Sunday makes me feel old....

[elfs]

Maybe it was just the amount of partying I did last night, but today I was stiff and slow. Tired for most of the day. Heck, the kids were stunned by the heat and spent a bit of the afternoon lounging on couches and trying to stay cool. But we did get some of the lawn mowed and the area under the orchard weeded. The girls helped gather all the early fallen apples (which were suitable only for composting, sadly). There were a lot. But the day overall was pretty good and it was only towards the end that a sour note slipped in.

We were preparing to play a card game with the girls. I walked upstairs into the kitchen to get cool drinks for us when I noticed the counter was positively crawling. Y'know what's amazing about ants? It's not that they find their way in; we expect that. It's how fast they do it. There weren't any ants there half an hour ago and now we were deluged with the purposeful little monsters. Omaha and I found where they came from, picked them all up with a vacuum cleaner, sealed the new opening, and waited. Later, we found another ingress for the little monsters and Omaha caulked that too.

We had a yummy dinner of chicken, wild rice, and orchard pears casserole, then retired downstairs for some television. We watched Queer Eye, which is a staple here. Kouryou-chan played a video game on her computer. We watched their "straightest guy ever" video, followed by part of their "Queer Eye for the gay guy" gimmick episode-- find the biggest loser gay man they could find and try to help him. I really felt that at least two of the cast were more sensitive dealing with a gay man than they were a straight man; there was a real awareness there what this guy was going through compared to their usual fare. The cattiness was there but it shied away from some of the more straightforward brutality of their assaults on straight guys.

Oh! And really annoying news: if your religious belief-- or lack thereof-- has an established heirarchy, Arlington national cemetary will allow the heirarchy's chosen symbol to be placed on your gravestone if you're killed in service. This means that the Moonies and Eckankarites, even atheists, can have their belief emblazoned on their headstones if they die. (I want to know what atheists get; the idea of an irreligious disorganization having a unifying symbol seems odd to me. I bet if I asked, they wouldn't let me put the IPU on mine. If it's that ugly AA symbol, fuhgedabboudit.) One religion has adamantly refused to establish a heirarchy and so guess which symbol Arlington has likewise refused to permit on headstones? If you guessed the pentacle, you're correct.

Apparently the first Wiccan to be gravely injured in combat happened recently and the question of "what do we do if he dies?" had not been adequately addressed.

Comments

[jenkitty.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I'm confused. Wiccans aren't considered to have an established hierarchy, but atheists are???

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Apparently. Oh, grief, the symbol, number sixteen at Authorized Emblems for Arlington National Cemetary (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/funeral_information/authorized_emblems.html), is that horrible, ugly AA thing. Oh, well. Very sad. I'd much prefer the invisible pink unicorn emblem, myself, if I had to make that choice.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

What about long-established religions that don't have much of a heirarchy, like the Quakers?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I agree about the symbol.

One of many reasons I hope I don't die over here in Iraq.