2016 In Memoriam, 2017 Praedictio
As I have done for several years now, at the end of year or beginning of the new year I've done a retrospective over the past year and sometimes even a half-baked plan of what the coming year might bring. Many people probably do the same with the arbitrary time-stamp that is the European new year, although most probably do it in their head rather than in a written form. There are good arguments against writing, but I find there are better (if different) argument for having the ability to refer to the past and organise one's thoughts in planning for the future.
1. Work and Linux
At the end of last year I switched jobs to the University of Melbourne just as VPAC/V3 Alliance closed down. During the year I have worked through the ten various ISBNs that the latter group provided to me, having completed four at least to a pre-editing standard and have made good progress on the others. UniMelb itself has proven to be a very interesting place to work and Research Platforms in particular has been interesting and good. Immediate recognition is given of the bright workmates I am blessed to be with, and especially the two immediate other techs whom I work with Linh V., and Daniel T..
At said location, taught about thirty days worth of classes and assisted in the implementation and launch of the novel HPC/cloud hybrid, Spartan, which has caught some international attention despite its modest size. Also, the year saw the end of Edward running jobs, although it hasn't quite been switch off yet. MC-ed and presented at Multicore World in New Zealand, eResearchAustralasia, and presented at the OpenStack Summit in Spain, as well as several place in The Grand Tour. Had a chapter contribution in The Crossroads of Cloud and HPC. The year also included five presentations to Linux Users of Victoria and one to the MelbPC Users Group. Linux Users of Victoria also finally decided to disincorporate and become a sub-committee of Linux Australia, many years after advocating this position.
Et quod predict in 2017 I will be going to at least four conferences; Multicore World in NZ, THETA in Auckland, OpenStack Summit in Sydney, and ISC High Performance in Frankfurt. The ten VPAC/V3 Alliance publications will be printed albeit in two sets six months apart. The Spartan/HPC cloud hybrid system will receive additional funding and expansion from the University. Weekly classes will continue, but with additional focus groups. A new publication will come from the University of Melbourne from these classes. Several presentations will be given to LUV and similar groups.
2. Politics
The two political groups I initiated, the Isocracy Network and the Victorian Secular Lobby, are both in periods of stable and modest growth. For the former, I've written ten articles and eight 'blog posts for group, conducted one interview (with a Syrian asylum seeker), wrote one Senate submissions, contributed to a new asylum seeker proposal, as well as organising and hosting four meetings, and generally keeping the website and adminisitrivia in order. For the latter group, only one presentation (to the Sunday Assembly), but organisation of three other meetings, two of which were held at the Victorian parliament itself. Also was generally keeping the website and adminisitrivia in order, which includes the rather onerous and large news service. Within the ALP, attended a few meetings of the Socialist Left, but also gave up my last formal position in the branch structure.
Et quod predict in 2017 the number of published articles for the Isocracy Network will double even if my own contributions remain stable. Towards the end of the year, the organisation will have an ISSN journal and its own set of ISBN numbers with at least two publications on the group in general and on Syria, with whom we've established a number of interesting contacts now living in Europe. More locally, another side-project of the group, the Labor-Green Alliance will receive more prominence, and there will even be some subtle work with some social liberals in the other direction, whilst I take up more strategic policy activities. The Victorian Secular Lobby will take up more of the national slack due to a lack of co-ordination in that area, and will continue its direct parliamentary lobbying. Both groups will have an increase in meetings, members, and activities in the year. I hope to make some substantial contributions to a current project that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
reddragdiva is involved in concerning the nonsense that is Bitcoin.
3. Gaming
At the end of last year I hosted the first meeting of the RPG Review Cooperative, which received incorporation status early this year. It turned out this was a smart, albeit overdue, move on my part. The group still has a relatively modest membership, but has boomed in terms of activities, resources, and finances. As editor, five issues of the RPG Review journal were released, a club library was started and the MARS library recovered, we have a monthly newsletter with social movie nights, a dozen associated gaming nights per month, and we conducted lobbying activities for RPGers.
Most prominently however was the Kickstarter for Papers & Paychecks, which received coverage by BoingBoing, and received an RPG.net interview. For the RPG Review journal, ten articles and four interviews conducted, and eleven reviews published on rpg.net. In actual play there was a heavy use of Eclipse Phase, as GM one game and playing in another, and as a playtester for a new ruleset in both groups. Also played in many sessions of GURPS Middle Earth, Laundry Files, and Secrets of Cats/Call of Cthulhu among more modest numbers of several other games, not the least being through our irregular CheeseQuest gatherings.
Et quod predict in 2017 there will be at least four, if not five, issues of RPG Review released with yours truly as editor. Papers & Paychecks will be printed along with the Cow-Orkers supplement, along with the third edition of Swordbearer, Spirit and Sword. Apart from that a lot will be playing-by-ear. I suspect my HeroQuest Glorantha game will come to a close this year, as will my Eclipse Phase game. The RPG Review Cooperative will continue and grow, with perhaps more interstate groups being established. Maybe some ideas from the AGM in a couple of weeks will be helpful there.
4. Philosophy, Languages, and Other Academia
Hosted ten sessions of The Philosophy Forum and have been assisted by Rohan McL., in the sourcing of speakers and organisation of the calendar. Gave two presentations myself ('The Espistemology of Madness', 'Race Conditions of the Human Species'), along with one presentation to the Melbourne Atheist Society ('Is Pantheism an Atheism?'), and two to the Unitarian Church ('Changing Definitions of Marriage' and 'The Abolition of Crime'), and also had but one academic paper published on - quite outside my normal area of investigations - the load bearing capacity of sheep femurs. There was one other 'blog post on how the Free Will and Determism debate is essentially unsolvable. Shockingly, I haven't completed any additional academic degrees for two years in succession an issue which must be rectified as soon as possible.
This time last year I just started to fall into the rabbit-hole that is linguistics, and predicted that I would have a basic fluency in Esperanto, French, and German by the end of the year via Duolingo. As it turned out I finished the skill tree for all of those as well as Spanish and have mostly kept them fully complete. Of note outside this set I started Russian because, well, livejournal to be honest (I was listed on a Russian LJ as being an Australian politician once) and, with no sense of time, took up Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian on the basis of a discussion thread on whether they were really languages or dialects!
Et quod predict in 2017 I will not learn Latin, ironically. Improved fluency in the existing languages is, of course, necessary to have anything beyond a beginner's competence, and I have also promised to at least initiate an open-source version with Tetum early this year. I will probably take the opportunity to improve my Russian and knowledge of Scandanavian languages this year. I am tempted to do an Esperanto for Anarchists book at the end of the year. It is about time that I completed another degree so that will certainly be on the agenda for this year (maybe even two), but it won't be until mid-year. There is also the opportunity already for one or two academic papers as well.
5. Music and Film
This aging math-rocker is still crawling about dingy and not-so-dingy clubs and doing reviews for Rocknerd. This year wrote eight reviews on said site, with six significant concerts attended (Jesus and Mary Chain at The Forum, DAAS at the Melbourne Town Hall, New Order at the Sydney Opera House, a Schumann concert at the Old Frankfurt Opera, 65daysofstatic at Razzmatazz, Barcelona, and The Triffids at The Corner Hotel.
I'm going to start to list 'film' under this category from now on as well, as it is another aesthetic dimension which I explore on regular basis, mainly due to visits at least monthly - if not more so - to The Astor. I think I saw at least twenty films at said location last year, and at least several in other locations. Stand-out concert of the year was 65daysofstatic in Barcelona, stand-out film was (perhaps surprisingly) Doctor Strange.
Et quod predict in 2017 that I will continue to do reviews on Rocknerd, probably around a half-dozen or so for the year (I'm sure the editor wants more). I'm going to approach Andrew M., about irregular contributions to Movie Reviews about making irregular contributions there. I sometimes even see new movies, so I might be able to make it worthwhile.
6. Personal
Life companion![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya continues to be an ever-loyal and practical individual and was especially helpful in The Grand Tour of (part of) Europe. Whilst few people would consider the main reason of visiting Europe was to go to high performance computing centres, that's my job and so it happened as such, even with a visit to the Black Forest as a weekend aside - Frankfurt, Schwarzwald, Stuttgart, Freiburg im Breisgau, Geneva, Montpellier, Barcelona - plus Dohar, I suppose. There are so many highlights of that highly condensed tour that it is livejournal's record that captures it in part. In addition to visiting the European side of the family, the West Australian Christmas trip was also delightful. The fur members of our household does well; albeit with the sad loss of one Scamper rodent who parted a bit of the young side. The house itself (shades of Usher, I am giving it a personality!) has had plumbing issues which has caused a gaping hole in the dining room ceiling which was certainly eventful.
As per comments last year I continue to have a wide range of excellent close friends and associates, and I was delighted to catch up with so many old friends on the recent visit to Perth. I am ever surprised by their goodness, reasonable behaviour, and sound critical thinking of those whom I know - all of which is enormously important for my own approaches to such things. Financially, I must say my situation has improved quite significantly this past year, expanding my moderately good holdings of both fixed and liquid assets; my personal and voluntary zakāt remains the same. Health-wise things have been mostly stable, albeit with an annoying ongoing issue (Plantar fasciitis) rearing its head.
A decision in the fourth quarter to make use of Bullet Journal (I insist on ignoring their cast-iron proposal of an analogue version) has proven quite effective in planning and recording. Time management when one has a wide-variety of interests, skills, and determined to be productive can be an issue. This has helped and continues to help a great deal, especially when coupled with project management knowledge.
Et quod predict in 2017 another trip to Europe will provide an opportunity to revisit the German side of the family and perhaps even have a side trip elsewhere (the Low Countries? the Northern Lights?). It really is time to give New Zealand a proper visit again as well, for my heart is in The South. Inevitably there will also be another visit to Western Australia, hopefully around Xmas time again. At home I cannot see Tramper rat making it through another year, although his cage-mate Rover seems determined to be young forever. Also at home, the necessity of some renovations of our thirty-four year old house is probably overdue, and even Bohemian slackers like ourselves have to eventually do repairs. There are Body Corporate issues to deal with as well, currently undetermined and undecided on that front.
There are personal development goals for the year. I need to spend more time writing articles and seeking better people to debate issues with rather than random nut-cases; it's taken years but I've finally accepted that it is a tragic personal flaw that I am so perplexed by people who can't or don't do the minimum level of research for an informed opinion and take it the suggestion do such as some sort of personal affront. Apologies to those of who I know find great amusement in my take-downs (but they may even be terser - the rapier rather than the zweihander, if you like). I am also going to be much more attentive to my health and diet; I am getting older and my capacity to pull an all-nighter followed by a ten kilometre walk just isn't the same as it used to be. Finally, I think I might attend St. Michael's more often; I have been quite remiss in that regard over the past year - and I need a bit of spiritual space at times.
In summary, 2016 was a good year for me with many improvements in my life and very few things that went terribly wrong. A couple of major projects are incomplete, but far outweighed by a multitude of others, small and large, that have been completed. It was an extraordinarily productive year, probably the most productive I've ever had and almost the most interesting (2003 in Timor-Leste is always going to be a hard bar to beat in that regard). Could 2017 be even more productive? Well, yes, if I am more selective about where I direct my efforts.
Excelsior! Labor omnia vincit!
1. Work and Linux
At the end of last year I switched jobs to the University of Melbourne just as VPAC/V3 Alliance closed down. During the year I have worked through the ten various ISBNs that the latter group provided to me, having completed four at least to a pre-editing standard and have made good progress on the others. UniMelb itself has proven to be a very interesting place to work and Research Platforms in particular has been interesting and good. Immediate recognition is given of the bright workmates I am blessed to be with, and especially the two immediate other techs whom I work with Linh V., and Daniel T..
At said location, taught about thirty days worth of classes and assisted in the implementation and launch of the novel HPC/cloud hybrid, Spartan, which has caught some international attention despite its modest size. Also, the year saw the end of Edward running jobs, although it hasn't quite been switch off yet. MC-ed and presented at Multicore World in New Zealand, eResearchAustralasia, and presented at the OpenStack Summit in Spain, as well as several place in The Grand Tour. Had a chapter contribution in The Crossroads of Cloud and HPC. The year also included five presentations to Linux Users of Victoria and one to the MelbPC Users Group. Linux Users of Victoria also finally decided to disincorporate and become a sub-committee of Linux Australia, many years after advocating this position.
Et quod predict in 2017 I will be going to at least four conferences; Multicore World in NZ, THETA in Auckland, OpenStack Summit in Sydney, and ISC High Performance in Frankfurt. The ten VPAC/V3 Alliance publications will be printed albeit in two sets six months apart. The Spartan/HPC cloud hybrid system will receive additional funding and expansion from the University. Weekly classes will continue, but with additional focus groups. A new publication will come from the University of Melbourne from these classes. Several presentations will be given to LUV and similar groups.
2. Politics
The two political groups I initiated, the Isocracy Network and the Victorian Secular Lobby, are both in periods of stable and modest growth. For the former, I've written ten articles and eight 'blog posts for group, conducted one interview (with a Syrian asylum seeker), wrote one Senate submissions, contributed to a new asylum seeker proposal, as well as organising and hosting four meetings, and generally keeping the website and adminisitrivia in order. For the latter group, only one presentation (to the Sunday Assembly), but organisation of three other meetings, two of which were held at the Victorian parliament itself. Also was generally keeping the website and adminisitrivia in order, which includes the rather onerous and large news service. Within the ALP, attended a few meetings of the Socialist Left, but also gave up my last formal position in the branch structure.
Et quod predict in 2017 the number of published articles for the Isocracy Network will double even if my own contributions remain stable. Towards the end of the year, the organisation will have an ISSN journal and its own set of ISBN numbers with at least two publications on the group in general and on Syria, with whom we've established a number of interesting contacts now living in Europe. More locally, another side-project of the group, the Labor-Green Alliance will receive more prominence, and there will even be some subtle work with some social liberals in the other direction, whilst I take up more strategic policy activities. The Victorian Secular Lobby will take up more of the national slack due to a lack of co-ordination in that area, and will continue its direct parliamentary lobbying. Both groups will have an increase in meetings, members, and activities in the year. I hope to make some substantial contributions to a current project that
reddragdiva is involved in concerning the nonsense that is Bitcoin.3. Gaming
At the end of last year I hosted the first meeting of the RPG Review Cooperative, which received incorporation status early this year. It turned out this was a smart, albeit overdue, move on my part. The group still has a relatively modest membership, but has boomed in terms of activities, resources, and finances. As editor, five issues of the RPG Review journal were released, a club library was started and the MARS library recovered, we have a monthly newsletter with social movie nights, a dozen associated gaming nights per month, and we conducted lobbying activities for RPGers.
Most prominently however was the Kickstarter for Papers & Paychecks, which received coverage by BoingBoing, and received an RPG.net interview. For the RPG Review journal, ten articles and four interviews conducted, and eleven reviews published on rpg.net. In actual play there was a heavy use of Eclipse Phase, as GM one game and playing in another, and as a playtester for a new ruleset in both groups. Also played in many sessions of GURPS Middle Earth, Laundry Files, and Secrets of Cats/Call of Cthulhu among more modest numbers of several other games, not the least being through our irregular CheeseQuest gatherings.
Et quod predict in 2017 there will be at least four, if not five, issues of RPG Review released with yours truly as editor. Papers & Paychecks will be printed along with the Cow-Orkers supplement, along with the third edition of Swordbearer, Spirit and Sword. Apart from that a lot will be playing-by-ear. I suspect my HeroQuest Glorantha game will come to a close this year, as will my Eclipse Phase game. The RPG Review Cooperative will continue and grow, with perhaps more interstate groups being established. Maybe some ideas from the AGM in a couple of weeks will be helpful there.
4. Philosophy, Languages, and Other Academia
Hosted ten sessions of The Philosophy Forum and have been assisted by Rohan McL., in the sourcing of speakers and organisation of the calendar. Gave two presentations myself ('The Espistemology of Madness', 'Race Conditions of the Human Species'), along with one presentation to the Melbourne Atheist Society ('Is Pantheism an Atheism?'), and two to the Unitarian Church ('Changing Definitions of Marriage' and 'The Abolition of Crime'), and also had but one academic paper published on - quite outside my normal area of investigations - the load bearing capacity of sheep femurs. There was one other 'blog post on how the Free Will and Determism debate is essentially unsolvable. Shockingly, I haven't completed any additional academic degrees for two years in succession an issue which must be rectified as soon as possible.
This time last year I just started to fall into the rabbit-hole that is linguistics, and predicted that I would have a basic fluency in Esperanto, French, and German by the end of the year via Duolingo. As it turned out I finished the skill tree for all of those as well as Spanish and have mostly kept them fully complete. Of note outside this set I started Russian because, well, livejournal to be honest (I was listed on a Russian LJ as being an Australian politician once) and, with no sense of time, took up Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian on the basis of a discussion thread on whether they were really languages or dialects!
Et quod predict in 2017 I will not learn Latin, ironically. Improved fluency in the existing languages is, of course, necessary to have anything beyond a beginner's competence, and I have also promised to at least initiate an open-source version with Tetum early this year. I will probably take the opportunity to improve my Russian and knowledge of Scandanavian languages this year. I am tempted to do an Esperanto for Anarchists book at the end of the year. It is about time that I completed another degree so that will certainly be on the agenda for this year (maybe even two), but it won't be until mid-year. There is also the opportunity already for one or two academic papers as well.
5. Music and Film
This aging math-rocker is still crawling about dingy and not-so-dingy clubs and doing reviews for Rocknerd. This year wrote eight reviews on said site, with six significant concerts attended (Jesus and Mary Chain at The Forum, DAAS at the Melbourne Town Hall, New Order at the Sydney Opera House, a Schumann concert at the Old Frankfurt Opera, 65daysofstatic at Razzmatazz, Barcelona, and The Triffids at The Corner Hotel.
I'm going to start to list 'film' under this category from now on as well, as it is another aesthetic dimension which I explore on regular basis, mainly due to visits at least monthly - if not more so - to The Astor. I think I saw at least twenty films at said location last year, and at least several in other locations. Stand-out concert of the year was 65daysofstatic in Barcelona, stand-out film was (perhaps surprisingly) Doctor Strange.
Et quod predict in 2017 that I will continue to do reviews on Rocknerd, probably around a half-dozen or so for the year (I'm sure the editor wants more). I'm going to approach Andrew M., about irregular contributions to Movie Reviews about making irregular contributions there. I sometimes even see new movies, so I might be able to make it worthwhile.
6. Personal
Life companion
caseopaya continues to be an ever-loyal and practical individual and was especially helpful in The Grand Tour of (part of) Europe. Whilst few people would consider the main reason of visiting Europe was to go to high performance computing centres, that's my job and so it happened as such, even with a visit to the Black Forest as a weekend aside - Frankfurt, Schwarzwald, Stuttgart, Freiburg im Breisgau, Geneva, Montpellier, Barcelona - plus Dohar, I suppose. There are so many highlights of that highly condensed tour that it is livejournal's record that captures it in part. In addition to visiting the European side of the family, the West Australian Christmas trip was also delightful. The fur members of our household does well; albeit with the sad loss of one Scamper rodent who parted a bit of the young side. The house itself (shades of Usher, I am giving it a personality!) has had plumbing issues which has caused a gaping hole in the dining room ceiling which was certainly eventful. As per comments last year I continue to have a wide range of excellent close friends and associates, and I was delighted to catch up with so many old friends on the recent visit to Perth. I am ever surprised by their goodness, reasonable behaviour, and sound critical thinking of those whom I know - all of which is enormously important for my own approaches to such things. Financially, I must say my situation has improved quite significantly this past year, expanding my moderately good holdings of both fixed and liquid assets; my personal and voluntary zakāt remains the same. Health-wise things have been mostly stable, albeit with an annoying ongoing issue (Plantar fasciitis) rearing its head.
A decision in the fourth quarter to make use of Bullet Journal (I insist on ignoring their cast-iron proposal of an analogue version) has proven quite effective in planning and recording. Time management when one has a wide-variety of interests, skills, and determined to be productive can be an issue. This has helped and continues to help a great deal, especially when coupled with project management knowledge.
Et quod predict in 2017 another trip to Europe will provide an opportunity to revisit the German side of the family and perhaps even have a side trip elsewhere (the Low Countries? the Northern Lights?). It really is time to give New Zealand a proper visit again as well, for my heart is in The South. Inevitably there will also be another visit to Western Australia, hopefully around Xmas time again. At home I cannot see Tramper rat making it through another year, although his cage-mate Rover seems determined to be young forever. Also at home, the necessity of some renovations of our thirty-four year old house is probably overdue, and even Bohemian slackers like ourselves have to eventually do repairs. There are Body Corporate issues to deal with as well, currently undetermined and undecided on that front.
There are personal development goals for the year. I need to spend more time writing articles and seeking better people to debate issues with rather than random nut-cases; it's taken years but I've finally accepted that it is a tragic personal flaw that I am so perplexed by people who can't or don't do the minimum level of research for an informed opinion and take it the suggestion do such as some sort of personal affront. Apologies to those of who I know find great amusement in my take-downs (but they may even be terser - the rapier rather than the zweihander, if you like). I am also going to be much more attentive to my health and diet; I am getting older and my capacity to pull an all-nighter followed by a ten kilometre walk just isn't the same as it used to be. Finally, I think I might attend St. Michael's more often; I have been quite remiss in that regard over the past year - and I need a bit of spiritual space at times.
In summary, 2016 was a good year for me with many improvements in my life and very few things that went terribly wrong. A couple of major projects are incomplete, but far outweighed by a multitude of others, small and large, that have been completed. It was an extraordinarily productive year, probably the most productive I've ever had and almost the most interesting (2003 in Timor-Leste is always going to be a hard bar to beat in that regard). Could 2017 be even more productive? Well, yes, if I am more selective about where I direct my efforts.
Excelsior! Labor omnia vincit!
no subject
On a related note, there's enough of a language spectrum within (for certain) Swedish that some native Swedish-speakers have an easier time understanding Danish than they do understanding other speakers of Swedish. And my main problem (being a native speaker of Swedish) with understanding spoken Danish is that it takes a couple of hours for my ears to settle in.
Back when I was a bona fide philosophy student, in the dark mists of time, I had one or two Danes in my class and by the end of the first term had no problem with either Danish or broad Scanian accents (we had at least two speakers of the Scanian dialect of Swedish), but that was from hearing it spoken several times a week. I've never really had a problem with (mainly Oslo dialect) Norwegain, but Norwegains and Swedes tend to end up speaking Svorsk, which is essentially a linguistic mean of the two languages.
There's also been a long history of muddling the linguistic waters. In some sort of "language tree" model, Norwegian is a west-Norse language (together with Icelandic and Faroese), with Danish, Swedish and Gutnish (now relegated to "dialect of Swedish" status) as the east-Norse parts of the family. But in terms of spoken language, "standard" Norwegian and Swedish are definitely easier for cross-comprehension, but written Danish might, just, be closer to written Swedish.
If you want an interesting "learning Swedish" challenge, see if you can find the cases (ahahaha) where you can still distinguish remnants of the (historically) four grammatical genders, and where you can mostly believe that all there is is utrum and neutrum.
no subject
Heheheh, I think I referenced that when I started going down this rabbit-hole.
Of course, some of the similarity is ethno-linguistic, and indeed some of probably stems from having political boundaries (e.g., Kalmar Union, the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway etc)
> see if you can find the cases (ahahaha) where you can still distinguish remnants of the (historically) four grammatical genders<
I'm not up to that yet! Maybe later in the year :)
no subject
Your post really calls for a more thoughtful reply, of which I hope you had several on dreamwidth. I am still more than a bit in awe over the Isocracy Network. http://isocracy.org/ In the vernacular of the younger generation here: you ROCK!!!!!!!! (And, no, I am not saying you are a rock; that's a verb, not a noun.) *grin*
Hearty congratulations for all you accomplished in 2016! Wishing you every success in 2017! And of course continued Best Wishes and Buddhist-Quaker blessings to thee & thy life companion, @caseopaya, in your journey thru life together.
You know, isocracy and (liberal) Quakerism have a few things in common.... (smile)
no subject
It's almost as if it's been inspired by an inner light that radiates outwards. :)
Always a pleasure to hear from you...
It's almost as if it's been inspired by an inner light that radiates outwards. :)
Just FYI, I happened to spend New Year's Eve at our local All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church since I found myself longing for a bit of candlelit religious service complete with choir and even stained glass, reminiscent of my Presbyterian high school years in St. Paul, Minnesota. As I mentioned to Rev. Dr. Nori Rost, if only I weren't so spiritually content and fit so well in the local Friends meeting I would attend her Universalist Unitarian church regularly. We were told on Christmas Eve that we would not want to miss the service on New Year's Day when Nori and the congregation would literally (in her words) "be playing with fire." * smile * Why do all the good church services happen at the same day often at the same hour? ;-) Until next time, Lev, please stay Awesome!
no subject
no subject