Yeah.

What Laura said.

Interfaith discussion

So, last Thursday we had an interesting Newman Night. (For those who don't know, Newman Clubs are Catholic student groups at universities; at my school, the club isn't actually called the Newman Club, but our weekly dinner and social event is still called Newman Night.)

This past week, we had dinner together as usual (cooked by a few of the members), and for dessert we walked over to Hillel House for a meeting with the Jewish Student Association. Their rabbi spoke a bit about Pope Benedict XVI and what his papacy might mean for Jewish people and for Israel. Our priest couldn't come along, so we improvised our own version of the short talk he had intended to give: an explanation of the Last Supper and what it means to Catholics. Then we all talked for a while about the connections between the Last Supper and Passover, and we answered each other's questions about different beliefs and practices of our faiths that came up during the discussion -- papal infallibility, the details of the Seder, the differences in the governing bodies of our religions, transsubstantiation of the Eucharist, and so on. One person was worried that Christian Passover celebrations are sometimes too Christological; this was an interesting counterpoint to the beginning of our discussion, when another JSA member had explained how appropriate it seemed to him that the Last Supper should have been a Passover Seder, since the focus of the Seder is deliverance.

I don't remember all the details of our discussion, but it was fascinating. I've been waiting for a real dialogue like this for a long time. I used to go to a Passover Seder at the Lutheran Student Center at my undergraduate university, and it was very carefully traditional, but I don't know if there was a single Jewish person at our tables. At the same student center, I participated in a series of intelligent, compassionate discussions comparing Islam and Christianity, but I'm not sure we had any Muslims present. In the semester I spent at Oxford, CathSoc (the Catholic Society) invited members of JSoc and ISoc (the Jewish and Islamic Societies) for an interfaith discussion, but it was during a busy part of the term, and not one member of JSoc or ISoc appeared. And now, finally, last week, I got to be part of a discussion with people who were curious and thoughtful and learned and insightful -- in fact, one of the JSA members knew more about some details of Catholicism than we from the Catholic group did! It was wonderful, and I hope we can arrange more events like this.

Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan is a fabulous board game. It will eat up all your blogging time...

No such thing as free shipping

I keep a lot of things in the "Buy Later" section of my Amazon.com shopping cart -- it's sort of a secondary wish list for me. Today I added something to that wish list, and got this message:

Important Messages
Please note that the price of HP DeskJet 3740 Color Inkjet Printer has decreased from $37.99 to $37.33 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of Written on the Body has increased from $9.71 to $10.36 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of The Weather of the Heart (Wheaton Literary) has increased from $8.24 to $8.79 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of Penrod and Sam has increased from $14.93 to $21.95 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of Little Town in the Ozarks (Little House) has increased from $5.39 to $5.99 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of New Dawn on Rocky Ridge (Little House) has increased from $6.29 to $6.99 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of On the Banks of the Bayou (Little House) has increased from $5.39 to $5.99 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of Rituals of Dinner, The : Visser, Margaret has increased from $10.85 to $11.56 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of Invisible Cities (A Harvest/Hbj Book) has increased from $9.26 to $9.75 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of How We Think has increased from $8.06 to $8.95 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of When Words Matter Most : Thoughtful Words and Deeds to Express Just the Right Thing at Just the RightTime has increased from $10.50 to $11.20 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

The price of every single book increased. (I could save $2.66 on the printer if I still needed one, though.) Gee, I wonder how they're paying for that new Amazon Prime feature?

Oh DEAR...

This does not bode well for me.

New (to me) blogs

Amira recently highlighted some new blogs that have caught her eye. I especially like the first two on her list:

By Study and Also By Faith is an intimidatingly thoughful, but very pleasant, place to stop by.

Knot in the String is about family, church (LDS), and daily life. Also quite nice.

...

I spent 12 hours at school today. I am tired, but proud. Early this morning, I had a two-hour meeting with my advisor (who is indeed back from Australia), and I'm really starting to feel like I'm a Big Grownup Mathematician. I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon helping students, which was especially encouraging because I'd just heard that the students in my other class have a rather vicious opinion of me. And the last two hours or so weren't work at all; we had a department pizza party and awards ceremony. A few of my good friends got awards they very much deserved, so I was happy.

(giggle)

Julie's highlighted a gem from the Curt Jester.

More advice for myself

I found this in the comments for a thread on making fun out of chores over at 43 Folders. I haven't figured out if it really works for me yet, but it certainly sounds like good advice. Obviously it applies to more than dishes; like, for instance, that laundry that's piling up in the hallway.

"To my mind, the idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you aren't doing them. Once you are standing in front of the sink with your sleeves rolled up and your hands in warm water, it really isn't so bad. I enjoy taking my time with each dish, being fully aware of the dish, the water, and each movement of my hands. I know that if I hurry in order to go and have a cup of tea, the time will be unpleasant, and not worth living."

From Thich Nhat Hanh: Essential Writings, page 30.

Where I've been

I've been pretty good about blogging daily -- until this weekend.

I was across the country attending a cool math conference at a nice hotel, and (as my whining below implies) my internet access was spotty at best.

Of course, I could try to make it sound better by claiming I was silent in solidarity with Dy and TulipGirl and the others who have been on the road lately and unable to blog daily. If only I were that thoughtful in foresight instead of hindsight! :)

My advisor's finally back from Australia (I think...) so I'd better get my nose back to the grindstone.

Argh.

Hotels lie about internet access.

And Jill has wireless at her hotel. No fair! :)

Wisely spoken

Do you feel you don't have enough time to do the things you want to do? First, give up reading comments on blogs. If that doesn't free up enough time, stop reading the blogs themselves as well...

From "Life Hacks" on the 43 Folders Wiki.

But it's so hard...

[/whine]

Also, I forgot to mention something about The Sparrow: It's (mostly) realistic science fiction about Jesuits. How cool is that?

The Sparrow

Maybe that's what it meant to find God: to see what you have been given, to know divine generosity, to appreciate the large things and the small...

Thoughts of the fictional Jesuit Emilio Sandoz, in The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

It's one aspect of discovering God, anyway, and maybe the one I'm best at just now.

It's one aspect of discovering human love, as well, I think: to realize all the things you are being given that maybe you hadn't paid attention to before, and to want to give back out of love, out of a desire to make someone happy, instead of feeling that you're so far in debt for their kindness that you can't ever get out.

The Sparrow is a fascinating meditation on the psychological and moral levels as well as the obviously religious level, and it's a plain good story, too. That's why I keep re-reading it from time to time, even though there are piles of other books waiting to be read for the first time, and piles of homework and grading and packing waiting to be done. I don't as often re-read the sequel, Children of God; it's nearly as good, except that ending is a complete cop-out on the part of the author.

Many of the characters in both books are Jesuit priests, but others are atheists or agnostics, and neither "side" is flattened or oversimplified. The stories both challenge and affirm the faith of the faithful, but they don't require either characters or reader to convert -- only to think. They have plenty of meaning and plenty of fun and an abundance of love.

And they make me appreciate the same things in my own life.

Order

Order will bring harmony to your life, and lead you to perserverance. Order will give peace to your heart, and weight to your behavior.

...

You are untiring in your activity. But you fail to put order into it, so you do not have as much effect as you should. It reminds me of something I heard once from a very authoritative source. I happened to praise a subordinate in front of his superior. I said, 'How hard he works!' 'You ought to say', I was told, 'How much he rushes around!'

Josemaria Escriva

I've been spending more time than I probably should lately on getting organized, on getting everything in order. Still, it does give me a delightful (and only slightly illusory) feeling of productiveness to finish things from my to-do list or to finally know where all my notes for Class X are...

(Hat tip to David Allen, inventor of one of the many organizational systems I've been Googling when I ought to be working. It's bordering on what 43 Folders calls "productivity pr0n"...)

Habemus Papam

Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI. Even the Wikipedia entry on him has changed (although it was changed by a rather zealous fan who's already referring to him as "Benedict o grande").

That was quick.

Are you a stickler?

Post-poaching from Poppins, because I can't adequately paraphrase it:

Eats, Shoots & Leaves has a little punctuation game for those of us who get a little bonk.ers when punctuation i'snt in, the right place.

It says I am 100% stickler.

My kingdom for a horse...

So, the stable where I ride has had an outbreak of a mysterious disease (nobody seems to be quite sure what it is, even after weeks of testing). They lost three horses, and others have gotten sick but responded to treatment. They're hoping that, if they're lucky, they can be open again by the end of the month. For now, the whole stable is quarantined; even owners who board their horses there have to make special appointments to visit. Some, and maybe all, of the horses have gotten outside for a little exercise, but mostly their exercise has come from people leading them up and down the barn aisles to keep them from getting colic. Even before the state veteranarians placed the quarantine, the stable owners were putting "biosecurity" precautions into place.

I miss my riding lessons, and I feel sorry for the friends I've made in the few months I've been riding at this stable. This must be financially and emotionally devastating for them.

Times are tough in this corner of the blogosphere this week. There are plenty of all-human families who could use good wishes.

Still, if you have some to spare, send good wishes to my friends and their horses -- I'm sure they'd appreciate it.

Aviva	Bailar	Gem

Such a doll

This is me today. More or less. My shoes are black and my jeans are long and my shirt's untucked, but it's surprisingly close. Oh, and I'm not anime.	Edit: Adam has requested that I change his doll, and publicly apologize for missing the guitar. He's sick, so I'll humor him :)

What do you look like? You can make your own girl doll or boy doll.

My dead celebrity soulmate...

... is Genghis Khan, apparently.

Genghis Khan responds...

"Your offering of twelve Yak carcasses shows me honor and respect, and for that I have chosen to spare you. You are officially a Mongol from this day forward!"

What your date might be like...

Despite his fearsome and well-deserved reputation as a ruthless military genius, Khan can be quite charming. The two of you can discuss art and the role of writers in advanced society, and then you can go out for a coffee and make plans to invade China. If you want something more romantic, you might take him to see a movie of "Robin Hood," although Khan might find it annoying that Robin Hood doesn't massacre everyone in the party he's robbing. If you want a lasting relationship with Khan, be prepared to travel a lot, usually on horseback.

My runners-up were Vincent Van Gogh and James Baldwin.

You can find your dead celebrity soulmate here.

Link via Happy Catholic.

Why I am not winning any TA-ing awards

I do try to engage my students, to make the "discussion" sections interesting (or at least interactive), but they just sit there blinking at me. I think they're picking up on my lack of enthusiasm. See, for this class, I'm not really teaching America's bright young minds to think. I'm teaching America's bright young minds to do their homework. And there's a world of difference.



This semester I'm also a teaching assistant for another class, one whose nickname is "Probability for Poets." The students in this class are mostly humanities majors; most of them dislike math and chose this course because it looked the least painful. And it's great fun to TA. The students don't come in knowing as much, but they want to learn how to think about things, and I get to explain the logic and the definitions and how things work instead of just standing there doing arithmetic for them.

I do have a biased view of the second class; since I don't teach a discussion section, I only interact with the students who are motivated enough to actually come to my office hours. And there are other issues with the first class, too; since there are several TAs and it's a large lecture, we spend a lot of time just managing things like who will grade what when, and who will keep the homework where.

Is there any better way to manage these big math lectures? As an undergraduate, I did have some professors who gave fabulous lectures, and really engaged the class (at least the class members who were awake), and I sort of remember the TAs for those courses being invisible. On the other hand, these were mainly history classes, which at my school meant that they didn't have recitations. Does the invisible-TA model work better for math classes too?

If not, does anyone want to take over my section?

Question for the other Catholic bloggers

So, a friend asked me the following question earlier tonight, and I'm mildly embarrassed to admit that I knew more about the LDS answer than the Catholic one. I mean, I like knowing a lot about other religions, but I guess I just assumed I knew the same amount about my own.

Just to warn you, it's on a topic that may offend some people. Obviously, discussing it doesn't offend me (or I wouldn't bring it up in polite conversation, er, blogging), but it may bother some, and that's why the rest of it is behind the "read more" link below:*

(*At least I hope it is. I just enabled this feature and I can't get to (anything).blogspot.com to check it!)



Now, before I get to the actual question, some caveats:

• The question was asked and (partially) answered in the spirit of cool-headed, curious inquiry. Please answer it the same way. I doubt most of you would start a flame war in the comments, but if you do, the comments, they are disappearing.


• I already know the general gist of the answer and my defensive side feels obligated to add this bullet point just to let you know that I'm a partial, not a total, ignoramus about my own culture. :)


• If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Sooo...

The question is, why does the Catholic Church consider homosexual activity a sin? I know it's something to do with lust, and with using sex for things other than creating life. I know the LDS take on it is (among other things) that there are souls out there waiting for their chance at mortal life, and it's important to help them get here. As far as I know (which isn't as far as I thought it was), that doesn't apply in Catholic theology. So what are the details of the Catholic explanation for why acting on homosexual desires is a sin? Do we pattern ourselves on Adam and Eve more explicitly than I realized? Is it that the default value of sex is "bad," and there are exceptions to that? Is it that homosexual activity is by definition extramarital? If so, does that go back to the Adam and Eve thing?

I can see how the medieval philosophers drove themselves crazy. :) Post away! Enlighten me!

Fabulous

A fabulous line via Julie:

Einstein said, "God does not play dice." He was right. God plays Scrabble.

Philip Gold

And this group is also fabulous. I particularly like the Chekhov mission.

Rare almost-political linkage

I guess I'm worn out from all that blogging yesterday.

For today, an open letter to the editor by Moreena on organ donation.

My inner European

Another silly quiz -- I'd hate to be too thoughtful...

And evidently my personality matches my genes -- I'm an Irish-Scottish mongrel.

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table.

Who's Your Inner European?

Oh... but I'm nice, too!

It seems I've offended people I didn't mean to offend. I'm sorry.

I should post some kind of disclaimer: I don't have to agree with you to like you! The blogosphere would be far less interesting if we all thought the same thing -- and if everyone thought exactly what I think now, I'd never have to stop and reconsider and figure out where I'm wrong...

If I post about you, it's because I like and respect you and your ideas enough to write up a post about them. If you're listed on my sidebar, it's because I like and respect you and your ideas enough that I want to read them on a pseudo-daily basis. I like you!

(The converse, of course, isn't true. If I haven't acknowledged your existence, it's practically certain to be because I'm a graduate student, and even my procrastination has its limits...)

A followup

From the comments:

G Zombie said...

I annoy you? How?

A perfectly reasonable question. And, now that I think about it, I think I overstated. He's periodically annoying, but certainly not "mostly annoy[ing]". This is a good thing, really; if I'm not periodically annoyed, I never have to consider my own opinions all that seriously, and I never find out that some of them don't hold water.

As for the "how," well, that's a harder question than I expected it to be. I think mainly it was an overreaction, to go with my overstatement. I can't reconstruct the blog trail that led me to thanks for not being a zombie, but it was a little heavy on the "I'm liberal, you're stupid" viewpoint, and some of the posts on [non]zombie's front page looked like more of the same. I'm sort of allergic to this point of view right now, because several people in my department are firmly and loudly on the "men are pigs, Dubya is Satan" end of the spectrum. But I agree with more of that front page than I thought I did. I recoil from conservative-bashing, but I was (for example) horrified at Nebraskans when they voted to ban same-sex marriage a few years back. It was already illegal in Nebraska. Even if I agreed with them, it would still seem stupidly, unnecessarily mean.

(Edit, 8:20 AM: Jill/Txt posts on another scary proposal in the Midwest. It's not that we're not dumb out there; I'd just argue that we're by no means the only dumb ones, or dumb in the only possible way, or even dumb in a consistent way.)

So, although I don't retract yesterday's post, I do apologize for not thinking a little harder about what I meant. And I thank you for being thought-provoking without picking a big fight! I look forward to reading more of your blog in the future.

Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!"

--Lois Lowry, The Giver

And of course I like Nebraska better. It's home, not anything objective. :)

Note to self

Getting stuck in the imagined narrative trajectory of your life can be intensely counterproductive. Author your way out of it and into another.

From a post by George Williams at thanks for not being a zombie. He mostly annoys me, but being annoying and having good ideas are in no way mutually exclusive...

I'm not a real homeschooler, but...

If I were, evidently I would be:


Mr. Potato Head You have your ideal of how things
should look, but youre flexible enough to allow
for change. You are not bothered by changing
methods, mid-course if necessary. You use an
eclectic combination of curriculum sources.


What Type of Homeschooler Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Another reason to go to the college Mass on Sundays

Because when you're greeting the priest on your way out, and he is distracted by talking to the person in front of you, and he forgets your name (and if you're a girl) he says "Good morning, beautiful." * I needed that this morning. :-) I'm in a good mood, but laundry is piling up, and all my nice clothes are in the pile somewhere, and my hair is expressing its free will again, and I've felt squinty and hunchbacked all morning because I've been doing computer work and there's something subtly wrong with my glasses. All in all, I didn't feel nearly presentable enough for church, so a kind word really hit the spot.

* (And without being creepy about it.)

A good day

Today I:

• went to the aquarium and a good Italian restaurant and walked around the harbor with Adam and a new friend, for free, because Adam and the new friend are prospective students for my department.
  
• incurred Adam's wrath by hiding behind him in the "splash zone" at the aquarium's dolphin show (so that he got soaked and I stayed almost dry)
  
• took pictures of the sunny day and the beautiful magnolia trees on campus
  
• played games and told nerd jokes and made plans and bounced ideas
  
• didn't touch the computer for nearly 24 hours and still had all kinds of fun.
  

I'm going into serious blog withdrawal now, but it's about bedtime, so starting to look at blogs now would be far too perilous. (Can't I have just a little peril?) I hope all of you are having good weekends as well!

Optical Illusion for a Lazy Friday

This optical illusion is new to me...

(Dredged up from an old post by Lauren at Cnytr)

What is Vanilla Ice's real name?

So, Google has developed a new feature: if you type in a question (say, "Who is John Adams?") you'll get an answer (or an attempted answer) above your search results, like this:

John Adams
Property: ... the first (1789-1797) Vice President of the United States, and the second (1797-1801) President of ...
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams

My favorite question-type at the moment is "What is ________'s real name?"

I discovered this new Google-property at Google Blog while I was trying to figure something else out: Those of you (Amira comes to mind) who have "Currently Reading" lists in your sidebar -- how do you do it? Are you constantly hand-editing your Blogger template, or do you use a nicer utility?

How'd the test go?

OK, several people have asked me nicely, multiple times, how the (statistics) test went, and I haven't managed to answer them yet. It went well, I think. It wasn't the spectacular victory that my take-home exam in graph theory was (or anyway I'm willing to believe the take-home was a spectacular victory, since I haven't gotten my grade yet!). On the other hand, I was far better prepared for it than I was for the last statistics midterm. If the final goes this well, maybe I can pull off an A in statistics after all...

As for The Well-Educated Mind, I'm very excited about it. I read well and quickly for pleasure, and I'm not unhappy with the ratio of classics to fluff in my reading, but one of the things I miss most about being an undergrad is spending lots of time in liberal-arts lectures, having interesting people tell me interesting things about famous books and events. Maybe books can fill some of that gap while I'm supposed to be spending my time and energy on math and math alone -- I certainly don't have time right now for formal classes, and there are good reasons I decided I shouldn't be a humanities grad student.

Even my optimism sounds sort of cranky to me this morning. Apologies... I'm in a snarky mood after grading some uncharacteristically bad essays from the "Probability for Poets" class.

The miracles of sunrise

For the last 36 hours or so, I've been whining about how early I had to get up this morning. But this morning I'm extremely happy. It was a little spooky to get ready for school when it was still pitch black outside, but the lack of traffic was very pleasant. Even driving in the dark was nice, since I wasn't exhausted. I listened to Holden Evening Prayer on my way in; it was slightly surreal, since I'm used to hearing it (or, when I'm lucky, singing it) closer to bedtime, but it fits the dark hours nicely.

On campus, the blossoming trees in the pools of light from the streetlights were lovely. (Dy beat me to it in the comments here, but I really have been meaning to mention that Maryland smells much better now that it's spring! Most of the campus is full of pink magnolia trees, and there are white blossoming trees all around my building, and it's been sunny and warm enough to sit under them doing my school work. It looks and smells heavenly.) I missed a lot of the sunrise, which is too bad, but I still got to see the world growing brighter outside my window, and it seemed like a miracle. Even the grass seemed to glow as it went from some vague dark color to a bright spring green. Someone planned well, making the world spin so that daylight comes back to everyone every, um, day. Well, OK, it's silly, but it's still wonderful.

I suppose it makes sense that getting up so early makes me happy; it's in my genes. My dad has always gotten up early -- once he forgot to reset his alarm for daylight savings time and woke up at 3:30. I'll have to try getting up early for several days in a row, if I can, to see if it's really the time or just the novelty that I'm enjoying.

I'm certainly glad that I have this many hours before my statistics exam, because it really lets me relax about studying for it. Just got back from the library, in fact; I walked over as soon as they opened to check out The Well-Educated Mind. I really enjoyed The Well-Trained Mind, and I'm re-reading it right now, but I don't plan on having children for many years yet, and it's a bit late to homeschool myself in a WTM way... Back to work now, though.

And because Ray's been waiting so long...

Since Ray is practically family (at least on the internet), he was out of the running for the First Post and Second Post medals. So Ray gets the Gold Medal for Friends and Family Who Comment on This Blog. His latest blog is new enough that it all still appears on the front page, so it would be a bit redundant to point you to any particular entries.

Second prize goes to Adam; his comment isn't his first appearance on the internet ever, but it might as well be, since I can't find any of the good math-nerd pictures of him that I used to be able to find on Google. Oh well...

Also, why is it still dark? Hasn't the sun noticed that I'm awake? And I mean awake. I tried to go back to bed and wait for a snooze alarm, but I was up again before it went off. I don't think I've ever been this awake when I sleep two hours later...

Oh, and

Dy, who I imagine is Dy from Classic Adventures (I don't know of anyone else who spells it that way) wins the silver medal for being the second uncoerced visitor to comment here! Check out her posts on self-educating; it's fabulous.

(Dy, you should e-mail me at libby dot beer at gmail dot com . I have a summer job that may bring me slightly closer to your part of the world, and a fair number of my "real-life" friends live down that way too. Maybe we can find a good time and place to meet up for something fun.)

Keys and Z's

Very early to bed tonight; tomorrow is some kind of recruiting event, so they're subtracting 250 spots (!) from the not-so-very-large lot where I park -- the only lot on campus with more than a couple of dozen spaces to begin with -- and I don't want to deal with satellite parking on an exam morning. So I'm getting up in the wee hours instead, which means I should go to bed, like, now.

Just got home a bit less than an hour ago -- I was throwing stuff in the car to go home, and reflexively locked the door before I shut it with my keys inside. Oh well, I was due for it -- I think this may be the first time I've done this in the 5 or so years I've had this car. Thank goodness for AAA (and boyfriends who remember that I have a AAA card...)

When the AAA truck showed up, after an hour and a half, to pick my lock, a campus security trucklet stopped to see why the truck was parked in the no-parking road. The AAA guy explained that I was locked out of my car, and the campus security guy said, "Oh, we do unlocks." Oh. Well, five years from now when I do this again (knock on wood) I may very well still be on campus to take advantage of that little service. Actually, I got to take advantage of it today -- there was sort of an unlocking race between AAA and campus security on opposite sides of my car. Campus security won. Oh, and they're thirty seconds from both my office and my car.

Lesson(s) learned.

New wheels and a new pet

I was right in the middle of procrastinating tonight when I got a phone call. Adam bought the new car he's been contemplating, and he was on his way up to my place -- a 20- or 30-minute drive -- to take me out for a ride! I felt like I ought to be wearing a poodle skirt and doing my nails, but in a good way.

I managed to get a lot done while he commuted up here -- my exercises and changing clothes and getting my school bag ready for tomorrow -- and so I was ready for some fun when he showed up. We went for a short drive, and he stopped by my apartment for a snack because he hadn't eaten dinner before going to the Mazda dealership, and now he is on his way home again -- and it's still about 20 minutes earlier than I've been getting to bed lately.

Hooray!

---

Also a new pet. If it's good enough for the M-mv's, it's good enough for me!

14 hours and counting...

I have a take-home exam due in a bit less than 14 hours.

Too busy to blog substantively tonight.

Anyone want to do my homework for me? How about my housework?

"Nothing Else Need Be Said."

This evening or this night, Christ opens the door to the Pope.

Angelo Comastri
Vicar General of Vatican City

---

Above, I am poaching a whole (brief) blog entry from Julie D. at Happy Catholic. I don't always agree with her, but she always makes me think, and this post was a gem.

I am sad for all the Catholics who have loved Pope John Paul II, but I am happy for the Pope. He has well earned his rest -- may it be peaceful.

The system is down

I'm about to head out to the Apple Store to get my poor ailing computer a new hard drive. Or maybe just get a new poor ailing computer. (I hope not!) We'll see. Wish me luck!