Reverend Ref +

A BIT OF EVERYTHING

The spiders have hatched. One of the "joys" of moving to a new place is discovering what kind of critters infest your particular corner of the world. For the most part, it's pretty normal here. Normal as in not many critters can kill you and most of the critters are of appropriate size. However, there have been a few incidents. The first came in mid-August. All of a sudden there were millions of itty-bitty flying things. They didn't bite, they didn't sting, it seemed their only purpose in life is to serve as food for larger critters. Kind of like flying plankton. But there were so many of these things that you needed to keep your mouth closed -- some type of eye protection was also helpful. But I digress.

The current spate of critters is the eight-legged variety. Not millions, but lots. Apparently it is hatching season, and these things are everywhere. I walked through a web going into our living room and into my closet, into the sacristy and into my office. Killed a half dozen in my office so far. Maybe I'll make a spiderweb thingy to notch my kills on since I'm out in the West.

And speaking of killing things, my daughter, the self-proclaimed non-nature city girl, is taking bow lessons. She wants to learn to shoot, and she wants to go hunting next season. I don't have a problem with that, I just find it funny. Or maybe it's ironic, I sometimes get funny and ironic mixed up. She's already figured out where she wants to display the buck's head in the house.

Okay, besides the bugs and the very slim possibility that I'll have an animal head in my house this time next year, I really do love it here. It's great to be back west, in a time zone that's not too far out of sync from friends and family, surrounded by mountains (which are especially beautiful with their new snow against the blue sky). It would be nice to be closer to some things, like big grocery stores, a movie theater, a pizza delivery place. But it does have its charms. Like remembering on Monday that the treasurer wasn't at church on Sunday and going into the church building to pull the offering out of the collection plates.

And finally, I'm working on my ordo for the ordination service. Okay, let me just say that that is driving me nuts. Note to anyone in seminary -- Start your ordo NOW and save it to disk (in case you have to change a name or something). I should've been working on it over the summer, but it escaped my mind until I actually had to get ready for the service. I'm taking Thursday off -- it's Veteran's Day -- and hopefully I'll get it finished then. Then it's up to Butte to have a printer make it look pretty. After that, I need to mail out something like 150 invitations to people in both dioceses. Maybe I'll just mail a select few to my home diocese since the possibility of people coming over from are about as good as having a dead animal head in my entryway.