Just to make it easier to get to, here is the actual video with Sister Judith, for your viewing pleasure!

Good news this morning, as Telus has backed down from its recent decision to offer pornographic images and videos for sale on their cell phone service. Archbishop Roussin and the BC Catholic took a very strong stand against Telus this past week, and it seems that between that press and the many complaints from customers, the company has reversed its position. Praise be to God!

I’ve been following this a little bit over the last week, and it’s fascinating. Sister Judith Zoebelein is the editorial director of the Holy See and runs the website team of vatican.va - Robert Scoble has a fascinating interview with this very sharp woman, and Whispers in the Loggia has some great info too. The coolest thing? They run Linux and use Macs. Aside from that, Sister Judith is intelligent and very well spoken. A must see.

(*I’ve posted a link to the video in a post on its own, so you can watch it right here!)

Also from Whispers in the Loggia (which is becoming one of my fave blogs, I have to say) is a beautiful video clip of the Allegri. What a fantastic way to begin Lent.

This weekend, I had the dubious pleasure of giving membership drive presentations at three of the four Sunday masses, on behalf of our Catholic Women’s League council. I’m a Lector, and have gone through a year of Toastmasters, so I am not entirely without some skills in the area. However, I have to admit the last day and half were a little gut wrenching at times.

I tried to give a little bit of a personal spin to it, and I think it all worked, but man - I was nervous! Hard to catch my breathe, and my stomach was churning terribly.

I tried to get a bit more help to cover some of the masses, but most people are simply terrified of public speaking. So, I hoofed it through and I’m glad I did. The benefit for doing a CWL drive like this is that I got to go to masses I don’t normally go to. We’re fairly regular (98% of the time) at the 8:00 am mass. If we are taking a Sunday drive somewhere, we’ll go Saturday evening, but that’s pretty unusual. I got to experience the 5:00 Saturday, my regular 8:00 am and then the noon. The most interesting was the noon - it was very packed, and I had a number of ladies approach me afterwards to inquire about our meetings. 8:00 am was good too, but subdued - pretty normal for that mass. 5:00 yesterday was not bad, but people really looked like they wanted to get out of there and get on with their weekend plans.

The other benefit was hearing three homilies; yesterday it was our Assistant Pastor, Fr. Yeung, and I am happy to report that his new priesthood is settling in. His homilies are getting better and he looks more comfortable in his skin up there. I think he is a deeply devotional person, and I am sure we will be hearing lots of great things from him. My favorite part was when he was explaining the rules of fasting and abstinence for Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season, and he threw in a little joke about “even abstinence from ice cream”, which I know to be his favorite dessert. Fr. James was the celebrant at 8:00 am and at noon, and it was interesting to see how his homily was the same yet different. The youth choir did the music at noon, and they did a great job. I felt like I went to three different churches this weekend - how amazing is the Body of Christ?

The next few weeks are going to be interesting. I’m going to go hear Immaculee Ilibagiza speak on February 27th at our local Catholic high school. She is survivor of the Rwandan genocide and has written a book called “Left to Tell” - I have the book here now (just arrived on Friday) and am hoping to read it and have her autograph it. She has an amazing story of survival to tell. Also coming up on March 3rd, Fr. Tom Rosica from Salt + Light TV will be coming to our parish to give a Lenten reflection, something to do with media I believe. Definitely going to that - what a great opportunity.

Speaking of Salt + Light, Fr. Rosica has a great interview with Rocco Palmo of Whispers in the Loggia. Definitely worth a look - I can’t believe how young Rocco is. And I have to admit, I’m jealous of the number of hits he gets. However, he works 16-18 hours a day so I’m not that jealous : )

Lent is coming quickly; one of my favorite seasons in the liturgical calendar. Either I’m a glutton for punishment or I’m just reveling in the newness of this refining opportunity. Maybe when I’m 20 years into being a Catholic, the novelty will wear off. In any case, I am excited about this year, and walking these 40 days with Jesus before entering the Easter season. What are you doing to prepare yourself for Lent, and in essence, Easter?

I must apologize! Due to recent “IRL*” activities, I have been remiss to mention this year’s Catholic Blog Awards. There is a registration to see and to vote (and to nominate… that’s what I was remiss about!) but it’s quick and painless. I had no idea there were so many Catholic blogs - I have some new reading to do. The categories are plentiful, and the candidates are many. Your humble blogmistress has been nominated for “Best Designed Catholic Blog” - I am flattered.

Both Curt and I have been struggling to get our blog postings back to days of old, where it was a daily or at most, every other day, habit. Maybe our Lenten journey this year will see us giving up coffee (again!?) and adding in more blogging. We’ll see. We still have a few days to figure that out, but it is coming up quick! Lent is my favorite time in the Liturgical Year. Walking 40 days in the desert with Jesus is a truly grace-filled opportunity for personal refinement, and each year I’ve participated in Lent, the interior changes are profound. Sometimes it even comes out in exterior changes, like more time exercising (which will be a Lenten observance for years to come, I think!) and more charitable acts.

Most importantly, my confidence in Christ (and in myself) is growing each year, and that is an amazing gift. When people don’t “get” Lent, I try to explain it but the depth of opportunity doesn’t always come through. Catholic or not, I think all Christians should experience the desert with our Lord in preparation for His death and resurrection at Easter. And it just happens that the Catholic Church has been doing this for a long time now, and the system works. Highly recommended.

Finally - Happy Valentine’s Day! May St. Valentine bless you and your loved ones today.

*IRL=In Real Life. I’m pretty sure you knew that.

First off, thank you for all who were here and read my request for prayers - very appreciated, and as usual, they worked. The situation is still not resolved, but I left my anxiety at Jesus’ feet as I received Holy Communion on Sunday morning, and I’ve been feeling loads better since.

I’m slowly working my way through David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” book, which has been helping me put my “stuff” in its place, and streamlining everying else. My job is growing increasingly in complexity and responsibility, which is great, but it does sometimes feel like I don’t have enough time. Part of stewardship is making sure we do the best with what we have, and then some. I’m working on the the “then some” right now.

For those of you not familiar with GTD, the ubiquitous Merlin Mann has a great round up over at 43folders, which is one of my favorite sites about personal organization out there. And Merlin is just outright funny too. Curt and I both laughed at this snippet:

I think Getting Things Done appeals to geeks for a lot of reasons. Overgeneralizing for effect:

• geeks are often disorganized or have a twisted skein of attention-deficit issues
• geeks love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world
• geeks crave actionable items and roll their eyes at “mission statements” and lofty management patois
• geeks like things that work with technology-agnostic and lofi tools
• geeks like frameworks but tend to ignore rules
• geeks are unusually open to change (if it can be demonstrated to work better than what they’re currently using)
• geeks like fixing things on their own terms
• geeks have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff

Ummm… I have nothing more to add!

PS: I’m super excited today because I was able to step up and ask for a Wacom Intuos3 pen tablet at work, and got the go-ahead. I got it last night and tried it out here at home - I LOVE IT. I can’t wait to get going with it, I think it will open up a whole new level of creativity for me, and maybe even help me do some of my tasks faster because of it. Woo hoo!

It’s been a very rough week; can’t go into details but if you are a praying person, prayers are welcome. Nothing to do with me personally but I am affected and affect me it has. I’m on my way to mass shortly, but I thought it would be nice to post a couple of pics taken recently with the new camera. I am so itching for longer days with clear skies so I can really get out there and “learn by doing” with the Sony. For now, you will have to be happy with incredibly cute dog pictures : )

From this morning’s Magnificat reading:

“Faith is a breaking out of the isolation that is the malady of my ‘I’ … Faith means resisting the brute force that would otherwise pull us under.” ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Have a good day all. The days are getting brighter outside again; spring is coming!

Even though our busy day yesterday means we have to do some Saturday house chores today, it’s still Sunday and it’s sunny, to boot. We snapped a few pics of the pups hanging out in the sunshine on our bed. Even the dogs know it’s the weekend; they’re even more relaxed than usual!

Sarah and Darwin goofing around. Darwin looks like he’s trying to figure out if he should jump on her head or just give her a good bite. There’s a few more fun pics of the same ilk over at my Flickr page - just click any picture in the Flickr badge on my sidebar, and off you go.

Back to the rest of the leftover Saturday stuff. Almost done and then real Sunday relaxation can commence.

Curt and I traveled to neighbouring Langley today, to St. Nicholas Parish to attend a seminar sponsored by Redeemer Pacific College. The speaker? St. Blogs’ favourite son, Mark Shea. We’ve been reading Mark’s blog, Catholic and Enjoying it, for about three years now. As we journeyed towards the Church, reading blogs like Mark’s helped both Curt and I along tremendously. While we didn’t get a chance to chat with him (Sorry Mark! We were rapidly running out of fuel and had to find lunch fast right after the session wrapped up), his talks were edifying and enjoyable. I personally learned a ton, especially during the first talk: “Behold your Mother: Discovering the Blessed Virgin Mary”; as a convert from a scattered evangelical past, I have had to unlearn some things about the Mother of Christ over the past few years. I will try to work out my notes that I took and post my thoughts here in the next few days. I haven’t been here much lately for a variety of reasons, but I will try to fix that. There’s lots going on, both in my life and in the lives of people I “know” online, and I need to keep in touch a little better. It’s good to keep connected. It’s also good for me to get some of my jangly thoughts and musings out of my head and out to where they can’t keep nagging at me.

Mark had a little trouble at the beginning with an uppity microphone, but all was well when he moved up to the lectern near the altar. My camera had a few problems knowing what to focus on because of all the fantastic sunshine streaming in!

Mark’s second talk was on “101 reasons not to be Catholic. There are a million reasons not to be a Catholic, and only one reason to be one. You be the judge.” This talk was not quite as theological and had quite a bit of Mark’s personal story, which was very interesting to hear. We have much in common, and I think he and my husband even more so. I’ll let Curt tackle that on his own blog, though, if he so chooses.

It’s always a joy to visit with Redeemer Pacific College students and staff. RPC is a small Catholic college attached to the much larger Trinity Western University, an Evangelical University in Langley. The arrangement is unique, and is exciting. RPC students receive a Catholic education while also attending classes at Trinity, and can choose from many undergrad degrees. Both Curt and I wish we were about 10 years younger and able to choose this type of education, but the fact is we’re well into the workforce with a mortgage and other responsibilities, so we do what we can. A couple years ago, we did the same trip and heard Dr. Janet Smith speak. That was before we were received into the Catholic Church, and was a real experience. I remember those days as being somewhat anxiety ridden as I wasn’t sure if my request for a declaration of nullity of my first marriage would be valid or not. The waiting was very hard, but I had determined even then that no matter what, I still wanted to be Catholic, even if I couldn’t participate in the Eucharist. My thoughts on that day with Dr. Smith are here, for all posterity. See? Blogs are awesome. You can dip back two years in your archives and see that you actually do know how to string a few coherent words together after all.

Anyway, we came away from today very grateful that we are part of a Christian community that has depths to plumb like nothing either of us have ever had. The intellectual goldmine is one thing, but the real treasure is in the deposit of faith that is being protected, loved, and handed down now and until Jesus comes back. Thank you to Mark Shea for being yet another apostle of common sense; his hero, GK Chesterton, would be proud of what he shared with us today.

So, we’re five days into 2007! Belated Happy New Year to all. I was working between Christmas and New Year’s, unlike most of my coworkers, so I was a little preoccupied and not in the mood to blog much in my free time.

Overall, it was a nice New Year’s Eve. We spent most of the afternoon and evening at my inlaws, and we all had a great dinner and enjoyed each other’s company.

And of course, January 1st rolled around and it’s time to pull up the bootstraps, especially in the healthy eating area. December was a wash - everyone was sick and we all ate pretty badly. Lots of chocolate, lots of other tasty things, but not all of it was very good for us.

I had some success a couple months ago with an online food tracker, and I found another one with more features and a nicer interface. It does have a monthly subscription fee of $9US, but for now I think it’s worth it. That’s two Starbucks coffees.  If you’re so inclined, try out www.myfooddiary.com and take the guided tour. I like it so far, and I appreciate that it gives me a running total of how much I’ve eaten plus how much room I have left in my calorie budget for the day.

I’m also amazed at how many calories there are in fast food meals, even the so called “healthy choices!” It’s cool that most of the big chains are listing all of the nutrition info (www.wendys.com is very neat - you can customize your meal to give you an accurate idea of how much you’re really eating, handy for people like me who shun most condiments.) However, most of the fast food meals are easily more than half of my daily caloric budget. Not worth it.

In my wise old age (34 now, I’m certainly getting on, aren’t I?) I’ve come to the conclusion that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. So I’m going to watch them like a hawk and see how things go. My food diary told me that I was over the limit by about 300 calories, but I hadn’t exercised (I slept in this morning instead!) So I went and rode my recumbent bike for 30 minutes after dinner and that brought me back in line again. And I’m just going to take it one day at a time.

When I went to confession during Advent, I had to confess my laziness and my general lack of concern for my health. I have to say that actually admitting it to the priest, and in effect to God, really struck my heart this time. Not to mention that I love my life and want to enjoy it as long as possible. I used to think that I didn’t overeat, but in retrospect I can see that I’ve made some regrettable food choices, usually emotionally based, and I think (I know!) I can do better. I’m so grateful for my Catholic faith in this, because it is so understanding of our fallen human nature. We try, we fail, we get up again, and on it goes. There is such gentleness and love in Christ, and I need to hold fast to that as I struggle to bring “healthy back.”

To any of my readers and friends out there, I wish you a blessed and joyful 2007. I think it’s going to be a wonderful year; even though the weather here has been most frightful lately (flooding again just a couple of days ago!) we can be thankful for friends, family, God’s love, health, work, and everything that brings us peace and happiness.

It’s been a quiet, and very quick, Advent season. It seemed to fly by! Sunday was the last Sunday of Advent and then poof! Monday was Christmas. We had a wonderful time with our family, with a good meal and lots of gifts to go around. We are truly blessed.

The big news for me is that the digital SLR finally got to come out of the box. We had it over a month ago, when we decided to buy it online. We checked it out when it arrived to make sure all the parts were there and that it worked as advertised. Then back in the box and into the closet until Christmas. Here’s a little montage of my new baby:

It was a joint gift for Curt and I, so I can see some fun outings in our future. And likely a few tussles over who gets the camera.

We surprised mom with a Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer, something she’s been wanting forever. I was able to save up a bunch of Save-On-More points from Save-On Foods to help offset the cost, plus I was able to get the gourmet attachment kit entirely on points. That was cool, and she had a blast opening it and is already scheming for things to bake and make. Pictures are up on my Flickr site for all to see.

The dogs were exhausted by the time Curt’s folks left yesterday, and the lethargy extended into today - for us too. It’s been a whirlwind of activity and late nights. We attended our first ever midnight mass on Sunday night, which was very beautiful. It was Father James’ first time as the main celebrant at a midnight mass, and he did an awesome job. We got there early enough to get our regular Sunday seats, front row and centre.

Everyone, I hope you had an amazing Christmas and will enjoy these next few days until early January remembering Christ’s birth, the miracle of incarnation, and the love God has for mankind. It’s truly awe-inspiring.

PS: If you haven’t seen The Nativity Story movie yet, please do! It’s lovely and moving.

I knew about this a few days ago, but didn’t write about it because I thought it would be more fun to write about it after the fact. Our annual Knights of Columbus-Catholic Women’s League dinner had a few special guests of honour tonight: the CFL Grey Cup, chaperoned by BC Lions players Jason Jimenez and Angus Reid, brought to us by our generous parishioner, Dan Dorazio, who is the offensive coach for the Lions and a really nice guy. Father James knows Angus Reid from high school, I believe, and everyone was super happy and had a great time. Even some of my CWL cohorts, some of them in their 60’s, hoisted the cup for picture taking. Great fun.

I took lots of pictures, a few of which I’ve posted on Flickr. Here are a few of my faves:

So here I am, dutifully attending the parish council meeting as a rep for the Catholic Women’s League, and what happens?

The priest surprises us with a very short meeting followed by an Advent Celebration. In other words, we got to hang out with Fr. James for about an hour eating some nice nibblies. It was a lot of fun, and I heard more than a few great stories. It was a nice treat, and I got to know some of the other parishioners a bit better.

I also saw my blog-friend from Letters from a Young Catholic at Mass - sorry I didn’t say hi, I was rushing off to this meeting and you were still praying - but we definitely need to get together very soon for coffee!

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know “no” from “know.” Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

Thanks to penni, who is gooder, too.

Well, the crazy winter weather just keeps coming here. More snow in the forecast, mixed with freezing rain - beautiful! Seriously though, I need some prayer support here because Curt commutes 40 km each way to work, and his drive home yesterday was one of the scariest he’s ever had. He is a careful, skilled driver but there is always the other guy. Not to mention that the roads are sheets of ice and the wind is still creating dangerous snow drifts that look innocent enough but are most definitely not. Our snow removal equipment in this part of the world is woefully inadequate for this type of weather. Salt doesn’t work on the ice, and I honestly have not seen enough sanding trucks out - haven’t heard or seen a thing in my part of town. I’m pretty ticked about that; the highway between here and Mission is just atrocious, and hasn’t been properly taken care of. Whether that is from the wind making it impossible to clear and/or keep sand on the road, I don’t know, but it’s not good out there. My commute is very short, but I have to go 25km/hr the whole way to avoid slipping. So, as I said, prayers needed for safe travel.

Also, a prayer request for my in-laws. Their sweet dog, Spike (Mikey) passed away in his sleep sometime between Monday and Tuesday. It is a difficult loss as they’ve had him for 14 years, and just lost his longtime companion, Rascal, last year. So they are now without a dog in the house at all, and it’s very tough. Mikey did have a fantastic year this past year, going hiking on Mount Baker several times. We’ll miss the little guy. Here he is with my father in law last year on Mount Baker when we all went up there. He just loved the mountains.

Salt & Light TV recently completed a Focus episode featuring our Archbishop Raymond Roussin, discussing clinical depression. This is a must see for everyone, and thankfully Salt & Light has it available online (direct link to the video) for those of us who aren’t able to get the channel on cable. It is a powerful witness today, just as it was when we all heard about Archbishop Roussin’s illness. I have some experience with depression in my life, and I appreciate his boldness in sharing his experience.

Especially interesting in this episode is the middle section, where the priest from Ontario discusses how people mistakenly refer to depression and other hard life situations as their cross. Listen up, it’s good stuff.

I live in a beautiful part of the world, best known for its mild weather and most notably for its incessant rain during the winter months. We saw a fantastic example of this just a couple of weeks ago as the Lower Mainland had oodles of rain in a short timeframe, causing all sorts of problems, including a boil water advisory for all of Vancouver - the largest of its kind in all of Canadian history.

Yesterday, winter arrived. We had a wicked snowstorm that started late Saturday night and went all the way through to this morning. I managed to get to mass yesterday morning, early, and the snow picked up pretty good after that. We came in at 46 cm (just over 1 foot) of snow. And it’s cold. Really cold. This from a girl who braved -30C weather in northern BC for five years. Not only was it cold, it was freaking windy. I went from the house to the mailbox two houses up the street and thought my face was going to freeze from all the driving icy snow hitting it.

Getting to work was no picnic, and I have possibly one of the shortest commutes ever - five kilometers. However, all of the roads I have to travel are side roads in the country, and the snowplows don’t ever get to them. They were icy and covered in snowdrifts, and with the water filled irrigation ditches along the side - well, my active imagination and overly cautious nature went into overdrive. I left work early to make sure I would be driving home in the daylight so I could avoid any ditch-diving situations, and I’m happy to report that all is well. We have power, we have heat, and we have a roof over our heads. There are many, many people who cannot say the same, and I pray for them tonight. No matter how many shelters make room for extra people, there are still those who will not, for whatever reason, come in from the cold. And I pray that God protects them even in their refusal to get help and shelter. Sometimes their decisions are not made from a rational place, and I think that God has a special band of angels watching out for our brothers and sisters in these situations.

In other news, I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I’ve made a few changes to my “About Me” page. Most notable is that I have taken out the reference to us wanting to start a family through adoption. Our trip to California was in part a chance for Curt and I to work further through our family situation; it allowed me to get outside of my comfort zone and reflect on things differently. I had been coming to the conclusion for the past year, but the trip confirmed in me that as much as I love children, I do not think that we are called to have children of our own. Lots of different reasons, which I may or may not share on here in future posts, but for now know that I am at peace, and so is Curt. We are best friends and in love more than ever, and I am taking Catechism #2379 at face value:

2379 The Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil. Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord’s Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity. They can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others.

My infertility is absolute and final, and was a reality before we were married. I feel a real spiritual tug towards service towards others, as much as my schedule outside of work allows. I also feel that my first priority is making sure my mom is well taken care of, which includes sharing our home and lives with her.  I hope to have the opportunity to get to know my nieces and 2 great-nieces better over the years, and am blessed to be surrounded by children from time to time at the family-run business where I work. And yes, I express my love and affection towards my sweet dogs, who love me unconditionally and bring me great joy. My life is full; whatever empty parts were there have been filled by Jesus, in his great fidelity and wholeness.

Just a few more days until Advent… !

Almost, anyway.

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks! First, a very bad flare up of acne right after we got home from our trip; I’ve mentioned in the past that I have PCOS, which has adult cystic type acne as a symptom. I manage to keep it under control, for the most part, but the last two years I’ve had bad flares. This was one of them, enough that I went to the doctor looking for something stronger than the topical cream I use. He prescribed one thing, which had a long list of side effects. I woke up the next morning with a swollen bottom lip and a weird feeling in my mouth, and sure enough, I was having a reaction. So, off to the doctor again. Different antibiotic, fewer side effects. Just finished the course on that one but the flare up has not 100% subsided. Time will tell. Halfway through taking this new antibiotic, I got a nasty cold which has sidelined me for the last week, and is continuing to have its way with me - lots of coughing, sinus infection, not able to sleep or concentrate - all the fun stuff.

And then the storm of the century hit here on Wednesday, leaving us without power for most of the day. I was at work, where we managed to stay on the grid, but five minutes away at home, the lights went off. We were fortunate to have the power back that night, but many are still in the dark. Vancouver Island was hit hardest, and I’m hoping my niece in Port Alberni is doing okay. She is resourceful, so I am sure she’s fine.

More stormy weather is in the forecast for Sunday; it’s been a wet, dreary November. But, lest you think I’m depressed, I am not. I’ve had a productive week at work and my desk is cleaner than it’s been in a few months. I’m working through some projects and sizing up how the next few months are going to go before spring comes around and things ramp up again. Life, in other words, is pretty good. The body I run around in, however, is wrung out and tired. A temporary and very annoying situation.

My in-laws are going through a tough time too. Their dog, a 14 year old Silky Terrier, has been ill and things don’t look so good. Please pray for them, especially my mom-in-law, as she is very upset. I can relate - I would be a total basket case if anything happened to my pups.

The annual Bazaar at our parish is about to kick off tomorrow, and mom is in full swing with her Avon table. This year, she’s added a new dimension to her Bazaar experience - she’s selling home-made doggie treats to raise money for the Domestic Abuse Society, a very worthy cause.

We put the finishing touches on the jars tonight:

We named them “Pooch Posse Biscuits” and I cobbled together a little collage of our three amigos. The ingredients are listed along the side, along with the disclaimer that “cats like them too.” Oh yes ,there is a little tagline too - “Hand over the cookies, and no one gets hurt!”

The weekend will be busy - mom at the bazaar, and I’m off to the Archdiocesan CWL meeting on Saturday. There will be a speaker there about Human Trafficking, a sober topic indeed.

Prayers are most welcome for a coworker who is overdue on her first baby; she is an older mom and this baby comes after much trying. Baby was due on the 23rd, I think, and doctor won’t let her go past the 30th. Pray for peace in her heart and that the baby comes soon!

So, I’m here! We made it back from the trip in one piece - had a fabulous time, and will fondly remember it for years to come. Pictures and stories are still up at Take California and my Flickr site, so head on over if you haven’t been.

Since I’ve been back, it’s been busy! Work hasn’t slowed down much and church activities are back in the swing of things. A few nice things to report:

Since I’m writing this during breakfast, I should report that I’m enjoying the benefits of steel cut oats, in my bid to eat healthier. These are not Quaker Instant Oats, folks - they are the cadillac of oatmeal. I love them. I bought mine from Bob’s Red Mill (available in our supermarkets here) and while they take a little while to prepare, they keep wonderfully well in the fridge for reheating through the week.

Exercising is going well - I’m averaging 4 times a week, about 30-40 minutes a session. If I stick to it in the morning, all is good. It’s out of the way and I don’t have to think about it again all day!

We’ve been enjoying wine with dinner once or twice a week - last night we uncorked the bottle from St. Francis Winery, and man… was it good! Every time I drink wine I think of the beautiful moment during mass where the priest holds up the chalice and says “Fruit of the vine, work of human hands…” I’m fully aware that alcohol can be a stumbling block to many, so I am so happy that it is not for me and that I can enjoy the fruit of the vine one glass every once in awhile.

I’m completely wrapped up in my quest to know the ins and outs of Adobe CS2. I’m loving this program - I often wish I would have taken the “graphics professional” route back when I was 19 and working in a small but busy graphic design studio. I loved it then, I’m loving it now. Better 15 years late than never, right? The technology rocks, and my creative soul is waking up. Tools helping me along - video podcasts (Photoshop TV, CS2 with Terry White - search iTunes for “Adobe” and you’ll find them), and more than a few books. I’m currently working my way through the Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book, and have taken Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic by Matt Kloskowski (”Rockin the Houseki”) out of the library.

I played around with Garage Band on my Macbook and recorded the Litany of the Counsel of the Saints from the October issue of Magnificat (Julie at Happy Catholic has been posting excerpts from it.) I was taken with the Litany as soon as I read it - and I am one who is prone to loving Litanies at any time - and thought, why don’t I record it? I did, and if I can figure out how to post it online, I’ll post a link here (I figured it out - click the link and take a listen!)

That’s about it for this morning - I’ll try to get back here a bit more regularly with thoughts, notions, and general miscellany as time allows. I’m still reading other blogs so hopefully you have me on Bloglines or similar and still catch my drift now and again.

Happy Monday, everyone!