"A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot." - St. Augustine
I'm about 12% Alleluia on any given day, but I'm working on it.

Answering questions about the upcoming papal election ~ A New Website Project - Contributors Needed!

February 12, 2013 By

UPDATE: ELECTINGTHEPOPE.NET is now live! I’ll post more about it soon. Thanks for everyone who’s shared this information already!

I’m still working through my feelings about Pope Benedict’s resignation – disappointment, certainly, but also hope and a tremendous curiosity to see who will be our next Vicar of Christ.

Something I’ve noticed is that there aren’t a lot of great resources out there that explain the papacy in very simple terms. Granted, it is a complex institution, to say the least. But I’m thinking about this on behalf of the sixth grade teachers around the world who just thought to themselves, “that might be a interesting topic for a lesson plan.”

What’s needed is clear, concise information for people who may be interested in learning more about the papacy from a research standpoint. So, because I think websites solve all problems, I am making one.

Electing the Pope

The goal of this website will not be overt evangelization, although I personally think that dispelling myths and misunderstandings about the Church is itself a form of evangelization. I want this to be a site that a teacher in a public school classroom would feel comfortable sharing with students, or that a journalist could visit as an alternative to Wikipedia.

Contributors will write short responses (I’m thinking 1-4 paragraphs) to questions about the papal elections or other aspects of the papacy. You will also be asked to provide links to online sources or print publications that could be beneficial. At this time, I do not plan to open up comments on the site or to allow random submissions of questions, but I’m sure you can think of questions that people might have. I don’t see it as a huge time commitment.

Filed Under: Electing the Pope, Web Design

Theme Thursday: Hats or Scarves. Or Helmets.

February 7, 2013 By

Sneaking in under the wire for the latest Clan Donaldson photography link-up, the theme being “Hats or Scarves.”

I know that many a snowbound reader will shake frostbitten fists at the screen upon seeing this picture of 70-degree weather, but trust me – we will have several months of Texas fireweather starting soon. We have to seize these days before the sun begins to actively fry our hides when we step outside.

So, here’s Little League tryouts:

Tryouts---Christopher-batting

I am proud of this photo for two reasons.

1. My son has never played baseball before, and in fact hasn’t played a team sport since Pee Wee soccer as a three-year-old. He didn’t exactly ask to play this year, so much as grudgingly assent to his parents’ semi-forcing him to try it.

I don’t like to write about my children that much once they get older – it feels invasive to try to get inside their heads and then share that with the world. (I also want to hedge my bets for when they all someday get book deals to write about their harridan mother.) So I guess all I’ll say is that I completely recognized his nervousness about trying out, the fear not so much of failure as of not knowing what to do, and I was really proud of him for overcoming that.

In hindsight, I wish we’d had him try a sport a couple of years ago, because he’s almost at the age where the real standouts start to leave the rest of the kids in the dust. But we spent this week going to the batting cages and emailing the coach to make sure we had all of the gear, doing everything we could to be ready. And he did just fine. The coaches knew he hadn’t played before and it wasn’t a big deal. He was beaming and telling all sorts of corny jokes at dinner, which is how I know he was proud of himself.

They find out next week which teams they’re on.

2. I took this picture in manual mode and lived to tell the tale. I think I need something up from the kit lens to be doing sports photos at night, but that ain’t happening anytime soon. I downloaded a copy of my camera’s manual to my phone, so I could quickly search through to find the right settings for taking these photos. Not that this is some great picture, but it’s way better than the ones I took where I was just randomly trying different settings.

Stop by Cari’s to see more great photos, including an amazing shot of her husband, who appears to be the barrister scion of England’s oldest family, ready to do what it takes to hold the financial industry accountable for what it has done. I may be projecting.

Filed Under: Family, Photography

Seven Quick Takes: NO THEME: Just That Dangerous

February 1, 2013 By

— 1 —

Because I want to fit every stereotype of the homeschooling mom blogger, I am not only learning photography, but we are going gluten-free. Next up: random tutorials. OH WAIT I ALREADY DO THOSE.

— 2 —

Okay, fine, it’s not (just) about my desire to fit in on Pinterest. My husband has been officially diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, an autoimmune disorder. We knew something was up about three years ago when he started having trouble walking, but we chalked it up to an injury. He did have knee surgery late last year, but continues to have chronic, random, and severe pain in his feet, knees, hands, shoulders, etc. I regret the day we decided to buy a two-story house because, basically, when he comes home from work, he can go up and down the stairs exactly one time. Hmm – well, I guess he can make two round trips each day, on a good day. So every evening is a routine of “how are you feeling?” – a question he absolutely loves to be asked every time he walks in the door, I can tell – and then assigning various children to fetch various items from upstairs.

It’s really crappy, basically.

A friend at church also has psoriatic arthritis, and is in fact almost exactly the same age as my husband. He’s experienced significant pain relief since giving up gluten, so now we are slumping towards doing the same thing.

— 3 —

wpid-20130123_222008.jpgSomehow I just don’t find the prospect of arsenic in my rice all that “Delight”-ful.

— 4 —

Here is the thing: I love making dramatic changes. Live for it. BREATHE it. Announce the change, be the change, live the change, forget the change because ain’t nobody got time for that. Back to the no-change.

But this change would be different, in that it wouldn’t be just a matter of “your life might possibly be immeasurably better if you succeed at making this entirely optional change!” Instead, we shall have “your husband will experience chronic and incapacitating pain unless you ALL GET WITH THE PROGRAM.”

So – that’s no fun! I liked it better when I was just letting a bunch of marbles gather dust and nobody was the wiser.

— 5 —

Uh – I said there was no theme, so here’s something random and amazing: a group of ten friends has spent the last 23 years locked in a game of “Tag.”

The game they play is fundamentally the same as the schoolyard version: One player is “It” until he tags someone else. But men in their 40s can’t easily chase each other around the playground, at least not without making people nervous, so this tag has a twist. There are no geographic restrictions and the game is live for the entire month of February. The last guy tagged stays “It” for the year.

That means players get tagged at work and in bed. They form alliances and fly around the country. Wives are enlisted as spies and assistants are ordered to bar players from the office.

“You’re like a deer or elk in hunting season,” says Joe Tombari, a high-school teacher in Spokane, who sometimes locks the door of his classroom during off-periods and checks under his car before he gets near it.

— 6 —

Also fun: Nic Cage as Everyone.

— 7 —

Is it too late to write about Christmas? Because I have had a “I Survived Christmas and You Can, Too” post brewing in my head for about, well, a month, and haven’t had time to post it.  I did just find this photo on my phone, which I think perfectly sums up the compromise between High Expectations and Keeping It Real that was key to my staying relatively even-keeled.

It's not even Ocean Spray. It's generic.

It’s not even Ocean Spray. It’s generic.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

 

Filed Under: Family, Fitness Journey, Food Glorious Food

Snapshots, Sun Flare, and a New Hobby

January 31, 2013 By

“Wait – why are you going to a class? You’re not going to have another job, are you?”

This is the level of support I get, here at home, from certain sectors. Sectors under 12.

I can’t blame him, really, as I am pretty sure all three children think “web design” is just a thing we call surfing.

But, regardless, I did indeed venture out, like a grownup, to a photography class a couple of weekends ago. I decided to go into the occasion tabula rasa and not know a single thing about the settings on my camera, or where the class was meeting, or where to park.

And it was so fun!

About halfway through the class, I got the courage to just switch the camera to full manual mode and play with the settings. I wanted to see what happened when I changed the shutter speed, or the aperture, or the (consults notes) ISO. I could tell a fair amount of difference from the daytime shots, but where it REALLY showed up was the nighttime photos. I was amazed at what a difference it made, just changing one setting. For the nighttime class, I borrowed my instructor’s tripod, which is why these pictures are all so similar versus those taken by my jittery hands. I took these photos in the space of about ten minutes. (You can click on the title of each photo if you want to see the settings.)

<p>Settings: 2 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm</p>

Houston skyline at night 2

Settings: 2 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm

<p>Settings: 1 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm</p>

Houston skyline at night 1

Settings: 1 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm

<p>Settings: 0.3, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm</p>

Houston skyline at night 3

Settings: 0.3, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm

<p>Settings: 4 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm</p>

Houston skyline at night 4

Settings: 4 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm

<p>Settings: 10 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm</p>

Houston skyline at night 5

Settings: 10 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm

<p>Settings: 1 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm</p>

Houston skyline at night 6

Settings: 1 sec, ƒ/5, ISO 400, 18 mm


Anyway, so I’m excited to join Clan Donaldson’s new Theme Thursday linkup. I’m cheating today because I forgot to take any pictures, so I am using another one from my class. The theme for this week is “sun flare.”

Houston skyline

Settings: 1/160, ƒ/29, ISO 800, 36 mm, I assume you understand that but I’m not sure I do

You don’t have to have a super-duper camera or anything to participate, so check out some of the other pictures in the link-up and join in yourself! If you don’t have a blog, you can post them to the Clan Donaldson Facebook page.

Filed Under: Houston area, Photography, Things I made

I feel pretty, and witty, and SHEENAZING

January 29, 2013 By

It’s a dream I’ve held since fourth grade: to finally be recognized as SHEENAZING. I credit, as always, my sweet dance moves.

My thanks, complete with pop-n-lock, to whomever nominated me in two categories for the Sheenazing Blogger Awards organized by Bonnie from A Knotted Life! Voting is open now through Thursday evening, with the timeline somewhat dependent upon whether or not “Person of Interest” is a rerun. I love a Catholic blog awards contest that keeps it real.

I’m nominated for Funniest Blog and Best Looking Blog; I credit the latter to my mastery of a smoky eye and 5-pound earrings.

Oh, yeah, I'm Sheenazing alright

I am realizing that the entire punchline setup for this blog post depends on your knowledge of who Sheena Easton is

As far as Funniest Blog, I totally know I am not going to win that category, either, but I shall submit a portfolio nonetheless. These posts from last year may or may not represent the average level of wacky hijinks around here on a daily basis:

Sheenazing Sheena Easton 1

What do you mean, you don’t have time to go back through my archives?

There are many terrific blogs nominated in several categories, and I encourage you to go forth and vote! Along with the categories I’m going to lose, there are also polls for Coolest Blogger (surprisingly, Sheena did not come through with a nomination for me in that one), Most Inspiring, Best Lifestyle Blog, Best Link-Up EVAH, Best Underappreciated Blog, Best Mommy Blog, Smartest Blog, Blog with the Best Memes, and Best Blog by a Catholic Man. Thanks to Bonnie for putting all of this together in honor of…wait a minute…

…it has come to my attention that I had the wrong Sheenazing celebrity. These awards are actually in honor of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, known for using new forms of media (particularly television) to evangelize.

AWKWARD.

Sheenazing Sheena Easton 3

I am kind of amazed my mother let me listen to this song 500 times now that I read the lyrics. I thought it was about karate. “Strut, POW!”

Filed Under: New Media, Scrutinies

7QT: Word of the Year: Unintentional Pun Edition

January 11, 2013 By

I’m so glad that Jennifer is doing Seven Quick Takes this week because I have been so worried about her. She is still in my prayers, as are the Poppe family, Kelly from The Careless Catholic, and several of my close friends who have experienced terrible loss and suffering recently.

And now, uh,  here’s my flippant blog post. It’s what I do.

1. Announcing: the nominees for Word of the Year.

Well…actually, I got nothin’.

Or, rather, I HAD nothin’. I kept reading all the cool kids, with their blogs, and their words, and all I felt was envy. I don’t NEED some stupid WORD I have lots of WORDS already and I have too many THINGS to be thinking about ANYWAY.

And then, because I am oblivious to the puns around me, I had an epiphany.

Limits

Yes. Limits. What a felicitous happening, that this word should spring into my brain just as I was beginning to give up hope. I mean, I could always make up another word for this year, but – no. This word felt right.

Then I did an image search on Morguefile for “limits” and realized: Oh. That is why it seemed so perfect.

Speed limit

Yes, I get it now.

2. Okay, so: fine. Sometimes I forget what my last name is. Maybe I’ll just continue this theme and choose “of light” or “skating” or “bump” as my word next year. But in the meantime, here are five reasons I like this word.

3. Overcommitments. It’s a congenital problem with me. I’ll never fully recover, but perhaps I can treat the symptoms. I can stop. raising. my. hand. to. volunteer. I think part of what’s happened is that there are a couple of activities in which my children participate that I really am not involved in at all – most notably, the arts immersion program they attend once a week, in another town (where my husband works, so he’s the one who knows the staff and the other kids). And I feel like all those people must think I’m a slacker, never showing up to help out unless I’m specifically asked to do so. I can’t be seen as a slacker mom.

Or maybe…it’s fine, really, and everyone is getting along just fine without my leadership, and I should enjoy my day “semi-off” with just my youngest. There are limits to how much outside stuff I can take on.

4. Time management. Totally related, this is a serious problem for me and I’m kind of getting fed up with myself. I’m always running late, mostly because I’m terrible at estimating how long it will take me to do something. “Limits” is like a brick wall standing in the way of me doing just-one-more-thing-before-we-head-out-the-door.

5. Goals. How I love goals. “Limits” here translates to “you cannot reasonably expect to achieve X if you do not stop doing Y.” Y usually means “staying up way too late working because I was so tired during the day I couldn’t really concentrate.” I mean, it’s not rocket science to figure out why that might be counterproductive. But just acknowledging – there are circumstances of my own creation in which I cannot do what it is that I want to do – this is a big thing for me. I’ve always been a “I don’t care what other people say, I can get this done if I put my mind to it” kind of person, which has definite benefits, but is becoming more self-destructive now that I’m not super young and really can’t do the all-nighter thing, at all.

Thunderstorm of emotion

Photo credit: photojock from morguefile.com

6. Thunderstorms. There are limits to my moodiness. Sometimes – usually when tired and overcommited – I just get in such a funk. I get really mad at imaginary versions of people and  inanimate objects that have wronged me (in semi-reality or possible futures), or I get really down, and I start thinking “this is how it will be now, for the rest of my life, this frustration.” Kind of like how I always assume a newborn who gets a runny nose must think, “dang, I guess this is going to be how my nose works for the rest of my life now. And things were going so well.” But then I get a dollop of grace plonked onto my head and I just feel – better. The hard times have their limits.

7. Calculus. I might have a kid taking this class in seven years or so, and I will need to brush up.

No, just kidding – threw that one in for my vast engineer readership.

I would love to know if you have a word for the year, especially if it involves a pun. And please head over to Jennifer Fulwiler’s to catch up on more quick takes!

Filed Under: Scrutinies

Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols A Tiber River Review

January 9, 2013 By

Mike Aquilina’s Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols is a quick read that provides a comprehensive foundation for further investigation into Christian symbolism. I was given a review copy of the book before a family trip that included many museums full of medieval art, and I found it to be a helpful overview for me and my older children.

Signs and MysteriesAquilina excels at writing about the early Christians in a way that makes them seem like long-lost relatives. This book is informative without being too academic in tone for a popular audience. As he says in the introduction, “This is not a work of scholarship, but an act of devotion – an act of piety towards our ancestors, so that we might learn to see the world once again with their eyes, and to pray and live as they once prayed and lived.” I enjoyed the mixture of testimony from Church Fathers, detailed illustrations showing replicas of actual Christian art, and citations from other contemporary sources.

Each chapter is a short overview of a symbol, exploring its roots in Jewish or pagan culture and showing how it was given new meaning by the early Christians. It’s a great way to learn more about the diverse groups of early Christians, including the Copts in Egypt and the earliest Jewish converts. I learned about several symbols I wasn’t aware had Christian meaning, like dolphins and peacocks, and Aquilina includes intriguing details like the hidden meaning of the “Sator Arepo” square.

Books like this one are a great way to start breaking open the central ideas of our faith. Christian symbols can be the “hooks” that draw us into a deeper understanding of a particular teaching, or allow us to see new spiritual insights in familiar images. I think this would be a great component of a course on either art history or the Creed – it’s short enough to be read in one sitting but organized in a way that makes it easy to refer to a specific chapter if you happen upon a symbol in a church window or a painting that is unfamiliar. I’d recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about the early Church. My middle schooler found it pretty easy to understand, so I would say it’s appropriate for young adolescents on up, although that’s not to say it wouldn’t be perfect for adults as well.

I wrote this review of Signs and Mysteries for the free Catholic Book review program, created by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods.

Aquinas and More is the largest on-line Catholic bookstore.

I receive free product samples as compensation for writing reviews for Tiber River.

Filed Under: Art For the Sake of Grace, curriculum, Things I read, Tiber River Reviews

The Annual Getting Together of the Act (WITH CALENDAR GIVEAWAY)

December 31, 2012 By

For people like me, whose lives are stuck in permanent “never mind! I have a better idea!’ mode, this is the most wonderful time of the year.

NeuYear calendarYes, it’s the annual changing of the calendar. By which I mean, “I can abandon the half-used systems of old and embark upon a new journey.”

I’d had success in the past, off-and-on, with the Uncalendar. But I’m finding that its lack of structure (you can fill in the weeks as you go, however you like) ultimately made it too easy for me to put off using it – and then I’d get these bursts of energy where I’d go through and label the pages for several weeks in advance, only to have to go back and erase everything. It also made it kind of overwhelming for me to try to prioritize the disparate tasks that make up my day.

My particular challenge is that I am homeschooling and also running a web design business. I was trying to keep everything all on one planner, which SEEMS like it would make sense – keep up with a master list of what’s going on in every sphere of my day-to-day life.

But then it occurred to me that, if I were working outside of my home, I’d have a calendar at work and one at home. This year, I’m going to try to use two separate planners – one for school planning, and one for my business. I think it will also help me to think of these things as distinct modes in which I operate, because right now I’m kind of doing a little of both things throughout the day – and yes, as I read that, I realize it sounds cuckoo.

NEVER MIND THIS, WOMAN, YOU SAID THERE WAS A GIVEAWAY

YES. There is, indeed, a giveaway!

I was contacted by Jesse Phillips of NeuYear.net a few weeks ago; he asked me if he could send me a free calendar; I had just completed round one of dealing with the office; it was kismet.

If you watched the video above, you are already aware of the Five Awesomes. I’m just here to validate their claims. I’m very impressed with this calendar. There’s plenty of room to write in each day, and I’m especially happy about the weeks-flow-together model. The design is very clean and appealing. I’m going to use an uncoated NeuYear calendar for planning out homeschool stuff, and a laminated NeuYear calendar for business. I love a dry-erase marker so the laminated version will let me color-code entries by client or type of task. For the school planning, I went with the uncoated because it will let me write things really small when needed.

NeuYear calendarSo, what’s going on my big ole calendars?

Well, I must admit that I am having that feeling of “I cannot sully this immaculate document with my erratic handwriting and more erratic plans,” but I’m going to press on and use the large calendar to map out some big goals for the year, as well as visualizing better how long it will take to accomplish them. For work, I know that seeing a large calendar will help me to better keep up with how many client projects I have going on at any given time. For school, I’m going to use the big calendar to write out the general “what we need to do this week,” especially for math, so that I make sure I cover the basics over the course of the year. NeuYear makes an academic calendar, too.

What’s going on YOUR big ole calendar? Because, you know, YOU COULD WIN ONE FOR YOUR VERY OWN SELF. I have two calendars to give away. Here’s how to enter!

1. Leave a comment using the word “calendar” in a sentence.

2. One entry per person.

3. Giveaway closes on Saturday, January 5 at 11:59 Central Time. Two names will be chosen via a random number drawing.

4. Earn an extra entry by posting to your own blog about how you’d use this calendar, with a link back to this post. Earn another extra entry for sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest – if you do that, shoot me an email with the details.

You can also save 30% if you use the promotional code “scrutinies” and order from NeuYear.net before January 31, 2013.

I bookmarked this post from Andreas Widmer on how to think about the year to come and am going to come back to it when it’s time to start marking up my new calendars. I like Widmer’s approach because it doesn’t read like a step-by-step goal management program:

Many people would advise you to start with a goal for next year, with setting out specific achievements and accomplishments. I suggest you to take a different approach. Instead of pursuing any specific achievements, start by thinking about the kind of life you want to live. What’s important to you? What values do you want to be present in your life? What virtues do you want to practice in your life? I find this approach to planning my own life much more effective, and it gives me the ability to keep perspective.

This is my favorite of the questions he suggests for how we can look at planning the year in terms of “what do I value, and how do I spend my time?”

What activities and habits made you fulfilled during the last year? Come up with 5 of them as well. Describe what they are, what virtue or value do they represent? What situations made them possible? What circumstances enabled them to grow or come about? Who and what helped you in this practice? Who and what hindered you?

I’ll leave you with another short video I thought was helpful for long-term planning – this one from Nathalie Lussier. It’s tailored to planning for business purposes but the techniques seem applicable to other sorts of planning, as well.

Now, let’s get those comments going! Who has a sentence that includes the word “calendar?” (Comments can, of course, be longer than one sentence.)

Filed Under: Homeschooling, Scrutinies, Web Design, Work
«Older Posts
Newer Posts»
Hosted by WPEngine