Sunday morning way the fuck too early meeting

Why am I even worried about this? Look around. I have the greatest staff in the world working reasonably diligently on a very cook work of Utopian literature. That’s what we do, aside from the plants in the morning. and why are we even here at this ungodly hour?

Why wouldn’t we be here?

A much better question. My friends, good morning. I propose a toast about toasting. 

La Chaim!

To G and the Utopian!

To our community!

Wait. Listen.  This is a question about toasts.

To the Civil Liberties Union!

No, no. Wait. There is a ceremony of sorts when drinkers or non-drinkers get together. It’s known as the ceremony of toasts, to coin a phrase. There was a bit of a pause followed by some genuinely appreciative applause. It was difficult to gauge the amount of time for the applause because there was some genuine emotion in the moment. And then G continued.

Keep giving me signs of hope lord. Keep giving me signs of hope.

The endorphin rush from a moment of genuine hope.

Seriously, you all saw it.

We were there.

Right in the middle of a rather painful bit of watergardening another bloody pause 

It rained. It actually rained. 

That’s right.

And I considered that a sign. A sign of hope. How British are we? It is something that this phrase is trademarked apparently by gamers. Such a concept is inherent in the play of predominantly murder games. It’s hidden in there somewhere but it’s not really loud enough to take over the game. Mr trump? 

Sad. 

Well done sir. 

Look, it rained during a painful moment of moving around and getting ready for my peririvka, моя перерывка, чтобы немного тагевать.

Lord that you for the reminder that we are just a bunch of damned dirty apes.

So, I was working, you know, getting ready for shabbos and suddenly it was raining. It was like a momentary break in the polution. Like some small percent of the local or international community figured out where I was in the world and just agreed not to run their cars just for me.

This is true.

Now, it didn’t really rain enough. My usual dose of rain was not really covered and honestly, the places on my property that I don’t give water to are looking a bit like the west Texas desert already. Climate change is climate change and we all can argue it. But I say it was a sign when it suddenly started raining. It meant I didn’t have to do my job. God/nature was going to take care of it for me. She was going to do her job. And that’s the point about the cars. Every time we drive a car, we prevent Mother Nature from raining because we constipate the clouds with our auto emissions. That’s what it means when I say that if you don’t water, the chance of rain is 0%. We live in the desert. Desertification: successful. Defoliation: accomplished.

Anyway, when I came out of my coma on Saturday, I saw that the ground was quite wet. It had rained during shobbos. And all things considered, I’m going to take this as a Sign of Hope. Somebody somewhere has heard my prayer and is cutting me some slack. Whoever and however many of you there are, thank you for doing your job. Well done.

Brittney.

Yo?

Well done.

Just a smile, not particularly knowingly. – Ed

Right. Sorry, it’s a great song… In olden days, there were many ceremonies of toasts, usually for religious ceremonies or in the cases of the more enlightened societies, simple drinking rituals done together for the purpose of reminding each other that we are together. Bonding. A very good ritual to be sure. In the original Russian variation, the company drinks first for the meeting, next for the brotherhood, next, to be done standing, for the women and then there is the hazy 4th that usually has something to do with more drinking.

We have something similar for Shabbos.

Yes, we do. Generally, these toasts are considered gender specific but if we agree that brotherhood equals friendship, we have the inclusion of anyone who truly, truly, truly wishes to participate. Any voice who absolutely states with purpose and dignity, “I’m in,” can toast. 

Are we all in?

The vote passed with a toast – Ed 

So, I propose two new variants to this theme, one for parents and one for non-parents. For the unmarried or even for those who wish to be married, you can toast for really good sex. This removes all stereotypes specific to women and we can stand up for it, as it were. Why not? It is also possible for married men to toast to really good sex as well and probably should at least try to stand up. I mean, I see that they are the same toast but you can see how completely different they are, right?

100%.

Ok, so here is where it changes, the fourth toast is for the children. Here the non-parents can drink solemnly and promise with all of their hearts never to do anything to hurt children and the parents simply leave this glass full on the table.

There were some general murmurings about this and then everyone agreed to have one more toast to the toasting theme. And in my humble opinion, this is where the meeting kind of went off the rails…

What is necessary to follow the baseball results?

We need to know the beginning of the first game and the potential ending of the second game. So…

Here there is a lot of shuffling of papers and intelligible banter about what is happening with the baseball. This week is a combination of Theatre week and we have our neighbors coming for a sleepover from the middle of the afternoon Tuesday and then they are going home after brunch the next day. Yes, it’s eat the refrigerator time again.  At some point in the show somebody screamed the word Miami! and this music began to play and wouldn’t stop.

Generally, people danced for a while and then this sense of sobriety came over the group and though we agreed we could do it, what amazing expense would be needed to do it. And then worse, the neighbors were coming and this is about what they were expecting.

Instagramming… Our Neighbors are instagrammers and… quite ethnically Russian. And just to say it, they do not admire our community’s… diversity.

Just so you know.

Right about here, some guy named Cal showed up and said he was ready to play shortstop if a job opened up. He was told where to go and then the meeting turned to a concept offered by our neighbors called Pin Baseball. Pin Baseball is where the bases or bags have been replaced with short logs embedded in the ground. They say that the true connoisseur of baseball will lay out his garden with trees with a future diamond in mind. They said that for a spectator sport, the stumps were better but that it would take some substantial hitting skills to get the ball through the trees. Ironically, we got a message from Doran at exactly this time that suggested forest golf as being one of his favorite new pastimes since retiring from baseball. By the way, to record an out in a close play in Pin Baseball, a runner must be able to put his hand on the pin before a fielder can touch the stump with his glove with the ball in it. In an instance where a runner is caught between bases, it is enough to have two defenders sitting on the pins and one of them has possession of the ball. A true connoisseur of Pin Baseball will plan on a ballfield being usable for 100 years, evolving from Nursery Baseball to Young Tree Baseball to the very tricky Mature Tree Baseball and finally to Pin Baseball where we can finally sit down and rest if and when we get on base. .

And then Bryce and several other players started showing up. Apparently there has been some kind of mobilization by our four clubs and the roosters have been restocked with call ups. It all started with the Babe stepping down. He said he agreed with G that sometimes it is better to let the kids play. 

And then the meeting started and we had the following suggestion:

• Stories for children about animals двіженіямі 
• The Root, a story for young boys about their roots.
• A short memoir about an old man spending time with two young girlfriends – and his ex-wife (Okay, I’ll tell the truth. I have two helpers at the moment).
• It seems that Lu San has two young daughters and Ralph is studying The Way of the Garden with him. I believe they are also working on something called a sweep ball.
• How many times I’ve failed trying to kill myself. This is a proposed essay about how many times the author seems to have cheated death and questions where his environment has played a role in creating his ability and need to escape. 
• And yes, we have Ben in relief.
• At one point in the concert, on our day on the Green with the neighbors, the cast members of their show started singing stairway to heaven. They have a guitar player named Steve who was just right there at the limits with his electric guitar. The voices, the rhythm section and that bloody guitar and then, Ralph appeared on stage playing slide guitar and adding a second solo voice to Steve’s note for note cover of the original fourth album solo. But Ralph is using his slide to just get up into that next higher register to find those epic Taj in Dubai heights. 
• Someone asked why we do this. One good answer was for the time before the word hits the page. Sometimes, a thought creates such a physical sensation that you simply cannot help but move. Sometimes we are just broken by the laughter. It brought down the house.
• The Root was rementioned
• An Essay about rude disruptions from our neighbors. The basic premise is that our neighbors are very… Russian. Коротше, наші сусіди – росіяни. And they have this concept of what they call the Russian is disturbance (Особенности национальной тревожности – The peculiarity of national anxiety), which is a process of causing damage and then forbidding any act of healing by disturbance again and again, all for the purposes of retaining power and dominance. – Ed)
• Also, I was harshly reminded that I needed to stick my head in the strawberry boxes. We have berries. They are not quite ready but they are berries. I also tasted my first two strawberries. The first had a most remarkable undertone of garlic to it. They were both yet very young and firm. It was a delightful moment.
• And finally, there was a message about accepting all things in their time. It seems that mosquitoes are not so bad once you get used to them. There was that one war where they fought so hard to live. But large numbers of mosquitoes called forth large numbers of hungry birds and suddenly the world became so heavenly. The sweet smell of fresh air just after a rian and the beauty of so many living things. Everyone generally agreed that we had all witnessed a sign of hope this last rest day. Then we all agreed that this was enough to keep us going. – Ed