Clear Lake vacation rentals

yep, i'm done...

I'd like to thank everyone for the nice comments and ask you to pray f

I lived my dream of living in a lake front home on my visit to Clear Lake at Lake County. Some of the Clear Lake vacation rentals have a breathtaking view of the Clear Lake, which lies at the foot of Mount Konocti, an inactive and pictorial volcano. While the senior members in our family were content with the serene and calm atmosphere of the place, we had a wonderful time indulging in activities like skiing, boating and parasailing. The most exciting was wine testing competition at a local winery.

During our visit to Newport, we stayed at one of the famed vacation rentals Newport, which were located close to the historic Nye Beach Overlay District. There are many types of rental homes, including posh condominiums, with all luxuries. Our luxury home was also modern and had all the amenities for a comfortable stay. We hired our own car to go around the city, as our vacation home also had the facility of parking for guest vehicles.

We stayed at one of the Central Vermont vacation rentals to enjoy skiing at the world-class cross-country and downhill ski areas. The unique blend of the beauty of Vermont and the presence of ski areas attracts tourists to this place during winter season. We got a chance to ski at Killington and Stowe. Our fun-filled days wound up in our cozy Central Vermont vacation rental, which had all the comforts one can possibly think of.

or me as I pray for you.

Contact: chrysostom407 [at] yahoo [dot] com.

checking out...

I won't be posting anything until I'm through with finals, about three weeks from now. Since I haven't had time to figure out how to install the anti-spam stuff, I will be having to check in to delete spam. argh.

UPDATE: It may be that I abandon blogging altogether. Thomas once said that the destroying of blogs was like the destroying of one's poetry and I do know exactly what he means (I don't, however, have any immediate plans for deleting the blog; I have a delusion there's something here I may want to keep one day). At some point today, right in between watching The Black Stallion Returns with my three year old (he loves horses, anything with horses--or dinosaurs) and providing the requested critique of my wife's afternoon painting (a portrait of her sister--wonderful colors, as usual; she's going to be a great painter), my desire to discuss or comment on things religious flew out the garage door (my wife paints in the garage and, well, the door was open so there it went) and I don't know if it's coming back.

I'm not moping that it's all been a waste of time or anything, since I've been told that my words have been beneficial to at least one person. I suppose that's a good thing.

But the less I knew, the more I wanted to discuss it, and the more I learn, the less I feel I know and the less I want to discuss it. I have a wife, a three year old son, three classical languages and some self-study for the OCA's Late Vocations Program that I'm (theoretically) participating in. I should think that's busy enough. Which is to say that after a week with no message boards, I'm wondering what I'm doing sitting here in front of this computer at all.

I kept telling myself that this was my little entertainment that I did in lieu of TV or something, but not logging on this morning, I not only got my two and a half hours of Greek done, but read some Phaedo and actually wrote (with, like, a pen!) in a journal about things, just things. I haven't written creatively in years and, somehow, I believe the internet to be at fault (and how much has writing "conversationally" destroyed my ability to write?).

So, I may be back, I may not be (the four of you all have my email, so I'm not worried about losing touch with anyone). I'll leave you with some ee cummings. Maybe you can figure it out; I think I have, but given that it's ee, I probably have no clue:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

miles to go before we sleep...

"In 1985 the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese started the mission center. In 1987 Ritsi became its second missionary. In 1994 the Standing Conference of Canonical [hey, where'd that extra C come from?] Orthodox Bishops in the Americas adopted it as a pan-Orthodox project. It has a modest $1 million annual budget. But during four years under Ritsi, full-time missionaries have more than tripled from six to 21 and the short-term volunteers from 50 to 150 per year. The goal is 100 full-time missionaries by 2010. By comparison, while there are generally believed to be just over 2 million Orthodox in the United States, the Assemblies of God with about 2.5 million members send 1,800 missionaries overseas."

Orthodox churches reviving missionary tradition around the world

This doesn't bode well for the "we're basically an immigrant church; give us a break" argument, which I often use myself. Heck, the AoG barely existed 100 years ago....

I have an acquaintance down in San Anselmo named john burnett, who's all excited to go to Uganda through the ocmc to help the tragically impoverished Orthodox schools there (which function as regular schools; they're "supported" by the state, since the state doesn't run it's own schools in these villages). It's a mess over there and John has not only the talent, but the zeal to help (if you'd seen the slides I saw, you'd know what I mean; we should thank him for going, since most of us wouldn't want to). If you have a mind to throw a few bucks toward an Orthodox brother helping Orthodox brethren far less fixed for, like, say, food, than we are, John's a good place to send some cash that will really do some good. Or just send the OCMC a fiver every once in a while. They're doing good things.

Also, John blogged about his exploratory trip to Uganda last summer. Well worth checking out; kind of like the slide show I saw.

+news article link via orthodoxy today

it's istanbul (not constantinople)

“This disrupts the canonical order and the respect due to the Mother Church," the announcement said, and urged Greek bishops not to go ahead with the election.

:rolleyes. Whatever. For some reason, the only word that pops to mind is "hubris."

Patriarch brings out his big stick

Church crisis deepens after surprise elections of 'New lands' metropolitans

The EP is actually threatening to break communion with the Church of Greece over this which, I suspect, will simply make him look like an impotent little tyrant in the eyes of most people.

Karl made me feel like griping. But now I'm irritated, so I think I'm going to go back and look at some more paintings by Georgian kids...

Hat tip to fr hans for the links.

the tblisi (georgia) children's art gallery

I love that. More can be viewed here. Apparently, Met Herman (OCA) just got back from an official trip to Georgia. My wife has family from there and my son's godfather's wife is Georgian. Hence, my interest in things Georgian. Even kids' paintings.

UPDATE: link fixed.

as of today, my wife can now sing...

...along with Chrissie Hynde: "I've got a kid, I'm thirty-three baby."

I, however, think she's still the cat she used to be. We've got Justin-sitting lined up and are looking forward to a nice dinner in Bodega Bay this evening. Mmmm, calamari....

i'm with david...

...who notes, "Just the tabbed browsing functionality [of Mozilla/Netscape] makes it worth switching [from Internet Exploder]." I have all the blogs I go to in one bookmark folder; all you do is click Open in Tabs and every one of them opens within one browser window with tabs, kind of like, if you're familiar with Excel, multiple sheets within the same workbook. Much easier than opening 15 or 20 bookmarks individually and it makes blogreading as easy, if not easier, than following threads on a discussion board. Plus, Mozilla has a built-in pop up blocker and google search so you don't need to download someone's toolbar.

It can be downloaded for free here. You have your choice between the integrated browswer/email combination and the Firefox browser with the separate Thunderbird email client. Which means that one can be freed of the nightmare that is Outlook as well.

If I were a bit more code saavy, I'd download the Linux operating system and be done with Microsoft altogether.

interesting genesis factoid...

Apparently, the idea that Genesis is some kind of "complilation" is not simply a product of modern scholarship. The differences I've noted (as well as many others I haven't gotten to yet) were observed as far back as the 11th century Jewish scholar Ibn Ezra and the 17th century Jewish philosopher Spinoza (and, apparently, it got him kicked out of the synagogue) in order to put forth the idea that the Pentateuch was not directly written by Moses.

I was under the impression that all this was new to the 19th century.

UPDATE: Here is an interesting article briefly summarizing some of the major historical points in the debate regarding authorship.