scattered

About two hours ago I decided that I'd like a cup of tea. I went into the kitchen, put away my things from lunch, emptied the dishwasher, ran the disposal, started loading the dishwasher, put away some appliances, straightened up the cupboard under the sink, and came back to my computer for a quick round of email-news-facebook.

I remembered that I wanted tea. I went into the kitchen, cleared off the table, brought in the mail, leafed through my new Time magazine, sorted and stacked the mail on my previously cleared table, washed some dishes by hand, noticed about six other kitchen chores to do today, finished off an open can of soda, and came back to the computer to research normal ranges for cholesterol. Plus email-news-facebook-twitter-other email-blogroll, until my mom called and I had to quickly come up with $70 of purchases I want for free at Circuit City in the next 24 hours.

I have learned a few things:

1. There's always more to do.

2. The next generation iPhone is going to be sweet, fast, AND affordable. (But I'm not sure I want to be wired to the email-news-facebook-etc routine more than I already am.)

3. Spammers hire people to type in those squiggly letters you have to decode to get online accounts. Sites that are looking to use those squiggly letters can get them from a nonprofit company that scans out-of-copyright books and makes them available online for free. When the company's OCR software can't recognize a word, it sends it to a squiggly-word-needing website, where someone types it in to get an account, and whatever they type is entered into the online version of the book. I think that's very very cool.

4. Some days are just like this. It's an errand day, a chore day, and in an hour it will be a work day. It's my last day sans roommate, so I also want to enjoy (guilt-free) a movie, a book, a glass of wine while I still can.

I have done a lot in the last couple hours, but wouldn't call it particularly productive. I'm not sure that the small choices I've made are the kind that will add up over time to reaching my goals or living a life of purpose and significance. I hope they will--that these mundane things are being incorporated into a God-centered momentum--that at the end of this day I'll be able to say I was serving the One I love. But sometimes that's hard to discern.

I think I'll go have that cup of tea now.