Come And Take It

Yeah sure, there are higher spending priorities on my list right now...

...but then again, maybe not.

"I am Geddy Lee, and I will do whatever I want!"

Love me some Rush... and South Park...

So I called Mexico last week...

...they didn't have a prompt of "press 2 for English".

Conspiracy Corner: Paula Abdul is responsible for Danny Gokey's demise!

Why?

Because Terrence Trent D'Arby SUCKS.  She picked a lousy song for him.  Cool to her as a cougar, but not so much to tweens and the rest of the nation.

Turkey Time!

This weekend, Mr. Jones is taking me turkey hunting.  I've got my gear, heck I've even got my rear in gear.  However, I still don't have a lot of experience with the bird barrel or turkey loads.  So, my friends, this is going to be a long shot.  I'll take my camera with me though, just in case I get lucky.  I'll leave it up to Jimi to decide whether there's a joke in there somewhere!

Thursday at noon... the junior Mossberg 500 is going into the car and off we go....

Yes, My Yahoo Account Was Hijacked

Sorry everyone, I don't know how it happened. I apologize for the disruption.

Chivalry Win

Tomorrow, my friends, I switch to decaf. It's time. And I think everyone "knows" when it's time to switch to decaf. It's not just that you're tweaked up.... but burnt out.

But all throughout this rather tough day today, this particular funny has been tickling my funny bone. There are so many funny things about this picture. If we was in the dennists office, this would be the Highlights magazine of lols ;) Click on pic for full size....

A Painful Lack of Reverence

I have the feeling that this is going to be a long post. But stick with me, there is a moral to the story.


Bleeeaaaaahlhhhhh....

Believe it or not, that last line took me about five minutes to write. Why? Well today I attended my nephew's first communion. It should have been a beautiful occasion, and I'm sure it was to a majority of people who were there, although many of them shouldn't have been anywhere near a church. Some people should just stay away. Yeah, I said it.

If you don't read this blog very often, or it's your first time here, I returned to the Catholic Church about a year and a half ago. However, I returned via the traditional Latin mass or TLM. The Catholic Church before it was radically dismantled in 1962. I never quite liked growing up in the new and improved Catholic church, and it's very painful for me to say that. All that time I didn't even know why I didn't like it, but I didn't. But when I returned to the Catholicism of my ancestors, I experienced and continue to experience the true joy and reverence of God.

Without making this too long, here are the bullet points of what I observed today that has been stuck under my skin:

- the sheer volume of gabbing prior to mass - and even during mass
- When I sat down at my pew, I kneeled down to pray, which I do before every mass. To my surprise, I got looks from people.
- I was also hoping to be able to go to confession before mass. That's also customary in the TLM as needed. As I looked around for an usher, I saw one man, leaning on the wall at the back of the church, reading. So I inquired, "is confession available before mass?". He looked at me like I was from another plant. He started leafing through the bulletin, and said "I'm not sure we even offer that anymore". !!!!!! I should have asked him if someone would make it available to me.
- As I sat at the pew, waiting for the service to start, I could very audibly hear people saying very casually, "oh my God!!!" Who takes the Lord's name in vain, in his own house????
- All throughout the service, people talked. And audibly. The two ladies in front of my Dad and I were having a straight up conversation.
- There is kneeling in the Catholic church. I'd say half of the people were kneeling at the appropriate times.
- At communion time, the chatty lady in front of us said to the girl next to her, "no I'm not going up, I'm Protestant". Now, there is nothing wrong with being Protestant, but the way she said it was in a way that dismissed the little girl's going up for Communion.

Half the time, I was looking to my father in disbelief. I could hardly believe the behavior I was seeing. No reverence, no respect, no nothing.

And as long as I'm ranting, I'll make it much worse.

Altar girls. Lay people distributing communion. And my ex-sister in law later saying, "I went to communion for the first time today".

WTF??????

But in all of this, I had one very beautiful shining moment.

The service was attended by a Monsignor who was (I think they said), the oldest in the diocese. After mass, I went to find him. There are many good priests, but I have an affinity for the faithful Old Timers. When I found him, I introduced myself, and he took my hand as I talked with him. There is a very specific look of someone who is at least, let's say, 98 years old. This is a man who has lived a long time, and has probably witnessed many events on the human spectrucm. I asked him if he would please bless my Rosary. I can't recall his exact words, but he was a very pleasant and kind person...he said something to the effect of, "why, I would love to."

As he blessed it, I could focus on nothing but the glow of the pearls in his small hands. At that moment, I heard nothing else in the room. It all fell away. And he blessed it in latin...

He handed it back to me and said, "I broke mine the other evening". And I replied, "you must have been praying very hard."

Through all of that today, it made me realize one thing. In all of the chaos around us, you have to stay faithful to what you know to be true and right.

And... you have to create moments of grace, they won't simply find you.

Retro Canape Party

Yawls, I almost forgot to share a picture from earlier this week. Your gracious host, Miss Jones, held a retro canape party among her female frethren. Deekawife 3.0 was unfortunately unable to attend, but next time, we shall attempt to tempt her with an abundance of bacon-wrapped waterchestnuts. Sorry fellas, it's ladies only!


From near to far... of course one must have crudites to balance out the abundance of protein, spice gumdrops, jello mold with fruit cocktail, deviled eggs, chive cream cheese filled black olives, ham rollups, and bacon wrapped waterchestnuts. Oh, also I decided to display a sample of my classic cooking pamphlets from back in the day. We used these all the time when I was growing up. Oh, the table, which is the convertible table, is for sale now. It'll be on Ebay within the next day, with bidding starting at $199. And yes, it's totally that awesome :)

The movie for the evening? Breakfast at Tiffany's. What would you 'spect?

And we're all too old for pillow fights. Sorry fellas!

Stevia. THAT Didn't Work

Okay dahlings. I know you are all out there workin' hard and breaking a sweat for bathing suit season. Which isn't what it used to be but I digress (actually, it isn't what it used to be primarily because I was 24 oh-so-many years ago).

So back to the matter at hand. The leaves are starting to bud on the trees and it's time to shed those winter pounds. I've been working at this for a while, and despite hundreds of situps weekly, I am looking more like Grimace than Jessica Rabbit. Whyfor? Nothing was really outside of the norm.... no more cans of reddi wip, no diet coke, pie crust, or other goodies. I have been settled nicely at 1300 calories a day plus exercise. It always works, never fails.

....cue the surprised gopher music.....



Instead of sugar, or any other artificial sweetener.... I was using Stevia a few times a day. Stevia is an "herbal" or "natural" calorie free sweetener. And of course if it's natural or organic or whatever, it's supposed to be (morally) superior.

Yet here I sit, with an enlarged belly, googling "stevia abdomen". I didn't find many, but I did find some hits that fit my search and quest. Even one that detailed an experiment on baby chicks, denoting increased abdominal fat, in particular.

So this is my speculation: Stevia gave me a gut within a matter of a couple of weeks. I'm going to throw it out and start over with the same diet approach, sans Stevia. We'll see how I'm doing in a couple of weeks, once we're at a firm 70 degrees during the day.

And further... no, there is no substitute for sugar, if you're going to eat it.