Cozy Day

Today is about doing cozy things.

Drinking herbal tea.

Baking lemon shortbread cookies.

Playing Christmas music.

Taking a long bath with a good book.

Making Christmas cards to mail to my friends.

Watching M*A*S*H* Season 11 that arrived in the mail yesterday.

Doing one or more of these things at a time.

Tonight is a Christmas party for the youth. I think we're taking them caroling at the homes of some people from the church.

But today is for cozy things.

Searching for Entertainment

I've spent a significant chunk of my day surfing the web for entertainment options for my company's spring regional meeting. Not the easiest task at the best of times, but my search has been significantly complicated by the audience we need to entertain.

You see, they're Mennonites. And not any one type. We have the ultra-conservative, still wear the special outfit Mennonites, and we have the very modern, they might have a nose-piercing mennonites. And we need to entertain them all. We'd like to make them laugh...

Turns out a great many of the people I would normally reccommend for this sort of thing - people I've enjoyed - would definitely NOT fit the demographic we're looking to entertain.

So, if you have any brilliant ideas for musicians or singers or speakers or dramatists or illusionists or comedians - basically something entertaining - that would fit a widely varied Mennonite audience, or if you, as members of my readership think you can do the job, drop me an email, or leave me a comment. We can use all the help we can get.

(And, by the way, I like my job, and the people I work for, and the people we serve - all Mennonites... they're just hard to figure out how to entertain!)

Mood Music

I think you can tell quite a bit about my mood and the kinds of things I’ve been thinking about lately if I just give you the most recent playlist I put on my ipod and have been listening to quite incessantly. (Remember, I’m less than musical, so you have to do some research and check out the lyrics to some of these songs if you want to really catch my mood!)

Small (Amanda Falk)
If it be Your Will (Jann Arden)
The Valley Song (Sing of Your Mercy) (Jars of Clay)
Deliver Me (David Crowder Band
Scratch (Kendall Payne)
Let Go (Frou Frou)
Hallelujah (Jeff Buckley)
Ups & Downs (Kendall Payne)
Hosea (Jacob and Lily)
Aslan (Kendall Payne)
Hurt (Johnny Cash)
Twenty Three (Kendall Payne)
Psalm 23 (Jason Upton)
Build a Tower (Jacob and Lily)
Hallelujah (K.D. Lang)
Pray (Kendall Payne)

Have you caught the mood? It’s also a fairly accurate reflection of the new music I’ve been listening to lately. And yes, I know that the same song appears on there twice, only performed by two different artists. That would be because I love the song, and I love both versions, and certain parts of that song quite nicely fit my mood of late, as well as highlighting themes in my life this last year. I realized as I was walking to work from the train this morning, that one song is missing - I'll have to add it tonight. Rescue Me (Rik Leaf).

Quick Rant

Okay, so I was just doing a bit of price comparison for one of the last Christmas gifts I have left to buy. I'm buying a book for someone, a Christian book, so I checked the local Christian bookstore, I checked a local Chapters store, and I checked Chapters online store.

The Christian bookstore was going to charge me $22.99.
Chapters was going to charge me $16.99 less 10%.
Chapters online is charging $12.26.

And I don't have to pay shipping, because I ordered a couple of other items I've been looking for, again, at reduced prices, and so the shipping is free. And the items should still easily be here in time for Christmas.

Why are Christian bookstores so much more costly? I think I'm going to do most of my bookshopping online from now on...