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captainsblogWhen Eleanor and I joke about talking to Emily in utero about making sure she got the right genes from the right drawers- Daddy verbal, Mommy spacial, we'd chant- we were so not kidding. Especially the "Mommy Spacial" part. I swear, I inherited my own mother's completely backward set of natural inclinations, and it manifests itself in so many stupid ways.
Here's the latest. Both generations of my iPhone, along with various random headphoned devices (most recently the AM radio I'm relegated to for listening to Bills games- God knows why), came with what are called "in-ear headphones."
That kind, as opposed to the deeper-diver earbuds that caused me such marvelous fun earlier in this year-
The bigger kind certainly seemed a lot less dangerous for unsafe-at-any-speed me, but for years, I've been stymied on how to get the damn things to stay in. Finally, yesterday, I let my determination get the better of me.
In the past couple of weeks, I've blown through two new pairs of the earbud type. One died a slow death, with one strand getting stuck in my driver's side door while the other one was in my left ear (toldya I was talented), and it was shot by the end of the journey, but I usually have only one side in anyway. Then a strand got dropped, stepped on and separated from the assembly, heading into the gym a few days ago. That, of course, would be the half that worked.
I'd bought a replacement for that set- vowing to keep it for gym and car use only- and stupidly took them with me on the Trot on Thanksgiving morning, where, never used, they fell to the ground, joining the 5-mile parade of timing chips, caps, gloves and even underwear (did not want to know) I saw in the road. So I am even more determined now NOT to replace that pair- especially because I have at least two perfectly good in-ear-ers.
So I googled the how-to, which I totally could not intuit with my non-lizard brain. You pull up on the top of your ear, and the hole expands. Insert the circle and let go. It fell a few times during a windy-turny fish tank cleaning, but mostly, it woiks.
----
Then, this morning, the other side of the brain got a workout.
There's a ton of church shit I have to turn in this week. Um, really, last week, but I was writing It Which Must Not Be Named and I didn't get to them. This morning, I turned to one of them- an annual report on my activities as a Certified Lay Speaker. There's a paper copy of the form here, but I'm a Fifty-First Century Kind of Exhorter, so I figured I'd fill it out online. It turned up pretty quickly on the conference website- but not before reading a lovely little bit of other news I'll get to in a minute. The form opened, the lines and ticky boxes were there for the filling, the form was plainly one generated as .pdf, not scanned, so I should be able to fill it, right?
No way, José Maria y Jesus. The handtool taunted me. As with yesterday's experience, though, I was determined not to be taken down by stupid, and this time, Adobe Reader help itself got me to fill that unfillable form.
If you've got Version 10 of Adobe Reader, there's a "sign" option in the upper right. I've never used it, since electronic signatures have never been standardized in U.S. legal business. But that same function allows you to overtype anywhere on the form you want. So I did. Plus, it not only lets you print the document, but it saves it with whatever you changed. So go me.
I turned it in this morning, have completed the Spreadsheet from Hell, and I am now mostly done with those annoyances until a marathon session on Thursday night.
----
ETA. Right. That other thing I forgot.
Rooting round for the form, I found an announcement on the Lay Speaker page. Rather, the Lay Servant page. We've been renamed. The church wants to get the emphasis off lay members lunging for the pulpit and into more flexible ranges of ministries. But that's not the thing.
This is.
I have some exciting news to share with each of you and I need your help sharing it throughout your Districts and with your Laity.
After meeting with the District Directors of Lay Servant Ministries, we have decided that the best way we can ensure that all Laity who have been faithful and dedicated to their ministry continue their work through LSM is to provide them with a year of “Jubilee.”
We know that District borders have changed and records of classes and educational opportunities have been lost, damaged, misplaced, or destroyed. Knowing that these unfortunate realities are not the fault or the responsibility of our Laity LSM members, we want to offer them all an opportunity to be re-instated as a Lay Servant (formally Lay Speaker) of the UNY Conference.
The “Year of Jubilee” begins immediately and will last until the end of 2013 or the end of your District’s 2013 Church Conference scheduling (realizing that it may trickle into January 2014 in order to wrap up all of the individual conferences).
During this time period, all Laity that have previously taken LSM courses and became either Local or Advance certified LSM members can and will be reinstated per their request. It will be done on a full honor system needing no proof beyond your word.
How does that play out in a situation such as, say, mine? Where I completed the requirements in the mid 1970s, became lapsed enough to take Catholic communion, finally felt Called to re-enter that corner of the church, and had to take close to 20 hours of courses, do two full practice sermons, and fill out mind-numbing annual reports to get re-certified.
Had I just sat on my butt, I could've walked in next month, put a checker on the altar, shouted "Crown me!" and I'd be back in without any of that.
The saddest thing is? Even with this, probably nobody other than me ever would have taken advantage of it, anyway:P
Here's the latest. Both generations of my iPhone, along with various random headphoned devices (most recently the AM radio I'm relegated to for listening to Bills games- God knows why), came with what are called "in-ear headphones."
That kind, as opposed to the deeper-diver earbuds that caused me such marvelous fun earlier in this year-
The bigger kind certainly seemed a lot less dangerous for unsafe-at-any-speed me, but for years, I've been stymied on how to get the damn things to stay in. Finally, yesterday, I let my determination get the better of me.
In the past couple of weeks, I've blown through two new pairs of the earbud type. One died a slow death, with one strand getting stuck in my driver's side door while the other one was in my left ear (toldya I was talented), and it was shot by the end of the journey, but I usually have only one side in anyway. Then a strand got dropped, stepped on and separated from the assembly, heading into the gym a few days ago. That, of course, would be the half that worked.
I'd bought a replacement for that set- vowing to keep it for gym and car use only- and stupidly took them with me on the Trot on Thanksgiving morning, where, never used, they fell to the ground, joining the 5-mile parade of timing chips, caps, gloves and even underwear (did not want to know) I saw in the road. So I am even more determined now NOT to replace that pair- especially because I have at least two perfectly good in-ear-ers.
So I googled the how-to, which I totally could not intuit with my non-lizard brain. You pull up on the top of your ear, and the hole expands. Insert the circle and let go. It fell a few times during a windy-turny fish tank cleaning, but mostly, it woiks.
----
Then, this morning, the other side of the brain got a workout.
There's a ton of church shit I have to turn in this week. Um, really, last week, but I was writing It Which Must Not Be Named and I didn't get to them. This morning, I turned to one of them- an annual report on my activities as a Certified Lay Speaker. There's a paper copy of the form here, but I'm a Fifty-First Century Kind of Exhorter, so I figured I'd fill it out online. It turned up pretty quickly on the conference website- but not before reading a lovely little bit of other news I'll get to in a minute. The form opened, the lines and ticky boxes were there for the filling, the form was plainly one generated as .pdf, not scanned, so I should be able to fill it, right?
No way, José Maria y Jesus. The handtool taunted me. As with yesterday's experience, though, I was determined not to be taken down by stupid, and this time, Adobe Reader help itself got me to fill that unfillable form.
If you've got Version 10 of Adobe Reader, there's a "sign" option in the upper right. I've never used it, since electronic signatures have never been standardized in U.S. legal business. But that same function allows you to overtype anywhere on the form you want. So I did. Plus, it not only lets you print the document, but it saves it with whatever you changed. So go me.
I turned it in this morning, have completed the Spreadsheet from Hell, and I am now mostly done with those annoyances until a marathon session on Thursday night.
----
ETA. Right. That other thing I forgot.
Rooting round for the form, I found an announcement on the Lay Speaker page. Rather, the Lay Servant page. We've been renamed. The church wants to get the emphasis off lay members lunging for the pulpit and into more flexible ranges of ministries. But that's not the thing.
This is.
I have some exciting news to share with each of you and I need your help sharing it throughout your Districts and with your Laity.
After meeting with the District Directors of Lay Servant Ministries, we have decided that the best way we can ensure that all Laity who have been faithful and dedicated to their ministry continue their work through LSM is to provide them with a year of “Jubilee.”
We know that District borders have changed and records of classes and educational opportunities have been lost, damaged, misplaced, or destroyed. Knowing that these unfortunate realities are not the fault or the responsibility of our Laity LSM members, we want to offer them all an opportunity to be re-instated as a Lay Servant (formally Lay Speaker) of the UNY Conference.
The “Year of Jubilee” begins immediately and will last until the end of 2013 or the end of your District’s 2013 Church Conference scheduling (realizing that it may trickle into January 2014 in order to wrap up all of the individual conferences).
During this time period, all Laity that have previously taken LSM courses and became either Local or Advance certified LSM members can and will be reinstated per their request. It will be done on a full honor system needing no proof beyond your word.
How does that play out in a situation such as, say, mine? Where I completed the requirements in the mid 1970s, became lapsed enough to take Catholic communion, finally felt Called to re-enter that corner of the church, and had to take close to 20 hours of courses, do two full practice sermons, and fill out mind-numbing annual reports to get re-certified.
Had I just sat on my butt, I could've walked in next month, put a checker on the altar, shouted "Crown me!" and I'd be back in without any of that.
The saddest thing is? Even with this, probably nobody other than me ever would have taken advantage of it, anyway:P
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no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-07 01:24 am (UTC)