St. Isobel of France

Just so you guys know how much I love you: I have exactly fifteen minutes free time this morning in which to do something purely personal, and I chose to spend them blogging.  I’ve been trying to get a blog post out to you guys all week.  The name of the post you’re currently reading has changed at least four times, every day I try to finish writing it, and then have to change the saint’s name when I can’t.  I’m hoping that today’s saint (St. Isobel of France) stays at the top.  I’ve always liked Isobel, if only because she’s got a pretty name.  But regardless: on with the blogging!

The other night at swing dancing (see?  I do too have a life outside of work!  Sort of.) one of my cute little dancing students told me that she had made me into a super hero.  Apparently she had an assignment to write an essay on a non-traditional female super hero (BA-ness minus spandex), and she decided that I was her super hero, with super powers of amazing swing dancing.  Which is pretty sweet.

Frankly, I’ve always figured that if I were a super hero (or mad genius – either one will do) I would take over the world with my insane powers of Cute (you will do my bidding, and you will like it).  And it is true that I am currently bending an entire hospital around my little finger through the sheer force of my charming personality and willingness to work late to get uniform orders in.  (As proof of my progress, I would like to submit an e-mail I got Friday from a certain cranky police sergeant saying simply, “You rock.”) But perhaps if I added in a super power of dancing (you just dazzle them with swing-outs until they give in), I would have already completely bent them to my will instead of only made significant progress.  But then, I’ve only been working here for eight weeks.  So perhaps I shouldn’t complain.

From the above you could gather that work is going well, which it is.  I’m working way too many hours, doing 10 and 11 hour days pretty much every day, and getting pretty tired.  I’m still working on that sleep schedule thing.  I kept inadvertently staying up way later than I meant to this past week, which meant that by Thursday I had a near constant splitting headache, and was having little random crying jags about ridiculous stuff.  That was when I decided to text my CL peeps to let them know that I wasn’t coming, and go home to sleep.  That night I was asleep by 9pm, and it was glorious.

It’s a good thing I got some extra sleep on Thursday.  Friday was the beginning of our own Dayton Swing Smackdown, which has been keeping me plenty busy all weekend.  This year I’m doing a reprise of last year’s deal, in which I work my butt off for my friend Bounce (the organizer and CEO of Smackdown) all weekend, and then get in to everything free.  Last year I was so broke that this was the only way I would have been able to go at all.  This year (thanks to all those extra hours I’ve been working), I’m flush enough that since I don’t have to pay admission, I can afford to pay for a private lesson with one of our Super Awesome International Instructors.  This is the first time I’ve had a private lesson of any kind, so I’m pretty excited.  It’s been so long since I was able to travel or take workshops or anything that I don’t really know where I am with my dancing, or what I need to work on to be better.  So I’m hoping that my teacher will be able to tell me.

And now my fifteen minutes, not of fame, but of blogging is up.  It’s time to go take a shower and get my butt out the door so that I can open up the dance studio for someone else’s private lesson at noon (mine isn’t until after this afternoon’s classes).  When the dancing part of  my day is over, I’ll be heading to 6pm Mass, doing some quick grocery shopping/necessity purchasing for the week, and then heading over to my neglected ESL student’s house for a quick tutoring session.  Between the long work hours and not getting enough sleep, she hasn’t been getting as much tutoring time from me as usual, and it’s starting to throw her into a panic.  So she needs a little TLC.

And then I will go home to sleep the sleep of the just.

And it will be good.

St. Agnes

I have three basic rules about my blog content.  The most recent rule, formed a few years back, is that I don’t blog about guys, dating, or romantic relationships.  Maybe if I got into a stable, long term relationship, I might blog about that, but then again, one day you might check the blog to find a picture of my engagement ring given to me by a guy you’ve never read about.  The second rule is that I don’t blog about things that might hurt my friends or family.  No matter how upset I might be about something, or how funny I think the story is, if I think it has a high likelihood of hurting or embarrassing someone, I won’t post it.

My third rule is that I don’t blog about politically or religiously divisive topics.  I feel very strongly about a number of things, but I don’t like arguing about them.  When I argue, I don’t like the way I act towards or think about the people I’m arguing with.  I’m not thinking about how to love them, or lead them to the truth, I just want to win.  I tend to go into a particularly vicious take no prisoners style that might leave me victorious, but also leaves a lot of collateral damage.  I’ve hurt too many people that way.  I have a lot of people in my life whom I care about deeply who do not share many of my beliefs.  So I tend to be very careful about how and why I get into arguments.  Plus, on the internet, discussions about religion and politics tend to get very nasty very quickly.  I don’t really want to have to deal with that.  So I don’t blog about it.

However, something has happened that is so egregiously wrong that I can’t not blog about it.  Yesterday Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that under the new health care legislation, all organizations would be required to provide and pay for 100% of the cost of elective abortion and contraception.  This means that not only would Catholic hospitals be required to perform abortions and dispense contraceptives, but that Catholic doctors would be required to do the same, and all Catholic institutions (schools, charities, parishes and diocesan offices, etc.) would be required to cover the cost of abortion and contraception for all of their employees.  The only way to get out from under the law would be for all Catholic charities and institutions to only employ other Catholics (putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work), and require a person to prove that they are Catholic before they provide them with any services.  Can you imagine them asking for Baptismal certificates at the line for the St. Vincent’s homeless shelter?  How about Catholic Social Services (one of the few providers of free and reduced cost mental health services) requiring applicants to pass a Faith Test before letting people in?

The Catholic Church has one year to comply with this legislation.

This is so completely and utterly wrong.  On so many levels.

First of all, let’s ignore the whole abortion and contraception issue.  From a certain standpoint, that’s irrelevant.  If you take this down to bare bones, what is happening is that the federal government is ordering one particular group of its citizens to either actively violate their deeply held religious beliefs, or no longer participate in areas of public life.  This is like telling Jewish people that they have to eat a BLT before they’re allowed to teach in school, and that if their synagogue employs any non-Jews, then everyone at that synagogue must partake in a ham dinner or else disband the synagogue.  It’s like telling the Amish that not only are they no longer exempted from the draft, but now every able bodied adult must do compulsory military service.

Our government, led by the guy who proclaimed that he was all about transparency and freedom, has already made it legal for the federal government to detain any US citizen for any reason and hold them indefinitely.  The government then did its best to take down free speech by destroying the internet.  And now they’ve launched a major attack on freedom of religion.

How many more freedoms are you prepared to lose?

Sts. Fusca & Maura

The problem with not blogging for a while is that when you get back, there’s just too much to talk about!  Generally when you don’t know where to start, people say to start at the beginning, continue until the end, and then stop.  However, I have found that sometimes it works much better to start with the most recent happenings, go back until you’re either tired of talking, or the other person is caught up, and then stop.  So I think we’re going to go with that plan.

The most recent news is that Saturday night we had our much-anticipated Beer Tasting Party.  The idea for this party actually came from a blog post I put up last September about a visit to Mr. & Mrs. Darwin’s manse in Columbus, and the Founder’s Breakfast Stout that I drank while I was there.  There was much beer discussion in the comments, and when I put forward the idea of a beer tasting, both Dove and Sugar Ray were enthusiastic.  The only difficulty was scheduling.  I tried at first in October, but between wedding prep and people’s schedules, it just didn’t work out, and I put it on the back burner.  Then on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when my Catholic young adult group was at South Park Tavern after going to Mass together, Sugar Ray brought up the subject again, and asked me when I was going to schedule it.  I opened up my calendar, and decided that it was going to be on January 14.  And it was.

The party itself was a good time.  We crammed in just about as many people as the house will hold, particularly since it was much too cold to spill out to a fire in the back yard like I was originally hoping.  People brought so much food that I had to open up the extra leaves on the dining room table.  This included the Vat o’Beer Cheese supplied by my sister Mariah, who borrowed my six quart crock pot to make it in (it was darn good, btw).  Sugar Ray brought some of his home brewed beer, I went to Belmont Party Supply and filled up two boxes with whatever looked good, people brought some amazing new things with them, and we had a great time.  Here (in no particular order) are all the beers we tried:

• RJ Rockers Son of a Peach Wheat Ale
• Bell’s Two Hearted Ale
• Yuengling Traditional Lager
• Celis Raspberry
• Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout
• Sierra Nevada Biggfoot Barleywine Style Ale
• Samuel Adams Irish Red
• Samuel Adams Latitude 48 IPA
• Samuel Adams Winter Lager
• Samuel Adams Octoberfest
• Samuel Adams Holiday Porter
• Leinenkugel Berry Weiss
• Leinenkugel Fireside Nut Brown
• Newcastle Brown Ale
• Abita Purple Haze
• Perre Jacques 2011 Belgian Style Ale
• Wild Blue Blueberry Lager
• Pepe Nero Belgian Style Ale
• Wernesgruner Pils
• Emelisse Imperial Russian Stout
• Rogue Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout
• Heavy Seas Gold Ale
• Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale
• Brekle’s Brown Ale
• Southern Tier Imperial Choklat Stout
• Point Belgian White
• North Peak Darkangel Cherry Porter
• Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat
• Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
• Ovila Dubbel
• Founder’s Breakfast Stout
• Belhaven Scottish Ale
• Framboise Lambic
• Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout
• Fort Collins Brewery Chocolate Stout
• Original Sin Hard Cider
• Crispin Natural Hard Apple Cider – honey crisp

You may notice that the list is rather heavy on the stouts and porters, particularly chocolate stouts.  This is mostly because I like them, so I bought a lot.  Maybe next time I’ll have more variety, but then again, maybe not.  I do love my dark beers!  We also tried Sugar Ray’s home brews, and did a side by side tasting of the Founder’s Breakfast Stout, and his own version.  It was pretty darn good.  Over all, I think my favorite was the Ovila Dubbel, contributed by The Pessimist.  It was smooth and caramel-y and delicious.  It also won my personal Bernadette Award for Best Beer At The Party.  When I was out shopping for the party, I decided that we needed to have prizes.  (This had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that those really cool big ornaments filled with chocolate pralines were on super sale.  Nothing at all.)  I had three things to give out, so I decided that they would be for Best Beer, Best Snack, and Person Who Amuses Bernadette The Most.  So The Pessimist won for Best Beer (though he left before I could give it to him), Mariah won for Best Snack, and Pippi won for Most Amusing.

The one thing that disappointed me about this party was that I had carefully, and with mischievous intent, hung a sprig of mistletoe in the greenery still decorating my house.  (What?  Christmas isn’t over until Candlemas!)  You would think that if you fill a house with mostly single young adults, supply them with lots and lots of beer, and then hang a sprig of mistletoe, that there would be at least a few kisses by the end of the night.  But no.  Not a single one.  It made me sad.  Though I do know of one girl who got asked out at the party, so that’s good.  But still… sigh.  We’re going to have to work on this.

Before rejoicing sometimes comes sorrow.  On Thursday we marked three years since my brother Jacob died.  This is always a hard day.  I had been thinking that I was doing very well with things this year, but as soon as I got off work Wednesday night the reality of what the next day was hit me like a brick.  That night and the next day were very hard, especially since I wasn’t able to take the day off this year like I did last year.  One thing I am grateful for is that in the afternoon, while I was alone in the office and feeling rather melancholy, three of the A/V tech guys (the closest thing I’ve seen to computer geeks since I’ve been on the new job) came in to get new badges made.  I hadn’t realized how much I had been used to being surrounded with geeks & nerds until they came in, and were so lovely and familiar that they felt like old friends even though I’d never met them before.  They were being utterly ridiculous, making funny faces into the camera, and teasing each other like geeks do, and it was all so great.  I laughed until tears came – the good kind.  It was an unexpected blessing.

I never told you guys what the results were of the poll you took a while back on what kinds of blog posts you would like to see.  The results surprised me.  Not a single person voted for the video posts, which, combined with the fact that my new work apparently Does Not Approve of youtube, means that you won’t be seeing any of those again for a while!  Most of you seem to really like the newsy posts about my life, followed by posts about my family.  To be honest, I had started doing links posts and picture posts and video posts because, well, sometimes my life just isn’t that interesting.  I swear.  Plus it starts to feel a little weird, talking about myself all the time.  But you guys seem to like it, so I’ll keep on.   I haven’t figured out a new blog schedule yet.  There’s no way I can post long, newsy posts about myself five times a week (it’s that not really that interesting thing again), so this does mean I’ll be posting a little less frequently.  But hopefully as I settle down into my new schedule I’ll figure something out.

And that’s as much time as I have to write today.  Tonight will be (God willing) my second ever visit to the Dayton Knitting Guild.  Good times ahead, my friends!

The Immaculate Conception

One of the things I’m going to be adjusting to with my new job is that my new employers have much more stringent guidelines about what they consider acceptable internet activity.  I have to admit, I’ve gotten a bit spoiled at my other jobs, enjoying their laissez faire attitude.  As long as you get your work done, they don’t really care if you, say, hit up facebook or watch a video on youtube.  But the new people care – enough to block sites, and redirect you to truly freaky warning screens anytime you might try to access something on the blocked list.  This means that I’m going to have to adjust my blogging habits a bit, maybe cut down on the type or number of posts I put up.  Until now, I’ve been trying to post every weekday, five times a week, including at least one links post, one video post, and one pictures post in that total.  What I would like to know from you is what kind of blogging content you’re interested in seeing, and what you could do without.  So please take this poll, leave a comment letting me know what you think, or (since some of you seem to prefer the direct approach) e-mail me your thoughts. 

I’m looking forward to your answers!

St. Ebba

Just a few links to get you through the week:

• Star Wars sushi: because it’s awesome, that’s why.
• Aww inducing: A Literary Proposal (now that’s how it’s done!)
• Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya.
• Taylor Lautner looks like an alpaca, which actually makes me think fondly of him for the first time.
• Study says that men know she’s The One after the first date.
• Coffee can help prevent skin cancer.
• Anderson Cooper laughing uncontrollably is ridiculously cute.
• What did he think they were going to do in his room?
• Horrific: Bedbugs found in college dorms.
• A fascinating post about literary tattoos, and a whole blog full of amazing ones (I think this one is my favorite)
• How to really annoy and confuse your women friends.

Also, Indy has an awesome new blog, complete with tutorials, free printable thingies, and a link to her Etsy shop!  It’s full of amazingness, so you should check it out!

Come back tomorrow to find out even more about how my bosses are made of win!