Long time, no blog I've been enjoying a few blog-free days. Some of the time spent away from this weblog was deliberate, but there were a couple of times the past few days that I wanted to blog but didn't seem to have the time.
Yesterday, I took the day off, and the wife and I went antiquing together. We haven't done that in ages. We used to visit antique shops and flea markets routinely in the summertime -- she, the serious bargain-hunter among us, looking for dishes and glassware, me sorting aimlessly through the bricolage of pop culture, marveling at the junk and treasures people put a price on. I would find an occasional book, but that was about all I would spend money on. Dy, meanwhile, would find pieces of glassware and tableware she had been wanting.
The only cool thing I found yesterday was a Gene Simmons KISS doll, complete with bloody axe bass guitar. But the price tag was $15, firm. So I passed on it.
Dyann didn't find anything worth buying, either. But we had fun looking.
Last night, we went to the local equity theater's production of Oliver. A co-worker's daughter plays the title role. It was fun, too.
Now reading... A new book by Donald Miller. It's called Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. I just started it yesterday and so far it's an enjoyable read. This is the first of his books I've read. Christianity Today described Miller's writing as something like "Anne Lamott with testosterone," but I disagree. Miller has his own voice, and perhaps he's GenX's answer to the boomer Lamott. Here's a snippet from early in the book:
Everybody wants to be fancy and new. Nobody wants to be themselves. I mean, maybe people want to be themselves, but they want to be different, with different clothes or shorter hair or less fat. It's a fact. If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn't want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him.
All those other books in the column to your left, I've already read. Right now I'm focusing on Miller's book, and picking up O'Conner's book for bits and pieces of inspiration and reminders. I should probably read it more thoroughly, though. I could use the help.
Comments code fixed (I hope) Didn't realize, until I received an email from Debi, that my comments code was broken due to Blogger's recent upgrade. I discovered that many of you were leaving posts on my comments form, even though the YACCS comment counter wasn't working. Then I read a note from Spud who informed me I needed to update my comments code. Thanks for throwing a clueless blogger a bone. And thanks to all who have posted comments in recent days, even though they went unnoticed by me until today.
Simon Dawes, 
