The sun and the wind

Oh I'm back! Just for a minute, though, so don't get your hopes up. I just remembered something from yesterday that I wanted to impart to this blog. It's a parable of the sun and the wind, in summary: "The sun and the wind were arguing about who was more powerful. They decided to test their strength on an unsuspecting traveler in a coat, to see which of them could strip him of his coat first. The wind blew furiously in an effort to tear it off of him, but he found that the man only wrapped his coat closer around him. Then the sun beamed down on him gently and the man took off his coat."

I think I've heard that before, but I'm not sure. Someone offered the story after the Theology at the Bottleworks discussion to relate it to a person in the discussion, and I thought it was a nice analogy. There's a regular at the discussions that likes to pontificate on everything, and it was especially bad last night. He talks at everyone without actually listening to them. Last night I agreed with him, mostly, but the fact that he was yelling and forcing his points made me more inclined to shut him out. It was over the top. I might skip next month's discussion on health care simply because of this man.

That man along with two of the other core regulars actually sat down with Joel and I afterward. He's very outspoken and takes some getting used to, but he was nice to us. The other two were cool. They had seen us there before and just wanted to know more about us. One of the guys said Joel and I had "great chemistry." Cute. It turns out that we still aren't sure how to answer the "How long have you been together?" question, though. It's not that important, anyway, but maybe we'll get to the bottom of it this weekend. Oh yeah, back to that whole "being productive" thing.