A Pot Luck Too Far

After a friday night UUUS Pot Luck, a Saturday Night UUUS Men's Cooking Group party, the Sunday UUUS Pot Luck was too much for me.

Actually, I was feeling a bit stressed and depressed about many things:

• Work
• Shopping Cart for Kerry Murdock
• Web server upgrades for the Nickel
• Learning new Statistical Analysis for Jason Karpeles
• Web site for Serra Construction
• starting up gjActive
• getting invoices out
• learning Zope
• work for non-profits
• preparing to go to New Orleans

• Writing
  

• keeping up with my blog
• learning to be a feature writer
• Sandy Dorr's writing work shop

• House
  

• Closing
• Getting the house ready for occupation
• Painting
• Environmental Upgrades
• redoing the floors
• fixing the leak
• contacting the utilities
• moving
• buying furniture

• UUUS
  

• Adult RE
• Auction Committee
• Worship
• Participating in activities
• newsletter

• Self
  

• laundry
• house cleaning
• bookkeeping
• gardening
• processing food from my garden
• fixing my mother's computer
• time for friends
• finding a girlfriend

So I basically freaked out during the worship service. Christella recommended that I leave immediately after the worship and go work in my garden. So I went and harvested one row of peppers. I collected nearly a five gallon bucket of jalapenos and and two buckets of anahiems. My peppers this year are excellent. Very meaty and not overly hot as in past years. Nearly half of the peppers had turned red. I love the sweet complexity of peppers after they turn color. They are much better than green peppers. I roasted the Anaheims on the barbabque and cooked the jalapenos in my smoker. Harvesting and cooking the peppers took nearly six hours. I then took the peppers down to Chirstella's and had dinner with her and Paul. After dinner Christella and I spend a couple of hours skinning and seeding the Anaheim peppers. I think between the anaheims and jalapenos we bagged 12 quarts of peppers.

I did feel better after doing this garden work.

The UUUS Men's Cooking Group's Asian Party

The UUUS Men's Cooking group served a wonderful Pan-Asian dinner which we had auctioned off at last years Service Auction. Peter Robinson generously offered his house for this event, he even sent off his wife and three daughters to the Holiday Inn for the night. We had a wonderful 8 course meal from my father's Pot Stickers, Duane Carr's Chinese Curry, David Miller's Soup, the stir-frys of John Mayo and Eric Niederkruger. My contribution of a desert of fresh pineapple and mango sherbert.

Being that this was the Men's Cooking Group, Shari Daly-Miller and Martha House both showed up in sport coats and ties. I happened to have my dress from last weeks Monty Python party. So slipped back into a slip.

Unlike last week, my mother was not pressent, but my minister was...

Startup Saturday

After a night at UUUS, I got up first thing in the morning to go to the Congregation wide Leadership Meeting. Using the most broad definition of who is a leader in UUUS that would included well over 50% of our membership, we met to dicuss our communities objectives for the year and how we shall relate to each other. While we did not get anywhere near everyone under this broad definition of leader to participate, this was a much better criteria than the very exclusive Startup Weekend that we held last year.

I have a very great feeling that we are on the correct track.

Pot Luck 1

This is a busy weekend for UUUS. It is the Start Up Weekend to launch the ministry of Reverend Marlene Walker. Marlene has been here since the start of July, but the startup weekend is the time when the Mountian Desert District Executive Ellen German, leads us through some visioning ground work to prepare for the coming year. Tonight we had a very successful pot luck (the first of two this weekend UGH!)

After the pot luck, we talked and talked about "Vision", "Mission", "Goals", "Purpose", "Covenant", "Polity", "UU-Elastic-Up-The-Wazzo-Buzz-Word".

I have already been involved in enough of these types of discussions to be bored out of my gord. But when you belong to a religion that is often described as "believing in nothing" the only way that one can work with others is to constantly review what it is we do believe. So we need this never ending discussion.

Asian Plans

The UUUS Men's Cooking group had a get together to plannin the coming Asian Dinner.

UUUS Auction Form

I have setup a form to submit donnations to the UUUS service auction.

Water Ceremony

The UUUS held its annual water ceremony today. This multi-generational ceremony marks the start of the liturgical year. Everyone brings water collected representing their journeys (spacial or otherwise) of the last 12 months. We combine our waters together in a basin and describe what the water means to us.

This year, I had the duty of pouring in water from some 14 bottles that my father and mother had collected in their travels throughout America's South East. For myself, I once again poured in some of my morning coffee to represent the energy that I have put into my current projects.

Doll Soup

Toby explains the band name:

Stone Bisque for the Soul was intended as a play on Chicken Soup for the Soul (Stone Soup, Stone Bisque get it ?) but I found it is also a term used in Doll Collecting to describe dolls made of "Coarse white bisque of a lesser quality". Hmmm, I can see a CD insert here.

"Doll Collecting"? Looks like we have another reason to worry about Toby. (By the way Toby, sorry for running you off the road the other day.)

God?

Marlene led a worship service in which she discussed her views on 'god'. After the service, we had an extended discussion period. It was impressive how many new people there were.

UUUS August 2003 Council Meeting

Last night I attended the "UUUS" council meeting. We have gotten off to a great start. Yes, we are behind the curve in were our planning should be. We still need to learn how to do advance planning. And we also were waiting for our first settled full time minister Rev. Marlene Walker to arrive.

This year, I am the Adult Religious Education chair. I have specifically held back on planning the ARE calendar because I wanted to learn what the other committees were focusing on and how ARE could collaborate in their efforts. I am looking for synergies. After last nights council meeting, I feel that I have taken the correct path. ARE will have a heavy focus on cooperating with the Children's RE, Social Action and Worship.

After the meeting, Jana, Marlene and I stood around in the parking lot. I made some elegant turn of phrase, to which Marlene responded asking if I had ever considered entering the Ministry because I speak so beautifully.

Rabbi Lee Joramo?

Scary thought.

Finally Circle Supper

Rachael and I went to a Circle Supper tonight at at the home of Joanie and Kent Leinbach. Also attended were Sharon Sturges & Jim Armstrong and some friends and family of the Leinbach's.

This Circle Supper group had a hard time getting its act together. We blew off May, June and July. August is suppose to be the last month! We are talking about trying to put together another dinner at the Sturges's.

What is a Circle Supper? It is a dinner event of {UUUS} members. Three times a year the UUUS Membership Committee asks who would like to particpate, from those who respond, the committee creates groups of 6 to 8 adults plus childern who will have a dinner together each month for the next 4 months at a different members home.

Improv Monkey's

Rachael and I went to Suhiros' for susui; after which, we attended the {UUUS} Improv rehearsal. There was a low turn out with only Jana, Eric, Rachael and myself. We did have a good time and made progress on the David Ives' play Words, Words, Words.

July Soup Kitchen

The UUUS monthly soup kitchen was a great success. We made a roasted chicken, mushroom and potato casserole. We had a good showing of people who are non-soup kitchen regulars to help us prepare the meal, including Reverend Marlene. Hopefully many of these people will become regulars.

After my shift at the soup kitchen, I ran into Sammuel at Main Street Bagels. Sammuel is one of the local actors who I last saw in Picaso at the Lapin Agile. He is currently working rehersing for the Empire Theater Companies production of Something Funny happend on the way to the forum.

Walking down Main Street, I ran into Rob Moore coming out of the Main Street Cafe. And running my car in to the car wash, I found myself next to Don Bell.

New Board

The "UUUS" Board of Trustees held their first meeting of the communities year. I attended as a member of the community, but as it turned out I was the only person there who is a Council member or on the Auction Committee so I had a fair amount of input.

I was very impressed by the postive tone of the board meeting, I feel that things are going start off very well.

Flower Communion

Rachael and I lead the "UUUS" Flower Communion Worship Service. It was a very nice service; of course, the it was a fairly small service since many members were taking an extended July 4th weekends, or were simply on vaction. This was Rachael's first time to lead a worship service. She read a wonderful childern's story The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle.

Bye Rev. Rob

Reverend Robert Moore delievered his last message to "UUUS" yesterday morning.

UUUS calls Reverend Marlene Walker

Today was the big day for UUUS. Marlene delivered her second worship message. We had a potluck, (Rachael prepared a yummy Tabouli!), then had our annual meeting.

The first agenda item was a vote to call Marlene as our minister. After a brief dialog that was entirely supportive of Marlene, we had the vote. Of the 70+ members who were repressented in person or via proxy the vote was 100% in favor of calling Marlene!

Next we voted on the slate of UUUS officers for next year. Again there was full agreement. (I will be the Adult Religioius Education chair.)

Then the budget was voted on. It is an agressive budget that is projecting a slight shortfall (with the realistic hope that a new Minister will bring growth that will close the gap). Once again we all agreed to the vote on the budget.

After the votes were done, Marlene returned (she had been off with her partner at the botanical gardens and enjoying ice cream) and accepted our calling.

YEAH!

Soup Kitchen

I did light duty at the Catholic Outreach Soup Kitchen today with the rest of my "UUUS" friends. I was happy to see Rachel throw herself into the work, and delighted that she gets along so well with my friends. After work at the kitchen, Rachel and I strolled down to Main Street Bagels for a Chai.