Prayer

I have been struggling with prayer. I was looking for things to help me understand what prayer means to me now. I found three things that were helpful. 

- A Simple Guide to Prayer. There are many guides like this, this is just the one I came across. The basics of traditional Christian prayer. 

- Some Unitarian Universalist Views of Prayer. How others in the Unitarian Universalist tradition see and practice prayer.

- Heretics Faith:  Prayer, Meditation, Contemplation. A sermon by Rev. John T. Crestwell, Jr. of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis on prayer, which includes different traditions of prayer. 

Texting Games

I was looking for simple games to play with one of my friends and my friend sent me this link:

35 Fun Games To Play Over Text That’ll Keep You Entertained and Connected to Your Friends

This worked out really well. There are so many sites out there with games that just kill you with ads and such. Games you can play over an existing medium like SMS remove that problem. 

Malcolm X, Alex Haley, Required Reading

I just bought The Autobiography of Malcolm X. One thing that struck me was the line at the bottom--as told to Alex Haley. I generally think of an autobiography as something written by the person themselves, but I understand that this does not have to be the case. I looked at Haley's Wikipedia entry and learned some interesting things:

- He had a career in the Coast Guard

- He wrote for Playboy Magazine

- The aforementioned work was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 most influential books of the 20th century

That got me interested in the other books. Especially because the Time Magazine article is entitled Required Reading. Wikipedia had a Wayback Machine link, but Time realized the relevance of this article and posted it to their archive. I'll have to add these to my list. 

Interesting recipes

 I came across some pretty interesting recipes--

Croissant Stuffing

Spiced Apple Paloma

Apple Pie Moonshine

Cheddar, Scallion, and Jalapeño Drop Biscuits

Sausage Stuffing

Nice vs. Kind

We got an email at work that encouraged us to be kind. That's a positive admonishment, but it reminded me that in the past I have confused kindness and niceness. I googled and found a post from The Caring Techie Newsletter. The Caring Techie points out that while the terms are used interchangeably, but they don't mean the same thing.  They have different underlying motivations and long-term effects. She has a very nice venn diagram:

Duplicating the Jimmy Dean Eggwich

 Was just thinking about the Jimmy Dean eggwich since I was eating one. I was thinking maybe I could make one and wondering how much effort it was. I checked the internet for copycat recipes. What I found was people using mason jar lids to steam eggs. Or rings. But then someone mentioned english muffin trays. Which made me think about baking. And when you look at the box, it says egg frittatas, which is a type of omelet that is baked. So the thing that's in my head now is a mass production method where instead of using an english muffin pan--which I don't have--I drop a scrambled egg mixture into just a regular pan and bake it, and then cut it into squares. I'm wondering if the sausage can be cooked the same way. I'm sure it can. The trick with the egg would be getting a pan where I get the right dimensions for the number of eggs that I put in. The Jimmy Dean egg mixture includes spinach, carmelized onions and bacon. I don't think I would bother with that last one. 

Contractors in government

Something that has bothered me for a long time is the contractor situation in the government. I could probably lay out what I mean by that better, maybe later. All I will say for now is that it came back to my mind this morning. I decided to look it up, especially after the research I did earlier this week, that alerted me to the fact that having contractors gives the illusion that the government is smaller and mentioned something about the number of civil servants getting reduced. So this Federal Times article stated that the 1994 Federal Workforce Restructuring Act eliminated 273,000 positions. It mentions that this movement began in the 80s, which makes sense given Reagan's policy.  I've seen Donald Kettl's name more than once. It seems that he's an expert in the federal government. I think I also read that he's retired. 

The online publication from the Volcker Alliance entitled The True Size of Government was also enlightening.