Friday quiz blogging!

It's been a long time, but Paul had this up at his blog... and I'm a sucker for quizzes like this. Now, I have to get sermonating!

Your result for The 4-Variable IQ Test...

Interpersonal

30% interpersonal, 30% visual, 20% verbal and 20% mathematical!

Your strongest type of intelligence is Interpersonal. You thrive when thinking about people, social situations, and human interaction. That's very touching. You are very likely to be empathetic, sympathetic, and in general, less pathetic, than most other test takers.

Your specific scores follow. On any axis, a score above 25% means you use that kind of thinking more than average, and a score below 25% means you use it less. It says nothing about cognitive skills, just your interest.

Your brain is roughly:

30% Interpersonal

30%Visual

20%Verbal

20%Mathematical

Matching Summary: Each of us has different tastes. Still, I offer the following advice to the world.

1. Don't date someone if your interpersonal percentages differ by more than 20%.

2. Don't be friends with someone if your verbal percentages differ by more than 25%.

3. Don't have sex with someone if their math percentage is over 50%.

Take The 4-Variable IQ Test at HelloQuizzy

Write to Marry Day

I've been posting some YouTube videos on the "Vote No on Prop 8" campaign, and today is "Write to Marry" blogswarm day. Here's hoping a lot of other UU bloggers are also blogging about this issue - whether or not they happen to be in the state of California. Because, hey, Florida has Prop 2 and Arizona has Prop 102 on the same issue of marriage rights - both of which also should be defeated. Anyone who has read this blog over the past couple of years knows where I stand. See 'All the Happy People,' for example...

Love is love.

Some straight couples choose to marry, some don't, the point is they have a choice.
Some gay and/or lesbian couples have that choice, but only in certain places.
Others would like to have the choice.
To make a public, legal commitment to their partners.
To make a life together.
To have some security that the families they make won't be judged "illegitimate."
To know their wishes will be honored in the event of serious illness or death.

They're not asking for special rights. Just the same old rights straight folks take for granted.

Here's a great video, that makes the point perfectly:



As I have written before, the marriage of longtime partners Del Martin (may she rest in peace) and Phyllis Lyon had no effect on my own longstanding marriage. Neither has the marriage of George Takei and Brad Altman, or Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DeRossi, or the marriage of my friend's mom and her partner. They are all affirmations of love, commitment, and hope. To take away the right to love and hope - that's just wrong.



Blessed be all marriages. Amen.

More on the California Critical Issue

Another in the ad campaign for "NO on Prop 8" (which rhymes with hate, which we don't need...) I love the humor!!!



h/t to Sunflower Chalice

Cat Blogging on a Grand Scale

So I post photos of the kitties (to the left are Spot, looking like a sphinx, and Minnie in motion) fairly often. I don't have mad photoshopping skills, but some cat lovers do, and have combined their politics with their cats at
Cats for Obama! Consider it a mental health break...

h/t to the MadPriest

Another Critical Issue

Looked at slant by Jessica Hagy at Indexed.

If you don't want/need an abortion, don't have one.
But don't bar access to appropriate medical attention to those who do want/need abortions.

As a corollary, don't bar access to contraception (or STI protection) to those who request it. The life you save may be your own (or your child's).

And - FYI:

Critical Issue

For friends, virtual & real, who have married in the past few months. Keep their marriages legal - vote no on Prop 8 (which rhymes with hate)...



h/t to Paul, Mimi, and a host of others...

All Americans

Thank god for Keb' Mo'...

No commentary needed

Keith Olbermann says it all:



h/t: Byzigenous Buddhapalian

Others have said it better

I try to keep up with a reasonably eclectic mix of blogs, and often find that what I want to say has been said before and better by others. So...

Go and read this post at Paul's place, and this one at Fran's.

Remember, go vote early if you can. If you can't - don't miss voting on the day of the election. It's your civic duty, friends. (Or, as the immortal Lucy Van Pelt always said, "If you don't vote, Don't Crab!")

I voted!

You should, too. In my state one need not provide a "good excuse" to vote an early absentee ballot. As it happens, I have office hours on election day, and an hour-long commute each way. It would be easy for me to miss voting, so I went on my day off/work at home day. While we were there, R got registered to vote, too.

I try not to let myself get too crazy about all the politics, but I do not want Obama's victory to be narrow. I want there to be no question that he is the winner of this election. I want a landslide. Is that too much to ask? I think not. Even in our Republican stronghold neighborhood, Obama signs are popping up.

This is all especially important, given the dangerous trash talk coming from the opposing side. Not to mention the disrespect shown to a Civil Rights Movement veteran, who knows a bit about mob violence. Photo is of John Lewis and James Zwerg, beaten bloody on the Freedom Rides in 1961. h/t to Slog


For shame, John McCain, for shame...

Why, yes, it has been awhile...

(Original image by M*)

...since my last post! But I've been busy:

- learning my way around the offices and other spaces of my internship church,
- getting to know my internship supervisor (IS) & church staff,
- figuring out a work schedule that allows me to sleep at home most nights,
- drafting and redrafting a learning agreement for the UUA (and a learning covenant for the seminary),
- preaching,
- meeting with my internship committee,
- getting ready to teach - and to learn,
- riding the rollercoaster of parish life, and
- having fun at it! (even when I don't get enough sleep)
WHEEEEEE!!!!!

When I told a longtime UU minister of my acquaintance where I'd be interning, his response was - "You'll learn a lot there, not the least of which will be how to have a good time doing ministry. [IS] doesn't do anything without having fun." He was right. And I'm very grateful. Because, you know, this work is lonely, and arduous, and can be downright depressing if we let it be. And I'm a naturally serious sort who needs people like my spouse who teases me about how he never planned to be married to a priest (he grew up Catholic), and friends who throw cows at me occasionally.

I'd like to write so much about my internship. I'm blessed with a congregation that has loved and let go of interns before - and are justly proud of their role in those ministers' formation. As a result, I have an internship committee whose members know what they're about. Two of them have been on internship committees before; all but two remember at least one past intern.

They are good at praise, bless their hearts - but they are equally good at asking questions. Questions like "why did you choose to mess with the IS's standard liturgy for this traditional service?" (Because I couldn't authentically say those words and mean them.) Questions like "so, why couldn't you just say them anyway?" (Because I have to speak out of my own integrity and in my own voice.) They point out little things, like I'm inhabiting the space more naturally now, which makes everything flow better. And they reassure me about stupid things that happen - like microphone transmitters that fall out of robe pockets, and candles that stubbornly refuse to light. They push, they question, they praise, they suggest - they are helping me live into my ministry, as much as IS. They are a gift.

***

So - work/life balance. How, exactly does that work? I knew it wouldn't be easy, having a spouse with a 40+ hour/week job whose life is his work (or at least his employer would like it that way). A committee member who also works for a huge corporation pointedly asked me last week if DH & I had done anything fun together lately. Something besides grocery shopping, or going on the retreat where I worked. Um, well, that had been awhile, too.

Yesterday we went hiking again. DH bought me new hiking boots for my birthday. My old ones were broken down & leaky, so I now have nice waterproof Keen's with really good arch support. We spent the day hiking around a pond, then through the woods to a backpacker's shelter. The pond and the adjoining lake were mucky with the blue-green algae that is rampant in bodies of water around here since the spring floods. Even so, being with DH while hearing & seeing fish jumping and walking around natural bodies of water lifted a piece of my soul I wasn't aware needed lifting yet. The woods were filled with orange and black flying Japanese beetles, which must have mistaken us for their mother ships. Even liberal applications of bug spray failed to stem the onslaught. (We were both wearing blaze orange t-shirts, having no desire to be accidentally shot during "youth hunting weekend.") Mid-day we stopped in a small town for lunch. We had so-so Chinese food, and a good chuckle at an unintentional language "blooper" on the menu. The menu read:

"Wanton eggdrop, or hot-and-sour soup"

We were kind of wondering about wanton eggdrops - just asking to be eaten, right? I'm pretty sure it should have read: "won-ton, egg drop, or hot-and-sour soup," given how our waiter presented the choices to us.

It was good to do this. There is no guarantee that good weather will continue - it's October already and DH & I both remember trick-or-treating in snow as children. And I have a hell of a schedule for the next two weeks. Remembered laughter over wanton eggdrops, and the picture in my mind of hawks overhead, may be just enough to sustain me/us 'til we can play hooky another day.