PeaceBang

Happy Anniversary!

Happy anniversary to Jonathan and Scott, my little D.C. Moo Cows!!

Still On The Edge

On the edge of the continent, that i!

Friends, I can’t wait to get home and start blogging about GA!

See you next week here at PeaceBang.com.

Until then, cheers and salmon.

Open Space?

Scott Wells — The Boy in the Bands — here. PeaceBang’s enjoying the Oregon shore, and who am I to ask her to blog? We had a lovely chat last night and at the end she asked me to write up an essay on Open Space Technology, that debuted at General Assembly this year, and make a post (this post!) asking her readers to see said essay on my blog.

Tell you the truth: I’m exhausted. I have about a third of a complete essay here. I’ll write more when I’m rested, where I hope to convince you that live innovative, distributed social networking has much to offer church communities.

The Onion: Not Funny, Just Very Sad

This is The Onion trying to be funny, but I found it incredibly sad.

Scott, remember when we saw the panda in DC together?

No More Cows For the Year!!!

I finished all the IRRITATING detail-checking on my last paper of the year, thankya Jesus. I am SO ON EDGE RIGHT NOW from reading and re-reading TINY FOOTNOTE FONTS.

But the paper is done and it is IN.

This one wasn’t so much like birthing a cow out of my butt as it was like trying to eat an anvil with a fork and knife. Pass the ketchup!! And the Pepcid!

I started revving up a good ole anxiety attack at about 5:00 AM. The cat interrupted me, woke me up with her alarmed cries (she can tell when it’s coming because I think my temperature shoots up, or I emit some kind of nerve gas or something), and spent the next 25 minutes literally petting my back with her paw until I was fully awake and breathing deeply and calmly. She then glued herself to my side (Velcro Cat!) and stayed there until I awoke for real.
I was so upset and disappointed because the anxiety has gotten tremendously better of late. But okay, you just take it one day at a time. I’m grateful for the many days of relief I’ve had of late.

That animal. I swar’. Just an angel in a striped fur suit.

Readability of the New PeaceBang Blog

Can everyone see everything okay?

I got a one comment asking for bigger font and higher contrast.

Please let me know if this is true for you, too. We’re still in process.

Gee, Sounds Like a Few Ministers I Know

Culinary school students aren’t the only ones who rack up a whole lot of debt and can’t find high paying jobs, kids.

I’ll be paying back my div school loans until I’m 50, myself, and I’m one of the lucky ones with a full-time parish position in a financially secure church.

Like my mother and father always said, “Make sure you have a back-up!”

One More Paper

It’s hard to believe I only have one more class (maybe two?) to go in my doctoral program. After that comes the sabbatical (I hope) and my project. Whoo. In this semester, I have one more paper to write and I really need to get it done tomorrow.

It’s one of those papers that would be really enjoyable as a seminar discussion but that’s going to feel like pulling teeth to write in an academically appropriate manner.

I’ve been reading lots of books on the subject but a lot of what I’m learning from them falls under the category of “yeah, I knew that, but you’re saying it in a fancy, organized way so I guess you’re the big expert.”

The thing is, I just don’t like theory. I kind of hate it, in fact. I hated it when I was in college studying to be a high school teacher and we had to study pedagogy and administrative theory and that sort of thing, and I just wanted to stick pins in my eyes. To me, there is nothing interesting or even very useful about studying how to do something that you’ve just got to get in there and DO and then go back and talk about and dissect. Case studies in books bore me to tears. Case studies presented by people I KNOW — well, that’s an entirely different story. When it’s real, I’m very invested. When it’s hypothetical, it’s so hard to engage.

Also, I’m just plain into content. I’m not so inspired by books about the best way to train ministers. I’m very inspired, however, by books by ministers that say, “Here’s what I know and here’s how I learned it.” I’m even more inspired by groups of ministers sitting around hashing through issues together, and I’ve loved my seminar this semester for that reason. The best thing about this degree program is getting to think about what ministry is as I’m doing it. I can’t say that I feel like I’m becoming some great high-level scholar of ministry, though. If anyone calls me “The Rev. Dr.” when this is all over I’m going to have to pinch them. It seems so ridiculous. Maybe after I sweat it out through my project I’ll feel differently and go walking around saying, “Please… it’s The Reverend DOCTOR Weinstein.” And then you can pinch me.

Well anyway, I’ll muddle through. I feel like the Holy Spirit finally, finally bopped me on the head this morning and gave me a hook, and I’m grateful as anything for that, because man, was I at a loss for a subject for a long time.

The question is, what do I do after I’m done with the doctoral program? Because I’m basically addicted to taking classes and feel very shriveled up and dry when I don’t engage in some kind of organized study on a regular basis. Also, I’m terrible at researching and studying on my own in any systematic fashion, so there’s no hope there. At any given time, I have six books going on completely different subjects, and I have terrible retention of material. Hopeless.

Learning Curve

Mi gente,
Wow.
I’ve been blogging for two years, and it’s amazing how hard it is to navigate new systems. My brain just shuts down when certain things come up, like “how do I close this window?” and “Gee, without my blogger bookmarks to click right to, how do I even get to my own site?”
I have no idea how to post photos yet, and I’m totally overwhelmed by Gmail’s helpful archiving of conversations that appear in light font up above the incoming mail. It’s hard to tell what’s going in and what’s going out, and I’m scared to delete things yet, as I seem to be deleting entire strings of conversations with one press of a button, rather than single e-mail messages.

I will be moderating comments for both blogs now (a practice I may or may not continue), and I’m still working with three MSN e-mail accounts and a verizon account (where I send most of my junk).

My plan is to ease out of MSN altogether (what a buggy and terrible browser!), start re-setting all my online business transactions through my verizon.net address, and gradually morph over to using Gmail exclusively.

However, I did float into the Apple store today in my nearby swanky mall and salivate over the i-books. My heart yearns to rejoin the world of Mac, and I may do so and sign up for a mac e-mail address. I like the fact that Mac’s software is all integrated, unlike my Dell, which is a mess of glitches and incompatability quirks, and frustrating techo-support.

Does anyone have an opinion of dot-mac?

What’s funny — or maybe not — is that the new Macs have a Blog feature that is entirely template-based and doesn’t require html knowledge. Currently, Scott Wells is busting his bachongas on my behalf getting both of my blogs onto Wordpress. Scott, my butter lamb, be assured that I won’t switch to Mac application when and if I DO return to the land of Apple, and I won’t beg you to help me if I eventually do. I’m thrilled to be starting with WordPress (Hey! I can BLOG without 17 error messages!), but that doesn’t stop me from lusting after a new Mac.

Looking at this all from the perspective of neurological wiring, it’s pretty fascinating stuff.

Agita!

Dear readers,
Thanks to the eternal patience of my dear friend Scott Wells, I can post this after about 1,000 techno misunderstandings from Clueless Moi to tell you that we’ll be up and blogging again soon.

xoxo PB