This Charge I Entrust to You

In general I tend to keep both Church and State on the sidelines in this blog.  I'm not a particularly confrontational person and public debate, be it religion or politics, has never been my thing.  If pressed unrelentingly I will 'fess up my general leanings, but, right or wrong, I rarely feel the urge to take the initiative.  But this Sunday has been so special in the life of our family and our church that it would be somewhat historically remiss of me not to chronicle it in some fashion.

Our church, Grace United Reformed Church, celebrated our twelfth anniversary this Sunday.  That in and of itself is a significant milestone.  But we almost forgot the anniversary and the reflection on our past in light of the events of the day and their implications for the future.  Last month, after several months of consideration, our Elders Board (our "Consistory") issued a calling to a recent seminary graduate, Mr. William Godfrey.  Mr. Godfrey accepted the call, and this Sunday, in a wonderfully rich and meaningful service, our church ordained him as Minister of the Word and Sacrament.  Mr. Godfrey is now the Reverend Godfrey and has taken on, quite literally, the mantle of service as co-pastor of our congregation, along side our veteran, Pastor Greg Bero.

This has been the culmination of several months of preparation where Mr. Godfrey has been preaching and serving in our church in an internship of sorts to see if the fit was there.  It was indeed and our family, along with (I am convinced) the entirety of our church congregation, have grown to love and appreciate Bill immensely.  We are ecstatic to have the day finally arrive to welcome Bill formally into our congregation.  We've been richly blessed and we are looking forward to the next dozen years with Pastor Godfrey helping chart the course.

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

-- Isaiah 6:8

These Are the Voyages of the Dawn Ship Treader

Tonight we finished Book 3 in the Chronicles of Narnia:  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This has always been my favorite of the Narnia books, so I particularly enjoyed reading it to L and N.  Their hands-down favorite throughout the book has been Reepicheep, the honor-obsessed mouse with a Napoleon complex.  They would always laugh heartily whenever their diminutive hero would come out swinging.  I found it amusing because in all my previous reads I had always loathed the character, who seemed to represent only arrogant machismo and bravado to me.  But as I've read it this time and I've watched the kid's reaction to him, I've somewhat softened my antagonism toward the good mouse.  I would no longer like to see a cat make a nice meal of him, but I still wouldn't mind seeing Reepicheep get a good, if not fatal, feline thrashing from time to time.

Mission Impossumable

I got home from painting class around 9:15 on Thursday night, slow and sleepy.  It had been a long day prior to class, so I was not the most alert or quick on the uptake.  That's why it took a couple of minutes and several passes between the house and the car unloading my stuff before I realized what was clearly in my field of view the whole time.  Perched upon the power line running the back line of our yard was an interloper.  An operative! A clandestine agent bent on some secret reconnaissance!  It had frozen in place hoping (and almost succeeding in that hope) that I would not observe his skulking silhouette.  A spy!  A spook!  A mole!  (OK, maybe not a mole in the strict sense of the word...)  Clearly an undercover asset of considerable skill, he employed the famed death-freeze which would have been entirely convincing, were rigor mortis not quite so incompatible with tight-rope walking.

I sensed a challenge had been issued.  I'm not exactly sure how I sensed this, but I knew nevertheless that, had there been a gauntlet high upon the wire, it would have been thrown down on the roof of garage for me to have to pick up the next day.  One shady creature of the night had identified another and there wasn't room in town for the both of us.  I fixed on him for a half hour or so with my bleary end-of-the-day-glare, and he watched me back through eyes clouded with faux-death.  Neither budged.  For all our immobility, our stares were piercing and violent.  We locked and held.  And no one flinched.  Well, not at first...  OK, do you know how boring it can get playing a stare-down game with a possum?  Finally I realized that I have more that I want to accomplish in life than being Alpha-dog to a marsupial, so I caved and went inside.  As I closed the front door I'm convinced I heard a self-satisfied hissing chuckle and in that brief moment I reconsidered whether all my other life ambitions really shouldn't have been sacrified to teach the little rat a lesson.

¡Burritos Parmigiana!

We originally planned to go out to dinner tonight, but a lovely lazy rain-soaked afternoon dissipated our desires to be out and about.  But this put Stacy in a conundrum:  What to do for dinner?  We just got back from a family vacation (which in and of itself is another grand motivator to eat at home), and we hadn't had a chance to restock the fridge, so a readily-prepareable dinner wasn't immediately obvious.  She called me in and we perused our ingredient options - far more condiments than content.  We eventually settled on an unorthodox, but decidedly multicultural plan:  Italian sausage burritos!  We boiled up a frozen package of sausages, sautéd some garlic and lonely red onions, then wrapped them in some old tortillas with a dab or two of sour cream.

Skepticism abounds.

I know this wasn't the melding of great culinary traditions.  It will never be hailed as an Italio-Mexican version of the Camp David accord. We realize that we won't be publishing the next best-selling cookbook phenom.  (Burritos, Prego!)  What it was was a quick and dirty dinner which turned out to be quite tasty.  We may actually have to forget to grocery shop again soon.

恭喜發財 - Or Rather, "Congratulations and Prosperity!"

No one can say the men of the Perkins family aren't culturally adventurous! A week or two ago N's preschool celebrated Chinese New Year with more activities than you could shake a chopstick at! They had their special lunch, a traditional New Year's parade with drums and costumes, and then, of course, the resoundingly reptilian climax to it all - the precession of the dragon!

N was heavily involved in all the festivities, even taking a turn at the dragon helm! Tremendous and terrifying, I have no reason to doubt!

Meanwhile a few L.A. basin municipalities away I was privy to a very authentic New Year's Dim Sum with a big group of co-workers. It was an adventure not for the squeamish. No Panda Express here! Among the delicacies being pushed around on little carts were stewed chicken feet, pickled seaweed, and dried, chopped up, and reconstituted jellyfish. I actually liked the seaweed, which actually had a noodle consistency and texture. Though I won't be seeking it out the next time I'm at Rice Queen, I was able to sample a few morsels of the jellyfish. I was expecting the texture to be seriously weird, and it was, but not in the weird way I expected - it was actually somewhat chewing - more calimari than jelly-goo. Having conqueored seaweed and jellyfish, I rather was proud of my cultural excursions, so I didn't feel too bad about telling the chicken feet to cross the road. Don't ask why.

Rosalynn, Eric, me and Vera, and yes, that is the celebrated seaweed!

There were also, of course, dozens of other offerings of various degrees of non-Westerness, and most of the were really pretty fantastic. I think Stacy would enjoy doing this sometime, but this place was really old school, and I'd be a little afraid of going there all by our lonesome. There's something to be said about eating jellyfish when you know it's jellyfish. I would definitely be a little more daunted by an untranslated mystery lump.

We whities were few and far between!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

So What Kind of Shoes Does One Wear with Shingles?

OK, I've heard it isn't a great idea to suggest that a certain dress makes a woman looks like a house, but what about a roof?

Stacy has been bequeathed a number of dresses recently.  The story behind how she came to get these dresses is so thoroughly bizarre that I don't quite have the gumption to put it down in print.  It will take a lot of prodding and probably a considerable amount of hard alcohol to get to the point of ever willingly publishing those tawdry details.*  (Let's just suffice to say that hanging out with the generous gift-giver could prove to be a real drag.)  So I shall set aside for a moment the nefarious tale of how we came across said dresses, and instead, jump directly to the haute catwalk modelling of them that Stacy afforded me this evening.

*I prefer Scotch, if anyone's wondering.




The first piece of art is, well,... rather structural.  It has an, <ahem>, layered look that speaks of... warmth, shelter and protection from the elements...   Oh, heck, she's wearing a roof!  It's really that simple:  a roof.  Complete with shingles.  Someone should sew on a few gutters and a companion water spout.

1-800-STARVE-FAST:  If it worked
for me, it will work for you!!!

Then there is the dress fit only for an "after" shot.

Cinco de Mayo is in the can!

OK, this one isn't absolutely horrendous. We do live in LA, after all, so she might get some use out of it.

Oh my Goth!

Stolen from the set of Tim Burton's latest project:

Better dead than red.

I'm honestly lost for a comment.