Found Pictures: Cute Dog

The universal response to this picture (thus far) has been: "Awwwww."

Evangelism

The husband and I were talking about evangelism the other day. The conversation was prompted by the behavior of a friend, who is what I would call a "conspiracy theory evangelist." This person is constantly harping on various conspiracy theories and predicting imminent doom and gloom. I find it tiresome because I do not believe in conspiracy theories. I also like to enjoy my life without a constant fear of impending worldwide disaster.

At any rate, our conversation strayed to another friend, who has become a bit of a "health food evangelist." Personally, I have pretty big walls up when it comes to discussing eating habits. I am an anorexic who has thankfully been in recovery for some 12 years, but food is still a touchy subject with me. Those "anorexic thoughts" never quite go away, no matter how much you grow emotionally and mentally. So when a friend, out of blue, tells me that my current eating habits are the root cause of all my life's problems, that tends to get my hackles up.

My husband, on the other hand, is an evangelist himself. He's an "anti-religion" or "anti-theist" evangelist. He really hates religion. A lot. And he will bend almost any conversation you have into a diatribe against religion, which gets on my nerves. Not every bad thing that's ever happened in the world has been caused by religion. And I'd like to have a conversation without discussing the "evil" that is religion.

Being surrounded by all these evangelists got me to wondering. Is everyone an evangelist? Do we all have something that we just can't shut up about? Or is evangelism something that strikes from time to time? Perhaps only a certain type of person becomes an evangelist and I just tend to attract them.

Am I an evangelist? I've been thinking about that a lot. Perhaps I go on and on about some topic that bores my friends to tears and/or annoys them. I like soccer a lot, but I try not to blab about it too much to people who don't care for it. I also like books a lot. I think if I were ever actively an evangelist for anything, it would be reading.

Mostly, I worry that I'm a "self evangelist." Perhaps I talk about myself too much. I do have a blog, after all, which is kind of the height of self-promotion.

I have no conclusions here. Just thinking out loud. Perhaps I should become an evangelist for anti-evangelism.

A Banner Day for Found Items

Lots of great stuff at the bookstore last Saturday! I now wonder if there was always this much stuff to be found and I wasn't looking. What have I missed out on all these weekends?

The theme of last Saturday seemed to be postcards. I found three of them:

I find it interesting that two of them had a "space" theme, even though I found them in different books, neither of which were space-themed themselves.

I also found this shellacked Canadian two dollar bill bookmark:

No one else wanted it, so it came home with me, even though I don't tend to use bookmarks. Why would you pass up shellacked money?

Found Pictures: Lady in Repose with Kayaks

She's a little hard to see; I didn't even notice her the first time I looked at the picture. I suggest viewing the expanded version.

I wonder where this picture was taken? It looks like a beautiful spot.

A Sad Little Library Book: The Update

I gave it the old college try, but I just couldn't get into The Sword of Shannara.

The book was in such a sad state that I felt bad taking it back to the library largely unread. Several years ago, I had tried reading the book for the first time as an adult and had found it too wordy. But with my love for reading recently rekindled, I thought maybe I'd have a different experience this time around.

Not so. I still found the book too wordy. In fact, I often found myself thinking, "Good God, man, get to the point already!" And this from a person who reads lots of dense, wordy non-fiction books.

I'm not quite sure how I zipped through these books as a teenager, but I guess the Shannara series will have to remain a love affair of my 15-year-old self. Thanks for the memories, Terry Brooks.

Found Pictures: Lady with Cat

I found the discovery of this particular picture rather coincidental, as earlier in the day I had put away a book entitled Cats and Their Women. The book is a collection of pictures of women with their cats. It had a very strong crazy cat-lady vibe.

At any rate, I'm rather fond of this picture. Was this lady actually just chilling on the couch, reading, when someone (husband?) came along and decided to snap a picture or was it posed? I guess we'll never know.