This entry may sound a bit like rambling but that's because there are no major events but a handful of minor ones.
Both boys are crawling pretty well now. They also do a fair job of pulling themselves up to a standing position, leaning against a nearby surface. For some reason they've been a bit cranky lately. I don't think it's teething. It may just be that their frustrated about a) not being able to walk, b) not being held often enough (they are twins , what are you going to do?), c) being tired of being indoors, or who knows?
We have a few plans for the weekend. Mr. Russell is having his annual autumn longest-night-of-the-year party and we're going to visit that for a while. Our parish is also having a haunted house that we may visit.
My cousin, Tom Luka, passed away early this week. He was only about a year older than me. It's the lack of age difference that makes this difficult to comprehend. In a way it reminds me of the death of some of my other cousins: Andrew, Dennis, and others. It's hard to picture someone your age dying. You don't associate death with youth. Like me, he had a wife and children. Please pray for their family.
I had a difficult question last night at RCIA. I didn't know quite how to answer it. These are candidates who've only been to a few classes but wanted to know, "what if I don't believe everything the Church teaches?" There's no easy answer to this. It's not true to say, "it doesn't matter". On the other hand you can't say, "then don't join". I did re-emphasize that many folks aren't against what the Catholic Church teaches as much as they are against what they think the Church teaches. If I were to judge the Church based on the likes of a 60 Minutes portrayal, I'd be out of the Church in a heartbeat. I emphasized that many of the positions take time to understand and look into. The positions aren't as simple as media portrays them. We've all been immersed for decades in pop culture, trite expressions ("choice", "don't impose your values", "rights", "tolerance"), and it takes time to really look into the teachings. I pray that they have the patience and that over the next several months we can express the teachings truthfully and charitably.
Tonight we had another step class with Joanne at the YMCA. As usual, she taught some pretty interesting and creative moves. By the time we came out, the boys were more than ready to go to bed for the evening. OK you little fuss-budgets. Hang in there and we'll get you home and into bed.
After many months of waiting, Mr. Russell finally got his new plates for his car, seen here . Late last year the state of New Hampshire decided to issue these moose plates with some of the proceeds going to conservation causes in the state. In Russell's usual sense of humor, he decided to do a pun on the ol' Rocky and Bullwinkle show by getting this plate. It's a takeoff on the famous Boris and Natasha line referring to "Moose and Squirrel".
While we're on the topic of Mr. Russell, he's had the past few months off (ahem). This gave him plenty of time to drive his new BMW Z3 and explore the state during one of it's most pleasant times of year. You can see some of his pictures here. There is no shortage of beautiful sites to see here in New Hampshire and he was able to both see them and have a great time getting there.
Last night's RCIA meeting ran late. The coordinator gave us a little insight into what the diocese is encouraging for instruction, which concerned many of us. For the past several years we've had a fairly decent program. It starts in September and goes through till Easter. It starts with foundational material and builds on it until Easter Vigil when the candidates receive Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Eucharist. The proposal is that the topics be based on the readings at Sunday's Mass. They desire that the classes be year-round and that individual candidates should be able to start at any time of the year. To most of us it just seems too unstructured, too chaotic to be manageable. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it.
In case you hadn't heard, today is the official release day of Microsoft Windows XP. Finally Microsoft is providing an operating system for ordinary consumers (unlike Window NT or Windows 2000 which cost more than the home user is willing ot spend...) that is reasonably stable. Unfortunately in numerous ways, Microsoft is making a major lock-you-in, take-over-the-web power play. I don't think the average consumer will notice though. The things that made the Internet happen were open, non-proprietary standards. More and more the web is becoming a Microsoft web. If a web page renders correctly on Internet Explorer but not on another browser, the assumption is immediately, "what's wrong with your browser". No one thinks that perhaps Internet Explorer is going outside of the web standard lingua franca, HTML, with proprietary extensions. What made the internet take off is it's openness, its basis in standards. This allows the market to come up with several clever products based on these standards and levels the playing field for computer and software developers.
The most brazen example of this Microsoft power play comes today from their MSN website. There are several browsers that go to MSN that now end up giving their end users a blank screen with a message to get Internet Explorer. This is not the usual Internet Explorer "recommendation" button. Their servers attempt to inquire what browser you are using. Their MSN servers show nothing if they don't approve of your browser. Tell me that they're not trying to lock the market into Internet Explorer. Is it their right to do so? Yes. But it's an example of their typical mode of operation. [update 10/26: Microsoft has recently stopped this tactic...] The only consolation is that we're currently in a down market with people's focus on the war and that many corporate IT managers are really peeved with Microsoft's recent practices. Windows XP will likely not have the explosion in demand that Windows95 had. Time will tell.
Lastly, I've signed us up for a subscription service at dotPhoto. Once you do that, prints are as cheap as $0.19 a piece for 4x6s, compared to $0.49 a piece at ShutterFly. I've been getting enough prints done online these past several months, I figured I'd better just sign up so as to save some money on it.
It's getting late now. Since I had a good workout this evening I'd better get some sleep now. The workouts usually make my body desire a good night's sleep. I'd better not deny it that opportunity...
