Rock is dead. Long live paper and scissors.

You need to click to enlarge. Pretty cool.

First, the important stuff. You'll need this for tomorrow night's Oscar party.
How to Tie a Bow Tie
Always happy to be of service.

Speaking of service, we went to one today. A memorial service for the mother of a lady who attended our church in Michigan. Wendy's parents had lived here in the Phoenix area (Chandler, way south of us), and Wendy has been here for weeks while her mother finished her battle with cancer. Her mom attended a Baptist church in a retirement community not unlike Sun City. Add Baptist and retirement community together and this service was like stepping into the Way Back Machine. I'd forgotten about song leaders who wave their arms (if not in beat with the music) and preachers who speak in the preacher's voice. Weird thing was, this 75-year old Baptist minister was wearing a Madonna mic.
Busta move, dude!

I'm posting early because Renee and her daughter are going to spend the night with us and should arrive any time now. They've driven over from So. Cal. to attend a festival here in town and will stay with us before heading back tomorrow. They attended our church in Riverside and I don't think we've seen them since we left in '89. In fact, I'm not sure Kirsti was born then. We'll have fun catching up.

Sect. of State Hillary Clinton is in China now. She met with the Chinese leaders (Hu's on first) to talk about a variety of topics. I was struck by one quote from her speech, particularly because observers wondered if she'd bring up human rights issues.
"Human rights cannot interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."
Whew! I was afraid we might let people being imprisoned without charge, forced to have very late term abortions of a second child, or secreted off in the middle of the night never to be heard from again get in the way of our economic prosperity. Hey, what's a billion or so people without basic human rights compared to a climate problem that scientists can't decide is caused by human factors or not?

(break)

Renee and Kirsty arrived, we visited, went out for dinner visited some more...
and now it's LATE. Especially for a preacher. So the rest of it...?
You're just gonna have to wait until tomorrow night, 'cause I'm headed to bed!