Ick on the too much rain. Stay high and dry!

How did the new year's sermon go, Susan?

Cleaned out the downstairs closet, under the kitchen sink, and gathered all the paper shopping bags to donate somewhere. Productive morning!

Now, I have lunch, and read. I'm really enjoying reading again!

My do fun things mantra for the year is, "Read, build, paint."

Build=small things, not, like furniture. Paint so far is acrylics with an online patterns course.

How did the new year's sermon go, Susan?

It went well, I think--I even had one of my fellow vestry members ask me if I was discerning a call to the priesthood! (I'm definitely not. I think I enjoy preaching because it's a form of writing and storytelling, but one year into my three-year term on vestry I'm already counting down to when I'll be free of all the meetings and arguments and budget-fretting. If you're a priest that's just part of the job, and in general I think I'm too much of an introverted lone wolf type to do well in the role.)

There’s probably no nice way of saying, I find it too icky to read a trashy romance novel written by a former teacher, but I do wish you luck in your future endeavors, is there?

"It's not for me, but good luck with your writing."

Or maybe, "That's not a genre I read in."

Or "I already have so many books on my TBR list that I'll never get to all of them."

Timelies all!

Back to work and school tomorrow. I need a rest from my time off.

I'm heading home from the airport after picking Miss Haley up. She is visiting here for a week or so, including her EIGHTEENTH birthday.

I have missed being a part of this community and am glad to have found my way back.

There was an interesting/depressing article on NPR today about how the yoga and wellness community have a lot of overlap with conspiracy theories, especially QAnon. I got about four paragraphs in before realizing that this probably has a lot to do with my BIL and SIL's refusal to get vaccinated. My MIL (BIL and my husband's mother) has cancer that's metastasized, and it amazes and infuriates me that he may not come back into the U.S. to visit her before she dies.

Dana - The Atlantic has an article on The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline as well. Very depressing.

Wow. Bad, bad injury in the Bengals-Bills game. I've never seen an ambulance on the field.

Bills' player Damar Hamlin made what looked like a normal hit and got back up on his feet, and then just collapsed like 2 seconds later. The broadcasters said the EMTs were administering CPR. I don't know if he went into cardiac arrest, but it sounds likely.