Summer Solstice

The weather I hate is back. It's currently 83 F inside the house and 95 F outside. The house typically lags about ten degrees F behind the outside. If it reaches 100 F today (and it did), the house won't cool down to 80 F until about ten o'clock tonight (and it did).

I wish it would rain. A lot. (At least Tuesday it's only 85 F.)

Arthur has generalized his sign language again. Mark is now "the bubble dad" and I'm "the harp dad." He requests bubbles and harping on an hourly basis. Just now he asked for the harp (over Cheerioes) so he could fall asleep.

He is getting a little perfunctory with the sign for more, too; I'm not so sure about this sign-language thing -- Arthur seems to think he's at some sort of spa.

Sunday the Unitarians let me do a presentation on neo-paganism and Wicca with a Wicca-style ritual as a part of their Sunday worship service. A woman named Martha was the day's worship associate (a kind of lay minister). She was introduced to Wicca about the same time I was, so we split up ritual duties. The lecture was humorous, and the curious got information out of it. The Tree of Life guided meditation went well, and the mystics had a numinous moment (at least I did, sort of). And everyone thought the spiral dance at the end was fun (although I did think I was going to drop my harp in the middle).

The service went very well. No one has set a question mark on fire in front of my lawn. With any luck, as a result, a Covenent of Unitarian Universalist Pagans group will start up at the church.

Let's see. We closed on the new house. We signed a zillion papers last Wednesday (the Solstice) I think it gets recorded Wednesday (tomorrow), at which point we'll be the official owners. The sellers fixed many of the problems, and all of the ones that were safety issues (like making sure the wall outlets were properly grounded). Before we move in the house will need to be cleaned, and we'll probably repaint.

I think the kitchen is ... well... oppressively uninspired, cheap, and institutional. And it doesn't match the rest of the house (neither does the bathroom). Mark thinks we should sand down all the cabinets and see what kind of wood they're made out of -- if it's nice wood, we could stain it to match the floors. And the kitchen's (and bedrooms') light fixtures have to be sent back to Tragicistan. Although I'm not usually a big fan of exposed wire track lights, I think they would do well in the kitchen in a retro kind of way.

I'm sure Mark and I will have many things (colors, lights, stencils, shrubbery, finance) to discuss over the next few weeks.