June 22, 2004--Hippo, Birdie, Two Ewes! I had said that I would get the first set of discussion questions for the two on-line books up on the 20th. Well, the 20th was also my birthday and we decided at the last minute that we were going up to K'Tok's parents' house for the weekend. So...as you probably saw...the questions were not up on the night of the 20th. We didn't get home until about 10:30 or 11 pm, so there was no way I could get them done by then.

At the moment, it is just after 1 am on the 22nd. I was working on writing those questions for a good portion of the day (of the 21st) and now they are up. They would have been up sooner, but blame errands like going to the store and eating meals for missing the "deadline." *grin*

I do suggest people take advantage of these book discussions. As stated before, this is an experiment to see how lessons may later be incorporated into this site. No participation would make one think that people don't want lessons. However, the results from the mini-poll and the most common search terms people use to find this site would indicate otherwise. These are 101-level books, and a lot can be gleaned from them and from discussing with other people. So if you're wanting to learn Wicca...for FREE...this is a good place to start. This is about as "Wicca handed out on a silver platter" as you'll ever find here.

In other news, I had a pretty good birthday. I'm on (a much-needed) vacation this week as well. People keep asking, "What are you going to do on vacation?" My response: "Sit on my butt and do as little as possible." We did go to Virginia, but otherwise I want to stay home. K'Tok's mom is the BEST at finding little knick-knacky presents that are not only useful, but are genuine surprises. One of the presents was The Miracle Ball Method: Relieve Your Pain, Reshape Your Body, Reduce Your Stress as seen to the right. I always have back pain from schlepping inventory, and even after a little bit of time using this, I've felt a difference. I'm going to be using it a lot this week, I'm sure. I also got some DVD sets I've been wanting, a life-sized Yorkie stuffed animal, a duckie puppet that quacks 3 songs when you squeeze its beak, lots of My Little Pony minis (I was a MLP fanatic when I was little, so these are just too cute!), a duckie keychain/watch, a book called The Wayfarer Redemption (The Axis Trilogy, Bk 1), and a book on Traditional Edgings to Crochet because I've recently taught myself how to crochet so I can make lace edgings for costuming. For the record, yes, I collect duckies, want a Yorkie, and was a Child of the 80's with a huge My Little Pony collection...these things bring out the kid in me, which considering how serious I usually am, it's also fun to be easily amused.

Speaking of crocheting, I used some birthday money to buy a set of 24 crochet hooks (most of them are steel hooks for thread crochet) to really dig into making edgings. In fact, I've begun working on my next costume...if you count cutting out the pattern and buying thread to match the material really a "beginning." I'm having a hard time finding appropriate trims for what I want to do, but that's mostly because the color is going to be terribly hard to match. Thankfully I have all the fabric I'll need for this one already, and the materials look good together. This is why I want to do my own trims...it's more time-consuming, but I find it more interesting to make the costume "my own" that way. I just finished making K'Tok a kilt for his costume as well. Now I get to sew for myself again, and I'm excited!

So I'll probably be in front of my sewing machine for a good portion of the day tomorrow...until I need to use the Miracle Ball, anyway!

June 4, 2004--The People Have Spoken. I'm still debating how exactly to go about holding lessons on Wicca, even though a good 40% of the votes on the poll to the right have requested lessons. But in an attempt to make it possible, we're going to begin book discussions on two Wicca 101 books on the College Wicca Forum. Those two books are All One Wicca by Kaatryn MacMorgan, and MaidenMoon: An Advanced Wicca 101. Both books are free on the web.

Discussions will formally begin on June 20th. These are not official lessons, mind you. There will be no ordination or reception of degrees afterwards. This is to help people find a peer support group in getting a better understanding of the texts and the practice of Wicca.

This is also very experimental. I am interested in running a more restricted book discussion using The Second Circle: Tools for the Advancing Pagan, and perhaps afterwards moving on to Self-Initiation for the Solitary Witch: Attaining Higher Spirituality Through a Five-Degree System with the same group. This book discussion would require the purchase of the two books, and of course, we'd only be going through one at a time as I'd like to go through the book discussions with everyone as well. But this is all still in theory just yet. I'd like to know if people are actually interested in the idea before setting it up. We have a thread going on the forum about this now.

The other option that a lot of votes have gone to is articles on Teen (Pre-Frosh...I want to still mainatin a "college-age" focus) Wicca articles. My only problem with this is it's been years since I was in high school. So if anyone has any ideas...or even questions you'd like answered...please let me know by sending me an e-mail or by posting to the forum. And be sure to make the subject clear because I am still killing off around 80-100 spam mails per day.

Litha's coming up...and due to the leap year, it falls on my birthday this year. YAY! Always easy to remember that particular celebration! The only thing that disturbs me is it seems this year is flying by too fast!