Matching Tracksuits

fun in fours

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Saturday, Late August

Saturday 27 August 2022

It's late August -- the time of year when cooler autumnal temperatures approach, but sometimes not quite fast enough. Daytime temperatures can still get up into the mid-90s, and summer's humidity still lingers, making it feel even warmer.

That's all fine and good if your HVAC system is working well. Sure, it might work a bit more than you would hope. The heavy heat of July is a thing of the past, and although it can be hot, late August usually brings a bit of a break for one's HVAC system and one's power bill compared to mid-July. Not much -- just a bit.

Still, we have a relatively high-efficiency system, and the difference I guess is no big savings. Five or ten bucks perhaps.

But then the system starts stalling, starts leaking coolant, and the indoor temperature climbs despite the temperature outside. Specialists arrive, investigate, diagnose, and give a $2,200 quote for fixing the system or $800 for a temporary bandaid.

"How long will it last?"

"A few months to a few years."

Cheap is expensive; lack of information leads to poor decisions. It lasts less than 24 hours. $800 for 20 hours of cooling.

More specialists arrive. They'll do the fix for about 75% of the other company's quote. We go for it. The system works for a couple of weeks, still showing some strain and problems but keeping the house comfortable.

And then the whole thing shuts down. Completely. When temperatures return to the mid-90s. And the company we've been working with doesn't work on the weekend, so we're stuck until Monday. And so you start researching things like this.

Fire Drill

Friday 26 August 2022

It's always seemed to me that shoes are especially important when you're outside and will soon be walking through wet grass. The option of taking one's shoes off and getting one's socks wet doesn't seem incredibly pleasant to me, especially when it's just the second period of the day and the socks would remain wet for hours afterward.

But spotless, white shoes are more important than comfort, I suppose.

First Scout Meeting

Thursday 25 August 2022

Forgiveness

Wednesday 24 August 2022

It's a pretty impressive feat of short-sighted hypocrisy that most of the people most opposed to student debt forgiveness are practitioners of a religion that is built upon the idea of a debt being paid undeservedly...

Spark

Tuesday 23 August 2022

Two images that came through my Twitter feed over the last few days. The first: a rather succinct overview of Trump supporters.

Then a graphic representation of the same idea.

Development

Tuesday 23 August 2022

In Praise of Pickle Soup

Monday 22 August 2022

Like an aspic or a bit of blood sausage, pickle soup is one of those dishes that initially makes people say, "Hold on, now -- are you sure that's a good idea?"

Pickles belong on hamburgers and other sandwiches. Some of us even like it on the once-a-year hot dog we might eat. Dill pickle is a good flavor for a chip, especially if you're already fond of sea salt and vinegar chips. You might skewer a pickle and bit of meat on a toothpick and call it an appetizer.

But in a soup?

Of course -- where else? Tangy and sour are notes that pair well with just about any other savory flavor.

Late August Sunday

Sunday 21 August 2022

Our Games

Saturday 20 August 2022

The Boy's first games with his new soccer team took place today. It was a tough start to the season: 0-4 and 0-5 losses. I was expecting him to be terribly disappointed about it, but he was surprisingly stoic: "We have some things we need to fix, but we could be good."

The Girl's high school varsity team, for which L plays middle, won their first tournament today.

A day of contrasts.

Belief Revisited

Friday 19 August 2022

It's a quote I've used twice here:

[Belief] may be the battle of your life, but emotionally and intellectually, it could also be the most exhilarating one you’ve ever engaged in. Whether you experience God’s reality or are just intellectually intrigued by the idea, God can be a very real force in peoples’ lives – spiritual, emotional, supportive – that almost no other system can offer. But you must gird yourself for a fight and know that you’re going to have to try to reconcile very difficult things. Or at least hold them in suspension and bounce them back and forth and get tired. There’s no quick fix, but we have the benefit of drawing on thousands of years of religious thinking. You can’t learn it over a weekend. It’s an engagement for the rest of your life.

Burton Visotzky

I originally included it while discussing Winifred Galligher's Working on God, in which it's originally quoted.

Belief

I also reposted the quote on its own a few years later, undoubtedly just to have an easy way out of keeping up some artificial posting streak:

Burton Visotzky

In some ways, I think I admired that quote, but now, I view it so very differently.

Visotzky writes that believers are "going to have to try to reconcile very difficult things. Or at least hold them in suspension and bounce them back and forth and get tired." I originally read this very ambiguously, not really thinking about what exactly one must reconcile. As I've returned to my skeptical positions of the past after a sojourn in faith, I see it simply: you're going to have to reconcile contradictions or ignore them. Contradictions between faith claims and scientific claims. Contradictions between various faiths' claims. Contradictions between claims of omnipotence and omnibenevolence and the evil we see around us. Contradictions within traditions' holy books. You might "get tired," he suggests. I think that's what happened to me: I got tired of the continual cognitive disonance.

Far from being a wise quote, I see this now as the dysfunctional heart of faith itself: it's seeing one thing that has an abundance of evidence and believing another that has little to no real evidence.