With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
October 06, 2009 - 10:59 p.m.
I've ha a long day. Let's see if I can think of things to write about.
I set my alarm for 4:50 AM and needed it to wake me up. I guess that isn't too surprising. I was up on my own at 4:00. I had the opposite of a lucid dream, one where you know where you are dreaming. I don't remember much of it. Just that I was with Christine Lavin in Central Park with two other singers and we were talking and they were all singing. Not much happened but I had dream heightened feeling of well-being. I woke up and found myself in my bed. My reaction was to close my arms and get back to Central Park. I wasn't thinking that I had to fall asleep again. I was thinking I had to stop looking at my room, and get back to Christine. If I hadn't had to go to the bathroom that might have worked but that got me out of bed and fully awake. When I got back to bed I did fall right back asleep and had a dream with a heightened sense of well-being. I don't remember anything about it, just the way I felt when the alarm woke me up.
I try to not tell you about my dreams but I do like talking about the way I experience them. I always hope that someone will recognize those experiences.
It was my first weekday at WFUV this pledge drive. As usual I was the first one there. I like that. It gives me a chance to log the phones on and set up each station. I added a new element to my setup. I disinfect each phone. That is my concession to the flu. I'm totally not germ phobic but this is a public health measure. Each new shift I gave the volunteers a wipe to clean his or her phone.
Too bad the phones were not put to much use. They've been averaging about 60% of each hour's goal. We made the goal one hour of the twelve that I was there.
I ate way too much. I had a sausage, egg, and cheese wrap for breakfast. Peanut Butter as a snack. An Italian cold cut sandwich for lunch, cream puffs as desert, and pulled pork and barbecued chicken for dinner. My theory is that calories eaten while standing don't count. Calories eaten while volunteering don't count. So calories eaten standing while volunteering count negative. The more you eat the more weight you lose.
I'm really good at deluding myself.
Despite the slow day I had lots of fun. Jim was there pretty much all day. Jill, Bob, and Jeffers were around in the morning. The middle shift was filled with newer friends, the only names sticking with me now are Joel, Gary, and Greg. Oh, Mike is a brand new friend I met this morning. I'm blanking on everyone else's name. They should not be offended. You know how bad I am with names. Oh I remember another one, Kathleen. Hey I'm getting better.
In the late afternoon Howard and Lori not LORi got there. I love playing with my friends.
I left some notes on redesigning the pledge form today. I really enjoy doing things like that. I like setting up systems. I like designing things to avoid situations that lead to mistakes. That's an advantage to being an idiot. You learn to plan things out to make them idiot proof. It's an important rule, no matter what you are doing. It's something I try to teach my students. I'll give one example from taking pledges. When I train people, I teach them to do everything in order and not jump around the form. Many volunteers wait to fill out what premiums the caller wants till after they are finished with the phone call. You can guess what happens, they sometimes forget and they sometimes fill in the wrong one. I sometimes catch it. I sometimes don't. Every drive we get calls from people that never got their premiums from the last drive. Some of those are because people forgot to fill them in. It's a mistake that only occurs if you let it. The best way to deal with mistakes to minimize the opportunities to make them.
I was nervous about parking when I got home. Tomorrow there is no parking on one side of the street because of alternate side. To make things worse they are repaving Main Street, where I usually park. I wasn't sure if I'd find a spot within walking distance. It wasn't that bad at all. I found a spot about a quarter mile away. I'm parked legally till I need to use the car on Thursday morning. I'm planning on moving it when I get home from school tomorrow. If there are spots available I'll fill up with gas and park it by my house. They should be finished with the paving by then so there will be plenty of spots on Main St. I'll be long gone by 6 AM on Thursday when they start again. I'll be back volunteering at FUV. There are advantages to getting up so early.
One Bitchin' Babe - October 12, 2009
How to Get to Carnegie Hall - October 11, 2009
Reading the Runa - October 11, 2009
I'm a Renaissance Man - October 10, 2009
Shotgun! - October 07, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile October 06, 2009
