Vacationing at the... Monastery?

I get several daily newsletters, most of which get a very short skim over before going straight to the trash. Every once in awhile something will grab my attention, and every once in a long while I think it might be itneresting enough to someone else I figure I'll post about it. (Which by the number of my posts that derive from such articles, you might correctly deduce I get quite a large number of such daily mailings.)

This article
offers up monasteries as an alternative to youth hostels for a European vacation on a tight budget. Eileen Barish has put together several travel books on finding monasteries open to traveling visitors, regardless of religious background, with an average cost of $20 or 30 a night. Apparently Europeans have been vacationing in this manner for years, and I must admit I'm rather intrigued by the idea.

Wind Storm in Dallas

Hurrican Rita brought a nice wind storm up to Dallas; my dad snapped this photo this morning of a house down the street from where my parents live. Lost electricity last night, and the temperature went from 101 yesterday to 64 today.

Guess now's a good time to be thankful we had to cut down our big tree a few years back; tree limbs were down all over our neighborhood. Thankfully, doesn't appear anyone lost much more than this poor guy's truck.

Economics of Courtship

In this article The Dating Game: The Dangers of Cash-based Courtship, Anne Morse provides an interesting take on that ever present question of who should pay on dates. I had long held to the idea that "old-fashioned" dating meant the girl should let the guy pick up the tab when he insists, but couldn't help wondering what he gets for all his money. I've been told "the pleasure of her company" and such, but I should certainly hope the girl enjoys his company as well or that would be a sad state of affairs indeed.

In the olden days (think Jane Austen era), mothers would give men permission to call upon their daughters, and the courtship took place primarily under the parents' eyes, all at no cost to the gentleman. Furthermore, it was considered highly inappropriate for a girl to accept gifts from a man, as she would then be seen as "owing" him. Consider in Gone With the Wind when Rhett Butler offers Scarlett a hat she knows she should refuse, but decides to keep even if she must allow him to "take liberties". Or when Rhett informs her, "I am tempting you with bonnets and bangles and leading you into a pit. Always remember I never do anything without reason and I never give anything without expecting something in return. I always get paid."

I remember reading that in elementary school and wondering what the big deal was in accepting a gift from a guy, but having experienced the imbalance and sense of debt our so-called "old-fashioned" dating system creates in a relationship, I've since restructured my views on dating. Not that I believe any of the Christian gentlemen I know would entertain such thoughts as Scarlett's infamous beau, but there is something to be said for keeping money out of a relationship as much as possible.

So to any such gentlemen who've ever had a girl refuse to let them pay and wondered if the girl has fallen in with the droves of independent feminists, I'd like to offer up the alternative that perhaps she is merely holding to the more old-fashioned idea of courtship our great-great-grandparents enjoyed.

Email Overload

When I got into work this morning, I had 1280 (oh wait, make that 1282!) unread messages sitting in my inbox. Thankfully, 99% of them were due to a crashing process on a test machine from a topology that went awry. Unfortunately, every one of them had a different timestamp in the subject line so I couldn't just group by subject and bulk delete. That also means my test machines need to be dumped and rebuilt before I can get back to debugging my test code.

Then a new email pops up in my personal inbox after I'd just cleaned it out, and even though I know chances are it's spam or one of several news alerts I subscribe too, I still get excited that perhaps it'll be something interesting. Turns out it was an email telling me I posted a comment on my own blog. Ah well.

After a few months at Microsoft, I've had to turn off all Outlook email notifications; I find it impossible to concentrate on my code when there's a little icon down there reminding me that something is sitting in my inbox just waiting to be opened. In case anyone else has been losing the battle with the email checking urge, you can turn off these notifications under Tools -> Options -> Prefrences tab -> Email options -> Advanced Email Options -> When New Emails Arrive.

It's been awhile

..since my last post, but then so much has happened in the past month that I intended to blog about, I never had time to write it all up. So instead I decided to go for the semi-brief summary version for those faithful few who might favor my blog with a quick perusal. (Ok, I admit it, I just wanted to use the word perusal in there. It's almost as much fun as ellipses!)

In the past month I...
1. Flew back to Dallas for a week and a half vacation with my family. (Ok, technically this was back in the first part of August, but who's being technical?)

2. Moved to a condo up in Kirkland and had great fun exploring the waterfront area. That was my first move without having family around to help with everything, but thanks to the kindness of new friends willing to spend their evening carrying heavy boxes and furniture, I made it! I've decided I definitely need to get rid of about half my stuff before I move again though. :)

3. Spent a lovely Labor Day rowing on Lake Washington, trying my first sushi, and exploring Snoqualmie Falls.

4. Did the Puyallup Fair with Jenny & Jill (my original roommies up here), and had a great time trying scones and elephant ears and all the other great fair food of the Northwest.

5. Participated in my first dance performance, after spending several dozen hours practicing the vienneze waltz over the last coupla weeks. Performing is definitely not my thing; but it was a lot of fun still.

6. Attended a behind the scenes tour of the Seattle Opera; I've never yet seen an opera (ok, other than one on VHS my mom rented from the library years ago), but it was fascinating seeing the costuming area and hearing about the voice coaching and how they work with supers (the opera version of Hollywood extras) to fill in the minor characters.

6. My mom flew up from Dallas to see the performance and stay for a week; we've had a great time so far trying new foods and lots of mom-daughter talks. I've really enjoyed getting to introduce her to friends up here as well as seeing the church I've been attending up here, Crossroads Bible Church.

7. Which brings me to my last blurb for today - I've decided it's time to commit to a church family up here and went through the new members class last weekend. Still miss my church back in Richardson, but once again God has answered my prayers and given much more than I asked.

A rather lengthy post this has turned out to be, and yet still covers such a small fraction of what I would tell, but now at least I can return to posting on random bits of interest without feeling guilty for skipping all the in betweens. :)

Modern Magic

The weekly newsletter for the Exchange team usually includes a coupla just because items; today's issue features an Invisibility Cloak (though not quite so cool as Harry's) developed by the U of Tokyo.

Check out the video of this thing then read over the article and if you can explain to me how it works, you get 5 coolnitude points.