It's Monday, and everything seems to be back to normal! This weekend was filled with much excitement and celebration, as an old friend of mine returned to town after being gone for a year and a half. I realize however that I have been neglecting all of my readers by not sharing news of my proficiency examination. I passed! I stumbled in a few places, but overall it went very smoothly. It was very exhilarating to be reciting the memory work in front of my Lodge. My brethren were very excited about my progress as well. I was told several times that it was the best examination they'd seen, and my mentor wanted to make sure everybody knew how quickly I'd learned it. But now I sound like I'm bragging, when really I'm just extremely thrilled!

I learned also that our Lodge goes dark in July and August. However, several of my brothers were scheming to pull together some "emergent" meetings in those months to get me through my Fellowcraft and Master Mason degrees so that I would be able to attend the Lodge's stated meetings when they begin again in September.

In the link department today, I have the Family of New Jersey Freemasonry, which happens to also be the home page for their Grand Lodge. Apparently New Jersey has so many Freemasons that they are broken down into districts, with deputy Grand Masters. That must be a lot of Masons attending a lot of Lodges. Now I understand why I get e-mail from so many of them!

In other news, I recently began planning for a trip to Egypt later this year. I would be very interested in making contact with Freemasons while I'm over there. If anybody has any information on contacting Masons in Egypt, please e-mail me and let me know. I haven't been able to find anything so far.