Accidentally Cool

When I decided to grow a beard this winter, it was borne out of a few things:

I was starting to feel older.
I wanted a change.
But mostly, I was just feeling lazy and tired of shaving.

And now, what's this I see? Pop Candy has written about the plethora of beards on display at The Golden Globes. Check it out here. Jon Hamm is one hot bearded daddy. Apparently, beards are really in this year. Who knew?

If Only In My Dreams

Joyeux Noel, intrepid Internet-ers.

I'll be home for Christmas and well, you know how the rest goes...

Advent

I like to believe that this is true. Here, Dawna Markova relates in her book, Spot of Grace, the story that begins it all.

My grandmother began to stroke my forehead very slowly, the signal that a story was on its way. Her stories always made a silken tent for the two of us to crawl into.

"Imagine, my darling, that back in the very beginning of everything, there was an immense crystal bowl floating in the dark velvet sky. Imagine it was glowing because it was made of light."

I held my breath until she continued.

"We don’t know how the bowl got there or how long it stayed. But we do know that one day there was a cracking, crashing sound that was almost as big as the sky. The bowl shattered into a million, billion, trillion different seeds of light. They flew everywhere, piercing everything alive in the world. From that moment on, each living being has had, hidden in its heart, one of those tiny seeds of light."

She bent over and looked right into me with her Coca-Cola brown eyes. She whispered as if she were telling me great secrets.

"One such seed is inside of you, and one is inside of me. I call it the spot of grace. Every one of us, whether we know it or not, is supposed to find that special light. Then we are meant to grow it and shine it into the darkness of the world, helping others find their light. When everyone does, you see, the bowl will be made whole again."

---

"Driven by the force of love, the fragments of the world seek each other that the world may come into being."---Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

Throwdown Thursday: Last Christmas

...And just like that it's Christmas time. Those who know me know it's my favorite time of year. Yet last year was so devoid of joy, it was almost sacrilegious. And when I look back on it now I'm almost embarrassed. There were no decorations, no gifts, no life. I did (or rather didn't do anything) everything but shave my eyebrows in mourning. Pathetic.

Ahh, but this year....I still will have no tree, but my lighted wreath will look nice on my wall. I think The Wisemen will look awesome on top of the microwave.

I am the poorest I've ever been at the holidays. Surprisingly, I'm not all that bummed about it. In fact, I'm still thinking of creative ways to give; not just with Peyton, but with everyone whose life I touch. In what ways can I exude joy and warmth, and carry forth The Light?

I am in love with the show Glee. They've released this cover, and it was so approriate, that I couldn't resist posting it. Ding Dong Merrily on High! The Christmas Bells will soon be ringing, until then, we shall rock out to cover songs originally made famous by Wham!.

Through The (November) Rain/The Architect's Dream

Even on those nicer Friday nights at the Art Museum where the live entertainment is perched just above Hector Guimard's entrance to Le Métropolitan and I sit on the sidewalk sipping my martini there is always one place inside the museum I always go.

Thomas Cole's The Architect's Dream hangs in one of the front galleries a little off the beaten path. It's almost always quiet in this wing and one can get some real quality time with the bright oil painting. The first time I saw it, I was taken aback at it's sheer size and audacious artistry. There's the seemingly disparaging styles and motifs all on display behind a red velvet curtain, and yet somehow, through the Architect's vision it all comes together. He creates it all.

Autumn snuck up on me. Finishing up the summer with Statistics and then Business Finance back to back definitely did not play to my strengths and sapped my energies tenfold. My friends remarked that I was the most stressed they had ever seen me. I was spent in all aspects. And there was the Thesis, and the Shelter overhead, always overhead.

But November brought with it relief in the form of Biblical Perspectives. Finally something to TALK about! And I scored some major time with the Director of Family Promise, who in turn, gave me more than a running start on fleshing out my chapters, and even gave me a grant she had written.

Maestro pointed me to some great possibilities for funding...and things come together. I wish I had a moral to this post. I don't. This is probably going to come out as a backlog of emotion I had reserved while my logical brain took over with calculator in hand. There is one, I guess...Anybody who says they got anywhere alone is full of shit. Given that, conscious choices must be made with who we associate with, because the world really is a community, but whether that community is positive or negative depends on the collective will of its inhabitants.

The arrival of November, ironically, feels like Spring for me. At 192 days left, the countdown is ticking ever closer to a future without school. Aside from what requirements I have left to fulfill, my mind drifts to visions of the future. Toledo, I'm afraid, is looking less and less like it. I had a rare break of two consecutive days, and travelled to Columbus. It's a major candidate. Some newer apartments in Sylvania I've looked at have a counterpart there. What's more the rent is cheaper down there. Now, I just need to find a job...

There's lot's to pull together. Each day has been a challenge. But somehow, everything disparaging will become united, into a unique, and beautiful whole. Somehow.

One Hundred Down

Remember this post? That was 100 days ago. Thesis Presentation? Done. Only nine months and six classes to go. Here's the evidence:

Where's the Beef?

Did I mention I was an English major once?

I've finally gotten around to tackling my thesis some more. The first step requires my re-working of the first chapter and making adjustments per my adviser's comments. Re-reading this I've had more "D'Oh!" moments than Homer Simpson finding himself without a doughnut. It ain't pretty, pretty folks.

• "Don't use contractions in research writing."
• "You need a space before the dash."
• "This shouldn't be capitalized."
• "Don't use a personal pronoun to identify a non-personal entity."
• "You have kind of a mess here with punctuation problems and problems with parallel structure in the sentence."
• "You probably don't need quotation marks here, since the title of the program in capitals is sufficient to identify it."
• "You should probably just have this portion be a sentence by itself.
• "Spelling error."
• "Bad sentence structure here. This is not an academic writing style."
• "Greater."
• "Just zero in on the specific ways in which ___________ will benefit if funds are obtained."
• "Don't use italics like this."
• "the"
• "Cycles don't jump - they continue."
• "You need to beef up the writing in terms of style as well as content."

Looks like I have my work cut out for me.