Out, out, damn thought!

I'm sitting in Panera, using their free wireless, drinking their free refills of coffee, trying to work out what on earth the Bible says about employment practice and firing people. I was just beginning to make progress on this finally when three NU students sat down at the one remaining table - a small one right in front of me. In order to fit them all in, they had to block me in (I'm in the corner). This is not in itself a problem - I can wait a little while to get more coffee.

Then they took out scraps of paper and started planning out some sort of theatrical project - it sounds like a collection of short student-written scenes. (later: Nope - in fact, they're mostly dance pieces, or at least dance-centered. Even better.) Now, if there's one profession that has ever threatened to tempt me away from an ecclesiastical vocation, it's the theater - specifically, stage managing. My senior year my dance professors wanted very badly to send me off to Yale or Columbia for an MFA in stage management, and for brief moments I pondered whether I might somehow be able to do both stage management and priestly ministry. It was a definite temptation. So I find it ironic that while I'm trying to work out a difficult biblical theology paper, three theater students come and start working out rehearsal schedules, scene arrangements, stage assignments, etc., seated so that they prevent me from going anywhere without a big fuss.

I can't help overhearing... they're practically sitting at my table. And I know I'd fit so well into this conversation. How am I supposed to stay focused on the Bible and employment in the middle of such an exciting conversation about one of the things I miss most from my former life?

spoons and such

I have spoons!

This doesn't sound like much, but, as some of you know, I have until now owned a grand total of one spoon. (I have a few cooking spoons, but not eating spoons.) Today, though, Hope and I went scavenging for wedding fabric and a graduation gift for her sister, so while we were at Ikea getting her sister's kitchen set up, I bought a cheap set of silverware. Now I have both teaspoons and tablespoons, each in the plural. (Also more than two forks and one table knife.) I can now serve tea, hot chocolate, soup, beans and rice, etc, and not require that everyone bring his/her own utensil to eat with.

I am excited.

peace on earth

I've had that U2 song in my head most of the night, and before I go to bed, I want to link here to a post on my friend Mike's blog that I found very moving. I've struggled with the pacifism v. just war debate for years, and this post is the sort of thing that makes me want all the more actually to be a pacifist. Regardless of your stance on the issue (and the post is really not about that debate), it's worth reading.

(Ok, like me, Mike still uses haloscan for comments, so you'll have to scroll down to April 11 to find the right post. It's titled "Peace." Sorry.)

deep breath...

Still cranky today, but at the end of a long day and long week, it's very nice just to sit and read about the Bible, instead of having to think of clever or useful things to say in papers. Tomorrow I'd better be back about the business of researching and writing, but tonight it's a relief just to do some class reading.

Almost there

No, I don't mean the end of the quarter, or reading week. I'm staunchly refusing to believe that. I am, however, almost finished with both this day and my theology paper (which was due today, but I took an extension in honor of yesterday being death day and this paper being sort of kind of about death). I have been informed that my paper does indeed address the prompt adequately, so I will put a conclusion on it, and then I will go to bed. And then this day, which has not treated me particularly kindly, will be over... and tomorrow I can get up and talk more about death. Woot.

oh. my.

Some of you know what the spaceship game is. Some of you don't. All of you should take this quiz. The official title is "Which Devastating Hope crew member are you?" but for those who read this blog, it could just as easily be titled "Which of Beth's friends in St Louis are you?" So humor me... go, now, and take the quiz. And don't forget to leave me a comment and tell me your results.


First Mate Emily: Your military training has made
you into a warrior, but your inner pacifism is
apparent to those who love you. You seek
redemption for the evil deeds of your past, and
you find the first hints of forgiveness among
the friends you've made in your new home.


Which Devastating Hope crew member are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Dark humor

In response to all of our classes focusing on death today:

Jane: What's next after we get through death in AKMA's class?
Me: Misery and frustration.
Jane: Oh, yay. What's after that, abuse and neglect?
Me: No, church and state.
Jane: Yeah, that's what I said, abuse and neglect.

I like Jane. She's funny and she makes good chai.

get out of my head...

So when my ex and I were still dating, she would drive me nuts by calling everything she didn't like binary and continually telling me to break the binary. It was cute at first, until things like my insisting that the alarm had to be set for earlier than class started became "binary". Last year, I lived with Ryan, and therefore thought about the binary not at all after/between breaking up with her.

It's been very strange, therefore, to find myself (yes, find myself) objecting this year that things are too binary. I'm pretty sure I first noticed that I was doing this in Gospel Mission, though maybe not. It could very easily have been Early Church. Anyway, I'm apparently now at the point where I had to speak very sternly to myself and explain that I may only use the phrase "binary opposition" once, or at most twice (intro and conclusion?) in my 3-5 page paper on God's omnipotence, our ability to affect God, and the logic of intercessory prayer. Oy.

Yeah, she'd be proud (if she were speaking to me... but that's another post. Or maybe not.)

condensed version

Things still needing to be done:

Write systematics paper (due Weds)
Fill out faculty eval sheet (due Fri)
Bills
FAFSA
Financial aid app
Finish biblical theology reading (due Tues) - done

Should add to that:
Read for NT Weds/Fri
Read for systematics Weds/write question
Read for PC Tues/Thurs

Still, not a bad weekend's work, especially since most of what's left I didn't expect to get done this weekend anyway, and I've still got a good hour or so to go tonight.

No, you don't have to care...

but if I put this here, I can't lose it. Nor can I pretend it hadn't occurred to me to do these things.

Things that must be done soon:

2 pm haircut - done! yay! happy!
Write pastoral care paper - done, and magically morphed from just over eight pages to just over five
Edit pastoral care paper - done
Write systematics paper
Fill out faculty eval sheet
Clean futon - done
Clean "desk" (coffee table) - done
Wash dishes - done
Read for systematics/write question - done
Look over bills & make appropriate calls
FAFSA
Financial aid application
Decide about art show
Take trash out to dumpsters - done
Map out how all my papers are getting written this quarter - done
Call Milner about singing tomorrow - ask about time and part - done
Look over alto part if it turns out I'm singing alto - unnecessary, singing soprano
Read for biblical theology - book (wow) and one article done

Hmm. On the one hand, that's a lot - on the other hand, there are plenty of opportunities to cross things off.

boo

This will be short, in lieu of sweet, or something. I'm feeling rather grouchy tonight. I made it through a week with several papers that I didn't mind writing but cared about doing well, and now get to write two next week that I'd really rather not have to write at all. Two for next week, I should say - they're due Tues & Weds, respectively. Then I get to start on a nice long one for the week after. I know I signed up for it, but I'm feeling grumpy today, so I'm whining. I also got stood up tonight, which is something I really don't like. I cut out of my evening plans promptly so I wouldn't be late to meet someone at 10, but at 10:30 he was still in his conference, and it didn't sound like they were wrapping up at all. This frustrates me. Also, because I had to leave so promptly, my groceries are still at Davies', along with my coat. This means that while I did acquire pudding pops at the store tonight, I can't eat one now to console myself. A good thing, in general, but it doesn't help the poutiness.

Anyway, I'm going to head toward bed now. If nothing else, I can get a good night's sleep, so I can be well rested to write that damn paper tomorrow.

PUDDING POPS!!!

We interrupt this New Testament research for an important service announcement:

PUDDING POPS ARE BACK!!!

So last Sunday, Seabury had a pizza dinner for prospectives, with yummy ice cream. In helping eat the leftover ice cream, I discovered that Swiss Miss makes Premium Fudge Bars, which are delicious and taste more like Jell-O Pudding Pops than anything I've had since they stoppped making them. So I told Rory, because she too has missed Pudding Pops greatly.

AND THEN: Ryan IM'ed me today to tell me that they went looking for the Swiss Miss bars and found Pudding Pops instead!!! She also gave me links, including a store locator which tells me they sell them at the Green Bay Dominick's. This makes me all the more excited for my grocery date Friday with Davies. I refuse to allow the fact that my freezer is about six square inches to faze me - I will figure out how to make this work.

Rory and Ryan are the best.

We now return to our regularly scheduled research.

I like these things.

Since the only thing I can say on my own today seems to be theology of religions gobbledygook, it seems like a good day for a quiz post:

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

25% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Surprisingly, I have no Midwestern in my speech... despite spending the great majority of my life in states that are at least technically Midwestern. I'm ok with that, honestly.

Si and Hope are terrible people

Well, ok. Terrible, wonderful, marvelous people. Si wrote a lovely post in honor of Jane's ordination yesterday. It was so lovely that I called across the hall to Hope that she should read it. Hope's response was something along the lines of "ohhh... we can't let him leave either!"

Now, on two hours of sleep last night (plus an hour this afternoon), a reminder that Jane and Si and a lot of other really great people are going to be leaving soon was enough to bring me to tears. (This is why Si and Hope are terrible - crying was not in my plans for today.) I'm very grateful that Hope is not graduating and that therefore Andrew will also be around next year, and I appreciate that Jane has the decency to stay in a reasonable distance next year. I'm steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that the following year all three of them and Heather will likely be much much farther away.

Someday, in addition to aspiring to an apartment with a kitchen, I aspire to live in some sort of circumstances that don't involve major parts of my social circle moving away every spring.

goodbye week!

I guess it's been a busier week than I realized - didn't notice it had been so long since I blogged. Between Prospective Student Days Sunday - Tuesday and the Day of Silence and another overnight visit to ENH yesterday/last night, I haven't had much time on the computer. It's been a good week overall, though, despite the chest pains and hospital time (and those of you who haven't already heard will be happy to know that, among the other things that aren't wrong with me, I do not have a blood clot).
~Note to self: email parents and tell them about that. And call tomorrow to say happy birthday to Mom and apologize for not calling Dad for his on Tuesday. (bad daughter! bad!)
Anyway, likely I won't end up on here again until Saturday, either: Jane's being ordained tomorrow (yippee!) and I'm headed down to South Bend for the night to attend that. (I hear also that there's an excellent chocolate company across the street from the cathedral. Or the hotel. One of them.) Saturday morning, instead of heading to softball practice, we'll head back here, and then I'll have plenty of time in front of the computer, since I owe AKMA one position paper, one research probe, and one case study next week.

Today's A-List

Susie - for being good company and a good friend
Laura - for being far more helpful than certain others ;)
Micah - for good chat at various points today
Si - for being funny and informative
Laurel & Kathryn - for a ride to church and helpful consult on the way

I know that's short and cryptic - but that's the way the cookie crumbles, at least until someone decides none of us can talk in cookie metaphors anymore.

gotta quatta?

While my parents were here, we were remarking that we hadn't seen any new state quarters in a good long while - in fact, none of us could remember seeing any for 2004, let alone 2005. Well, today I went down and requisitioned quarters from the bank, at the insistence of my mountain of laundry. Lo and behold, in the two rolls I got, I discovered Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin from 2004 (maybe one more) and California from 2005. Admittedly I stopped paying close attention a long time ago, but all of those were new to me. Kind of cool to see so many new ones at once.

My father's got collections running for my brother and me, so if anyone is actively collecting and needs one of these more recent ones, lemme know. Quarters are of course equal to gold, so I'd like a different quarter in return, but I'm perfectly willing to trade. The washing machines are utterly indifferent.

Also, I think there should be a natural law against invisible bruises. It always feels really wimpy to complain about a bruise when you can't even show off its six different colors, yet I usually find that my most painful bruises (like the one on my leg from practice this morning) don't show themselves very well. Maybe that's a matter of how internal a bruise is, or something - I don't know nearly enough about anatomy for that. But if it's going to get any mileage out of hurting me, I want to be able to back that up with evidence.

That was originally related to the laundry discussion - dragging laundry down to the basement was harder than usual because I didn't want to keep banging even clothes against my shin - but I guess I missed the transition part. Oops. Well, time to stop whining and go back to work.

Seabury Silence

Susie surmises that a side effect of the recent Seabury plague must be that none of us seem to have much to blog about lately. So I'm joining the line of folks blogging about our lack of things to write about (Si, Ryan, Susie), not to mention those who just haven't blogged much recently (notably Jane, though others have also written less this week than usual).

So yeah. Not so much to say.

ponder, ponder

Yes, I'm feeling pondersome tonight. Various discernment-type questions have been floating around my brain lately, and are starting to needle at me a little more than usual. Some of this is because of questions my parents asked while they were here.

I could be more specific, and make this a more interesting and informative post, but I've just spent the evening doing Greek and planning a service for Thecla, so I need to do some reading now for my two (credit) classes tomorrow.

a list!

I can't think of anything useful to post, but it's been a couple of days since I've posted anything, so let's have a list day.

Things that make me happy today:

~Baseball season
~Eucharist (for more than one reason)
~Food
~Warm weather!!!
~Having class outside in the warm weather, barefoot. (Well, I was barefoot. Most people weren't.)
~The prospect of thunderstorms tomorrow.
~The Bible (We've established that I'm a dork. Get over it. :) )
~Brief reading assignments
~Tomorrow is Wednesday, and Wednesdays are looking like my favorite day of the week this term: two excellent classes and no icky ones, noon Eucharist (often with healing), work, and Greek.
~Tomorrow I have Greek!
~Thursday I have spiritual direction. (Not only do I like spiritual direction in general, but it's been a good long time since the last meeting, what with spring break and Holy Week and Easter and all.)

Overall, a satisfying day.

come again?

From one of my pastoral care books:

"In order to model emotions and choose topics, the minister might find a non-sexist approach to counseling helpful"

I'm sorry - might find a non-sexist approach helpful? Under what circumstances is a sexist approach helpful? or even appropriate at all? Why is a non-sexist approach optional?

In addition to the statement itself, I can't decide whether the fact that this is in a book on pastoral counseling for men makes the statement worse or not. I'm leaning toward not - in that it's equally inappropriate for any gender-specific discourse, and only slightly less inappropriate in non-gender-specific discourse (and I do mean "less inappropriate" rather than "more appropriate").

wwjd?

Following this week's discussion about the phrase "doing x makes the baby Jesus cry," today I noticed that a Smith housemate has the following away message:

"being lazy makes the baby jesus want to drink gin out of the cat dish."

I guess there's a first time for everything.

Annunciation practice

(Ok, that's weird... the previous post just appeared today, despite my having told it to publish on Monday.

Hmm. In blogging, would one refer to "the previous post" as "the above post" or "the post below"? I mean, usually previous is above, but that's spatially ridiculous on a blog... Experts?)

No, I haven't been practicing my public speaking. The last few days have been a whirlwind of parental visits, trying to squeeze in some homework, meetings, and a rehearsal today for our Annunciation service on Monday. I'm very excited about this service - it kicks off at least a month of weekly high church worship services at Seabury, it's a Mary-day, and I get to be thurifer (thurifer: one who carries a thurible)! I've never been a thurifer before - I'm not even sure they exist in the diocese of Ohio (or Missouri, for that matter). I've never seen incense used in either place, except for Ohio's annual Boar's Head when the three kings come in with their gold and frankincense and myrrh. I got to spend a fair amount of time rehearsing with someone who actually knew what he was doing (Si, Jane was right about my needing time to practice) and will spend some more time doing so on my own this weekend, now that I have something to practice. It's more complex than any liturgical action I've participated in for a while, but I'm excited. I do love complex liturgical movement and incense both.

Now, however, it's time to try to get an hour or so of reading in tonight before I go to my dinner. One of the consequences of the parental visit is that I'm barely caught up with my work, and I need to get moving on that pronto.

around the world in 8 hours

My parents arrived last night, as I may have mentioned below, and today we had a full day in the city. We headed down to Chinatown, which included a very ordinary lunch and an extraordinary tea shop - not in the sense that Dream About Tea is extraordinary, but I found there chocolate milk tea with boba (which there apparently comes in slush form when you order it cold), and my parents found a small teapot with an infusing basket in it (which I thought they were buying for themselves and in fact they were buying for me). Then we headed back up the red line to Michigan Avenue - specifically, to American Girl Place. My father was extremely tolerant, and even enjoyed the museum-like parts and the chance to marvel over how much the company has grown in a mere 15 years. My mother and I were more like exultant at the chance to wander around and see in person all the stuff we mostly skim now in the catalogues, and to touch some of the really cool outfits I don't own, and rejoice over how well they do what they do. It was superfun, and a woman in the store gave me free stickers.

After AG, we wandered up and down Michigan Ave for a while. I managed to find a pair of cropped jeans at Gap (where jeans often fit me) that stunned me. Not so much because they were gorgeous, but because they were both too long and too small. Granted, I'm not actually a size 0 and haven't been for years, but these were a strange size 0. Also, I really think it's ridiculous that the smallest adult size is too long for me, and especially if it doesn't even begin to go around my skeleton. Who are these people whose hip bones are three inches narrower than mine (entirely aside from whether there's anything on them) and whose legs are six inches longer than mine.

We topped off the day with a brief rest and then a delicious dinner at Tapas Barcelona. China, all around America, and Spain all in one day, then a whirlwind tour of Christian theology from all over the Mediterranean and Europe to close it out. No wonder I'm exhausted!

in case you were wondering...

Christ IS risen!

It happened this year, indeed. We arose for a 5:15 service and were not disappointed - the tomb was empty. I survived singing solos at 5:30 and 6:30 am, basically, sang "Welcome, happy morning!" (minus verses 2 & 3, but I dealt) and had a fine brunch with friends.

Somehow I forgot to take a nap today before the 6 pm Easter dinner - really, if someone knows how I possibly forgot to take a nap after getting up at 4 am, please let me know. But I had a great day chatting with Hope and then eating with friends, and then my parents joined us after dinner for dessert and wine!

18.5 hours and half a bottle of Montepulciano later, I'll wish you all a happy and blessed Easter week!

He is risen, he is risen!
Tell it out with joyful voice:
he has burst his three days' prison;
let the whole wide earth rejoice:
death is conquered, we are free,
Christ has won the victory.

hope around the edges

One of the things that gets me during Holy Week is that most years, I'm not really all that sure what's going to happen until it does. There's a piece of me that wants to believe that maybe this year, we can avoid the cross - maybe this year, we won't screw it up. And there's an equal part that isn't sure, after Good Friday, if Jesus will really rise this year - what if Easter just doesn't come? I'm never convinced it will happen until it does.

But after a good Easter Vigil rehearsal this afternoon and seeing some of the prep work for tomorrow morning, I'm beginning to hope again. It still feels a little bit like "just in case." There's a way in which it's a little like the waiting when someone's missing, when every day it becomes more real that they're probably dead, but you don't make it final until it's for sure - just in case she comes home tomorrow. Rehearsing the Vigil/Easter service is a little like that - like we'd better be ready just in case the tomb is empty tomorrow, rather than because we know it will be. But it begins to look as though that hope is not false.

It's got my vote.

My sophomore year at Smith, when our director introduced the Brahms Requiem to the Glee Club, he told us that if he had to pick only one great choral work to survive destruction, this would probably be it. Several people were amazed that he hadn't chosen the Mozart Requiem, but I quickly came to agree with him. I fell in love with the Brahms, and even after we performed the Mozart my senior year, I didn't change my mind. The Mozart was great, but the Brahms was transcendent for me. It spoke to my heart at a time when I needed to hear that kind of language - by which I mean both the texts and the music. And it has continued to be the most powerful piece I've ever performed OR heard. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that my German is better than my Latin, though my requiem Latin is pretty decent (or was). Certainly I'm proud to have been part of a performance whose CD version is actually worth listening to - I go back and forth between ours and the Chicago Symphony version. I'm sure part of my love for the piece is the timing - that year in general, and the performance date specifically (the day before what would have been Emily's 21st birthday). But the piece itself is also an amazing work of art and prayer. It's become a regular part of my Holy Week listening:

Nun Herr, wess soll ich mich trösten?

Ich hoffe auf dich.

Tod, wo ist dein Stachel? Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg?

playtime

Ok, I've done several hours of reading tonight already, and since my own classes haven't actually started, I declare it to be play time.

I've been looking for a recording of "Welcome, Happy Morning" - my very favorite Easter hymn and one of my overall favorites as well, since commenting on Tripp's blog about it. I can't seem to find one anywhere (if you know of one, please share!), so I'm indulging in one of my favorite daydreams: if I could commission recordings of hymns, what would they be? I've often bemoaned the fact that most fairly straightforward choral recordings of carols and hymns leave out verses; as I've begun to search for good cds of hymns, I've also discovered that many of my favorite hymns don't seem to be out there at all.

It occurred to me that there might somewhere be a church who could pull off some sort of fundraiser around this - calculate the cost of having the choir record, say, 25 songs, and start the bidding there to auction off the opportunity to pick which 25 hymns they'd record. You could limit it to the Hymnal 1982 or not, whatever you preferred, and you could reserve the right for the organist/choirmaster/musical director to set the order. They'd make money off the raffle itself and then off selling the cds once they were produced.

Anyway, if in my fantasy world I were to have such an opportunity, here's what I think I'd pick, from the Hymnal 1982:

1. All hail the power of Jesus' Name! (450)
2. Not here for high and holy things (9)
3. Alleluia, song of gladness (123)
4. Alleluia! sing to Jesus! (460)
5. Lord of all hopefulness (482)
6. The Church's one foundation (525)
7. Come down, O Love divine (516)
8. Crown him with many crowns (494)
9. For all the saints (287)
10. We know that Christ is raised and dies no more (296)
11. I come with joy to meet my Lord (304)
12. How firm a foundation (637)
13. Let all mortal flesh keep silence (324)
14. Christ is made the sure foundation (518)
15. The King of love my shepherd is (645)
16. God of grace and God of glory (594)
17. The God of Abraham praise (401)
18. Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve (546)
19. O worship the King (388)
20. Praise to the Lord (390)
21. Christ for the world we sing! (537)
22. When morning gilds the skies (427)
23. O praise ye the Lord! (432)
24. At the name of Jesus (435)
25. Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (436)


Ok, I couldn't do it. Even that was tough. I had to make a separate list just for Easter (and could do likewise for Advent and Christmas songs, but those get recorded a lot anyway).

1. Welcome, happy morning! (179)
2. He is risen, he is risen! (180)
3. Christ is alive! Let Christians sing. (182)
4. Alleluia, alleluia! Hearts and voices heavenward raise (191)
5. That Easter day with joy was bright (193)
6. Come, ye faithful, raise the strain (199)
7. Now the green blade riseth (204)
8. The day of resurrection (210)
9. Awake, arise, lift up your voice (212)
10. Come away to the skies (213)
11. At the Lamb's high feast we sing (174)
12. Hail thee, festival day! (175)
13. Alleluia, alleluia! Give thanks to the risen Lord. (178)
14. Jesus Christ is risen today (207)
15. The strife is o'er, the battle done (208)
16. We walk by faith, and not by sight (209)
17. Hail the day that sees him rise (214)

Yeah. Should probably go to bed now.

pop! goes the seminary

People seem to have popped out of the woodwork this morning. All of a sudden, juniors are middlers are back from break, and even better, seniors are back from field ed. There were fewer empty seats at mass today than I've gotten used to on Mondays (especially in the row behind mine, which is mostly seniors). The seniors are not only around (which some of them were last quarter) but in classes. I have roommates again! Kirsteen's only been gone a week, and Hope's still house sitting for a couple of weeks, but it's great to have Jane back, cleaning and singing and making tea. We've all begun doing homework again.

Yep, things are buzzing again - and all this is before I've set foot in any of my classes for the term.

things

Today is Palm Sunday. Rory and I went to a lovely church service this morning at St. Matthew's.

Rory and Ryan are gone. This is a terrible travesty.

We did, however, have a superfun weekend. I can't imagine anyone more fun to visit the Field Museum with, and dinner Friday was a blast.

Classes start tomorrow, except mine don't start until Tuesday. I think I'm looking forward to this, though somehow my classmates are enthusiastic enough that I already feel behind/like a slacker. Oh well.

Did I mention that Rory and Ryan should not have left?

this is the morning report...

gives you the long and the short...

As of right now, weather.com predicts that it will start raining here on Maundy Thursday and rain through until Easter, when the sun will come out. This will probably change between now and the weekend, but I think it's pretty darn cool.

Weather.com also tells me that it's 33 degrees out and feels like 23, with wind gusting. I'm perfectly willing to believe that it's 33 out, but I see very little movement in the trees. I'm thinking not so much on the gusting.

And regardless of these silly claims that it's cold today, I am sitting here in shorts - because it's not nearly cold enough to warrant the kind of radiator activity we're getting in the dorm.

Countdown: 5.5ish hours until Rory and Ryan arrive...

good to know...?

kind of strange, considering I don't drink that much, and I definitely don't drink hard liquor, but there it is... and I can't for the life of me figure out how to tighten up the ridiculous spacing...

Bourbon Congratulations! You're 130 proof, with specific scores in beer (80) , wine (116), and liquor (104).

Screw all that namby-pamby chick stuff, you're going straight for the bottle and a shot glass! It'll take more than a few shots of Wild Turkey or 99 Bananas before you start seeing pink elephants. You know how to handle your alcohol, and yourself at parties.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender : You scored higher than 69% on proof You scored higher than 94% on beer index You scored higher than 97% on wine index You scored higher than 98% on liquor index

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on Ok Cupid

back!

I am back. This is good.

I am watching Help! This is also good.

Rory and Ryan are coming in 1.5 days. This is very very good.

March Gladness is here!

This is copied from Mike's blog:

Once again, Wash. U. Episcopal Campus Ministry is doing March Gladness ... it's your usual NCAA basketball tournament pool -- with a twist. If you win, you don't get to keep the money, you get to donate it to a charity of your choice! We all have fun. It's good healthy competition and in the end some people who really need it get some help.

And it's only $5 an entry to join. You can't beat that!

This year, we've gone hi-tech (sort of) ... well, actually we've just gone kind of lazy. We're letting Yahoo run the pool for us. In fact, we've arranged it so you can do the whole thing ... fill out your bracket and give your $5 "donation" (see that, FBI guys, no illegal gambling here!) all online. Here's how it works:

1) Just go to the game front page and click on the "Sign Up" button to create a team. After completing registration, or if you already have a team, click the "Create or Join Group" button and follow the path to join an existing private group. Then, when prompted, enter the following information...

Group ID#: 36417
Password: love

The only catch to this is that if you don't already have a Yahoo ID, you have to sign up for on (it's free, I've had one for years and never had a hassle with it).

You have to have your bracket entered by Thursday morning. NO LATE ENTRIES!

2) You can give your "donation" through Network for Good with your major credit card. Just click on this link or on either of the Network for Good buttons on this site. Then...


-click on "Donate Now"

-contribute $5 (or more, if you like!)

-under "donation preferences" put in that you want your name and email address revealed (otherwise we won't know you've paid!)

-under "designation" put WUECM March Gladness

-under "dedication" put the name of the charity you want to receive your winnings.

OR

You can bring $5 by Rockwell House or mail it to ECM March Gladness at 7023 Forsyth, St. Louis, MO 63105. Be sure to include a note with your name and designated charity.

IT'S THAT EASY!!!!

Tell your friends and family about it! The more people who enter, the larger the pot for some worthy cause! In case of a tie, the money will be split. Otherwise, it's winner take all!

March Gladness is the brainchild of ECM alum Lesley McCullough! Yeah, Lesley!

Just thought I'd pass this on for those of you who are into basketball, tournament pools, March, or gladness. :)

Ain't got nothin on Smith

NU is far larger than Smith College. I'm quite sure that even if you only count the students who are likely to be on campus at 9 pm on a Sunday night before finals, it's more than Smith has altogether. Considering that, the strength of NU's primal scream is pathetic. I was walking through campus tonight and heard a few guys screaming. I smiled to myself. A few more people screamed. Eventually I realized that it's the night before finals and this is probably the beginning of their version of the primal scream... only it never got to be more than a few people at any given moment. Now, at Smith, when it comes time for the primal scream, you know it. It usually starts at one end of campus or the other and spreads, but for a good sixty seconds at least, the whole campus is screaming at once. I remember being in the basement of the chapel playing the Cube with a friend one semester the night before finals at 10pm (which is the proper hour for a primal scream, but 9pm here is 10pm on the east coast, so I'll let it slide) and hearing a bloodcurdling scream from all over campus, even down there. A Smith primal scream makes itself heard. I'd be willing to bet that hardly anyone north of Emerson or south of Clark heard tonight's scream.

I have to say, however, it was pleasant to be walking through listening to their screaming, mild as it was, knowing that I'm on spring break, even if my spring break isn't the most exciting thing ever.

sluggish

I'm supposedly back on the Jeremiah-God-sexual violence paper again, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to get motivated to work on a paper on the second day of spring break. I really do want to get some good work done on it over break, and I really would prefer not to bring my computer to the hospital with me, but not doing work is so enjoyable...

Admittedly, this is hardly a surprise. One of the pluses to my original plan for spring break was that I'd get several days off with friends before* buckling back down to look at a paper again. I'm not in the least surprised that I feel ready for a couple of days off at the end of the term - that's why we get a break between terms. On the other hand, my plans have shifted; my days away from the suite will be Tues-Sun, not Fri-Weds, and I need to deal with it and do my work.

I have* read a 440 pages of a 600 page tome in the last twenty-four hours... but that doesn't really count as productivity, since it was the March Power Issue of Vogue.

Maybe if I give myself till tomorrow, I'll be more motivated...

*I was planning to italicize this, but oddly, Netscape isn't displaying those buttons. Any of them. This is unwelcome - the entire reason I use Netscape is because it displays more of those buttons than Safari does. Harumph.

pizza bagels bad

I've never liked pizza bagels. Even the one night they were really good at Smith, and my roommate ate something like ten of them, they weren't that great. They're usually crunchy on the bottom and soggy on the top and then greasy over that, and they're made with bland bread and sauce and cheese and often taste like cardboard. Here at Seabury, it's also a way to use up all the extra bagels before break, so we have pizza bagels on cinnamon raisin and poppyseed and so forth. But they've never hurt me before today. Today I bit into my pizza bagel and the sauce was so hot - temperature-wise, not spice-wise - that it burned the roof of my mouth so badly that my skin is peeling off of it.

I am not a fan. I am, however, a fan of ice. I believe eating ice is helping much more than my lunchtime neighbor's suggestion of drinking soy sauce. Ice is good.

languages

I was listening to the Hebrew class discuss their final this morning and being jealous (yes, I know it's bizarre to be jealous of someone's final). So here's my list of languages I want to learn, in the order I currently intend to learn them. I don't include German, Greek, or Latin, even though I'd like to improve all of those, because I've learned their basic grammar and can work through readings in those languages, though German is much much quicker than Greek or Latin.

1. Hebrew.
2. French
3. Spanish
4. Russian
5. Welsh
6. Gaelic
7. Italian
8.

yippee!!!

The staff of Rush has informed me that I only need to be in for 2-3 days for the video EEG, not 3-5!!!

So right now, my understanding is that I will go in on Tuesday the 15th and be released sometime on Thursday or Friday. As soon as I can get them to pin that down for sure, I'll start putting together a visiting schedule, but let me know what days are good for you if you want to come play. I know there are a couple of people who have requested early in the week... as far as I'm concerned, we can have as many people in there as will fit. I don't know, though, if Rush will be as lenient as Evanston. Both places claim you can only have 2 visitors at once, but we know that Evanston doesn't mean it. I'm hoping Rush doesn't either, as long as their patients are safe and happy.

Ok, I do actually want to pay attention to this class. We're talking about icons. Icons make me happy.

notes to self

~Buy more microwaveable bowls. One microwaveable container for food is not reasonable.
~Reschedule spiritual direction, as march 17 is clearly no longer workable.
~Call B&B about rates
~Email Mom and Dad and tell them you need them to bring Ramen, books, summer clothes, the Godspell video, and the games from the top of your closet when they come. Do not expect them to read your mind and simply bring these things.
~Mom & Dad's birthdays are in a month. (So is Amy Ray's, but you don't have to buy her a present.)

i survived!

So I made it through what was actually a very pleasant weekend - catching up with my friend Sam Thursday night as I stayed at his house, meeting the COM and chatting with them Friday and Saturday, dinner with my parents Saturday night, and church this morning. That last included preaching at both services, as many of you know, and an adult forum on the ordination process in Ohio with a couple of current/past COM chairs from my parish. The sermons went amazingly well, though the parishioners there are probably supportive enough of me not to be the best measure of how good the sermon actually was. Now I'm back and I've got to learn to chant Eucharistic Prayer D, Mozarabic Tone, with all due speed, so I can sing it tomorrow afternoon for a final project. For those who are interested, here's the sermon for the later service (the early service was much the same but without the first third). Warning: it's not short. They like long sermons at that service, or at least the rector does. (The relevant readings are 1 Samuel 13:1-16, Psalm 23, and John 9: 1-11. Except at the early service the first half of the Samuel was cut. Without warning me. Luckily it didn't matter.) Anyway:



I love anointing stories. We’ve got three of them this morning: Samuel anoints David. The psalmist talks about God anointing his head with oil. Even the Gospel talks about anointing - when Jesus smears the mud on the man’s eyes, the Greek says he “anoints” mud on his eyes. One of the reasons I love anointing stories so much is that they’ve always sounded kind of mythical to me. Until this year, I’d never been part of a community that did regular anointing, and I would guess that many of you haven’t either. So it’s something that can sound kind of old-fashioned when we think about it today, like being knighted or rescued from a dragon. Certainly we use anointing differently today - we don’t anoint our presidents, we elect them, and we prefer medicine to anointing people with mud to cure diseases! If we think about anointing at all, actually, we tend just to think that there has to be a pretty special reason for someone to be anointed by God. Often we’re inclined to reserve that epithet for Jesus, since the Messiah is the Anointed One.

And it’s true that being anointed by God is a pretty special thing. It’s not your everyday happening. But it’s also not just for Jesus - or even David. We don’t have to be the savior of the world or the greatest king ancient Israel ever knew to be anointed by God. The blind man was anointed by God too - not because he was particularly talented or amazing or because only he could do a particular task, but because it was an opportunity to glorify God.

Some of us may be like David in that God tags us for certain tasks. Some of us may have sensed a clear calling as a doctor or an actor or a teacher. Others of us may identify more closely with the blind man, who was anointed to see and to bear witness to Christ. Most likely, we each have some of both of these going on. God probably does have some specifics in mind for each of us - a place to be, a role to fill, something along those lines - though we may not always know what those specifics are - or maybe we think we know some days and other times we know we don’t. Certainly, we are all called to see the world anew and to witness to Christ’s presence and work.

In fact, we’re not just called, as important as that is on its own. We’re also all anointed to these two things. The reading from Samuel tells us that David was anointed with oil and the Spirit. Does this sound familiar? It should - because we’ve also been anointed at least with the Spirit, and most of us probably with oil too, at our baptisms. Think about the last baptism you witnessed: after the baptism with water, the presider makes a cross on the person’s forehead (often with oil) and says, “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

Now, being anointed is sort of a scary thing to think about sometimes. On the one hand, people who think they’re God’s anointed usually come to our attention on the news, after they kill someone or something like that. We vehemently disagree that this is the work of God’s anointed, but that image is enough to make us think twice about adopting the label for ourselves. In our society, being “God’s anointed” often means being arrogant at best and psychotic at worst.

Admittedly, it’s not all rainbows and fairy dust when we acknowledge that being God’s anointed means something else, and might even apply to us. We don’t get a menu with daily specials for what we can be anointed to be or do for God. Often, it means we get signed on for more responsibility, harder work, greater risk, than we would have chosen for ourselves, or maybe even imagined. God chooses, not us, and since God is not a short order chef, sometimes we get chicken fried steak and are told to eat it with a potato masher when what we were hoping for was cottage cheese and pineapple with a teaspoon.

So sometimes we’re not sure what God’s going to anoint us to do next. Some of what we’re anointed for, though, we can know fairly definitely, because it’s pretty much non-negotiable. Our baptismal vows tell us that we’re all anointed to do things like pray, work for peace and justice, and repent of our sins. The blind man’s tasks, and ours, of telling people about Christ and seeing the world anew fall into this category.

Seeing the world anew after baptism means seeing the world the way God sees it. So what do we see when we see through God-eyes? Well, my friend Emily used to talk occasionally about seeing the world through stained-glass glasses. What she meant by that was seeing Christ in absolutely everything. We look up at a stained-glass window, and we see something that makes us think of God. Putting on our stained-glass glasses meant, then, that when we look at something or someone, we think of God. We look at a tree, and we see a source of beauty and perhaps of food and shade, and we remember that God created it to grow the way it does, to change with the seasons, to revitalize itself. We look at a broken-down house and we see a way for a group to come together in rebuilding it, and a place where someone who needs a home might be able to afford one after it’s rebuilt. We look at our neighbor and we see the ways in which that person cares for their family and friends, the ways that person makes sense of the world around them, or maybe we remember a time when that person helped us to learn something new or challenged us to work harder. But we see everybody that way, and every thing. It’s not just the people who are easy to love, or the things we like the most. It’s seeing Christ in absolutely every single place we look.

So that’s part of our new sight. But that’s not quite enough. The reading from Samuel gives us a pretty clear idea of what it means biblically to see the world as God sees it. The LORD says to Samuel, “the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” The way of the world is to look at the outside, in more ways than we often realize. We’re no better than Samuel about this. In school we learn not to judge by whether someone walks with a limp, or speaks with a lisp, or whether they wear certain brands of shoes or clothes. We talk about how outside characteristics such as beauty or money or fame don’t make Hollywood actors and sports stars good role models. Adults teach children to listen to what people say and look at how they treat their classmates instead, and those are valuable lessons. As we grow up, though, we often forget much of this. It changes shape, and we learn to rationalize it better, and so sometimes we’re not even aware we’re judging that way. So we look at someone in a pinstripe suit with a briefcase and someone in a trench coat with long hair, and we make assumptions about which person it’s safer to stand next to. If we’re from the North, as most of us are, we hear a Texas accent and we make assumptions about their politics, about their intelligence. If we’re going to a job, we know that we need to look a certain way, because in our society, appearances matter. They matter a lot. And we know all the tricks to justify how those decisions are based on other things, why we aren’t guilty of that - but deep inside, if we let ourselves notice, we probably know that we’re just like the person next to us, or across the street, in this. We are mortals, and mortals look on the appearance of a person, and we see them with glasses that are colored by our own personality quirks and foibles.

But putting on stained glass glasses means seeing the world in radically new ways, completely differently than how we saw it before. With these glasses on, I can see the world the way everyone around me sees it. I can read books and magazines and play on the internet and watch TV. If I put on a pair of sunglasses with purple lenses [note: in the early service I actually did this], everyone looks a little purple. I like purple, a lot. But you and I both know that you’re not actually purple, so seeing the world through purple glasses probably wouldn’t work very well for me in the long run.

Putting on those stained-glass glasses, on the other hand, trying to see the way that God sees, means seeing things honestly for what they are and seeing what God wants them to become. It doesn’t mean trying not to see the differences between people or the conflicts in the world. That’s putting on rose-colored glasses. Rose is a great color too, probably my favorite color. But, just like the purple glasses, rose colored glasses don’t show us a true picture of the world. We only need a little bit of rose in our glasses. Stained glass has all sorts of colors and shapes. Walk around the church after the service and look at all the stained glass. Some pieces are very different from each other, and even in a single piece there’s beautiful variety. Stained glass glasses help us to see all sorts of different facets of creation.

Looking on the heart means we see the true picture, the one we don’t get either with our everyday, worldly eyes or with rose colored glasses. It’s not about ignoring people’s flaws or pretending that only good things can or will happen. It’s about judging people by their character, their actions, the person they are inside, rather than what they look like on the outside. I see the best of you, I see the worst of you, if you will. David grew up to be not only a great king, but a faulty and flawed human being. God knew that. But God also knew that David was true and faithful and loving, because God looks on the heart. That’s why Jesus looked at the man born blind and saw more than just an outcast. By learning to look on the heart instead of the outward appearance, we too participate in God’s love for us and for the world. And that love is the greatest thing to which we have been anointed.

spring break: downtown

So originally I was planning to spend spring break split between visiting St Louis and rewriting my "what shall we do with a predatory deity?" paper. But today I had my appointment with the epilepsy expert at Rush, and now I'm not going to St Louis.

It turns out that what needs to happen now, in order for him to make a diagnosis, is a video extendeed EEG. What's that, you ask? That means that I pack a suitcase and a bag of books and things and spend my spring break at Rush, with wires glued to my head and a video camera pointed at me for 3-5 days, so they can monitor my brain activity continuously. The hope is that I'll do something interesting, like pass out, while this is happening, but this doctor claims that even if I don't, five days of brain activity will give him enough information for a diagnosis. Here's hoping.

So if you're going to be around Chicago and you feel like coming down/up to Rush for a couple hours sometime that week, let me know. I'm assuming, though I don't have checkin information yet, that they'll have me come in on Monday and leave Friday or before. Since I actually get to plan for this one, I'm hoping to make up some sort of schedule. (People who are on Thursday or Friday may or may not actually have to show up, depending on how interesting I am and when they release me, though I'll certainly be more than willing to do lunch/coffee/movie/whatever with anyone willing to come to Rush if I end up not being there then.) I won't need the same level of attention as I do when I don't know what's going to happen to me next, but a week will still be much more pleasant with a few visitors. :)

mystery!

Sometime between the last time I used my snow brush in my car and today, it seems to have transformed from a lovely blue and black sturdy plastic snow brush/scraper into one of the flimsy wooden-handled ones, with a very used looking, wimpy brush. I could have sworn that last time I was in my car the blue and black one was in there. In fact, I could have sworn that the blue and black one was in there when Joe and I took it to the dealership. That's the part that confuses me most - I could see someone borrowing my car and needing somehow to replace my snow brush, I suppose, but it seems odd to me that it would morph during its visit to the dealership and body shop. Sad.

Still, such are the mysteries of life...

with a memory so clear that it's as if you're still before me...

For lack of anything else to post tonight, I'll jump on the bandwagon. I've certainly commented on enough of these...

If you read this, even if I don't speak to you often, please post a memory of me. It can be anything you want, it can be good or bad, just so long as it happened. Then post this to your journal/blog. See what people remember about you.

wake up, lazybones!

I didn't set my alarm last night. There was no mass this morning, so I thought I'd sleep in, and it was lovely to get close to 11 hours of sleep.

It meant, though, that I woke up at 10:30 to the following outside my window:

(Imagine stereotypical old people voices)

woman: THIS IS A SEMINARY!
man: WHAT??
woman: IT'S AN EPISCOPAL SEMINARY! THEY WORK HARD DAY AND NIGHT, AND AT THE END IF THEY'RE LUCKY THEY'LL BE EPISCOPAL PRIESTS!
man: GOOD FOR THEM!

I heard that, rolled over, saw that it was 10:30, and thought to myself, "day and night, hunh? guess I'd better get up"

I'm going to shower now and try to get to the grocery store and back by lunch, before some sneaky grocery store owner decides "NO GROCERIES FOR YOU!"

this should be interesting...

from Kirsten's LJ:


- bold the ones you've seen
- italicize the ones you've seen part of
- put an * next to the ones you actually liked
- add three to the end

01. Night at the Roxbury
02. Shrek *
03. M
04. Dogma*
05. Strictly Ballroom
06. The Princess Bride *
07. Love, Actually *
08. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring *
09. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers *
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King *
11. Reservoir Dogs
12. Desperado
13. Swordfish (can I put half a star? it was ok)
14. Kill Bill, Vol. 1
15. Donnie Darko
16. Spirited Away*
17. Better Than Sex
18. Sleepy Hollow
19. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl *
20. The Eye
21. Requiem for a Dream
22. Dawn of the Dead
23. The Pillow Book
24. The Italian Job
25. Goonies
26. Basketball
27. The Spice Girls Movie
28. Army of Darkness
29. The Color Purple
30. The Saftey of Objects
31. Can't Hardly Wait
32. Mystic Pizza
33. Finding Nemo *
34. Monsters Inc. *
35. Circle of Friends*
36. Mary Poppins*
37. The Bourne Identity
38. Forrest Gump*
39. A Clockwork Orange
40. Kindergarten Cop
41. On The Line
42. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
43. Final Destination
44. Sorority Boys
45. Urban Legend
46. Cheaper by the Dozen* (ok, I think they mean the Steve Martin version, which I have not seen, but I can't afford to let anything slide by... I have seen the one based on the book by Ernestine Gilbreth Carey - you know, the real one)
47. The Crow
48. The Princess and the Warrior
49. Seabiscuit
50. Hard Core Logo
51. Phantom of the Paradise
52. Zardoz
53. Lost in Translation
54. American Beauty
55. Big Fish
56. Starship Troopers (did appreciate it a lot more when I saw it in "America and the Germans" class than when I saw it in the theaters)
57. Starship Troopers 2
58. The Lost Boys (yeah, um, i had issues with this one. at least the first six times or so.)
59. All About Eve
60. Showgirls
61. Swept Away
62. Star Wars: A New Hope*
63. Black Hawk Down
64. Elizabeth*
65. The Shawshank Redemption*
66. Four Weddings and a Funeral
67. The Sound of Music*
68. Notting Hill*
69. Scotland, PA
70. Oxygen
71. Ringu
72. Shrunken Heads
73. Legends
74. About a Boy
75. Lilo and Stitch
76. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?*
77. Pitch Black
78. Maid in Manhattan
79. Willow
80. Secret Of Nymh
81. Thoroughly Modern Millie
82. The Cutting Edge*
83. Anna and the King
84. The American President*
85. Save The Last Dance
86. Grease *
87. Dirty Dancing*
88. Mad Love
89. Lantana
90. Kiss the Sky
91. Braveheart
92. Dark City
93. SLC Punk
94. Memento
95. In America
96. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory*
97. The Wedding Planner*
98. Empire Records
99. Edward Scissorhands*
100. Almost Famous
101. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
102. Star Trek Generations
103. Beyond The Mat
104. Transformers: The Movie
105. Scary Movie
106. X-Men (might have liked it better under different circumstances
107. Ghost
108. Changing Lanes
109. Hangman's Curse
110. Broken Arrow
111. Mona Lisa Smile*
112. Moulin Rouge *
113. The Ninth Gate
114. Emma
115. The Name of the Rose
116. Top Gun
117. Heartbreak Ridge
118. U-571
119. Ghost Ship
120. Johnny English
121. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
122. The Fifth Element
123. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*
124. Holes
125. The Pianist
126. Amelie *
127. Road Trip
128. Miracle
129. Center Stage*
130. Spider-Man
131. Exorcist
132. Omen
133. 8 Mile
134. Son in Law
135. Stepmom*
136. Dr. Strangelove
137. Full Metal Jacket
138. Lolita
139. Little Shop of Horrors (I think,anyway... if my brother read my blog, he might be able to tell me. If I saw it, I probably liked it... don't remember)
140. Annie*
141. Rocky Horror Picture Show *
142. Being John Malkovich
143. Monty Python & the Holy Grail *
144. Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie
145. Under the Tuscan Sun
146. The Four Feathers
147. Gosford Park*
148. Bubble Boy
149. Without a Paddle
150. Labyrinth *
151. Shrek 2 *
152. Spider-Man 2
153. X-Men 2
154. Ever After
155. Great Expectations
156. Orgazmo
157. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
158. The Matrix*
159. Underworld
160. Anchorman
161. Leon: The Professional
162. The Cooler
163. Head (1969)
164. Bridget Jones's Diary
165. Albino Aligator
166. Chasing Amy
167. The Usual Suspects
168. The Shape of Things
169. 13 Conversations About One Thing
170. Hero
171. Rules of Attraction
172. I (heart) Huckabees
173. Farenheit 9/11
174. Akira
175. Garden State
176. Ghost in the Shell
177. Kissing Jessica Stein*
178. Sailor Moon: Super S
179. Adaptation
180. Punch Drunk Love
181. Mulan*
182. Napoleon Dynamite
183. Pleasantville*
184. Rat Race
185. Blue Crush
186. In Good Company
187. 13 Going on 30*
188. Elf
189. Life Is Beautiful *
190. Cruel Intentions (it was ok)
191. Princess Mononoke
192. Mallrats*
193. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
194. Fight Club (brilliant. and i hated it.)
195. Phantom of the Opera*
196. First Knight*
197. Alexander
198. Real Genius
199. Secretary
200. Quills
201. Detroit Rock City
202. Beetlejuice
203. Thirteen
204. Trainspotting
205. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
206. Weird Science
207. Mean Girls *
208. The Bourne Supremecy
209. Dodgeball
210. Meet the Parents (blah)
211. Meet the Fockers
212. Troy
213. Saw
214. The Passion of the Christ
215. Ray
216. Collateral
217. Coach Carter
218. Assault on Precinct 13
219. Hitch
220. Finding Neverland*
221. National Treasure
222. Million Dollar Baby
223. Cellular
224. The Terminal
225. Mr. 3000
226. Head of State
227. Blue Streak
228. National Security
229. Rush Hour*
230. Rush Hour 2*
231. Shanghai Noon*
232. Shanghai Knights
233. XXX
234. The Fast and the Furious
235. 2 Fast 2 Furious
236. The Last Samurai
237. Van Helsing
238. Ocean’s Eleven*
239. Ocean’s Twelve
240. Men in Black*
241. Men in Black II*
242. I, Robot
243. Harold and Kumar go to White Castle
244. Zoolander
245. Rose Red
246. The Silence of the Lambs
247. Hannibal
248. Red Dragon
249. Prophecy trilogy
250. Interview with the Vampire
251. Queen of the Damned
252. Pi
253. Ichi The Killer
254. Suspiria
255. Spun
256. A Beautiful Mind
257. Nightmare Before Christmas
258. The Butterfly Effect
259. White Noise
260. Alone in the Dark
261. The Aviator
262. American Psycho
263. Die Hard
264. Die Hard 2
265. Die Hard with a Vengeance
266. Batman
267. Batman Returns
268. Batman Forever*
269. Batman & Robin*
270. Resident Evil
271. Resident Evil: Apocalypse
272. What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
273. Blade
274. Blade II
275. Blade: Trinity
276. The Blues Brothers*
277. Blues Brothers 2000
278. Ghostbusters
279. Ghostbusters 2
280. Clue
281. Raiders of the Lost Ark
282. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
283. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
284. Street Fighter
285. Super Mario Brothers
286. Gremlins
287. Gremlins 2
288. The Addams Family (it was so-so)
289. Addams Family Values
290. Superman
291. Superman II
292. Superman III
293. Superman IV
294. South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut*
295. Beavis & Butt-head Do America
296. Ed Wood
297. Donnie Brasco
298. Pulp Fiction
299. Face/Off (maybe? did this come out when I was in high school?)
300. Con Air*
301. Mission: Impossible
302. MI:2
303. Escape from Alcatraz
304. Speed
305. Speed 2
306. Go
307. The Godfather
308. The Godfather Part II
309. The Godfather Part III
310. Manhunter
311. UHF
312. Mortal Kombat
313. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
314. Saving Private Ryan *
315. The Relic
316. Enemy at the Gates
317. Home Alone *
318. Home Alone 2*
319. Home Alone 3
320. Home Alone
321. Happy Gilmore
322. Billy Madison
323. The Waterboy
324. Little Nicky
325. Dirty Work
326. Tommy Boy
327. Black Sheep
328. Death Wish
329. Pecker
330. Cecil B. Demented
331. The Shining
332. Carrie
333. Pet Sematary
334. Pet Sematary Two
335. The Terminator* (ok, I don't remember much of the movie, but it was a good night...)
336. Terminator 2
337. Terminator 3 (either this or T2... I think it was this)
338. Ned Kelly
339. Kate & Leopold
340. Mystic River
341. I Am Sam
342. Joan of Arc (Leelee Sobieski)
343. 50 First Dates
344. Atilla
345. Timeline
346. Titanic*
347. Reign of Fire
348. Legends of the Fall
349. The Mask of Zorro
350. Rudy
351. Signs
352. The Village
353. Gladiator
354. The Bumblebee Flies Anyway.
355. The War
356. Gothika
357. Se7en
358. Hairspray
359. Love Me If You Dare/Jeux d'enfants
360. Maria Full of Grace
361. Vampire Clan
362. Once Upon A Time in Mexico
363. A Soldier’s Girl
364. Ong – Bak: Thai Warrior
365. The Man Who Cried
366. Some Like It Hot
367. The Sleeping Dictionary
368. Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run)*
369. Sideways
370. Steel Magnolias*
371. Bend it Like Beckham*
372. Tombstone
373. The Girl Next Door
374. Now and Then*
375. Muppet Christmas Carol*
376. Little Women*

There's commentary on the ones I didn't like, mostly because the bold is showing up poorly.

I'm amazed, actually, at the amount of bolding on this list. Also at how close I got to the number of movies Kirsten's seen. At least on this list. Though on this list, there are still 200 more movies that I haven't seen than that I have. Not just 200 I haven't seen, but 200 more. Eh well.

catholic it is... but they misspelled it... ;)

You scored as Catholic. Catholic 90% Jewish 70% Christian (Protestant) 55% Anarchist 45% Cult 40% Buddhist 30% Religion created with QuizFarm.com

is that right? that's a LOT of text for a little tiny bar graph...

Janik cards!

My tenth grade English class was one of the most remarkable classes I've ever had. We read, wrote, and thought more in that class than in any other class I had in high school and many I've had since. One of Janik's classic assignments was the index cards. At any time, we were supposed to have a good stock of 5x7 index cards, and most days he would start class by giving us a quotation, or a word, or a picture, or some such thing, and we would have to write a card about it. We could write anything we wanted, as long as it related to the topic. When we visited the art museum, we were assigned a number of cards to ensure that we thought about the art. Whatever we did, we reflected on it on 5x7 index cards, and I generally loved it.

Even then, I appreciated the pedagogical value of making us Think. Until today, though, I'd never noticed a direct correlation to other academic work. Today I was sitting with Psalms and the Life of Faith looking for another passage to reflect on so I can finish my book reflection, and I realized that I was writing Janik cards. They're a bit longer now, and the language is a bit more polished, the thoughts more fully worked out (sometimes). But those cards were direct training for a lot of what I'm writing now, and to enable me to find something thoughtful to say about nearly anything if I have to. It also makes some of my current assignments feel a little bit more enjoyable to think of them as large index cards... instead of 5x7, they're 5-7, but the reflection process is much the same. Hunh.

now accepting applications...

So as some of you know, I'm preaching at my home parish on March 6. In other words, I'm now soliciting reflections on the following passages:

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:1-14
John 9: 1-41 (despite the fact that the Episcopal lectionary cuts it off at v. 38)

There's a lot about seeing and darkness and light in there to start with, but I think I'm going to look at the common thread of fear throughout. Maybe. Right now I'm playing with how that works into the relationship between the blind man and everyone else except Jesus, and who the blind man is in our world, and how (at least for this congregation) it just might not be us... I'm preaching to an incredibly educated, wealthy, privileged, powerful group of people, who like to identify with the healed in healing stories, and while I think that's often good, I also think that parish lets itself off the hook a lot by focusing on their own individual pain and healing, so I'd like to invite them to move beyond that as well. I'd also like to bring in some of the darkness and light imagery, even if Julia thinks it's too platonistic.

Beyond that, I don't have much, but we'll look at the Greek on Friday and then I've got another week after that to get it well and truly ready. I'd like to have a manuscript for the longer version done before my retreat with the COM March 4-5, so then I can just review notes and tweak things Saturday night.

Glad I was sitting down...

The Cleveland.com sports page lists "Bullpen again key for Indians" under "Latest Baseball Headlines." I realize this is February and not October - but this is headline-worthy information? It seems to me that the bullpen is always key for the Indians (nor is this unique to them). Even the article doesn't say much - the best they can come up with for a first paragraph is to tell me that Eric Wedge drove straight from Ohio to Florida for spring training. Why is this pertinent information? Am I missing something here?

"yeah the blessings, at the moment i was most alone..."

I think Rhonda is psychic. Two weeks ago, the weekend after the GM debacle, I was missing her a lot. I knew she would have understood completely and brought some good levity to the situation. That Monday, I got a surprise package with a present Rhonda had picked up on her trip to Jerusalem and a postcard quoting "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I longed to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me" (only in Latin).
This week, I finally wrote Rhonda a thank-you letter and I mentioned how providential the timing of her package had been. Today (which, as you may have noticed, is the day after last night) I got a phone call from her, full of the righteous indignation and wicked sense of humor I'd been missing. It was really great to talk to her, and to laugh like that. She's a very funny woman, and a marvelously loving one as well. I have had very good luck with roommates in my life, and for that I am thankful.

surreal

Tomorrow is Emily's* birthday - she would have been 25. As I often do when I'm particularly missing her, I'm watching the video "Diocese of Today's Youth" (or some such thing), which is basically a slideshow of photos with music in the background. Since I was 16 when a couple other peer ministers compiled it, it's got most of the people who were peer ministers right before or with me and a few significant people slightly younger than I am. What I usually do is to watch them go by and then pause the pictures of Emily and remember for a few seconds before I go on.

Anyway, right now I'm paused on a picture that shows Emily and another girl tickling me. (For one thing, we all look really really young, but that's not surreal.) In most pictures, I have no idea where these people are now and what they're doing - Barb is in my liturgy class, Lyn is a social worker, and Hopie is traveling around the world, and that's about it - but I have every reason to believe they're still alive. (I saw many of them a few years ago at Emily's memorial service.) But of the three of us in this picture, Emily is certainly dead, I am certainly alive, and the third girl could easily be either. Last I heard she was a prostitute in Cleveland somewhere and was in the hospital, but that was a few years ago. For all I know, she's gotten help somewhere and is living marvelously - then again, for all I know, she could be dead too. That's what's surreal about that picture.

*I googled to try to find a picture of Emily to link to, but the only decent one I could find seems to be on a website using it to help further racism. It's an ironically sickening memorial for a woman as passionate about social justice and human dignity as Emily was.

hunh?

The "what makes you sexy?" quiz on Marisa's LJ tells me that my sexy body part is my nose, and my special talent is looking innocent. Looking innocent I can believe.

But my nose? What on earth makes a nose sexy? Do I even want to know?

I'd post the meme here, but, well, I don't feel like it.

I don't really feel like reading about Psalms either, but if I intend to play most of the day tomorrow, I should be productive tonight. Maybe if I meet my goal for the night I'll take out my guitar.

Speaking of which - where can I buy new guitar strings within walking distance of Seabury? Mine are quite a bit older than they ought to be.

huzzah!

I made myself a new blog tonight. It's very basic - I haven't played around with colors and things yet at all, but it starts out in shades of pink, so that's ok. This one is because I've repeatedly, since about age 8, started and lost book journals. So I figured that even if I remain terrible about posting mini book review/summary things, I can't lose this one.

On a totally unrelated note, I realized that the sermon/sermons I have to write are coming up in about two weeks now, so I should really start thinking about it/them. Also about hymns for the second service, which apparently I get to pick.

homesick

Frank played "Heaven" by Live in class today, and it totally took me back to last year. I hear this song now and I'm driving down Big Bend in spring weather with the windows open, probably frustrated by someone in The Church telling me things can't be done the way we're doing them, or that I can't be who I am, or something like that, and hearing the chorus:

I don't need no one to tell me about heaven
I look at my daughter, and I believe.
I don't need no proof when it comes to God and truth
I can see the sunset and I perceive

and seeing in my head the faces of the ECM community. I don't need to be told about heaven, or God, or truth - I look at these people around me, at the blue skies and the trees turning green, and I feel the breeze and smell the soil, and I believe.

And right now, I'm very aware of being in Chicago in February, with a group of people who are also marvelous... but I miss St Louis. March feels like a long time away right now.

new peanuts!

I realized, upon reading my comments below, that while I read Tripp and Mark's blogs and they apparently read mine as well, they weren't listed in my Peanut Gallery. This injustice has been rectified. (Sorry, Tripp, I can't do much about your not getting to officiate Evensong, but one out of two ain't bad.) Welcome!

this is getting weird...

So we're at the point now in my Use of the Voice class where we're done learning to point collects and sing suffrages - a good thing, since class members have begun officiating evensong and matins. This means, however, that we're now learning to point things like Gospels and Eucharistic Prayers. This is a Very Weird Thing. I'm so not supposed to be singing Gospels and Eucharistic Prayers. Certainly not yet, and it still feels kind of weird to be training to sing them at all. At age 8 or 9, when it was all still play, I would gladly have made up my own tones and practiced them with dolls or something, except that I'd never heard these things sung until high school or college. But learning to sing them now is just weird. Not entirely comfortable getting up and singing a Gospel in front of people today - not because I don't want to sing in front of my class, I've gotten over that - but because I'm Not Supposed To Do That.

(For those who aren't churchy people... umm... wait... right, so for Marisa and Kiery... these things are only supposed to be done by ordained clergy. Which I'm not.)

Note to Self

I should really have a conversation with my parents soon, before I start dating someone again (ok, I suppose I don't know how long that will give me, but let's be optimistic and stick with soon), about what is and is not appropriate parental behavior during wedding planning. That is, I trust my parents not to be weird and controlling... but I also thought they'd be more ok with it when I came out, so I only really trust them a certain amount. Yeah.

And this is why I don't give my parents my blog address. This among other reasons.

N.B. Ryan tells me she's been telling my parents for years that the proper role of the parents is to set the bride on fire, so I don't have to worry. However, they have not yet settled on a means of setting the bride on fire, so I think the conversation is still worth having.

very strange...

Apparently Safari refuses to acknowledge that I have comments here. If I view my blog in Netscape, I see "Comments (0)" like normal... if I view it in Safari, not so much. weird.

to be or not to be? is it a question?

I resent strongly the implication in our Gospel Mission reading that gays push the biological argument as a way to be accepted. I don't know the biological research and I'm not going to try to quibble about what it does or doesn't prove. I do know that I have other reasons for insisting that my sexual orientation was not my choice but is irrevocably part of me. Primarily, I believe that it's a "given", to use Weber's term, because I never made a choice to be bisexual. I realized that I was attracted to guys; a while later, I figured out/admitted that I was also attracted to women; finally I accepted that that fit pretty well with the label "bisexual." But at no point did I choose to be queer.

Do I choose to identify as bisexual? Yes. Do I choose when, where, and how I come out or stay in the closet? Generally, though occasionally someone chooses for me. But did I choose to be attracted to women as well as men? F*ck, no. Why on earth would I have chosen something that makes me repulsive to many lesbians and gay men as well as to many straight people; something that greatly increases my vulnerability within my vocation (and I came out as ordination track about the same time I came out as bisexual, so there was no surprise about it)? Why on earth would I choose something that I prayed for a year for God to take away from me, or at least for God to choose between "bisexual" and "priest"?

Sure, insisting that this wasn't my choice doesn't address the issue of whether it would be ok if I had chosen it. I'm ok with that, at least at this juncture. My firm belief that God created me this way does in fact have bearing on my theological stance that it's an ok way to be. But I don't "push through" an argument of "it wasn't me, don't blame me" as a way out. I argue that sexual orientation - totally apart from how we do choose to live that out - is something with which we're endowed by our Creator, if you will, because that's been my experience. Because I did not, in fact, choose this.

Truth telling

"How people interpret their 'truths' - their lives, the meanings they take from their experiences - is also revealed as much in their silences and the things they take for granted as in their spoken words."

EXACTLY. Silence is not a neutral zone. Silence does not guarantee innocence. Sorry, but it's true.

foiled again

If the squash is thrown into greasy fake ground beef and topped with melted cheese, does that mean I'm no longer allowed to complain about it? because, really, putting veggie crumble on something makes it less palatable, not more.

Poor Cecil

Some of you may know that over Christmas, we discovered that my car hood was closing but not latching. Several of us concurred that the hood was probably unlikely to fly up while driving and therefore was not an urgent concern.

The problem here is that those of us making this assumption really don't know anything - at least, not about cars. So yesterday while Laura was driving along Lake Shore Drive, the hood did in fact fly up. Oops. Luckily, she was able to pull over and several very nice people who seemed to know at least a little more about cars were able to get the hood down and tie it in place, and she and Cecil both returned safely.

Unfortunately, Cecil is now at the Toyota dealership waiting for a new hood, and probably a new fender and column as well. Now, apparently, when a hood flies up on its own, it often shatters the windshield. This did not happen, and I am as thankful for that as I'm sure Laura will be when she discovers this. On the other hand, I can't imagine that a new hood, fender, and column will come in at anything other than Expensive. Yikes.

However, while today was not a good car day/money day, it was an excellent mail day. I got a very funny "happy monday" card from Susie, an Ohio State Buckeyes postcard from Heather, and a package from Rhonda with a beautiful painted plate from her recent trip to Jerusalem.

This means that overall, today was still a much better day than the last few. Huzzah for that!

Two songs

Two songs today, in lieu of a real post. Both by the Indigo Girls, both written by Emily Saliers.

Philosophy of Loss

Welcome to why the church has died
In the heart of the exiled in the kingdom of hate
Who owns the land & keeps the commands
And marries itself to the state
Modern scribes write in Jesus Christ
Everyone is free
And the doors open wide to all straight men & women
But they are not open to me

And who is teaching kids to be soldiers
To be marked by a plain white cross
And we kill just a little to save a lot more
The philosophy of loss

There are a few who would be true out of love
And love is hard
And don't think that our hands haven't shoveled the dirt
Over their central American graveyards
Doctors & witch hunters stripped you bare
Left you nothing for your earthly sins
Yeah but who made this noise just a bunch of boys
And the one with the most toys wins

Who is teaching kids to be gamblers
Life is a coin toss
And of course what you give up is what you gain
The philosophy of loss

Whatever has happened to anyone else
Could happen to you & to me
And the end of my youth was the possible truth
That it all happens randomly

Who is teaching kids to be leaders
and the way that it is meant to be
the philosophy of loss


language or the kiss

i don’t know if it was real or in a dream
lately waking up i’m not sure where i’ve been
there was a table set for six and five were there
i stood outside and kept my eyes upon that empty chair
and there was steam on the windows from the kitchen
laughter like a language i once spoke with ease
but i’m made mute by the virtue of decision
i choose most of your life goes on without me

oh the fear i’ve known
that i might reap the praise of strangers and end up on my own
all i’ve sown was a song but maybe i was wrong

i said to you the one gift which i’d adore
unwrap a package of the next 10 years unfolding
but you told me if i had my way i’d be bored
right then i knew i loved you best born of your scolding
when we last talked we were lying on our backs
looking up at the sky through the ceiling
i used to lie like that alone out on the driveway
trying to read the greek upon the stars the alphabet of feeling

oh i knew back then
it was a calling that said if joy then pain
the sound of the voice these years later is still the same

i am alone in a hotel room tonight
i squeeze the sky out but there’s not a star appears
begin my studies with this paper and this pencil
and i’m working through the grammar of my fears
mercy what i won’t give
to have the things that mean the most not to mean the things i miss
unforgiving the choice still is the language or the kiss

Yeah. Anyway, I'm headed to Indiana for the night. Back tomorrow.

Squash...

is a game, an action, a sound, a "crushed or crowded mass," a British soda, a tendril-bearing plant with edible fruit, or such fruit, which makes a lovely side dish, especially if you enjoy the taste.

It is not an entree.

Despite this, this week at Seabury the vegetarian dinner offerings have been:
Zucchini & yellow squash mix
Something that looked like tomato juice with celery and onion, served over rice
Stuffed shells with alfredo sauce
Half a yellow squash with lemon butter

Seeing a pattern here? Twice this week, the vegetarian entree has been squash.

Now, it's unfortunate but admittedly not the kitchen's fault that I don't happen to like squash (the veggie sandwich at lunch yesterday was also a grilled squash sandwich, by the way). However, it is the kitchen's fault (ok, the cooks' fault) that all they're feeding me is squash. I realize I won't always like the veggie option. I don't hold it against them when they serve eggplant, and I even eat their stuffed zucchini with some pleasure, since it includes things like tofu and cheese and rice in the stuffing. I get irritable when they serve plain rubbery tofu blocks, but that's life in a dorm. Serving steamed vegetables as an "entree," however, when everyone else is eating meatloaf and lemon chicken and salmon, is not an acceptable way to feed us - even if it is just Hope and me.

I'll stop ranting now, and start looking for some dinner around here.

alice's bones?

I've never noticed it before, never having listened much to "Dem Bones"... but "Dem Bones" sounds a lot like "Alice the Camel" - or, probably more accurately, "Alice the Camel" sounds a lot like "Dem Bones" - especially the line where it says either "so ride, Alice, ride" or "now hear the word of the Lord."

Makes me feel like I should be waist deep in a creek holding hands with ten-year-olds, not sitting in Old Testament class.