Books, Computer, Priest, Reindeer

Most of my L'Engle books are no longer
falling over as much due to gaps.

I didn't get the yams cooked, although I may nuke 'em while doing the dishes a few minutes from now. I didn't do laundry. I didn't clean, either, except for one desperately-needed task: I put away about twenty L'Engle books, in date order, and most of the Thurbers as well.

My computer is acting up every day now, with programs "not responding" and the hard drive endlessly chugging away, doing nothing. My hard drive was critically close to being full, but I deleted the AVI files of a couple Doctor Who episodes, some photos and some screensavers, which ought to help. It didn't, though, as far as I can tell. My CD drive, which formerly burned CDs and played DVDs, no longer does either reliably. If I can't burn CDs, I can't back up data and free up more disk space. You know about my keyboard problems, and lately I've even had intermittent problems with USB connections: camera, scanner, iPod and mouse. In short: it's becoming painfully clear that I need to replace my computer.

Father Ireland and his new stole

That being the case, I am very nervous about the fact that I just transferred 39 photos from my camera, because of the storage it will eat up. All but two of them are from church this morning. We were celebrating Father Ireland's 25th anniversary as a priest. He took the opportunity to mention in his sermon, as he does every year at this time, what a sick and twisted story the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer tells. His take on it is that Rudolph is teased for being different, and Santa, who should love and comfort him, does nothing to help - until the crisis comes, and Santa finds he can exploit Rudolph. This is a running joke with Father Ireland, although I think he really means it. This year, I offered him an alternate interpretation: Rudolph is a Christ figure, a suffering savior. He is unique and special, but ostracized, misunderstood, mistreated and ignored, until the day he comes into the world at Christmas, bringing a gift no one else can give and saving the world from a darker fate, filling it instead with joy and love and generosity. Something like that anyway. Father Ireland was delighted was this, and plans to incorporate it into his Rudolph rant--uh, sermon--for Advent 2007.

The heck with the dishes and the yams. I'm going to bed. Sorry, John.

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