Theatre Under the Stars

Yesterday was a very long day for me.  It started at about 6am and didn’t end until the wee hours this morning.  After work, I came home and we had to immediately leave again for a trip out to Abbotsford.

It is so beautiful out there.  If it wouldn’t more than double my commuting time, I would consider moving out there.  If I found the right place, I still might.  It reminds me of the island where I grew up, except without the need for a ferry ride to get to downtown Vancouver.

We were finalizing the purchase of DW’s new car.  It’s a ‘95 Mazda something.  It’s indigo, and pretty

It still needs a bit of work and a run through aircare, so we won’t actually ‘have’ it until mid this week, I think.  It will be so great to have two vehicles again.  I am very excited.

We also learned through visiting with the friends we are buying the car from, that my car’s conniption fits on long drives may just be a faulty O2 sensor.  This would be SO very awesome, since I think that is something that I can replace myself.  May head out to the auto-wrecker this week to see how much a new one will cost me – I got a great deal on my new radiator there, so they are my new best car buddies.

The friend we are buying the car from is running away to join the circus.  Literally.  I think that this is just beyond cool.  I’ve never known anyone with career goals that awesome before.

We found out that he was also starring in the Theatre Under the Stars presentation of ‘A Thoroughly Modern Millie’.  He’s the flasher, among other things

He got us tickets to last night’s show, and after some visiting and paperwork, we headed back into town to see the play.  Driving from Abbotsford to Stanley Park is a REALLY long drive.  Not so long as the drives you have when you live on the island, but I am not used to that anymore.

With traffic and all that jazz, we got there just at 8pm when they were starting.  It was a fantastic show.  We found out that DW had never been to a play before, so it was super exciting for him.  And I had never been to one where I knew one of the actors.

They all did a really great job, and the show itself is hilarious.  I highly recommend that everyone who can get out to Stanley Park this summer go and see it.  A Thoroughly Modern Millie runs alternating nights with Annie until August 22nd – so you still have time!!

Another pretty cool feature of the night was the fireflies.  We don’t usually have a lot of fireflies around here, so they kind of stole the show a bit.  You could see people in the audience pointing at them and whispering to their neighbours.

DW thought at first that bugs were exploding midair – which, admittedly, would have been a lot cooler.  After a really great time, we finally headed home.  As we were leaving the parking lot, we both realized that neither of us had eaten all day and were starving.

I let DW drive home (shocking, I know, but I wanted to sleep, so I made an exception and let him drive my car).  He decided that he wanted a cheeseburger, and we went through the McDonalds drive-thru.

This was a bad idea on many levels.  First, there really isn’t much of anything on the McDeath menu that I can eat, not a lot that anyone *should* be eating, and to make it all that much more interesting, we were stuck there for a half hour.  They had one guy working in the restaurant.  One.  All alone.  Trying to man the drive-thru and cook.  Alone.

Did I mention how McDonalds was a *bad* idea? Luckily, the other people stuck in the drive-thru with us were pretty awesome, so passing the time was actually a lot of fun.  We played horn songs.

I ended up with one of their Angus burgers with ‘extra lettuce’ since I knew that I wouldn’t be able to eat the bun.  DW’s cheeseburgers were so shiny you could see your reflection in them.  Needless to say, we both felt a little sick afterwards (even with my makeshift lettuce wrapping).

Don’t think I will be making that mistake again.  Ick!

After midnight, we finally hit home, and crashed.  I don’t really remember climbing up the stairs.  It was a long day, but a pretty awesome one all around, I think.

AC

 

Settling In

We are all moved in and have started the unpacking process – and I have no furniture!  I knew that I would need to pick up some pieces when we moved.  A one bedroom apartment into a three bedroom town house was going to leave some holes.  But I wasn’t expecting to have whole rooms bare.

I don’t even have a dining room table.  I didn’t have a dining room before.  Luckily, my taste in furniture tends to run pretty retro, so I am hoping to save a few bucks by stalking the local Sally Ann.  My brother also has a friend who’s uncle might be looking for carpentry work, so I might also get my bed built for less than I was expecting to pay.

I am hoping to have some of the house put together in time for a house-warming party that I am planning to coincide with the Equinox.

Once things have found their natural routine, I am going to get back to work on my photos.  I have quite the backlog of post production to get through.  I haven’t even finished with my pictures from Mexico yet.

I don’t spend a whole lot of time online any more.  I have been reading LJ the past couple of days, but I don’t think I will get caught up any time soon.

I think that leaving the internet might be a part of my moving away from the Pagan community as a whole.  I am finding myself less and less interested in what other Pagans do.

I don’t really care about many of the issues and outrages that I used to. I caught a post on Jet’s LJ about P/W, and I went over there to take a look.  I couldn’t bring myself to even open one thread.  I just didn’t want to go around in the same circles again.  The thought of watching the same old trolls flinging the same old muck holds no appeal for me.

My spiritual dry spell has been going on for several months now.  I still do a bit of divining, but that is really about it.  My life has moved to a more earthy phase, I think – home, career, family, physical fitness, etc.  Not a lot of room for much else.

I think that it’s ok, though.  I spent years trying to chase down who I was and what I believe.  Now it’s time to build the life I want to live.

Anyway, I am still alive, and occasionally watching from the sidelines.

–PT

 

The Dark of the Year

The changes that have been plaguing me these past months have lead me to the realization that the Dark of the Year is the Witch’s time.

In the spring I tend to feel more Pagan – more daughter of the Earth, servant of the gods, joyous dancer to the music of life.

In the autumn and winter I feel like the evil old Witch in all our well loved faery tales – the baleful wind that blows chaos and change through the village, the darkness that forces the hero to reach for his potential, the temptation offered by the devil.

The dark of the year is the time for work.  It is the time for divination and spellwork and wrestling with demons.  Celebration is on hold while the world sleeps it’s way towards Yule.

At this time of the year I always feel a bit less religious, a bit less Pagan.  But this year is somewhat different for me because it change from Earth Child to Witch happened so much earlier that it leaves me wondering if I ever turned away from the Dark Witch of last winter at all.

I look back at my posts from the beginning of the year and I see myself pulling away.  I am pulling away from friends, from projects, from plans, from a nice, safe future.  I remember how horrid it was to claw at the plans for a stable future as they slipped away, but I knew enough to know not to follow them.  Some things need to die.  The plans needed to pass so that I could be in a position to accept this new place – this new path where nothing is planned beyond the next month.

The fog is still thick enough to blur my view beyond December.  Maybe it still needs to be lest I fall into old habits.

At this point, I’m not even sure what it means to be non-religious.  I still believe all the same things I used to believe.  I still see my gods more as ancestors than gods.  I still don’t know that that matters.

Maybe I am not so much non-religous as non-political or just not interested in my community anymore.  I don’t even read the news articles anymore.  I can’t really bring myself to care about the latest protest, the latest fight, the latest outrage.

The new year will bring some interesting developments, I think.  We’ll see if the cards are willing to shed any light.

–PT

 

Epiphanies and Discoveries

So, a minor epiphany after a much cranky LJ post of a couple of days ago, came as I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep. It was kind of one of those *poof* “Oooohhhh, I get it” kind of moments.

But first, a little background – there are a lot of parts of Wiccan theology that I don’t tend to agree with. Much of it, in fact, I have really just discarded over the years because it didn’t fit at all in my world view. Over the years, I have heard people describe what writings such as the Wiccan Rede mean to them, and I have always felt mildly envious that I just didn’t see what they saw in it.

What I saw was really just a big PITA waiting to happen. The majority of people don’t really understand it and try to invoke it as some sort of High Law for Witches. Academically, I can see the value of how ‘An it harm none, do what ye will’ can be very freeing for people who have lived good portions of their lives under the yoke of a god who tends to take offense at a lot of rather trivial things.

I grew up in a very liberal family, and the ones who were more hardcore were people I just generally avoided because they were a serious buzz-kill for a young and flighty Aquarian.

In the end, I wrote off the Rede as more trouble than it was worth. Until the moment that I realized that it can work both ways. I am sure that most of you have noticed that I tend to be more forgiving of newbies than I was in previous years (I credit this attitude to spending more time working on my own path, and less time caring whether someone else looks silly in front of a TV camera). My feelings these days can be summed up in eight little words:

“If they aren’t hurting anyone, leave it alone.”

The fact that someone may have a silly or even stupid idea does not obligate me to set them straight. Let them think that the world is made of fluffy kittens and unicorns. Let them believe that they are the reincarnation of a fictional character or that they are actually aliens in disguise.

If I can live in a world of Jedis, Trekkies, Plushies, conspiracy nuts, Crystal children, Otakukin and any number of other weird personality quirks, then I can live in a world with Fluffy Bunnies in it, too. In the grand scheme of things, their offenses are really rather mild.

Not to say that I mean to keep my opinions to myself when asked, but if no one is asking, I can just as easily roll my eyes and go on about my business. And in the last four years, one thing I have learned is that no amount of denouncing them is going to change how the mainstream public views Pagans and Witches. Apparently, that takes pizza.

Now, on to the discovery part of this post. I have recently been feeling poked and otherwise prodded to get my altar finished and to get some statuary for it. I have been looking for a nice modern interpretation of Aphrodite (more on that later), when I found a couple of the most gorgeous new sculptures I have seen in a long time.

Neil Sims is an up and coming artist and sculptor from the UK. His busts of the Horned God and the Earth Goddess have been hitting some online shops in recent months (Others can be found HERE). They are really gorgeous, but obviously quite pricey as well (and then shipping from the UK – ouch!)

Some random surfing over the weekend showed me that he draws and paints too. My only sadness is that he doesn’t have a website of his own where you can order prints and see his whole collection.

Some good news on the pricing front of the busts is that the fantasy modelling community got a hold of him before we did. You can order the busts and paint them yourself for about half the cost of buying them bronzed. *as the artist in me squeals with delight* About the only part of those silly fantasy war games that WD used to play that I actually liked, was the modelling. I love painting and altering models!

Now if I can just find something suitable for Aphrodite, then I’ll be set – though, I have an inkling that I may end up having to make something for her as well.

That’s all from me for now.