[ and i'll leave it cryptic like that for now, which is uhm, half past 5-ish Maui time... as i need to shower, sleep, and eat (not necessarily in that order). am all tuckered out from my latest fishy encounters. chances are i might doze off in the shower. zzzz... oh sorry. come back a little later. ]

later... early evening.

Oh. So, yeah... *yawn* Wrote a long Christmas weblog yesterday, in segments... so today's will be not-long. If you haven't read it yet, you may wish to do so, as I wrote stuff in there that you may not have heard me say before, or write in weblogs. Things I consider important and, if you really want to know a bit more about me, then it's a good a place as any to start. ;-)

So for today I'll just post some pix of this neat old Buddhist church right across the street in back of the house. It's the Hokoji temple, a place of worship for Buddhists of the Shingon sect. It's very old, and is in the state register of historic sites. The main frontal view of the temple is the one embedded with this paragraph. Image #1 below is the view looking up from the bottom of the sixteen steep steps. #2 is a closeup of the ancient cast-iron bell hanging from the temple's main entranceway. #3 is the view from that entranceway back out to the street, and across to the parsonage where we live; and #4 is a picture of the inside of the little structure on the temple's front yard (the roof of which you can see in image 3 and in fact, in the pic to the right: its that little shed with the 'historic' sign on it), containing carved images of Buddhist saints. This is where congregants can put lighted joss sticks or incense. (I was unable to go inside the temple itself, as it was closed up this afternoon; as always, clicking on the small pix will yield bigger ones.)

middle early evening...

[ Hmmm... haven't done any weblog links in a few days. I think now's a good time and place for that. (But AFTER I eat and shower. Someone remind me to shake my bedsheet out later on. There's sand on it. Hehehe.) ]

So, anyway. Anyway, when will I learn that I cannot write weblog updates if I'm logged on to AIM? *chuckle* Starting from today, going back to the 20th, here's some pretty cool weblog reading:

• 12.26 ... my friend Catherine wrote Prosperity and Its Discontents, a thoughtful, sharply observed response (in part) to my Xmas weblog sermonette. (Her title is a nod to S. Freud's classic Civilization and Its Discontents.) I've been fascinatedly reading Catherine's accounts of her new life in Texas, which is a great big blank in my mind, even though I have relatives living there (they just moved from Beaumont to Lubbock). On the 24th, Catherine's weblog had this pithy and hilarious observation about microsurgerified Texan vasectomy reversals. *ouch, squirm* ::snicker:: Anyway, such things aside, Catherine touches on something I've been meaning to write about for a while now: the generic affluence in this country and how I find scary its potential to be deadening -- psychologically, physically, spiritually, and in just about every meaningful way there is, as far as living one's life. (Perhaps for a New Year's meditation weblog.)

• 12.26 ... With a very straight (virtual) face, Kati wrote in support of the "real" Santa Claus. As I began reading her weblog entry, at first I frankly thought it was going to be either a sardonic or a maudlin piece about the virtues (or otherwise) of the big, fat guy with an inexhaustible appetite for milk and cookies. It was neither. It's an uncommonly thoughtful piece of writing about a topic most teens wouldn't touch if their lives depended on it.

• 12.26 ... [ 4:30 a.m. on the 27th as I'm writing this (unlike most of the updates on this page, which I wrote last night) and I got up to let the cat out. Couldn't immediately go back to sleep, so I log on and randomly click a link on the left. Turns out it's to Ozzie's weblog and he writes about the 13th day of xmas... where, among other things, he accuses me of wearing sensible, mature shoes. If he only saw my footwear these days, which ranges from nothing to slippers to reefwalkers. *chuckle* Btw, his weblog a few days back on heroes and villains, replete with pix of the toy setups in his room, is, I suppose the definitive statement of who this particular young person is at this stage in his life. Who says you can't play with toys as a teenager? I love it. Heheheh. And Oz: your heartfelt, hilarious, hero/villain characterizations deserve an entire weblog response on its own, so be patient. ;-) ]

• 12.26 ... Oh, so that's what Boxing Day is all about, Candace? I like the way she packages all her 'leftover' thoughts in neat little categories (boxes) of text. Question is, is there a return department at Macy's or Nordstrom's for these particular gifts? ;-) Oh, and if you somehow missed Miss Prudence's nifty paean to the infinitely small, click here: . Yes, there. *chuckle*

• 12.26 ... Chris plays around with tables like no one else I know. His Mondrian-esque squares and rectangles are witty, apt visual commentaries on one thing or another. (Ol' Piet has got nothing on Chris' sense of humour, however.) The Xmas day one is a great example, too. The face drawings in tabular form on the post-Xmas weblog are particularly cool, especially if one had too much to eat during the holiday. Heheh. As for the text: hey Chris, I did sorta kinda hear a southern twang in your voice when you were singing that goodbye song you composed for Catherine, at that party. ;-)

• 12.25 ... Laura wrote about her so-so Xmas eve and a guy being fresh with her (no, neither Santa nor Rudolph) and then her pretty good Christmas. I was touched by her description of her spat (about teaching!) with brother Alex (whom I know as well). Plus, she has more cool marbles, on her next weblog entry, the 26th. Oh and I must quote her from that weblog, since I've been spending a lot of time in the ocean, after all, and this funny passage caught my eye... hehe:

  We both lived in fear of her boss... an extremely intelligent man (in some ways) whose face and words conveyed hate in such a way that the word "sharklike" would be a grave injustice to sharks.

  Also, if you missed Laura's awesome weblog on how the way the impressionist painter Manet influenced how she tells her own stories with her drawings, you must read it. You guys in particular, Trev and Quad hehe.

• 12.24 ... Spark's classic long weblog entry
• 12.24 ... (which was so thorough it deserves 2 lines here. lol)

• 12.21 ... Kass on winter break rebus
• 12.21 ... Quad on echs newspaper follies

• 12.21 ... Damien on smiles
• 12.21 ... Kati on why?!?

• 12.20 ... Kevin on giving
• 12.20 ... Alejo on fear

• 12.20 ... Tom on yuks
• 12.20 ... Robin on angst

{ net.casting }
^