News/ Supreme Master explained

First, the news. Caitlin took her first steps with a walker today! She's been pulling up and cruising on furniture, toys, your legs, etc. for quite a while now, and occasionally we've been able to get her to take a few steps while holding her up by her hands, but today for the first time she pulled herself up on a walker and took about 2 steps before sitting back down on her butt! Cherylle saw it happen several times, but she would never repeat it in front of me... Boo!

All this was happening while I was wiring up some lights we'd gotten from a trip to Ikea a while back, and hanging a canopy over Caitlin's crib. The lights consist of two pink 5-petal flowers and one green bug, and the canopy is made of a material similar to mosquito netting with large leaves and vines appliqued onto it. Her crib is in one corner of her room, so one of the flowers got hung on the wall at the foot of the crib, which is to the left as you face it. The canopy was hung center over the crib and spread out around the perimeter, and the bug and the other flower were hung to the right of the canopy, and staggered for height. It'll all look beautiful when I have enough light bulbs to go around - I didn't realize they were supposed to be candelabra base until after I'd already bought 25w medium screw base ones for the project! Oh well... it's not as if I'm supposed to be a lighting professional or anything...

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Anyway, by request, here is further explanation of the cult I spent Labor Day weekend with. Supreme Master TV is the television studio for a religious group that follows the teachings of a lady they call the "Supreme Master" who preaches vegetarianism and green living as a way to achieve heaven on earth. The religious part is a blend of Catholicism and Buddhism, as she was raised Catholic and "found enlightenment" through the Quan Yin method of meditation, as taught to her by an enlightened master deep in the Himalayas. After returning from the mountains, supposedly she "spontaneously" became talented in painting, poetry, jewelry design, and a large number of other things that she sells to raise money for global awareness. The TV station is broadcast on a number of obscure satellites and on the website I linked to earlier. Most of the time they talk about vegetarian cooking, being nice to animals, and protecting the planet.

The funny part is that as big of a hippie as I am I don't entirely disagree with everything they espouse, I just felt like I was the only one not drinking the kool-aid while I was there! I was actually raised vegetarian as a Seventh Day Adventist, and although I've since converted to omnivorism, I can appreciate the desire to be vegetarian both from a health and a "cruelty to animals" perspective. I mean, I love a good hamburger, but have you seen those cattle farms in the California central valley? Disgusting!!

Anyway, the event I was working was a series of musical performers coming together for a concert for the TV station's 2nd anniversary, presented by a couple of B list celebrities, the most outstanding of whom was one of the producers of the movie "Babe" who was inspired to make the film because he thought it would help kids understand that factory farms are bad, as is eating your friends - and animals (even the gross ones) are your friends. Interesting, but so was the bacon and eggs I had last night for dinner. LOL

At some point the show I lit should show up on their website - when it does I'll link that video here so y'all can see some of what I did...

That's all for now!

In Remembrance

I got a phone call from my brother-in-law at 7am the morning of September 11, 2001, telling me to turn on the television, that we were under attack. From then on, I was glued to the screen, in complete disbelief at what was happening. That shock turned to grief as I watched the towers collapse, one after another, while people in the streets fled in terror.

I find it immensely saddening that our country, which tries so hard to do so much good in the world, can be hated so fiercely as well. People offer reasons, both valid and invalid, but there is never justification for hatred so complete that it can extend to a minimum-wage filing clerk who just needed to pay the rent; or to an airline flight attendant who had just given you a cup of water; or to a security guard at the front desk who smiled and waved when workers dragged themselves in to the office in the morning, still sucking on a scalding cup of coffee in a futile attempt to wake up; or, realistically, to anyone who died that fateful morning.

If anything good can possibly be said to come from the deaths of over 3000 people whose only offense was to be in a building that was a symbol of American economic strength, it is that on one day a year, we can put aside politics and just be Americans, citizens of the United States of America, brothers and sisters in the spirit of this great country. For another 364 days a year we debate the meanings, the causes, and the appropriate reactions to the events of September 11, 2001. Today, we mourn together, and we remember together, and hopefully, we grow closer together.


















May God bless you, and keep you.

May God lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

Busy weekend!

I worked way too much this weekend, so I missed most of the fun. My wife's entire family came over for the long weekend! It was absolutely a packed house for those three days, though. We've got a 1300 square foot condo with three bedrooms, the master for us and one for each of the kids. Cherylle's parents slept in the spare bed in Caitlin's room, her youngest brother and his family all packed onto a queen-size inflatable bed in Evan's room, and her middle brother crashed on the couch downstairs.

While I was off spending 30 hours over two days in a small TV studio in South El Monte (not a particularly nice neighborhood!) with a very pleasant but slightly Jonestownian group who believed that vegetarianism was the path to saving the planet, while following a lady known as the Supreme Master, the rest of the family was out having fun. They drove down to the Northridge Fashion Plaza for a day of shopping, capped off with a night at the Wood Ranch Grill steakhouse (while I was eating vege-meats, mind you!) on Saturday, and then cruised to the local mall on Sunday finished off with a trip to Buca di Beppo. At least they brought home leftovers from there!

Anyway, since Caitlin is the reason for this blog, here are the updates on her. After waiting until she was a year old to cut her first tooth, she's now got three coming in at once! Both of her top teeth and one of her bottoms are all coming in at the same time. Obviously it's great to get them over with, but it's making for some cranky nights... Cherylle's poor dad is a very light sleeper, and Caitlin kept him up all night both nights!

We also rediscovered a toy we'd bought for Evan many years ago - a tripod table from Fisher Price designed to encourage standing play. It's got lots of noisy toys around the perimeter, and on one side it has a steering wheel with a gear shift lever that moves a series of alphabet pictures in the center, playing back the name and sound to match each picture. Caitlin loves it! It's exactly the right height for her to pull herself up and cruise around, and she has a blast playing with it, despite the fact that it barely works anymore!

I've got pics, but they're trapped on my phone... for some stupid reason, Samsung doesn't support Macs for sync, so I have to disassemble the phone, remove the micro-SD card, find the adapter to regular SD size, go upstairs and plug the printer into my laptop with the USB cable, and finally grab the pics. Realistically, it's just that I'm really lazy, and collapsed on the couch downstairs with the computer in my lap and a beer in my hand, trying to talk myself into going to sleep since tomorrow's my first day on the new job...

'till next time!