Blogging willy-nilly.

Major reorganization today of my home office -- our house's "fourth bedroom." This meant moving my desk, and opening up a card table to put beside it. The scanner will go on this table, as soon as I can unbox it. Before I could do that, however, Lilly colonized the table with her drawing materials. Now she's sitting at it, drawing. "I have work to do," she says.

I also took a crack at the storage room, which, during the move into the house four weeks ago, received items willy-nilly; and had also been stuffed with warehouse-portion paper goods that we'd bought at Costco. So I stacked the willies in one spot, the nillies elsewhere, and a paper goods yet another place. About an hour's worth of effort went into freeing up a lot of space in the room, but I know it isn't final. There's a primitive desk built into one wall, and I want to use that for the primitive (1995) word-processor that still I own. But at the moment that wall of the storage room is being used for, well, storage space.

Visited a church this morning, one across the municipal line in another suburb. One of the ugliest church buildings I've seen in a long time. Someone's 1950s idea of breaking away from the dead hand of traditional church architecture, a church in the round made of brick. Set in a large, treeless lawn, it looks like a squashed pile with a steeple stuck in it like a toothpick in a sandwich. Inside wasn't much better -- no pews, just a circle of tired old wooden chairs. The altar was in the center of the building, behind support pillars that were flat black rods of metal.

Certainly, the church is really the congregation of the faithful. But... why would I spend time in an architect's mistake when I can go to a place that pleases the senses? I think, also, in the long run, that a building like this helps kill off a congregation. This morning's service was sparsely attended; the church has lost its priest; and according to one fellow there's talk of merging with another congregation. So it's imaginable that this awful building has finally taken its toll.