I love using titles that apply in two different ways. ;)

But to start off with something unrelated... so far, I've not been able to force myself to get up at 9 AM and go for a walk before my shower. Not even the actual Tai Chi stuff yet, just Sitting Qi Gong. I'm of three minds about that particular "exercise" -- the skeptic mind says it's a big bunch of hooey, the Kemetic Orthodox mind thinks water makes more sense than ki, and whatever's left has to admit that there is some kind of result. Still, there is no substitute for actual exertion, like the nice 1.3mi walk I've made the habit of taking on weekend mornings. Peryt is letting me borrow an unused exercise bike, which should help me get into things on weekdays as well. :)

The results one gets with daily weighings are odd. You can gain 3 pounds one day, only to lose 4 the next and gain half a pound the next. I guess it's all in the averages.

I've been working my way, gradually and with much gnashing of teeth, through Die Goettin Seschat. I have learned some of the quirks of Babelfish -- bugs, typos in the lexicon, words that translate to the wrong thing, words that don't translate at all, resulting in a mishmash something like "...in this text textext of the old person realms, the Seschat wears Pantherfellumhang is draped over its woman wife..." From context and prior knowledge I can figure out most of it, but once in a while I'll hit a sentence that just doesn't mean anything at all.

To ease the process, speed it up, and hopefully get better translations, I'm getting a Quicktionary II -- the Tricorder of Text. It's a penlike device that scans, recognizes, translates, displays, speaks, stores, and beams or uploads text, and oh yeah, its software is also upgradeable, and it brews coffee too*. If the thing works -- and the interspersed jargon, transliterated Egyptian and occasional hieroglyphs don't totally confuse it -- it's gonna be great. Even if the translation stinks, it might be easier to scan the book than to type it.

I've found some interesting things so far. Some of them I'm going to have to mull for a while. I am definitely going to rewrite the essay though... Budde not only made a more detailed study, but was working with sources that Wainwright didn't have access to. There's all kinds of fun things such as images of Seshat and Nit together on coffin lids, Seshat being called "the right and true flower in the hand of Ra", Seshat wearing the skin of Set while punishing the enemies of Ra-Heruakhety (!)... and some clues about the significance of Her titles, functions and iconography that hadn't really sunk in before. Hot stuff in other words. ;)

Meanwhile on the gaming front... I went to the local game shop intending to check the price of Magic of Faerun (it's steep) and wound up buying Manual of the Planes instead. A lot of old school gamers are whining about all the older edition stuff that's "missing", but coming from the perspective of a relatively new player, this stuff looks great. I don't expect any of our campaigns to involve zipping around the various chunks of universe like a madman, but even if we never leave the Prime Material Plane we're likely to run into monsters, gods, spells, etc. I like the concept of Inevitables, beings that enforce the laws of existence (hunting down liches becuase "every living thing dies" is one of those laws).

One of the things that caught my attention was the Divine Agent prestige class, which is so similar to what I was trying to design with Divine Servant that I just canceled that effort. :) My current plan for Few involves getting increasingly closer to his deity and more mystical (sound familiar? ::grin::), which means 10 Divine Agent levels and 5 Contemplative. I'll probably ask Steph about substituting other things for a couple of the planar travel abilities of Divine Agent though.

* Does not actually brew coffee.

Argh. I wrote this entry once already today, but when I went to upload it, accidentally downloaded the old version of the files instead. This version will be a little shorter and less clever...

Last weekend was the roughest in a couple of years as far as OSGM hotline activity goes. Thus the brief but heartfelt entry from a couple days ago. :)

This morning though, my German book on Seshat arrived before we took off for work. I spend a happy few minutes paging through it, gazing at illustrations, and alternately cackling madly and going "whoah!" There are some surprises.

Already I've learned a few small things... and there are new avenues to explore. What's this about "Seschat die Große" (Seshat weret) and "Seschat die Kleine" (Seshat nedjset)? What's the story behind this illustration of Her wielding a pair of knives? This is exciting stuff to me. :)

Language is going to be a challenge, but I knew that. I'm finding some of the transliterations easier to understand than the German -- for example, I know what means, but "die Zauberreiche" I don't, and Babelfish thinks it's "charm realms." :)

So that's going to keep me nice and busy, and hopefully I won't have to bug Neferu with too many incomprehensible phrases. :)

And here I was just getting back into Diablo II, with the Eastern Sun beta version that works with the expansion. I have an Assassin who relies on speed, lots of damage, and cover of darkness to do her thing and it works quite well, none of that messing around with traps. But now that'll be something to do when my brain is fried from too much German!

I've started on my efforts to lose some weight. Bought a scale a couple of days ago, and it turns out I'm not as bad off as I thought. 263 as of Aug 21st. My initial goal is based on Body Mass Index -- 240 pounds, which means I'd no longer be "officially" obese by government standards (I didn't know I was). After that, we'll see. A little at a time, eh? :)

The plan is this: don't diet, because dieting is hard. Instead, I'll try and get rid of stupid waste calories, like soda, and choose healthier things to eat. I'll make an effort to exercise regularly -- ideally, getting up earlier in the morning and letting it fire up my metabolism for the day, alternating walking with Tai Chi or else getting an exercise bike. I'll keep track of my progress so that I don't slack off, and so I know how well (or not) it's working.

For once I'm actually kind of looking forward to this. I never thought of it that way before, because generally I don't like "exercise" as such, or "dieting" as in measuring and limiting everything one eats.

Today was Wag Festival. I wrote up stuff about our visit to Borromeo Graveyard in the lost version of this entry, but for now I'll just leave it be. KI Merybast is going to do another photo essay thing and that'll tell it better than I can now that the original words are gone.

I've said it already, but so that it's on record... thanks to my akhu for keeping an eye on me and my family. :)

Must resist urge to destroy cell phone!

Several people have asked why I went for the Kain/Kojak/Mr. Clean/Blofeld look. I've been giving some silly or evasive answers, such as "Chicago was having a disastrous hair shortage and I decided to donate mine." Nah. Two reasons really: I wanted to see what it looked like anyway, and it's symbolic. Getting rid of what you don't need, breaking with the past and making a fresh start, that sort of thing. There is no better time to do that than New Year. But I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't curious to see the look anyway. :)

I know I've written about "fear of God" before, but a quick search tells me I haven't done it in this journal. Fine... I've changed my opinion on it somewhat anyway.

Like anything else, fear comes in healthy and unhealthy versions. The unhealthy version is terror, "fear that agitates body and mind." While agitated in that way, you can't be happy, you can't focus, you can't trust... you can't be the way you're supposed to be. Terror hurts you. If you are terrified of God then you probably either don't trust God, or you don't trust yourself.

The healthy and appropriate kind of fear is "extreme reverence or awe, as toward a supreme power." (Thanks, dictionary.com!) Not to say this can't also be a very strong emotional response... but instead of a clenching, defensive sort of feeling it's a release. Part of faith is not just believing that God exists, but that this vast powerful thing that could destroy your world with barely a thought, will not ever do that.

A friend was commenting the other day about how scary and mean our gods seem. It's been a while since I thought that way. Many of the Names are intentionally intimidating by reputation. Yet one of the "scariest", Sekhmet, is not just a blood-drinking berserker lioness but a healer who cares deeply about people, has a playful sense of humor, and likes her beer. There's something of the gargoyle effect going on -- it's evil, not us, that they are meant to frighten and destroy.

I realize now how much my last entry was babbling... sorry about that. :) Part of the problem is that I know my audience is part Kemetic Orthodox, part gamer, part random friends, and part even more random people from the net who stumbled in here somehow and stayed for no reason I can fathom, and I'm not sure who I'm writing for (other than myself). Part is that I was writing on an unfamiliar computer without my usual software. Part of it is the effects of post-retreat jellobrain.

There's one thing I didn't want to mention before some people here got a look for themselves :)

That's right, the entire dome is now on display in all its stubbly glory. I'm relieved to find I have no hideous scars or lumps (though a USB port would have been handy), and people have been saying it's a good look for me. I'm not quite sure what I think yet. It's... comfortable. But I am still a bit startled every time I see my reflection or shadow.

Something I did mean to write was thank-yous... which I am not good at for some reason. So I'll just say that everybody at the retreat was great and I'm proud to have such brothers and sisters. A lot of people's efforts made the retreat what it was, whether in setting up and executing the actual event, making really cool things, keeping us entertained, sharing wisdom, giving support or some of everything. I can't thank KI Antybast, KI Nakht and Imakhu Ini enough, both for making the retreat happen and for putting us up and driving us all over the place. :)

While it's something of a relief to be back home and in the routine, with my cat and my bed and my computer and my glacial air conditioning... I wish I could have taken about 33 people back here with me. :)

"I love the smell of natron in the morning. It smells like nekhtet."

Retreat is over. I'm sitting here at a friend's place this morning; we fly home tonight and get back to the grind on Tuesday.

The first day of the retreat was a matter of greeting people and settling in; things really got going on the second day. (Appropriate to the Birthday of Set, there was a fierce storm in the morning that dumped something like 7 inches of rain on Chicago in an hour, flooding the Deep Tunnel and putting some highways under 8 feet of water -- nobody was killed. There was no other rain during my stay in Chicago, just hot humid days.) We did a lot of drumming; Wenem brought his guitar and Nesi her flute, both of them their voices, and much jamming was done. There's a lot of musical talent and enthusiasm in this group. :)

The third day was one of learning. Myself and five others were trained as Wab priests ("Pure Ones"). Purity (of heart, body, places and things) is such a vital thing in our faith that high officials in antiquity would boast about having been a Wab. (Can you imagine an archbishop saying the most important thing he's ever done was his service as an altar boy?) Anyway, it's a lay priesthood so don't go calling me Reverend Belligerent Dave yet. :)

We took time out of the Wab training to join everyone else in the candle workshop, where we each decorated candles for our parent Name(s). There are some people with mindboggling artistic talent in this group -- I am not one of them, and let's leave it at that. :) We also attended the divination workshop, which was fascinating... though I haven't quite settled my thoughts on it regarding asking about the future. As soon as my brain is available to work on that one, I will. There's a long line though.

I won't say much about the form of the ceremony that evening -- it would be difficult to understand without having been there. But a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about decay I was thinking about how much I just let things go. I don't take good care of myself. I have excuses, but not reasons, for what I have allowed to decay. And actually, I have known that for a long time and don't think about it often.

If there is a thief sneaking around in your house, you have two choices: you can confront him or you can just let him make off with everything you own. If you have a health issue, you can confront it or you can let it cripple and kill you. Neither choice is pleasant, but one is worse.

Diabetes runs in the family. I have some of the possible symptoms. I have not wanted to get it checked out because I really didn't want to know for sure that I had it. But during this ceremony I spoke face to face with Sekhmet, and Her first words for me were "Have you seen a doctor yet?"

That sort of cast a shadow on the rest of the retreat for me. I still don't want to see a doctor, and I don't know why I am so reluctant. At the least, I will cut back on soda, follow kai-Imkahu meryBast's example in eating less meat, and at least walk on weekends and get the Tai Chi stuff going again if I can't find any other exercise I can stand. Diabetic or not, I would be happier with some pounds gone. I will also look into diabetes screening.

Sekhmet also told me that I have a job to do -- to serve my Mother and to teach and take care of Netjer's children -- and I can't do that if I'm broken. So if I let myself go I am doing an injustice to more than myself.

On to more pleasant things! On the fourth day of the retreat, Nebt-Het's birthday, the coronation was successful and we sang as we re-greeted our Nisut (AUS). The one song that we have, which is very short, very repetitive and very catchy... not even "Particle Man" can drive it out of my head. Then the Shemsu Ordeal, and then a few hours of unwinding time before the Naming Ceremony. Those of us who had been named received them again, and two children were given root names (based on their birthdays) -- Ragan was actually born on a New Year and so is called Renpet Nofret (Beautiful Year) and everyone in the House is her godparent. How cool is that? :) Niankh's priest name was restored (woohoo!) and she and I were both elevated to Imy-set'a (assistant priest in training). Yes, eventually I too will have to go shopping for lots of white clothes. ;)

Though this time the festivities were more, well, festive, and in less danger of drowning in seriousness and solemnity, Jack put in his appearance to make us all laugh our fool heads off. He taught us that the answer to everything is either "why not?" or "181 proof rum!" :)

No nightmares or spooky visitors this year... or rather, none that I noticed. My roommate Ikhet says my akhu showed up and freaked him out though. Come on guys, play fair :) I set the alarm clock for 6 PM instead of 6 AM, but lateness was narrowly averted and we were on time to help set up for the new year rites.

The attitude and atomsphere were so much better this year. Before, we were stiff and grim and fearful as if on the edge of a disaster, and were greatly relieved afterwards. This year, we were jubilant and alive! We cheered for our gods, sang, celebrated the destruction of evil.

This is going to be a great year.