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Year Two, Day 324: Enneagrams, the ebrary and a Bike Ride!

 Today is my daughter's actual birthday.  April 1st. No fooling!

She spent the day with her husband. Tomorrow the family will celebrate with yet another dinner!

After this weekend, I am definitely going to work on eating less, and eating healthier.  Do I sound like a broken record?

Sigh.

Today was yet another "real" day off.  The only scheduled event was lunch with my mother.

It was a completely random day.  I followed one thought to another. I ended up buying some "camo" yarn to make a baby blanket for my new grandbaby. I asked my daughter what colors she would like for a baby blanket and she said "camo"!

My daughter and her husband are avid hunters. Bow hunters.  I am actually quite excited about making a camo baby blanket.  It will be perfect for a boy or girl.

I am practicing up on my knitting skills.  I still have five months!

I also stopped by my storage unit. Picked up my old VCR and a few movies.  Then I came home and put in "Miss Congenialty" with Sandra Bullock. Attempted to take a nap, but got too caught up in the movie. One of my favorites. Light hearted and fun. But I shed a few tears!

I was planning on having lunch be my only meal of the day, after my feast last night at Fogo de Chao. But watching a movie without popcorn was making feel deprived.

The bus does not go down my street on weekends, so justified my trip to the store for junk food by riding my bike!

I had a lovely 3/4 mile ride there and back.  A bit of sun was peeking through the clouds.  No rain. A hint of spring in the air!




After my bike ride, I came home intending to practice piano and blog. But instead I surfed. The internet that is. I haven't done that in a long time. Just randomly going from one website to another. I had a mission. I was researching the "Enneagram" which is the study of different personality types.

Earlier today, before lunch with my mom, I was organizing my room while I washed my pillows and bed linens.  Dust mites be gone!  I found a set of CD's that a friend of mine from one of my online prayer groups had sent me. I had never really listened to them. She sent them to me a few years ago, when I was in Salem.

So I stuck CD #1 in my player and was instantly engaged!  Apparently, the enneagram can be traced back to the Christian "desert fathers". I have had a fascination for them for many years. But have just barely begun to study their works. I do know they exist and in my spiritual wanderings, the desert fathers have popped up numerous times.  From what I understand, their teachings led to the Orthodox Church.

A few names that have come up in my wanderings that I intend to explore are Evagrius Ponticus, Saint Anthony the Great, and John Cassian.

I am just going to have to live to be 200 years old in order to complete my studies!

But I am so excited! I am attempting to stick to a budget, so am limiting my book purchases on Amazon and instead, renting library books online. Well, when I put in searched for the "Enneagram" and "desert fathers", on the multnomah county library site, I was transported to another site that I had never heard of before!
It is called the "Proquest Ebrary".  According to Wikipedia,


"ebrary (the "e" is lower case) is an online digital library of full texts of over 100,000 scholarly e-books.[1] It is available at many academic libraries and provides a set of online database collections that combine scholarly books from over 435 academic, trade, and professional publishers. It also includes sheet music (9,000 titles) and government documents." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebrary)

Most excited am I! I may never be seen in public again! Actually, ironically and quite amusingly, the first book I rented was 
The Happy Introvert : A Wild and Crazy Guide to Celebrating Your True Self
Book Cover Image
by Wagele, Elizabeth 
Now isn't that ironic!
Well, I could go on and on, but it is getting late. And this wandering woman should be practicing piano and going to bed soon.
It's been fun!
Happy Saturday!
Talk to you tomorrow!
Zita
P.S. Ironically, my fruit of the spirit that I was pondering today was "self control". Might need to ponder that one for the entire week!

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