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What a great city to stroll around in. Even better if you're swathed in coat and scarf, a light drizzle creating a drippy mystique.

The London Bridge Hotel is agreeably situated in Southwark, a block from the Southwark Cathedral and the Thames. Just returned from a worshipful dinner at the temple that is Wagamamma. In a neighborhood full of pub food and snooby up-market eateries, it attracts long lines of young and old willing to wait tens of minutes to eat noodles. I'm surprised it hasn't hopped The Pond to the States.

I love the mix of old (and ancient) with contemporary trendiness that's everywhere here. For instance while viewed in isolation, the London Eye is a bit of an abomination, when you're standing in Westminster with Parliament, the Abbey and Big Ben in the foreground, the contrast it presents somehow elevates the historical grandness. The view of all that as you ascend out of the Westminster Underground is breathtaking. Yesterday I got to enjoy that view both in daylight and by night. Fantastic.

[Corrected URL 3.26.08]

Note to the Vatican: You want true sin? Here you go: Lying to women is a sin. Pathological hypocrisy is a sin. Half a billion dollars in pedophilia lawsuit payouts is a sin. Homophobia is a sin. Hiding those golden vaginas is a sin. And creating new sins in a strange attempt to stay relevant as your church withers and struggles and falters in the new and spiritually hungry but religiously mistrustful world, that's surely a sin.

No, wait. Check that. That's not a sin at all. It's actually just a sad, inexcusable joke.

As usual, Mark Morford hits the nail on the head. Easter has fallen off my calendar radar during my many years of liberation from The Church, and folks like Matt keep me from ever feeling nostalgic. Mazel Tov.

Not as kinky as it sounds. I just cannot believe how tired my ass is from hooping class! Oy vey. The big drag is that I'm not in shape enough to hoop as much as I want to. I can't say I've ever felt that way about other forms of exercise, except maybe dancing. Cool.

The thought I'm pondering this MLK Day morning is this: what do you do when you find yourself in the middle of living a "life of meaning," but are not sure what that means? Strange, even ridiculous - I know. But many would (and do) look at how I spend my time and tell me they wish they, too, were doing something "that mattered." Well, I have news for you all - me too. It isn't that I think I don't do things that matter; sometimes I can even point to a specific example. I guess my point is that even when you're in a "meaning-rich environment," you still have to work at figuring out how to make it really matter. For me, the toughest nut to crack is myself (yes, and I'm comfortable calling myself a nut).

Anyhow, I arrived at this train of thought while considering, once again, what kind of creative writing I really want to pursue. For some time now, I've been trying to fashion myself into a writer of genre fiction. However, I haven't been working very hard at it, of late. So, when I was reading an article this AM about a writer of personal essay, I started wondering.

That wasn't enough to send me into the "how does a life of meaning matter" by itself. As I was considering the relative merits and recipes for success the two kinds of writing represented, I realized that I am most attracted to personal essay because, to me, it represents the most authentic type of writing I could do. That's appealing, since I'm a firm believer that the only thing I'm really good at is being myself.

Even that wasn't enough to toss me into existential meanderings. What finally did it was the answer to the question: why aren't you writing essays, then? Really, the question could have easily used "anything" in place of "essays" and had the same response. Because writing requires you to believe you have something worth saying. That, to me, could be one of the most fundamental challenges any writer faces.

I have journals and electronic documents full of partially finished essays, thoughts, ideas, and repeated commitments to really knuckle down and write something this time. Even as I type this, I'm tempted to save it as a draft that "I'll get back to," knowing good and well that likely won't happen. So I'm going to stop here and commit this to the blogosphere, hoping it will be the first of many entries about this and related or unrelated topics. Think of it as an experiment in non self-editing. At least there's some words on a "page" here. That's something.

I finally succumbed to both a bit of peer pressure and a bigger sense that I'm in danger of being out of the loop, technology trend-wise: I signed up for Facebook. I can't say I completely understand its purpose in the big picture, but I'm after setting up my initial page, I'm a little bit intrigued. It's irresistible to start searching for friends, acquaintances, and even "ex'es."

I've been confused about Facebook versus MySpace for a while now, so this morning I actually did a search on that topic. One of the key distinguishing features appears to be that Facebook has opened up its platform to application development. We've even talked about taking advantage of this for OpenEco. I'm a big fan of "open-ness" (yes, the Sun Kool-aid is very tasty), since it seems to spark a lot of creativity (among other virtues).

Feels good to learn new things :)

It's all Black Rock prep, all the time at this point. Yesterday's run to the surplus store (thanks, T) was excellent, so most of the supplies are in hand. A quick run to OSH ought to round it out. Yesterday I found myself pondering the dollars that are going into this, but then I thought better of it.

The costumes are coming together nicely. One or two little projects still cooking, but the Purple Poncho of Doom is now complete. It really looks cool, I have to say. I'm also happy how Kitty's turned out. She'll be a vision in pink fuzziness!

Yikes! Just looked at the spreadsheet prep list. Still looks like a lot. All this prep makes me feel like getting to the Playa on Wednesday, rather than spending the night in Tahoe. Wanna make it worthwhile, eh? It probably won't happen, given all the stuff that has to be accomplished on Wednesday before I leave, but...

Anyway, that's where my head is. Oh, then there's that whole work thing. So much happening - it's either a terrible time to be gone, or skipping town is the best thing I could be doing at this point. I'm going to go with 'B.'

Was up in Marin yesterday, helping Kitty out with her Bottle Cap Tree piece for Burning Man. Mostly I was throwing out ideas for stabilizing it against the Black Rock elements, trying to be useful. The tree is really cool up close, and I think Burners will judge it "groovy."

It was nice to hear someone else express that combination of anticipation and dread I've been feeling about the whole junket. Now that I'm getting my head around planning in earnest, I think I'm leaning more toward "anticipation." I'm still not sure about my giveaway scheme, but I've gotten inspired around some sewing and other projects. In a way, this reminds me of the old Spooksville days, when there'd be months of preparation around the Halloween extravaganza, and with it a lot of on-the-fly innovation and creativity. Feels cool.

Save yourselves the calls - I slept right through this morning's earthquake. I mean, 4.2? That feels like having a heavy truck driving past your house. No self-respecting Bay Area resident would so much as roll over in bed for anything less than a 5.0.

Since 1997 in Japan and 2000 everywhere else Toyota has sold a million hybrids and it just keeps climbing; by 2010 they expect to be selling a million a year.

Yes, I've joined the spaceship-driving crowd. Wanna see? Look here!

I can really feel sympathy for those poor souls in New York, stranded on airplanes and digging out from another blast of winter-y goodness. It was a brutal 70-ish today in the Bay Area, and The Boy and I checked out the Pulgas Ridge Open Space Preserve. It's days like today that remind me why I wanted to live on the Peninsula, where there are miles of trails and amazing views right in my back yard. Of course, there were caches to hunt (and find - huzzah!), though a bumper crop of poison oak kept us a away from a couple I loaded in the Garmin. Ah well. Those shining trios of leaves also keep folks on the trail, which is a valuable aid in keeping the land in good shape! Then of course there are the heartwarming warning signs against ticks, rattlesnakes, and mountain lions...

It's been a pretty good winter, moisture-wise, because there are signs of a great wildflower season everywhere. Just in our little 2.5 mile or so stroll, we saw several kinds in bloom, and more getting ready to erupt soon. Took some time to educate myself about the actual flower species (my existing naming scheme consisted mainly of terms like "pretty red one, " and "spotted leaf one"), and definitely identified:

* Indian Warrior
* Mission Bells
* Fetid adders tongue
* Sticky monkey flower
* Giant trillium

Rad.