Miscellaneous, Random, Etc., and So On

First off, my prayers are with you if you live in Southern California anywhere—most likely, you've been evacuated to somewhere else. By God's grace, no fires have threatened us as of yet, but we have several relatives who are in different digs this evening. The wind has been demonic today, which makes for really great outdoor fun but also massive and horrifying fire danger.

Onward and upward. My dear sister over at You Must Be Kidding... posted about what I avoided last time: the death of our grandfather. It wasn't so much an issue of my being too upset to post (as she notes there, he was a believer—this is a temporary separation, as he has scaled the walls of the kingdom and awaits our joining him in our true home); it was just too much for me to post. The experience (which she recounts much more wonderfully than I could) was just somewhat surreal. So many clichés were tossed around, and yet I think I now know why we still rely on them in difficult times. I think this was the first death I can remember at which phrases like, "He's better off now," and, "He's gone home," and, "It's better this way," didn't feel like hollow attempts to comfort ourselves. I don't know if I was just hanging on to a lot of my childhood perceptions (it has been a very long time since someone close to me has passed), but those ideas rang true. I don't know what those who don't have the hope of Christ see in such phraseology. Perhaps, for them, they are simply platitudes meant to console a grief that cannot be assuaged otherwise. I like knowing that they are stone truth.

Meanwhile, for those of us still here in the world, mired in the earthly, everyday things continue to eat at us. Sometimes I wonder if we aren't so bound by the cords of mundanity that we are missing a much more thrilling call. I suppose our best hope is to pray to be open to the larger, more wonderful things of God and pray to live in and for those things. I want the adventure God offers, but I'm always stuck doing the dishes.

On that front, I've been doing some reading lately, as reflected in the sidebar over there. I read Harry Potter and the Seventh Harry Potter Book for an upcoming book discussion at school. (I need the professional development hours.) It was better than I had feared but still not high on my list. I likened Rowling to Stephen King in that: she can put together a plot and keep you interested in the outcome; the pacing is generally sound and the read goes quickly. But boy, does she have some annoying habits when it comes to description, inner thoughts, and a tin ear for dialogue (except for some quite funny bits with Fred and George, the Weasely twins, actually; she should try comedy at some point). So now I don't have to read the first six books, I guess, since I already know how it ends up (though it would be handy to know some of the approximately 7,436,772 references to previous events made throughout book 7).

A much more satisfying read came from Max Brook's World War Z. If you've ever seen the rather amusing The Zombie Survival Guide, you may have a sense of his tongue-in-cheek realism. WWZ gives a much deeper picture of what it would actually be like were the dead to rise and a pretty accurate depiction of what steps would have to be taken to ensure our survival. (I, for one, would not like to have to be on one of the sweep teams sent to colder regions each spring to wipe out those zombies who were frozen during the winter and were beginning to thaw...) The book is set up in a verité style as a series of interviews with survivors from a worldwide zombie uprising. I was a bit bitter, as this is the kind of book I think I could do ferociously well but didn't think of before someone else got to it. So many books out there are like that.

Between that and watching the excellent 28 Weeks Later, I feel like I should launch into my sermon about the use of the zombie trope in modern storytelling and the inherent lack of suspense almost all horror movies have for the thinking Christian viewer, but that's a diatribe best saved for another time.

So no one has yet come forward with any good trail name for me, or a vote about where to put my hiking journal once I become a card-carrying long-distance hiker. However, since I know you are all wondering what delightful thing you should get me for Christmas this year, I share my secret greedy shame: I have a registry over at REI's gift registry. (My number is GR1603873, in case that helps.) I'm not really looking for people to buy me these things (though I wouldn't be so ungentlemanly as to say no), but I was tired of figuring out the gear I wanted and then forgetting a week later and going through 900 backpacks again—this keeps the list of the stuff I like accessible. I'm working on moving as close to ultralight as I can get without actually becoming a fanatic on the subject; I certainly have enough gear to get along with now, but with all that fancy stuff listed there, I could get down well below 30 pounds, and if I'm going to seriously do any long-distance hiking—and the long-dreamt-of PCT—I'll need that airy lightness. Our projected date when I can actually do that with the boys in tow is 2017, but the registry doesn't let you go so far into the misty future, so 2011 is what's listed now. Of course, I just read the journal of a man and his 12-year-old son who completed the whole shebang this year, so maybe 2012...

There's more, but no time for it. As always, more updates equal less substance. So much time, so little to do. Wait. Scratch that. Reverse it. Thank you.