the area back in college I have noticed the handmade signs along the freeway announcing the annual corn maze and pumpkin farms. And every year I drove by them and think maybe it might be interesting and then promptly forget all about it until the next time I see the sign.

So this morning, on our way home from waffles and car washing, I spotted the sign and this time I decided I’d waited long enough to check out the corn maze. We headed down one of the back country roads for a few miles and finally tracked it down by the fact that it is surrounded by a few acres of pumpkins.

For whatever reason I had always assumed that the corn maze would be some cheesy thing for little kids. I was so very wrong! We paid our $6, they handed us a map, and it was at that point, looking at this extremely detailed map with teeny tiny paths drawn in, that I realized just how huge this thing really is.

The corn is, of course, tall enough that you cannot see over it. So you have no choice but to wander the paths and try to decipher the little markers set up at every junction to figure out where you are. It didn’t take much time at all before we were both completely turned around and had lost all sense of direction – and this was with one of us carefully scrutinizing the map at each turn to try to lead us out. At one point we tracked down a little wooden staircase that was tall enough to climb above the corn stalks. However that wasn’t much help since only the paths nearest us were even vaguely visible, and it seemed to be there only to emphasis just how vast this cornfield really was.

We found our way out using the map but had to miss a large portion of the maze because I needed to get home (today was Painting Day at the office). I think we’re definitely going to do this again though – and maybe we’ll try to scrounge up a few friends to bring along – friends who will have just as much fun as we intend to, trying to muddle our way through this thing without using the map at all, all while working on the plot of what is sure to be the next best cheesy horror flick (because really, what better place for unspeakable evil to stalk and kill another flock of plucky teens than in a corn maze?).

Richard and I have signed up for NaNoWriMo again. We didn’t do it last year because our job had us traveling and there just didn’t seem to be a feasible way to handle that much writing when on the road. But we did it in 2001 and really enjoyed it. Granted I wrote 50,000 words of what was probably one of the worst novels ever created in the history of writing, and after getting the word count verification I promptly deleted every single file associated with it. It was so terrifically bad that if it had been paper, I would have burned it, page by page, all the while cackling with mad glee. So I am not expecting that this year will be any different (although Richard thinks I ought to at least let him read my 50,000 words of babbling drivel before I send it off to the ether of oblivion this time). However, this year I am pondering taking a different approach, and working on a collection of shorter stories, all bundled together. There is still nearly entire month before NaNoWriMo starts for me to change my mind on that. We shall see.

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I have been reading about this Sweet Potato Crack thing on TUS for months and wondering what the heck it was. This afternoon I finally got so fed up with what I was doing at work (I am gathering data, but the data is on a website where some idiot requires Macromedia Flash on every single stinking page and that means each page takes about a minute to load!) that I left early and swung by the store to pick up two sweet potatoes. And then I went home and chopped them up and mixed them with a heap of garlic and olive oil and thyme and salt and baked them and when they were all done and the entire house just reeked of garlic I tried a bite and realized right then and there not only why this recipe has its particular name, but also that if Richard didn’t get home pretty darn soon there wasn’t going to be any left for him.

I am thinking that the next step is to try a combination of this and the yam chips I have made in the past, and I am also thinking that I really ought to track down kosher salt and use that instead of regular salt since that *is* what the recipe calls for. I am also thinking that maybe I really ought to stop making extremely garlicky things on the nights when we have choir practice and spend two hours doing lots of singing next to lots of other people.

Tonight, I am baking cookies. I am also doing laundry and checking email and trying to clean up the house a little bit because things are starting to pile up in places, and also trying to catch up on all the reading for the bible study (this week it’s about 40 chapters of Genesis – or at least the part that deals with Abraham and Sarah and all his descendants – all about how a bunch of people lied and cheated and tricked and got rewarded for it. Yeah, I’m cynical).

Mainly, however, I am trying very hard to pretend that the election didn’t really happen, here in California, and that when I wake up tomorrow morning somehow the general public will have found at least one working brain cell and this election didn’t really end up in such a complete and utter disaster. Really, I should know better by now. After all, I need only look toward the White House at the Shrub to get evidence to how short in supply working brain cells really are.

But I digress. I am baking cookies. This is because at the very first session someone (okay, it was me) thought it would be an incredibly spiffy idea to have theme snacks. The first session was pretty easy, since it was all about how the bible is made up of different types of writing (so I brought a snack you could build out of layers, because the bible has layers. Like a parfait. And speaking of parfait I think I need to see that movie again). This week, however, the theme is covenant, and frankly, short of baking something that would require me to use an oven mitt to remove it from the oven (because oven mitt rhymes with covenant. Shut up. *You* come up with a better idea!), I was at a loss. Finally I hit upon making Mexican wedding cakes (also known as Russian tea cakes and probably a whole host of other names but basically they’re butter and powdered sugar and nuts and flour all rolled into little powdered sugar-covered lumps and they are really good) because a wedding is a sort of covenant and why in the name of all that’s holy did I think that theme snacks would be a good idea?

I had dinner with my mom tonight while Richard was off volunteering at the library and that was fun, because we had a chance to talk and laugh and eat virtuous salads, followed by decidedly unvirtuous desserts. And then I swung by the grocery store and picked up walnuts for the cookies (which reminds me – I am not allowed to buy any more nuts no matter how badly I think I need them because there are now three half-empty bags of them in the freezer, ensconsed next to the umpteen half-used packages of mozzerella cheese, all of which I keep forgetting I have) and a can of pumpkin because it is October and thus the season for pumpkin spice cake for breakfast, and now I am home. With the cookies. And the laundry. And oh yeah. That stupid election.

I would have liked nothing better than to sleep in this morning, after being out late last night at craft night (although I’m glad I went because I am *this* close to joining the shoulders on that sweater I am knitting for my youngest nephew and then all that’s left are the arms and the neckband and by golly I might get this thing done by Christmas after all). But we ended up getting up far too early for a Saturday because we were meeting friends at their house before piling into their nice large car and driving for several hours down to Hollister, which is where the Renaissance Faire is now being held.

Luckily the weather decided to be nice and lovely. This is crucial for a Renaissance Faire trip, if only because we like to go in garb and that style of clothing was never really meant to be endured in California’s hot summer climates.

Our friends were all dressed up and Richard wore his outfit as well. I, however, resorted to renting an outfit once we got there, because one of the skirts I’d hastily put together a few years back refuses to hold together (the elastic keeps coming undone and then I have to feed it slowly through the waist band again using a safety pin and my fingers and this is really, really tedious) and my bodice was also falling apart (probably because if we’d had any sense my friends and I would never have put the seams on the side, where they would get the most stress when said garment is tightened). I did, however, wear my clunky fair-appropriate shoes and brought my belt with me, both of which looked oh-so-lovely with my shorts and my t-shirt when we swung by a bakery to pick up breakfast.

The faire is nicer in its new location. There are more trees, more shade, and it’s a little hillier. The only drawback is that it seemed a bit more cramped, as if they hadn’t left enough room for everything and had to stuff it all in at the last moment. But otherwise it’s just like I remembered it – dusty and noisy and full of a crazy mix of people in typical garb, as well as the requisite few in some form of armor, Viking garb, kilts, or sporting wings. I do not get the wings thing, frankly, but they seem to be quite popular with the teen girl set. I suppose these, at least, are slightly more colorful than the whole Goth thing that was so prominent in years gone past.

We wandered around the booths and saw jousting and rather clumsily choreographed swordfights. Our friends’ little kids got made honorary knight and lady by the ‘queen’. We saw someone eat fire and juggle 10-pound bowling balls. We ate shepherds pie and strawberry shortcake. There were trolls with tusks and slow deliberate actions. I broke down and bought a new bodice because I really did not relish trying to make a new one, and we also found a dragon print (white brush strokes on a black background) that had to come home with us. I remembered how to breathe in a bodice, and I also remembered how incredibly wonderful it feels to finally take said bodice off at the end of the day.

We drove home after it got dark, stopping only briefly to get hamburgers and soda at McDonalds, and then once the kids fell asleep in the back seat, the rest of us had a spirited discussion which famous people are hot and which ones would be good in the sack and which ones we’d just rather not see naked, but who are still allowed to sit in our bedrooms and read us poetry. Okay, that last bit was mainly between me and the other woman, but still, if the entire cast of Hunt for Red October is looking for work, my friend and I are willing to supply the books of verse. Except for Alec Baldwin, who is exempt from poetry reading because we have far better things for him to be doing. And that is all I am going to say on that.

Last year, because we were in a job that had us always on the road, Richard and I signed up for permanent absentee voter status. Then we promptly forgot all about it and it’s a good thing Richard figured it out eventually because when they sent us our absentee ballots for this ridiculous farce of a recall election California is staggering through, I nearly threw them out, thinking they were only the sample ballots I’m so used to receiving.

Luckily this did not happen and the ballots have been sitting safely on the kitchen counter. The booklet of all the candidate statements, however, has been living in Richard’s car because for amusement, while we would drive somewhere, I occasionally open it at random and read one of the statements from the myriad list of crackpots who are running for governor. I cannot seem to choose which one is my favorite, since currently it is a toss-up between the loony who said that if we vote for him, the seventh seal of Armageddon would be broken, or the guy who gave as the reason to vote for him “I breathe.” Which frankly, when you stop and think about it, makes perfect sense, since if you look at the list of candidates, breathing and a pulse is apparently the only qualification required to run.

If you caught my little snarky comment above, it should not surprise you in the slightest to know that I voted against the recall. I think it is a ridiculous waste of time and money and am extremely disappointed that there wasn’t a proposal included on the ballot that would allow us all to line up and smack the imbecile (that would be Darrell Issa, for those of you playing along at home) who was so convinced he could actually *buy* this election that he dragged the rest of the state down into the gutter with him, repeatedly upside the head. And don’t even get me started on the sheer inexperience of one of our main contendors for governor – Arnold Schwarzenegger – a man who refuses to answer any questions without getting time to script his answers in advance, and whose sole thought for how he is going to ‘fix’ California is to go in and ‘cut spending’ without once offering any suggestions for how this might possibly be handled. Apparently the legislature will be so bowled over by his inability to keep his hands off anything female they’ll just jump right to it and play along.

Right now all I want is for this recall to fail. I want it to go away; to slink back into the cesspool of shame from whence it came. I could care less about the qualifications of whoever is the governor, if only because it doesn’t take much rational thought to figure out that the national recession and the Dot Bomb is more responsible for the current state of California’s debt than anything a mere governor could do – especially since the rest of the legislature cannot stop the party-line back-biting and bickering long enough to pass a budget on time.

I want this recall to fail, because if it succeeds, it sets up a dangerous precedent that is going to make a nightmare of politics in our future. Disagree with the person in charge? Find someone willing to spend a chunk of change, and get a recall on the ballot, allowing an extreme minority to vote in the successor. Why worry about how much money this is going to cost the counties to run this special election each time? Who cares that that money had to be taken out of the budgets for essential public services that are already strapped to their limits? Lets just throw a million-dollar tantrum and pretend that will make it all better.

When the laughter over this idiocy is over, this state – and the rest of the country – is going to have to live with the results. And I’m not sure that anyone is ready, if this recall succeeds and we elect ourselves a “Governator”, to handle the fallout from what those results could be.

Today there was music. Lots and lots of music. This is because it was Joyful Noise Sunday at church, which meant that for people like me, who are involved in practically every musical group available, the day started far too early for a weekend. I got to church at 8:30 to run through the piece we’d be playing with the recorder ensemble (which, by the way, is sounding less like an out-of-tune calliope and more like actual music with every practice!), then promptly zipped off to choir practice and from that to the rehearsal for the instrumental ensemble (going from recorder to oboe is not nice to the lips, I might add), and then from that to the rehearsal for the women’s group. And after all that I finally got to flop down in a quiet room and hastily do every single bit of reading and homework for the bible study class because I have yet to get myself into the habit of doing the work nightly like we are supposed to. Here is where my ability to read at lightening speed comes in so handy, or else I’d be perpetually behind. Besides, this week we’re reading all about sin. Our whole group was excited about that. Finally, we get to learn about sin!

Anyway, I digress. Music. Lots of music. In fact, afterwards some of us from the recorder group got to talking and I am hoping to coordinate some sort of practice schedule for the next few months, if only to get us all playing together as a cohesive group, learning how to listen to each other. Plus I have grand plans to arrange Carol of the Bells in four-part harmony for the group since I think it would sound incredible on recorders.

And then after all the music and the rushing around to get to practice and remember which group performed when, there was even more rushing around with non-music things. First there was lunch with my parents and then we headed home where I whipped together a peach pie and washed my laundry while Richard got to go play computer nerd with my dad and my older brother-in-law (my mom’s computer hard drive went south last week and had to be replaced, requiring reinstallation of *everything*), and then we headed off to my parents’ house for dinner and the entertainment of my two little nephews, and much laughing and chatting afterwards.

Friday afternoon Richard got an email from his parents about the Scottish Games. We knew about it, of course, and had discussed possibly going, but now suddenly plans were hastily made for meeting times and hence, we went.

We slept in Saturday morning as long as we could (which wasn’t very long), and started the morning with a trip to the local bakery for a dozen assorted donuts. This was our reward for four weeks of sticking religiously to the Weight Watchers program. Yes, I know, perhaps a donut binge isn’t exactly the best way to reward oneself when one is on a diet, but that’s what Flex Points are for, and while I may not exactly like their new program, those stupid Flex Points have to be good for *something*.

Richard’s parents showed up around noon and we headed off to the games. The weather decided to cooperate (mostly) with some slight breezes, and while it was warm in the direct sun, when there was shade it was downright nice outside. I’m sure this was extremely appreciated by those who attended the Games in full Scottish garb, complete with those heavy woolen kilts, long-sleeved shirts and coats, woolen stockings, and so on.

The one in town is a nice size gathering. There are plenty of booths from all the clans, and plenty of bagpipers and dancers, and lots of music. Richard was pretty excited to discover that one of his favorite bands, Tempest, was playing several times through the course of the day, and as we meandered around we heard a few other groups perform as well. We ate traditional Scottish veggie burgers for lunch (yeah, yeah, they’re only 4 points including the bun) and I took pictures of men in full costume wearing extremely colorful socks, and someone who looked far too much like all the classic pictures of Santa. But the best possible thing of all was a huge dragon built from all types of metal parts that actually could move its head and breathe fire. I want a dragon like this. No, I *need* a dragon like this. Think how incredibly cool it would be to just park a big metal dragon about the size of a Winnebago on the front lawn. I’m sure the neighbors wouldn’t mind at all. Especially the part where it shoots flames out of its nose.

It was a nice lazy day, strolling around the Games, occasionally parking somewhere to listen to music, checking out the sights and sounds. And once we were done we had plenty of time for dinner at a little Mediterranean restaurant in Davis, and a side trip to both a coffee shop and a bookstore (to pick up the latest Lemony Snicket) before meeting my parents for the Davis Musical Theater Company’s first offering of the season. Unfortunately it wasn’t one of their better ones. It didn’t have the horrific fascination of that infamous production of Oliver Twist we winced through a few years back. It wasn’t that the singing was bad, or the cast inept. It just lacked…oomph. It seemed too often to get lost. And while I usually like Music Man quite a bit, I was right there with the rest of our little crowd when we all decided to skip out after the first act and go get pie instead. Because after all, what good are those darn Flex Points if you cannot blow them all in one day on donuts and caramel apple pie ala mode?

While in graduate school, years and years ago, I worked as Managing Editor for a nutrition research journal. It was an interesting job, if only because it was really just the two of us running that journal. I had my own room and my own computer in the back of the house and I got to set up the organization of everything however I wanted it to be – tracking subscriptions and sponsors, sending out books to be reviewed and gently prodding authors to return their articles and reviews in a timely manner. I worked only part time, and usually a fairly flexible schedule, wrapped around my classes and my research and everything else I was involved in during school. The editor-in-chief pretty much let me do things however I wanted. I suppose he figured it was easier that way, especially since the work always got done.

On a whim, I decided to Google the name of the journal, even though it’s been inactive for more years now than it ever was active, and with the way things had happened when it folded, I never expected it to resurface. But suddenly there was a list of links, and as I hit the first one my eyes were drawn to the top of the page. It displayed a list of editorials from this journal, with words I was not expecting. In Memory Of.

He’s dead. The editor-in-chief is dead. In a way this is not so much a surprise as it should be, but in some sense there is still shock. Worse yet, a chance glimpse of another online article tossed the phrase “before he killed himself” into the mix. Dead, and by his own hand.

That, I think, is perhaps the strangest part. Dead of accidental overdose I might have expected, since he’d been experimenting with alternate substances since long before I ever knew him. But dead because he brought it about himself? That was unexpected. Shocking. Sad.

He had such a clear certainty about the world of nutrition and the world of supplements. He introduced me to a viewpoint I’d never encountered in any of my classes. He was prominent enough to rub shoulders with the big names. His connections gave me the opportunity to work as a freelance writer and gave me the taste for a career wrapped around writing. Because of him I once got to speak with Linus Pauling on the telephone. Yeah, that Linus Pauling. And if you don’t know the name, you should. Go look it up.

He had a lot of other views that weren’t necessarily so well received, and I think in some way some of them were more linked to his use of mind-altering substances than based on anything more than tenuous fact and hearsay. But despite all of that he tried his best to take on the FDA. One person fighting this type of battle is more like a flea trying to bring down a bear by gnawing on its leg, but at least he gave it a try.

I don’t know how long he has been dead. I tried finding him a year or three ago, just out of curiosity, and found no indication of this so I can only assume a time frame. I wonder what happened to him. By the time the journal folded he had begun to show visible signs of wear – in part because of the death of his father and also I think because his own personal demons were starting to close in.

I looked for him earlier hoping to find him; to at least let him know where I was; to thank him for his role in setting me on this career path, even though what I have become is far different than what he ever envisioned for me. I wanted to talk to him; see how he was doing; hear about the progress he might or might not be making in his fight against the demons he alone could see.

I wish I’d tried harder the last time. Maybe by then it had already happened and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, but I can at least pretend that it would have been different. But I suppose it’s too late for that now.

This entry is a collaboration for On Display. This month’s topic is “endings.”

These past few weeks I have felt a bit scattered. Not necessarily a bad thing, this feeling, although I’ll admit it’s been bad for this journal. There are so many little things I think I should write about, like how I got at least four inches hacked off of my hair and not one single person has noticed, or how the new improved Nice ‘n Easy Color I did is not fading as quickly as the older stuff used to and my hair is staying darker than I am used to for longer than it usually does and maybe I might have to switch to a different shade next time, like the one with ‘caramel’ in the name because I am such a sucker for caramel.

And there are other things I have thought about writing – like stories I get second hand from my mom about my nephews, especially the oldest one who is playing soccer in a team where they do not keep score in their games, and where sometimes the game is paused on account of worm rescue, and where sometimes the teams have to be reminded which side of the field is their goal because all the players are five. Or how Christmas is going to be in Seattle this year and I am poking at airline reservation sites and trying to get someone, anyone, to commit to times and dates for everything that has to be decided before we can actually make those stupid reservations because ‘do whatever you want’ really is the most unhelpful response ever. Or how there are times when I can post a question to the tech support newsgroups and get the most useful replies, and there are other times when the only reply I get is from some idiot who is so incredibly impressed by himself that he cannot even be bothered to read my question and discover that the ‘answer’ he has deigned to post has absolutely nothing to do with what I asked.

I wanted to write about how absurdly excited I was to finally get one of those silly viruses in the mail that everyone else in the world always gets and I never seem to. Not, mind you, that I was dumb enough to run the attachment, but still, there it was in my inbox and it was with great and malicious glee I deleted it so that it could do no harm. I wanted to write about how I had this sudden need to see Noises Off again but of course Blockbuster doesn’t carry anything more than 2 months old, and we only found it in the strange little video store downtown that arranges everything by some numerical code that is undecipherable to anyone else but the person who runs the store.

But all of these things are such little, inane things, and none of them ever seems worth writing a whole entry about and my mind refuses to focus on anything more substantial than tidbits. I cannot seem to concentrate long enough to get more than bits and pieces. This is probably why I have not yet painted the claustrophobic bathroom, even though we bought the paint and even marked off one wall to get me started. I have become the queen of procrastination, it seems. If I was truly productive I would be working on my knitting so I could at least finish that sweater for my youngest nephew by Christmas (remember how I was going to knit sweaters for all *three* of my neice/nephews for Christmas this year? Ha!), and I would be motivated to paint the walls and I would be motivated to finish sewing those damn curtains (remember the curtains?) or at least hang the store-bought lace panels in the living room that we bought back in (good grief) February.

I think for now I will blame this all on the weather, since it cannot seem to make up its mind whether to still cling, kicking and screaming, to summer, or slide more gracefully into autumn. And I will blame it on the fact that suddenly every bookstore we enter had another stack of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels that I haven’t read and must immediately buy and devour in order to rectify the problem (have I mentioned how completely and utterly I adore his characterization of Death?). And maybe just by writing this I will kickstart something in this cluttered brain of mine and get back on track.

Considering my feelings on religion and on god and everything to do with either, I would never have expected to be so excited about getting involved in a Bible study. After all, despite my best efforts I have never been able to understand the whole concept of faith, nor have I ever been able to muster up any sort of ability to believe in divine beings. And yet here I am, flush from the lingering enthusiasm of the first group meeting of this study and still just as excited about doing it.

The difference, I suppose, is that this particular study focuses on the bible, and not so much on the need to have some kind of necessary faith. And while I may have my own personal issues with divinity and miracles and inanimate objects suddenly bursting forth in lists of rules to live by, I cannot escape the fact that this book; this motley collection of stories and prose and random facts has had such an impact on so many countries and cultures, for so many hundreds of years. When they announced they were going to be undertaking this Disciple Bible Study training in the church, I realized that here, at least, was my chance to try to get a better handle on the book, and through that, perhaps I’d get a better understanding of faith as a whole.

I tried reading the bible years ago, probably when I was in high school, and mainly because I had this feeling that I really ought to have read it at least once in my life. I think I made it as far as Leviticus, when everything gets bogged down in nitpicky details on how to handle all the various burnt offerings and I finally gave up. The only time I’ve ever touched a bible since has been when necessary for some type of church function. Other people have favorite versions of the bible. I have never even bothered to figure out what the differences between all the versions are because it has never been all that important to me. And frankly, right now it still isn’t all that important. What is important is getting a sense of what the book is about; what kind of information it contains; what type of influence it holds over those who do believe.

Tonight was our first meeting. In preparation we all had a list of various bible verses to read prior to the meeting. Our particular group is for the ‘young’ adults (or as I put it, for the adults who still have yet to accept their grey hair) – mainly those of us under 40. By golly we’ll cling to that ‘young’ definition until you have to pry it out of our wrinkled, gnarly hands!

But I digress. I knew that with this group the focus would be more on the historical and cultural aspects of the bible, since we are all coming from about the same level of background and understanding. Other groups have different participant types – those who might have already undergone intensive bible study, or those who have a difference in religious faith due to generational familiarity. Plus with what I knew of the participants for our group I knew there’d be lively discussion and insight from everyone, as well as unique perspectives.

But I hadn’t realized quite how much those unique perspectives would contribute to the discussion as a whole. Each weekly session is two hours long, but those two hours sped by. We mainly focused on the makeup of the bible – how it contains so many different types of writing: law, prophecy, letters, history, and prose. And it was amazing to me how each type of writing seemed to resonate so differently with each member of our group. For example as we were discussing the sensory images a particular psalm evoked for us, each person in the group had something completely different. I think in a way it surprised everyone how differently each of us interpreted the words we read; what each of us perceived as the meaning or message behind them.

At one point we were all asked what we expected from the bible, and then, what the bible expects from us. One woman’s answer seemed so simple but so true. The bible expects us to give it a chance. And that’s really all I am doing. I do not expect to be miraculously changed from agnostic to someone who hears the word of god speaking through me. I do not expect to suddenly find that faith that everyone around me seems to have. I just want to get a little more understanding. That’s really all I’ve ever wanted out of this whole concept of faith, after all.