And I'm done

was too tired to brain enough this afternoon for research reading, so I graded and wrote the exam for next week (it takes less brain power to do that as you don't need your memory so much).

I came home, did a bit more piano practice. Showered - a long, warm shower - washed my hair (and used a deep conditioner on it, and I'm happy to realize that in the Ulta order I placed right before Ash Wednesday, I ordered enough packs of these to last me until the end of Lent - I like to do one per week during the winter). Used a nice sea salt scrub I have (Shea Moisture brand) on my arms and legs to try to exfoliate.

(I also have a set of the Tony Moly foot-exfoliating slipper things; it takes an hour or more for them to work; I might do them tonight, I don't know).

Wrote my Sunday school lesson, and remembered a funny historical anecdote.

Part of the Scripture was from Luke 14, particularly this part was what I was thinking of:

"²⁸ “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? ²⁹ For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, ³⁰ saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’"

Okay. I grew up not too far from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (we used to go over there to shop sometimes). In the late 50s, an evangelist (I guess he was a televangelist, or maybe a radio evangelist first) named Rex Humbard built a "cathedral" sort of thing, and then in the early 70s, he wanted to add a tower to it.

Yes. A tower. It was going to be grand, I guess, 750 feet tall, and with a rotating restaurant on the top of it. 

Well. He didn't "count the cost" of the tower, apparently, and ran out of money about halfway through. And there it stood, all through my childhood and adolescence, and I remember driving past it and my parents laughing at it. (They politely called it "Humbard's folly," later, as a young adult, I heard a less-family-friendly name for it was "Rex' erection"). But yeah: it was an unfinished eyesore and a source of much mirth.

(Later, I guess Humbard sold the cathedral part - but not the tower - to Ernest Angley, who, wow, is apparently still alive? (born 1921). Angley had his share of scandals, the lesser one being his not paying employees the right way....my parents ran into him once, ironically, in a hotel we were staying at when my dad was at some geology meetings....maybe in Toronto? I don't remember. But my mom remarked that Angley "had" to shake hands and introduce himself to everyone in the elevator, and she kind of shuddered when she described how "soft and floppy" his handshake was....she never did like anyone with a 'dead fish' handshake)

And yeah, maybe not very nice of me to report that, but I confess a lifelong suspicion of (nearly all) televangelists; all too often it seems they live lavishly off of donations from people far less well-off than they are.

But yeah, wow. Blast from the past. I mostly remember the unfinished tower as being on the way to Children's Palace (the preferred toy store when I was a kid), or, less happily, trips to the dentist in the wild, funky round medical building (so 1970s. I thought it was Akron-area artist Don Drumm who designed the bas-relief - it looks like his work - but I think I remember reading elsewhere it was not)

Anyway. Going to the dentist there was not fun, not just because I didn't like dental work being done (and I had A LOT of cavities as a kid) but it was this weird, windowless, concrete building....like a bomb shelter. The elevators were small and cramped and I remember feeling was was probably the first start of my claustrophobia (I still have to think really hard about getting into an elevator to this day, and if the place I'm going is less than four or five stories up, I'll take the stairs)

But yeah. And now I need to figure out a light dinner, and then change the sheets on the bed, and then, finally, plop down with some knitting and maybe some mindless tv...