Scattered Sunday

I'm trying to blog every day, but today has been a rather scattered day with no clear focus.

• I wore my prayer shawl to church. It was made for me when OHP went to Baghdad for a few months back in 2004. He insisted then, and still does, that he was in no danger, and indeed was in the then-fairly-safe Green Zone nearly every moment. Still, the shawl was a comfort. It was made by a dear lady at Up the Hill UMC where I worked then -- she was one of those pillars of the church who did everything from outside painting to quilting to singing in the choir. Not long afterward she became a shawl recipient herself when she developed an aggressive brain tumor, and we lost her about the time we moved to Maine. So this shawl has a lot of memories attached.
• Senior Pastor (who will be gone in 2 weeks, not by his choice) wore a lovely spangly white stole today and preached a good clear sermon on baptism with no warm-up jokes.
• Brother #1 is improving, but now it looks likely he will remain in Big Hospital for a couple more days. Maybe just as well as we are expecting another big snow and windstorm tomorrow.
• Local genealogical society met this afternoon and we had a rousing discussion about various uses of the computer for genealogy purposes. There was also an article on genealogy in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine, which pointed me to a 2001 article in the New Yorker, which I can read since I have the complete New Yorker (up through April 2007 now) on DVD. We also had several visitors, which was nice.
• Both Cordeliaknits and Sisterknits were much involved in worship at their respective churches today -- Cordeliaknits preached at Professors at Prayer UCC and Sisterknits was the liturgist at our old church in City of Lakes. Evidently both efforts went very well. I'm very happy at the good reports I'm hearing of the new minister at our old church, and pleased at the good sense of the search committee in choosing a young minister (under 30 I think).
• Four boxes of Christmas ornaments are photographed, the lights are off the tree, and it only needs a few moments of OHP and me together to get the tree out to the curb, where we hope the town will pick it up. (Otherwise he'll have to take it back whence it came, our woods, or perhaps to the town landfill set aside for leaves, brush etc.)
• And that's all I can think of at the moment.