Saturday, November 20, 2004

why i'm not the phd candidate...
This is some seriously good stuff... but it's a lot to read, so I'll leave you some links and then quote the stuff I like bestest.
Start here with Theomorph, then read Funky Dung's response here. After that, you can read Theo's response to Funky's response here and FINALLY you can read Funky's response to that response here.
Yes, it's a lot to read, and I will honestly say that I haven't studied it all very closely myself, but oh was it worth it to get the general idea and to see Funky say the following:

How is marrying an atheist good for a Christian? Not being able to share your faith with your spouse is a painful experience. What about raising Christian children? That's not likely to go over well. How about when they learn that Mommy or Daddy doesn't love God? How about the anxiety of worrying about the eternal state of your spouse's soul? Furthermore, the Church sees marriage as a sacrament. It is a means of obtaining grace and each spouse is supposed to be helping the other become holier. Mixed marriages make that sense of marital union extremely difficult, if not impossible. These and other issues are at the heart of being "unevenly yoked". It is for our own good that we are to avoid marrying nonbelievers. Marrying nonChristian theists is often little better.

why was i in oakland?
This is why I was in Oakland last night. I was curious to see how a priest would describe these differences to me and what questions people would ask him, and also about the possibilty of meeting a fellow blogger.
As I said earlier, I did arrive late but thankfully a kind gentleman in the back of the room pointed out a seat to me, so I got to sit down. I was uncomfortable that I had arrived late because I like to be early and not attract attention to myself in unfamiliar situations. After the talk was over, it was snack time and when I got up I saw a man who I thought might just be Funky Dung but, being the borderline introvert that I am, I wasn't about to approach him and then find out I was wrong. So my inner introvert & I wandered out to the hallway, grabbed some candy to snack on and looked at the pictures on the wall. Many thanks to Jim the Extrovert who introduced himself to me, found out how I ended up in Oakland and then proceeded to introduce me to Funky Dung. I also had the pleasure of meeting Jim's wife, Becca, Funky's wife, Amanda, his friend Jonathan, and yet another blogger, Narwen.

I'm glad to see, by the way, that Jonathan finally got the URL for Ales Rarus so that I didn't have to put a reminder into this entry.

So, I've now met two "Internet people" in real life. Who woulda thunk it?

Stay tuned for part three... What I learned in Oakland.
# posted by Amy : 2:44:09 PM (2) comments

p.s.
I'm a Flippery Fish!!
What's a flippery fish?
I don't know what a flippery fish is but it sure is fun to say.
# posted by Amy : 11:05:06 AM (0) comments

feeling like grover
Those of you who have known me for a long time know quite well that before all of this butterfly insanity started I ran around the internet using names such as Grover, GroverC, and the most ridiculous of them all, SGroverC. All are references to history-making president and my favorite Democrat (yes, I just said that), Grover Cleveland... whose first name was Stephen.
Today, I feel like the other Grover... the fuzzy & blue guy from Sesame Street. My parents have a record (yeah, I'm just barely old enough to know what those are) of Sesame Street songs that I used to listen to often and Grover sings a song about being proud of himself. Today, I'm proud of me.
I did an amazing thing last night. I drove to Pittsburgh. I spent an hour and forty-five minutes in my car, in the dark, by myself without cruise control and went to the Oratory in Oakland. For those of you who have never visited the 'Burgh, Oakland is one of the many sections of the city, and home to several colleges & universities.
The last fifteen minutes were the longest fifteen minutes of my life. I was not even a block away from my destination and I saw a sign that lead me to believe that I was on the wrong street. The saying about driving in Pittsburgh is that you just can't get there from here... and I was starting to believe it. I drove myself in a GREAT BIG oddly shaped circle and did manage to get back to where I needed to be. I arrived only 10 minutes late (I think) and had an enjoyable time which I'll save for another post later on today.
I have never in my life gone into the city by myself at night. It was a big day for me. I attribute my success to praying the Rosary on the trip down the interstate. I think having that kept me going where I might otherwise have gotten frustrated and/or scared & turned around & went home. Incidentally, I was able to pray all four sets of mysteries in the time it took me to drive down. I used a CD by Kitty Cleveland and Father Robert Cavalier to help keep my place.
In all, it was an uplifting and liberating experience, but I still refuse to parallel park and back out onto a road with lines on it. I'm much more confident about hopping in the car and going somewhere new, but I have to know I'm going to find a parking lot or an insane amount of open space on the side of the street when I get there.

Stay tuned for the answer to the burning question... Why was I in Oakland?
# posted by Amy : 10:40:59 AM (0) comments

Thursday, November 18, 2004

christmas, gift giving and non-christians
My life is full of pondering these days.
Today's first thought to ponder: Why do we give gifts at Christmas? An overview of the history of the tradition can be found here.
Those darn Victorians with their silly games:

The Victorians surrounded the act of gift giving with a great deal of ingenuity and merriment: simply tearing into a cache of wrapped boxes would have been to miss the point. Far more thought and preparation than that were in order during the holiday season. They had cobweb parties, which was a lot of messy fun. Each family member was assigned a color, then shown to a room crisscrossed with yarn of various colors. Each person was to follow an assigned color through the web of yarn until he or she reached the present tied to the end.