Life Update 2026-03-26

Published on: by Anita

3 min read

Current status:

  • At the time of the last life update we had waited about 3 months for the permit to put in a new drain field for our septic system. After another month we cancelled the job, got a refund, and found another company to start the process. They had a permit in 2 weeks and the job was completed a few days later. We may have been a bit too patient.
  • I switched from flip phone to smartphone. The 2 posts on the saga begin here
  • As a result of reading Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff I’ve been learning a bit of Bash scripting. In the video course I’m using (along with other material) I learned enough about vim to use it to practice writing such scripts. Now I’m using vim a bit more as the editor with Mutt, an email program I use fairly often. If and when I get secure enough with it I might switch to using vim rather than nano for routine console text editing.
  • Some major household electrical problems materialized recently.
  • The list of blogs has been updated on the Websites page.

Reading:

My profile on The StoryGraph

Read:

  • Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography by Bruce Chilton - “Jesus within the context of his times to present a fresh, historically accurate, and revolutionary examination of the man who founded Christianity.” This was a very different look at Jesus for me and I enjoyed the perspective.
  • Why Religion?: A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels - The title says it all. I’ve read some of her work and enjoyed seeing how she got into that line of writing.
  • Urgent Track by D.L. Keur
  • The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle - A very realistic science-fiction story by an astronomer and cosmologist published in 1959. It came highly recommended and they were right.
  • Toxic Deceit by D.L. Keur
  • Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty
  • Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement by Catherine Keller - I found this extremely difficult to read and understand. The main reason was the use of complex words especially when they flowed together in a sentence. It was poetic many times. Many concepts in the book are about things that when experienced are nearly impossible to put into words. It seems to me that the book got across the concept that some of the most important things are not actually understandable in the way we conceive of understanding. The title “Cloud of the Impossible” resonates with me.
  • My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende - A historical novel about a young writer who journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father. Top notch in my estimation.
  • InnSaei: Heal, Revive and Reset with the Icelandic Art of Intuition by Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir
  • The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann - “Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets.”
  • Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff - “A transformative guide to rethinking our approach to goals, creativity, and life itself.” I posted how I used what I learned in this book.
  • The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben - “Wilde is a mystery to everyone. Decades ago, he was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past.” The story was engrossing at the beginning and had mysteries to be solved which kept me reading. But it felt cluttered, like there were too many things going on. I’m not sure why I stuck with this book to the end.

Currently Reading:

  • Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr
  • Entropy by Peter Cawdron
  • Selected Writings (Meister Eckhart) with editor Oliver Davies