No, your eyes have not deceived you, this is indeed a new (although fairly paltry) post from Elainie. Thank you, everyone, for your comments (especially the lolcat piccies :). One of these days I do hope to address each of them in turn, or perhaps that's my OCD tendencies talking. The UK didn't really have a summer this year, but the floods weren't as bad as last year, so for that relief many thanks.

I do indeed have asteroid hyalosis in my right eye, but the diagnosis sounds worse than the actual tiny speckles (motes) in my vision field. Given the health problems many endure, little soapy fat globules / crystals in the viterous humours is hardly anything about which to blog, so moving on....

Some stuff was disposed of from my parents' house. The garage is more accessible now. However, most of my stuff from Birmingham is still up in the roof space. A project for next year, I think. Why wait for another 3 months? I'm using 10 days' holiday as of Monday visiting friends & family in the USA with my Mum. I really should stop writing now and get on with figuring out what I'm taking to my parents' house, where the majority of my clothes are and the suitcases I'm packing.

That leaves me with 1.5 days remaining for this holiday year, which I'm using at the end of November for an Advent Retreat with the Community of All Hallows, an Anglican religious order. If God wills it, I hope one of the sisters there may be a spiritual director prospect.

So I'll be working in between Christmas and New Year this time, as last year I had that time off and it's only fair. New holiday year starts 1 January, woohoo.

The Lambeth Conference went quite well, better in some ways than doomsayers had portended. The hospitality provided by our Diocese was superb, if I do blow my own parents' trumpets.

I'm still feeding the neighbour's kitty, Lara, whenever she trots up for her treats. I'm a prime example of how animals engender Pavlovian responses in humans. I call her "Nom Monster" and "Meow Face" and I get the benefits of a cat (being privileged to buy her kitty treats and watch her scarf them down) with none of the downside (except for her continuing to poop in my garden).

That's about it for now. While I'm travelling, I won't have reliable access to computers and/or Internet. I look forward to seeing lots of white names upon my return. Until next time, God bless and take care :)

PS (I like Dan Aykroyd's work a lot. I hope I would like him if I ever met him. However, I'm now concerned for him. Does Dan need money this badly? I know times are hard given the current economic crises, but words fail me. I think we should add Dan to our prayers....)

Happy Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend for people in England; and a very Happy Wedding for Kennon and Chris in Germany, and all their family and friends, both those who are there with them, and those who are elsewhere.

I'm going to be away from my computer until Wednesday 28 May, hence the post. Nothing exciting. Will be catching both Indy and the Sex and the City films. I have a follow up appointment with the Eye Clinic of Ipswich Hospital on Wednesday, so that they confirm or refute their original diagnosis of suspected asteroid hyalosis in my right eye.

Major activity between now and then is working on my parents' garage and disposing of the mounds of accumulated detritus we have moved from house to house over the last decade or so. A mini skip (dumpster) has been hired. I'm not looking forward to it, as I'm a hoarder and far too attached to material things. My possessions own me. So this process will be good for me, even though it will feel like death during. Yes, that is a little emo melodramatic of me.

Therefore on a lighter note, thank you for all your birthday wishes :) To answer Ted's question, the UK does endure natural disasters but to a far lesser extent than the Texas coast, Tornado Alley or pretty much anywhere else in the world. England had an earthquake earlier this year, despite not being near any fault lines. When I still lived in Birmingham, a tornado hit there (2005). Hurricanes, not so much. The Great Storm of 1987 is referred to as a hurricane, but was not actually one.

To answer Miriam's questions, the bishops attending the Lambeth Conference are being housed by host families in the dioceses of England, Scotland and Wales. Among Mum's many tasks at the moment is sorting a garden party at one of the host families for all the rest of the host families in the St. Edmundsbury & Ipswich diocese, in advance of the arrival of the bishops.

Ok. This isn't getting me packed for the next four days. Whatever you all are doing, please enjoy yourselves and stay safe, if the two aren't contradictory. If they are, well, please stay as safe as you can while enjoying yourselves. Until next time, God bless and take care :)

Thank you everyone for your comments on my previous entry, especially the birthday wishes :) Portmeirion was brilliant, and I highly recommend it to anyone including Wales in a trip to the UK. The weekend before (26/27 April), we went to see Jersey Boys in London. The performances were great, the staging was stunning and the story was well told. It was my first jukebox musical, and I thought it showcased the music of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons very well.

So far 35 is not too bad. I enjoyed being 34, but 10 days in, and 35 is ok at the moment, even if it means I can no longer get away with describing myself as "early 30s". No, 35 means mid 30s, fer shure, fer real sigh.

England is enjoying a lovely May, so much so I almost feel guilty about the conditions elsewhere: tornadoes in the USA, the cyclone in Burma and now the earthquake in China.

I'm in the middle of drafting a letter to my spiritual director as was, back in Birmingham. Although through the grace of God I have survived here in Suffolk for 21 months without counselling or spiritual direction, I feel both would be useful again now.

My brother has edited two features now, one of them from a company for whom he used to work, and that feature is going to the Cannes Film Festival, so I'm even more proud of him than usual.

The Anglican Communion has a decadal gathering of its bishops in July: the Lambeth Conference. The dioceses in the host nations (England, Scotland and Wales) are providing hospitality to the bishops and their spouses before the Conference starts. Among the several roles my parents fulfil for the Diocese of St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich is organising the diocesan hospitality for the visiting bishops.

My decree nisi has been scheduled for Monday 2nd June. If that goes through on that day, the earliest I may then apply for the decree to be made absolute is Tuesday 15th July. I think the fee for that is £40 / $80. If everything is in order, the court will send to and my soon-to-be-ex-once-and-for-all-this-time-we-really-mean-it husband the decree absolute.

That's about it from me at the moment. I hope you're all ok. Until next time, please take care of yourselves :)

Google (EDITED - or rather, "Virgle" ;) thinks I'm "distressingly normal" :(

"Well, you're distressingly normal and could conceivably adjust to life as a deep space pioneer, though we recommend instead that you leave the Mars missions to the serious whack jobs who scored over 130 and instead finish year 3 of law school, tuck your toddler into bed, design Web 2.0 applications, run for Congress or do whatever other normal, healthy, middle-of-the-road thing you're currently doing with your normal, healthy, middle-of-the-road life."

Google just doesn't know me at all. I'm not sure if that's my fault, given the answers I selected, or their fault. I thought they knew everything by now. The realisation that there are gaps in Google's omniscience (which we kinda already knew from our Google testing of Pleo's privacy, Kennon rules :) disturbs me a little, but only a little. I love the Google announcements at this time of year :D

"The peace of all things is the tranquility of order.". I encountered this quote earlier today in BBC Radio 4's Prayer for the Day, which this week is given by Tina Beattie. She used it in the context of living simply, so that others might simply live. I must admit I haven't yet read St. Augustine's "City of God". I'm still working through his Confessions.

I liked this quote when I heard it this morning, and also when i read the transcript. I then decided to go check the context in which St. Augustine had used it. It is the 10th in a series of descriptions of different types of peace. St. Augustine then follows it with "Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own place.". Again, I can agree with that. I think that statement could be applied to many areas of life; for me, it has most resonance with things domestic (I really need to investigate Flylady more closely, and finish Kim & Aggie's book, How Clean is Your House?).

However, Chapter 13 is called "Of the Universal Peace Which the Law of Nature Preserves Through All Disturbances, and by Which Every One Reaches his Desert in a Way Regulated by the Just Judge.". St. Augustine is actually talking about the ultimate in cleaning house, here: the disposition of souls in the life to come. I here snarkily paraphase the rest of the paragraph as St. Augustine proffering cold comfort to the "miserable" (ie the damned): ok guys, obviously you're not at peace, 'cos you're in hell, but because you deserve to be in hell, you are therefore orderly. Your hell is adjusted to you, so this order could be said to be "tranquil". Therefore, peace out, dudes! I hope this helps you get through the rest of eternity. You'd feel worse if you didn't exist at all....

I'm still getting to know St. Augustine, as much as any of us can get to know people we only know through their writings and what other people have written about them. Ditto St. Paul, because I think that to my reading & re-reading of the New Testament canon in this life time, there may be no end. From what little knowledge I have of them both right now, I think Saints Paul & Augustine are best buds in heaven. I feel they use language in a similar way, and possibly for similar ends. They obviously did something right, otherwise we wouldn't still be reading them today. Peni-Jean introduced me to Jack Lewis's sermon, "The Weight of Glory", which I love, and is just one of the many reasons why I give thanks for knowing her, and for Kennon and his creation of this space where I could encounter her and other people also precious to me.

One particular quotation from Jack's "Weight of Glory" resounded me with some time ago, so I made a note of it. "If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know." You may already be ahead of me now, because you're all pretty sharp. I appreciate that St Augustine was riffing on different types of peace. I think that he would probably be surprised at my initial reaction to his writings about those not in heaven and peace: I feel that his words are salt in the wounds of the damned. At the same time, I recognise the truth of what he's saying. So, I would classify this snippet of the City of God as puzzling and/or repellent. I want my religion to be objective, so I cannot avert my eyes from this, as easy as it would be. If Tina Beattie knew what she had started....

"The peace of all things is the tranquility of order.". Originally, in addition to my resonance with this because of my lack of a housework gene (aka an abysmal abundance of sloth), I also accept this because of how pervasive disorganisation and chaos can be in other areas of my life, and how unpeaceful is the uproar of disorder.... Yet, the name of my house is "Shalom". More, thus far, as an ideal towards which I'm striving, rather than an accomplished actuality.

Not sure how to end this for now, other than in my usual way.

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EDITED, thanks to him :)

Create your own Friend Test here

Changing the subject completely, here's a 9 question quiz for the lolz.... But not the lolcats. They've over-tired their meme for the moment and need to take a nap ;)

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I hope you all have a good weekend. The UK finally puts its clocks forward this Sunday * groan *. Until next time, take care of yourselves, please :)