When I got confirmed, my sponsor gave me a beautiful golden cross. I suppose that was his duty as my sponsor; I think he knew at the time that my soul was out of his hands. In fact, I picked him because he seemed to be the kind of Catholic that, if I had to [...]

[Read more →]

I’m experimenting with some changes to the site.¬† Miko and I now have links to the books that we’re reading in the left sidebar, compliments of Library Thing. My list also includes books that are on “next read” shelf–only a randomly selected subset of a few dozen books are displayed, but LibraryThing caches it, so [...]

[Read more →]

As in stepping and hopping, not as in missing something.¬† Though if you try this experiment, you may find that you’ve been missing something. It doesn’t matter where you do it (e.g. in public or private), but skip for a minute or so.¬† Do you feel self-conscious? Giddy? Do you even remember how?¬† If skipping [...]

[Read more →]

I almost felt sorry for Madame Secretary Rice after watching this.¬† Almost.¬† After we watched it, I said to Jana, “That was vicious.”¬† To which she replied, “But I liked it.”

[Read more →]

or T’ai Chi Chuan or taiji or Tai Chi Ch’uan or whatever. When I moved here to Burb-Ankh (the suburb of life), my husband & I noted the presence of a Tai Chi dojo & stopped by to check it out. It was run by a very nice, very open guy, who started his training [...]

[Read more →]

One of the disturbing aspects of the purity pledges we talked about last week is that it is but one face of a powerful abstinence-only movement that affects education, public policy and social welfare. How effective is this emphasis on abstinence? 

[Read more →]

sorry, this ended up being longer than intended

[Read more →]

With Miko piloting the ship, I took a three-day vacation from blogging. I love doing this, but I find that the main thing I sacrifice to make time for writing posts (which I generally do in the evenings after the kids are in bed) is sleep. It was nice to hit the sack at a [...]

[Read more →]

For Catholics, repentence and subsequent forgiveness is a very important part of spiritual life. It’s a sacrament, literally! But their emphasis is on the penance, what you do to make it up to the person you wronged. Often, the penance is simply prayer, which used to confuse me: for me that was a punishment, but [...]

[Read more →]

Let me start this by saying that I love NPR. I think they are the least biased news source currently available to me and do a great job with little money. Now, I shall rip them a new one.

[Read more →]