Good morning all! I'm on vacation already! (Sorry, Shrift.)

I'm glad Billytea has been girlfriended and Gus is back. I hope the world gets brighter for you, Gus.

I have lots to do this morning, and really should go for a run. But I think I'll clip the dog's nails and clean house instead, so at least I won't be disgusted when I get home late Sunday night.

Sounds like my proposed trip to Alaska may be pushed back. Which wouldn't be the worst thing ever, so long as I don't end up going in, say, late November. Except, thinking I was going to Alaska the end of next week, I bought a new laptop and paid $100 for overnight shipping so it would arrive before I left.

.... erg. I think I need to go tell Dell not to hurry quite so much. But first I should probably check with my boss and make doubly sure I'm not going.

Libkitty! Tell me Fairbanks will still be nice in late September?

From yesterday's chicken and waffle talk:

That completely changes my mental picture. I thought it was, like, a chicken/waffle sandwich. If they're on different plates, the waffle is like cornbread or a biscuit, just with little holes.

"Waffle's just pancakes with little squares on 'em"

Because I can't not quote it, I'm afraid.

Considering how very not useful I am just makes me depressed. I'm aiming for not being too much of a drag on the rest of society, mostly.

You're interesting to locals by virtue of being from an exotic locale, but equally the other expat people who are in the same boat are liable to be friendly and enjoy the chance to talk to you on the basis of shared points of reference.

So, if I understand you correctly, it's about sharing the new-ness (silly lack of vocabulary, brain!), from both points of view, the locals and the foreigners? About having a group you can relate to and socialize with based on the shared grounds? That actually makes lots of sense.

There are always several post-doc students here from around the world, and, well, it's physics, so mostly people automatically relate based on liking that as opposed to the majority of the rest of the world. But your point is interesting.

I would love to see you explain this idea further. Religion has so little to do with my life, and I'm really curious about how it impacts yours

Thanks, Kate. Would it be horrible of me to quote from myself from the (embarrassingly and scarily) long burble I had about Objects in Space? I can't afford the time of writing anything from scratch now, in direct answer to your question. But I would love to discuss it with you some other time! Anyway:

It all reminds me, and I find it a bit confusing to articulate why - of that sentence (that I loved) from Angel's Epiphany from the second season of AtS (that I loved), that (and I'm paraphrasing) if nothing that you do matters, the only thing that matters is what you do. It's the meaning that you pour inside your actions that is important. No, more than that - the meaning of one's actions come from them, not from the outside. I loved that sentence from the first moment Angel said it, and I agree with it so very much. And the funny thing is, I agree with it from a believing-in-G*d (there must be a better way to say this) point of view.

The simplest way to look at this sentence is in "there is no greater plan, no writer who decides who does what, no greater plan like in the hugest most complicated chess-game possible, in which each move by each player has calculated results to the situation of the other players". And then all that is left is the meaning you put into something yourself.

The way I come to this sentence is different - I don't think that nothing that I do matters, I don't think that there isn't any difference caused by my actions. However, this difference may be only to me. I can't change the situation of the world, it's going to continue to have bad things in it, as simple and as childish as those words may seem. I'm not going to make much difference, in the grand 6-billion-people way of seeing things. However, it matters. I believe in G*d, and in fact I have a very deep and meaningful relationship with he/she/it/them/whatever. I'm also a practicing Orthodox Jew, so I follow the Jewish 'halakha' as best I can. And I do believe that these actions have meaning. Also, I'm pretty sure I failed miserably in trying to explain myself here.

As far as I understand it, though, Joss is an atheist, so I find it even more interesting, that watching an episode of his (both writing and directing) made me think about things I do as part of me being not only a believing-in-a-deity person, but also actually practicing a religion, and one with lots of orders and things-to-follow, to boot. I mean, there are plenty of things that I do on a regular basis, that out of the context of being a part of me being a practicing Orthodox Jew, look positively silly, let alone meaningless. Not just to people from the outside, who don't believe in G*d, or that G*d actually cares about what one person does in the tiny-little-action scheme of things, but even to, well, me.

If I take a step back from me and look at what I'm doing, on certain moments, it seems like a series of meaningless acts, like moves in a dance, only not so pretty, and definitely without rhythm. But because I do have that faith, and because no action, as irrelevant as it may seem, which follows If I take a step back from me and look at what I'm doing, on certain moments, it seems like a series of meaningless acts, like moves in a dance, only not so pretty, and definitely without rhythm. But because I do have that faith, and because no action, as irrelevant as it may seem, which follows any halakha, as 'small' as it may seem, doesn't stand on its own, doesn't exist without the connection of it to the larger picture, to the faith and to me trying to lead my life in the best way I hope I can find according to that faith, each movement suddenly gets meaning.

So, standalone, they are objects in space. Maybe not downright meaningless, but whatever 'aloneness' meaning they may have, it begins and ends with that, and that's all there is (I know that 'aloneness' isn't a word, but I couldn't talk about an action being 'lonely' - that description requires an emotion attached to it, IMHO).

The actual meaning of many of those things - the order in which I wash my hands before I eat bread, the not-switching of the light-switch during the day of sabbath - is not in the action itself, it's in its connection to all that's behind it, causing it and keeping it there, in a way. It's because of its connection to the meaning behind that movement, and the connection to that meaning to the whole world of Judaism and its principles, and the connection of that to my own personal relationship with G*d, and through that, with, well, me, and that me that I'm trying to be, that the not-click-on-the-switch gets its meaning. And that meaning can be as deep and as important as, well, anything.

( continues...)

( continues...)

Many people who stop practicing Judaism say that the first time to click on a light switch on a Saturday, to put in their mouth a non-kosher food, to eat in a day of fasting (all of these are actions that are strictly in the realm of relationship between a person and G*d, they don't affect any other person, they can't hurt people's feelings or be untruthful or anything like it) - in those first times, they often describe it as if they're expecting a lightning to come and hit them from the sky, or a large booming voice to scold them from above or something. And it's only in hitting a light switch, an action that they do each and every day without ever thinking about it at all, and still, the connection, the meaning all around it, makes it seem different, makes it get meaning of its own.

[Edit: OK, going away to hide myself in shame over my babblingness. Also, I'm not sure if it's even what you're talking about, Kate, sorry! So you'll just have to laugh at me for quoting myself for no reason and at such ridiculous length.]

Death by Caffeine will calculate how much of your favorite caffeinated beverage it would take to kill you. (Sadly, only packaged drinks are included -- because their nutritional information is standardized and available -- so for those of us who just drink COFFEE, it's not very helpful.)

[eta: If would take 265.42 cans of Diet Coke to kill me]

Is that 265 cans raining down on your head, or poured into a vat that you can drown in?

Or, I mean, you could drink 265 cans of Diet Coke, but you'd probably die of overhydration and sugar shock before the caffeine could get at you.

[eta: If would take 265.42 cans of Diet Coke to kill me]

What, if they fell on you?

eta: death by carbonated beverage crushing x-post....

Libkitty! Tell me Fairbanks will still be nice in late September?

Not the Kitty of the Lib, but Fairbanks will be nice, if cold. Be ready for snow.

Also, 'suela, how long are you going to be up there? If you want, I can ask my mom and stepdad to show you around/take you flying/whatever.

But because I do have that faith, and because no action, as irrelevant as it may seem, which follows any halakha, as 'small' as it may seem, doesn't stand on its own, doesn't exist without the connection of it to the larger picture, to the faith and to me trying to lead my life in the best way I hope I can find according to that faith, each movement suddenly gets meaning.

As always, I LOVE NILLY.

Is that 265 cans raining down on your head, or poured into a vat that you can drown in?

It doesn't specify. Either way, I don't think I'll be testing it any time soon.