HAPPY AUTISTIC PRIDE DAY!

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy first-ever Autistic Pride Day. :)

Kudos to the Aspies for Freedom who put this event together.

Exploring

I'm exploring more on the Huna front, cracking open some old books on it that I've had around but haven't read yet. I really REALLY don't like Max Freedom Long's version of Huna, he's extremely condescending towards Hawaiian spiritual traditions and keeps trying to relate everything back to Christianity and Theosophy... the "Christ was a Kahuna" part is especially hard to take. That said, he does accurately record a lot of good information on the practice of Huna if you can extract it from his interpretations. So, I'm once again going to crack open my copies of The Secret Science Behind Miracles, The Secret Science at Work, and Growing into Light. (I already got rid of "What Jesus Taught in Secret", I just couldn't take it.)

I'm also cracking open my copies of Alchemical Healing by Nicki Scully (a book Duo and Solo gave me a while ago that pertains to Alchemy, Reiki, Huna, and Healing in general) and Shamanic Spirit by Kenneth Meadows. Finally, might crack open my Serge King books as well. See if I've gained any more insight into the stuff there since gaining additional understandings of Huna.

May have to go through my other books and see if there are any things that link up well with Huna, even if they themselves are from another tradition. The syncretic approach to Huna seems, IMO, to work very nicely with many disparate systems.

Oh, and this is my first post using the new LJ tagging system. Hopefully this will make it easier to track back through my older entries, I never liked having to make a post and then sort it into memories as a seperate step.

Carness

Well, we have the new car. We haven't bought it yet, it's just ours for the weekend (well, technically till tuesday when I see Charles again, so long weekend) to "test drive". So far, I'm liking it a *lot*. It has 129,000 miles on it, which is significantly less than the Taurus had. The air conditioning does work, though it's not that strong and takes a while to kick in... I've had cars do that before, though, and sometimes it's just a matter of using the air a bit more often to get it to kick in a bit more strongly. Had one car that after a while of "practice" had air so cold I could hardly stand it on for long. And all four windows work, so that's a plus, though they're the old manual kind not automatic windows. I kinda like that, though... I can fix manual windows if anything goes wrong with them, I couldn't do that with the electric ones. Also doesn't have cruise control, which I think every other car I've owned has had, but I don't really tend to use that a lot even on longer trips so it's not really such a bad thing.

A few fairly minor cosmetic concerns on the inside of the car (apart from needing a good general vacuuming and cleaning session)... the passenger side armrest is a little loose, but I think it just needs to be screwed in a bit more tightly, and the lining covering the ceiling of the car (give me a break on terminology, I know what it is I just don't know what it's called) is separated in the rear, and tucked up on itself to keep the rear window clear. Functional, but a messy fix... at the very least needs to be fastened up more firmly again. Probably something I can do on my own with a bit of adhesive, or even duct tape, though so we're not talking a major problem here. In fact, so far I've only noticed one thing not working that's going to get on my nerves: the up button on the radio's tuner does not appear to be working. Big damn deal, right? The radio itself works, just means I can only tune in one direction and have to loop around. I usually do that anyway, just in the opposite direction. I can get used to that. Seatbelts are also going to take a little getting used to... the lap and shoulder belts are separate, and the shoulder belt goes in the opposite direction of every other belt I've ever seen... it goes from the bottom middle up and attaches to something on the door frame, with the release being on the part of the door frame it attaches to. Don't really mind this, but my habits are going to take a little while to change. Keep reaching for it in the opposite direction, both to put it on and take it off again.

I'm going to take it out again after it gets dark tonight, get a feel for how driving it at night will be. Obviously want to make sure the lights are all working. I've already tested out pretty much everything I could think of... drove it on the highway at those speeds to make sure it could handle that, tested all its gears here in the parking lot, including reverse, drove it on some twisty little backroads to get a real feel for how it handles on curves, that sort of thing. Very much like the feel of it so far, even if it'll take a while for me to get used to it as opposed to my previous car.

Ally likes it too, but I have a feeling that's mostly because the radio already found Disney music on a local station for him. *chuckles*

And there's something else... my last car was red, for those who don't know, and a Taurus. My mom had originally named it Kaz, after a minotaur in the Dragonlance series of books. When I took it on, I felt no affinity for that character, and eventually changed it to Kasteylan... naming it after my good friend Casteylan of Alorya. It seemed to fit, both of them being "red hawks", and far-wanderers. And while pondering this new car, I had been thinking "gee, wouldn't it be cool if this car was blue? I'd know just which Aloryan to name it after, then."

Folks, the car *IS* blue. The outside is a beautiful sky blue (admittedly the paint could use a touchup in many spots, but that's not exactly a priority at the moment), and the inside is a deep, midnight blue plastic that almost exactly matches the shade of a certain cloak (and, I believe, certain scales in other forms). So yeah, this car is getting named in my elfy-Dad's honor when I buy it. Not sure exactly which of his many and varied names to apply (suitably altered, of course, I don't believe in using the exact same name to name something after someone, I'd at least need to change the spelling to differentiate... if I was going to name a male child after myself, for instance, I'd probably name him Jareth or Jaim or something, not Jarandhel), but I'm quite sure I'll figure out which name would be best to use in just a few days. :)

I'm really really really excited about this. :)

Oh, and the car's energetics feel as if they're responding very well to me, though I've kept my own influence on the car to as much of a minimum as possible and will continue to do so until I actually buy it and make it mine. So far the *only* energywork I've done on it at all was the teensiest bit of Reiki on the AC when it was slow to come on, I've had ACs in cars respond well to that before and it did eventually come on after I did that so maybe it helped. All in all, I'd give it a very positive review, both physically and in other terms.

Carness, Pt 2

So, I just got back from the night-time drive. Actually, I left around twilight, but it got nice and dark by the time I got back. Really put the car to the test this time... I drove all the way up 81 to New Market, then took 211 over to Luray. This involves driving over a largish mountain, so that I could get the feel of how the car handles steep inclines. It's also a VERY twisty road, so more testing of how it handles. It did very well on both. Then, once I hit Luray, I turned around and came back on 211 to 340... took 340 south down to 33, and took 33 back to Harrisonburg. This is the long way to go, wanted to get a real feel for how it would handle the drive, plus I wanted it to get nice and dark so I could see how well the lights work. They work very nicely. :)

I'm getting this car, there is no doubt in my mind now. None whatsoever. This is the car for me.

I also tentatively have a name for it, though I'd like some feedback from those who know the runes better than I do, particularly silvaerina_tael. I want to name this car after Eyovah, specifically after his elven incarnation on Alorya where he was my father. The name he took in this life to refer to that incarnation (not sure if he ever used it in that life or not, but that's largely irrelevant) was Frey. Now, I want to name this car in his honor, with a clear reference to the name Frey, but I'm not a fan of naming two people or things exactly the same. I was named Howard after my father Howard who was named after his father Howard. Let me tell you, it gets old fast. I don't want to just name the car "Frey". So what I was thinking is, what if I named it after the rune associated with the god Frey? That'd still have a clear link to the name, right?

So, how about it, would there be any real down-sides to naming a car Inguz that I should know about before deciding?