... is it possible to ask for a bookcase in one dimension and end up with a Buick LeSabre in another?
Don’t I wish?

B.B. Bumble and the Stingers
Mott the Hoople, Ray Charles Singers...

3.1415926535 89 is as far as I get.
Is it time to purge other info to make room?
Or does this number just need a catchy tune?

Slide guitarists and Fender basses
Mushroom omelet, Bonnie Bramlett
Wilson Pickett, stomp and kick it

so teach us, gracious Lord, to die to self...
One last spiritual lesson in the making of the rose altar cloth. So it was crooked. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe it had shifted during the four Masses before I saw it. Maybe if the pink hydrangeas had just been bigger they would have obscured the angling at the corners. Maybe nobody noticed. Maybe...

Sometimes the hymnody is speaking right to me.

Ides report...
Made it in to work for a while. Realize I missed Pi Day. Better luck next year.
Was not stabbed.
Altar cloth is OK. Tomorrow the safety string on the fringe will be clipped.

If only...
I were benefits-eligible at work. I wonder if "ides of March" could be a floating holiday? I wonder if I could just take an unpaid sick day? I don't feel so well. Oh, presentee-ism strikes again. That and I must put the finishing touches on the fringe on the rose altar cloth. If I'm lucky I can take the evening off from dishes etc. and revel in "The Office" and other delights of Thursday nite.

I am so proud...
I guess. If I were a better 'foodie' I'd know who this Ming fellow is.
Embot met him at the Housewares show in Chicago and got an autographed copy of his book. That's our brush with greatness for the week-end.

My husband posits this theory...that my mood might be cheerier if I didn't spend Saturday mornings in bed, watching "Six Feet Under" on Bravo. Which I wouldn't have to do if I didn't fall asleep trying to catch it on Monday evening. Maybe it's not such a great way to bracket my week. But I can't stop. Mama needs her stories.

Oh, NOprah...

There was a rare evening some days back when I caught the daily Oprah 11:00pm rerun. It was such a schlock fest, with Oprah wiping back tears as she attested to the life changing promises of “The Secret.” I’m not making this up - Ironic Catholic caught some of the histrionics - so there are witnesses. Oprah gets caught up in these life changing things on a regular basis. But this “The Secret” biz is especially flaky. Flaky, offensive and as the Salon.com article says, meretricious. I love it when we can find good use for such a rich word.

...with survivors of Auschwitz still alive, Oprah writes this about "The Secret" on her Web site, "the energy you put into the world -- both good and bad -- is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day. You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought...” Oprah, from a studio within walking distance of Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green Projects, pitches a book that says, "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts."

Here are some pieces of The Secret according to Ellyn:

If you can buy it on Amazon.com, it’s not much of a secret.

The law of attraction does explain the dog hair on my clothes.

I have been visualizing a Jaguar. And you know what, it is there in the parking lot at work. It’s not mine, so I guess I bobbled on the visualization.

The best part of Oprah’s “The Secret” was when a small, still voice said, “This is b*llsh*t. Turn of the telly and pray your rosary.”

Another, different, cross to bear.
Dom and Melanie Bettinelli are especially in need of prayer. Dom has asked for the intercession of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. This might be a good time to ask for the help of Rose Hawthorne, too.

Yes...
Emily. Re the picture below, #4 is really #1.
Please accept my apologies for the misunderstanding.
And move your 'no complaining' bracelet to the other arm.

Cure for the winter time blues...
Three of our girls last June. (#4 is the photographer!)

Help Get Me to the Convent
No, not me. Someone more worthy who needs just a little help paying off her student loans before entering the convent. And she's almost halfway there!!!

Well, China Proof half the time...

OK, so I’m kvetching…
Some minister stole my most difficult Lenten practice. And is turning it into a media saturated, world-wide event. With bracelets.

And so he asked his flock to take a pledge: to swear off complaining, criticizing, gossiping or using sarcasm for 21 days.



My first complaint would be about the bracelet. Those things itch. Embot gave me a literacy awareness bracelet from an ALA convention. That lasted less than 36 hours and then I developed a rash. So I went back to spending as much time as possible reading as my way of promoting literacy.

Not
as my sister says, “That Roman Polanski day you people in Illinois celebrate.”
Supposedly, Flukys has freebies today for anyone whose surname ends in “ski.” Somewhere in my family tree is an Englishman who fought under Pulaski against the English. What might that get me? Bupkis.

The Bedlam Cube
Like Tetris. Only 3-D. (Eddie will generously hum the annoying little Tetris tunes for those having trouble making the segue from computer screen.)

Appalling?
I've leafed through a lot of church supply catalogues. I've never seen a pall with ribbons and feathers that had been richly "be-dazzled." And I hope to never see one again.

Hey Emily...

I’m not sure I understand. Isn’t this the same as the bridesmaids dresses in your wedding? Or is my eye just not finely attuned to the nuances? Anyway, I want to see it in celadon or peridot or whatever it is that you girls will be wearing.

Pretty darn good, ya want some?
At the movies with Fr. Robert Barron.

Creepy, weird, sick and gross.
In 2007, in America, where no lives are in danger, all I can think about "cross-nursing" is...gross. I mean, LifeSource won't take my blood, so would you want me to nurse your child?

That's all I can say now...I am supposed to be working... but this was too strange - too "hippieish" to pass by.