six quirks meme

Rufus, one of the Parollees fine upstanding citizens that hang out over at Korrektiv has tagged me for a meme. I am supposed to divulge six quirks about my character.

I think it is very interesting that Rufus tagged me for a meme when just a short time ago he was actually calling me out for my meme addiction. (I tried to find the post in the archives but couldn't find it, darn it)

Would this make him an enabler or my dealer? (I'm just asking?)

The 6 Quirks Meme
The Rules:
1. Link the person(s) who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged



1) I write in a journal nearly every day. I am very picky about the kind of journal that I use though. It has to be the size of a large paperback book and have a thick spiral binding and hard front and back cover. When I find one on sale in a store for less than $5.00 I will buy it even if I have just started the one I am writing in because I store them up. I tried writing a journal on my computer and it just wasn't the same as writing with a pencil (never pen) on paper. I have all of my old journals, dating back to the year mrangelmeg and I got married sitting on a shelf in our closet in our bedroom.

2) I do not like the taste of sweet tea. Hot or cold there is something off putting to sugar added to tea. On the other hand I have no problem with sweetened coffee drinks. I greatly prefer mocha lattes for example.

3) I sleep better if I am flat on my stomach. If I am on a couch or am sitting up in a car (hopefully riding in a car, not driving) I don't sleep as soundly.

4) I have to fight the uncontrollable urge to read the last page of a book before I get to the end. The urge usually hits somewhere in the middle of the book, and from that point on it is a race to see if I can get to the end without peaking ahead to see how things turn out. I usually lose.

5) I rarely ever carry change in my purse or my pockets. I deal in bills, am handed change and at the end of the day the change goes into a box on my desk, when enough change is deposited into the box that it is full the angelbaby usually "finds" my box of change and becomes "rich" for a day or two until she can get to the store to purchase a few things.

6) I talk out loud when I read the paper (just like Bull Meecham from The Great Santini). Mrangelmeg and the kids are used to it by now but I forget when we have guests in the house and have been known to scare the angelbaby's friends when they spend the night.



I tag anyone who wants to play along. I am too tired to think of anyone in particular.

Did I Volunteer to be Exhausted?

So the angelbaby wanted to attend "Power Lab VBS" at Corpus Christi this week, and recently graduated daughter volunteered to help out. I thought that I would be dropping them off at 8:30 every morning and then going back at Noon to pick them up.

Then it turned out that the Craft room needed another volunteer, and I was there, so I somehow volunteered to help out in the craft room with this amazing woman that I have gotten along with really well all week. We have come up with some pretty creative little "extra science experiments" to amaze the kids each day, and our sense of humors mesh really well so we keep each other amused in between times as well. She has given me some great insight into the Destin area, and she even gave me a Trader Vic's VIP Card that I intend to use for 50% drinks at the bar here at The Palms very often for the rest of our stay.

I have had an enormous amount of fun and I have also gotten to know some of the other women in the Parish which has been a real bonus, but what I didn't count on was how incredibly exhausted I would be every day at about 12:25. I went from almost no activity in the mornings for the past four weeks to being totally hyperactive for an entire week, and surrounded by very hyper kids too (well, surrounded is relative, this is a small parish so the VBS has about 30 kids total.)

Anyway, I am really glad that today is our last day, and I will be back to my lazy mornings next week.

This week really reminded me that back when I was DRE my very favorite job during VBS week was getting to be the person who cut the checks and sat in the office across the parking lot and made sure everything got paid for but really didn't have to do any of the real work. Now that is the way to get VBS done. Those were good times.

Pax

Nice to Know our Marriage is Timeless!

86 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

mrangelmeg's score:

133 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

h/t to Darwin Catholic for the link

How to Accept an Award. . . Tony Division

Last Sunday evening Mark Rylance won the Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. This is how he accepted the award and how he won the hearts of, well the world:





h/t to Ken Levine for the link.

Too Achy to Think Kind of Day

So I had a pretty miserable night. My arthritis took a nasty turn on me and every joint hurt all night long. I woke up at 6:30 and took a heavy duty pain killer and then at 8:30 I took a different kind of pain killer that would piggy back with the one I took earlier. By Mass time I was able to at least look as though I could move like I normal human being, but the pain killers were wearing off pretty quickly.

The family went to the movies this afternoon, but I decided it might be a better idea if I stuck close to the medicine chest. The last thing I want to do in my condition is be in a really loud movie theater when my pain meds wear off. Trust me I have been through this before.

So, yesterday I was noodling around on the Project Gutenberg Library site and found The Man Who Was Thursday in MP4 format and downloaded it and transferred it to my IPod. I think today would be an awesome day to have some great Chesterton read to me while I snuggle up in a nice warm bed; a little hot coffee and chocolate on the nightstand right next to my bottle of arthritis medicine.

And maybe, if I feel up to it I can even knit a few rows on the sock I am working on . . . no pressure though.

The trick is knowing your limits and being prepared. Lucky for me we went out and stocked up on Godiva chocolate just the other night!!!

Pax

Happy Birthday Mrangelmeg

My charming and long-suffering spouse turns another year more distinguished today. Above is a picture he took for some sort of project for work. He was trying to look as though he knew how to actually do his job. I think the little smile was a nice touch.

We are going out to an Irish family pub for lunch so that he can come back and watch the St Louis Cardinals play baseball this evening. Then we will have cake and ice cream. So much excitement, I don't know if I can handle it!

The girls got him an absolutely HUGE bag of Peanut M&M's (I think it is the industrial size actually). He was very excited about that. We also got him the Eagles new album Long Road Out of Eden finally, I had promised it to him at Christmas when it came out, but every time I tried to get it at Walmart in our College town it was sold out. Finally the other day I thought to check the Walmart here and there were actually four copies. We also got him Lynyrd Skynyrd All the Greatest Hits (with a 14 minute live version of Free Bird no less). He was very happy.

All in all I think he will have had a very happy birthday when this day is done.

Pax

Just Another Day at the Beach!

Do you know how frustrating it is to fix a broken shock cord in a tent pole?



Well as soon as I recover from the one I had to fix for our sun shelter I will tell you. I may or may not have said a few Bozo-No-No's in the repeated attempts to get the stupid cord to stay taped to the wire as it was being snaked up the pole segments. I bet I had to throw away ten little pieces of used duct tape after it was all said and done. Please pray that the other two poles don't break thier cords before we leave here, because I don't think my mental health can handle another round of "fixing the pole".



Other than that, the day at the beach was really nice, even with the sea weed that looked a lot like little green puff balls floating all through the water. (It stuck like glue to the angelbaby's body too, which was really funny because she swore up and down that she didn't need to take a shower until she got home, took off her suit and saw all the little green puff balls stuck all over her abdomen and back.)



We even learned a new trick today. We went to tbe beach with our friend who has an umbrella, and the umbrella kept getting caught by the wind and blowing over. A nice lady sitting very close to us came over and showed us how to anchor the umbrella by rocking the base back and forth in the sand before setting the top on and then angling the top into the wind. After that we didn't have any trouble at all with the umbrella. You learn something new all the time when people are willing to share what they know.



I am off in a few to get some items from the store so I can cook meatloaf and mashed potatoes for mrangelmeg for dinner. I know, maybe somebody needs to check my temperature to see if I didn't get sun stroke while we were at the beach, only I volunteered to make the meal before we went to the beach, so I'm guessing I am really all right. He just deserves a little pampering.



Pax

Angelmeg's Spiritual Thought for the Day

It's a pretty sure bet that you have created God in your own image

if you both hate the exact same people.

Pax

Mental Pause Moment #7: You Picked a Bad Time to . . .

Never, and I can't stress this enough, NEVER make life altering decisions when in the throes of a mental pause moment.

Case in point, my trip to the beauty shop just the other day. . .

I have spent that last year (just ask my friends) painstakingly growing out my bangs trying to get my hair all the same length and had almost achieved that feet. My hair is (was, sadly) about shoulder length and my bangs were nearly grown out all the way to my shoulders.

The problem is we have been down here in Florida for two weeks and we are swimming in either the ocean or the swimming pool every day. My hair is getting very dried out and tangled up and hard to manage. I decided that I needed to make a change. It was time for a haircut anyway.

I went to the closest hair stylist and sat down and asked the stylist to give me a short haircut, but failed (as my beautiful angelbaby so delicately reminded me when I got home) to add two small words to my request. I forgot to tell her to cut my hair "NOT TOO SHORT"! Then apparently I went into some sort of mental pause trance while she worked on my hair.

In my defense I didn't have my glasses on, so I couldn't get a clear idea of what she was doing by looking in the mirror because what I saw was very blurry. When I finally put my glasses back on when she was done I found that I had less hair on my head than mrangelmeg does (well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I can't run my fingers through the back).

Now I know what that poor girl feels every season on America's Next Top Model when they cut off all of her hair and give her an extremely severe haircut. I feel so butch. The only plus is I have been swimming and the change is amazing. I got out of the pool, ran my hands over my head and my hair was pretty much back in place.

Oh well, it will grow back, and in a few years I can have it back to my shoulders again. I might even have stopped crying myself to sleep by then.

Pax

Happy Father's Day

My dad was a golfer. He called himself a "duffer" but he played pretty well considering he picked the game up as an adult and was a lefty but he played right handed because he couldn't afford a set of left handed clubs.

My favorite thing to do on summer days was to follow him around our little nine hole golf course at the "club" we belonged to when I was growing up.

There was one pretty easy par three on the course that he would let me play. He would let me hit off the tee, and hit once on the fairway and then I would pick up my ball and drop it on the green and then I could putt it three times. If I didn't get it in in three putts he made me pick it up.

I never played very well, but I always had fun. Sadly, that all ended when my dad got sick when I was 12, and then he died a year later.

My husband loves golf just as much as my father did. Only mrangelmeg is a righty, and has been playing golf since he was a little boy.

The girls got mrangelmeg this book for Father's day:

It looks like a book my Father would have liked had he stayed alive long enough. I wish mrangelmeg had had a chance to meet my father, they might have been great golfing buddies.

Happy Father's day to all you Father's out there.

Pax

Losing Tim Russert is Like Losing a Trusted Friend

Tim Russert passed away yesterday of a massive heart attack. I was so saddened to hear the news last night, it was as though I had lost a trusted friend.

His political commentary was always balanced. Although we knew his background, (a Catholic man who had high moral standards) he never let that turn him into an overbearing holier than thou interviewer, even when the person sitting across from him was someone whose views were on the oposite side of the spectrum from his own.

He will be greatly missed.

read the New York Times column here.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord. . .

Canada Persecuting Christians

This is absolutely frightening. This story is almost too scary that one would think it were something out of fiction, but it actually happened. A young minister in Canada who happens to be trying to live his beliefs and wrote a letter to the editor stating that homosexual acts are inherently evil, as same sex marriage became law in Canada. He was reported to the human rights tribunal for what he believed.

Before this happened he had been working with youth, some who were living on the streets as same sex hustlers. His group gave the youth a safe place to live and get education and training so that they could get off the street and stop living the lifestyle they were drawn into by need and circumstance. (This just shows how much he "hated homosexuals") Unfortunately because of the ruling of the Tribunal his work among the teens has been halted.

I encourage all of you to go to Pete Vere's Catholic Light site and listen to his conversation with Pastor Boissoin. This is a man that the Canadian Government considers a threat. In my eyes he is a hero.

We need to pray for the government of Canada.

Pax

Wave Rider

This is a pretty good picture of the angelbaby catching a wave on her boogie board. She is totally fearless when it comes to riding the waves. She would catch one and ride it pretty well, and then she would get tossed tail over tea cup the very next five tries and just keep trying.

She had a wonderful time every time though even when she was picking sea weed out of her hair, and as you can see from the picture there was a ton of sea weed in the gulf that day.

Go angelbaby I predict she will be a surfer before she turns 21. I just hope I don't have to stand around and watch.

Pax

A Few Days Late: Sorry Fr. Aaron

My friend Aaron from St. Meinrad was ordained on Saturday at the Cathedral in Indianapolis. As a seminarian he spent last summer in residence at our home parish, and my family got to know him. He is a very quiet young man who is a convert to the faith and had the joy of welcoming both of his parents at a recent Easter Vigil mass as well.

One of his hobbies is stained glass. His work is very inspirational.

He was recently assigned to his first post as associate pastor in Indianapolis. I hope they realize how amazing a young priest they are getting.

If you would all add him to the list of priests that you pray for I am sure he could use the extra prayers.

Pax

In Honor of Every Bad Rendition I Have Ever Endured:

Ken Levine , Hollywood Writer of MASH and Frasier (among many other credits) fame has a great piece on his blog on how not to sing the National Anthem if you are called upon for this esteemed honor at the ballpark nearest you this summer.

The National Anthem


It is a great read. As is his blog, which is one of my favorites, that I found during the writer's strike when I was boycotting all the crud that network TV was giving us to fill hours while writers were trying to get what they deserved.

enjoy.

Pax

Togetherness: Too Much of a Good Thing

It occurred to me today that I have eight more weeks of time here in almost paradise with my three beautiful daughters and mrangelmeg when we get to see him. Don't get me wrong I love being here, but I don't know if I can take this much togetherness.

There isn't anywhere for me to go to get away from the girls. I could walk to the store, but I am not really a shopper. I could walk down to the pool, or (as I do every other day, to the gym for my workout for about forty-five minutes) but even then they are still right here in the building.

What I really miss is being able to call up my friends and go out for a cup of coffee, or just go out, away by myself for the afternoon. I really miss having someone besides the girls and mrangelmeg to talk to, not that they aren't great fun to talk to.

This week I am going to venture out to one of the nearby nail salons for a pedicure, at least I can do that without taking the girls. If I am lucky, the person who does my nails will be able to carry on a conversation in passable English, and I will have had an hour away.

Oh well, everything will work out. By the end of the time we have down here we will either be a very close knit family unit, or we will have driven each other insane.

I am hoping for us growing closer.

Pax

Maybe, Maybe Not . . .

The angelbaby tried out her new boogie board yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico. I only let her get in with me right next to her and I was thigh deep in the water, so she really wasn't in much danger of getting caught in a riptide or having anything else hazardous happen (or so we thought, but more on that in a bit).

She was only about 30% successful at catching waves with her board. As the time progressed, she got a bit more skilled at choosing which waves would be good ones to try for, and how to set her board on the crest of the wave. All in all she had some really sweet rides.

We got out to reapply sunscreen and take a break, and while we were out of the water a young man and his dad who were body surfing right near where we were caught sight of a shark just below where they were swimming. Having seen the movie Jaws, I decided that we were done swimming for the day. The angelbaby, who hadn't seen the movie, wondered why I was so concerned about being that near a shark. She had seen a shark before at the zoo. I reminded her that in that case there was a large pane of plate glass between her and the shark.

I still have nightmares about seeing Jaws when I was 15 and living in Hawaii, and then snorkeling off the beach at Makaha and running into a hammerhead shark in the wild with nothing between us but a few hundred yards of ocean. It was the most frightening experience of my young life and one I don't want to re-experience, thank you very much.

Anyway, we came back to the suite, which was probably a good thing, because two of the girls got a bit too much sun. We ended up with the bonus of getting back before mrangelmeg had left for work for the evening (we had originally thought we would stay at the beach long after he had to go to work) so that was a nice plus.

We are still feeling our way down here, and will probably not go to the beach today to give the burned skin a day of rest. I am still trying to get used to the slower pace. Not much is expected of me besides knowing where the angelbaby is when she is in the water (whether it is in one of the pools or the ocean) or trying to determine what the two older girls needs are, and they aren't very demanding. Even keeping the suite clean isn't all that hard, although because we didn't bring all that many clothes I seem to be doing just as much laundry down here as I did back home.

Life is funny like that.

Pax

White, White Sand and Wild Blue Water

We took a quick trip to the beach today. We only spent about an hour because mrangelmeg had to go to work later and we had misplaced our only bottle of sunscreen. I was absolutely amazed at how white the sand was and how blue the water was.

We are learning how to navigate here too. We have decided against an umbrella (we forgot the one we had at home, so that was probably a blessing) after seeing how horribly they get whipped around by the wind. We will most likely invest in a little mini shelter tent. We are also learning about the threat level flags. Today was a yellow flag day, which means mild conditions. Mild water conditions were so strong that the angelbaby couldn't go any deeper than her ankles. Anything higher than Yellow and we won't even be going near the water.

Tomorrow we intend to go back to the beach for a longer visit, equipped with sunscreen and a tent/sun/wind break. We are going to pack a lunch and stay for a few hours.

Pax

My Morning Devotion View

For the next nine weeks this will be what I will see as I do my morning devotion. This is a picture that mrangelmeg took off of the balcony of the suite which he stayed at last time he was down here, and where we are currently residing.



Not a bad place to be, even if I have to cook meals, do dishes and clean the suite (the trade offs we gave for staying here instead of in a hotel for nine weeks -- we got two bedrooms two bathrooms and a full kitchen for mrangelmeg's per Diem.



The girls and I spent the day today at the pools (there are four actually, a children's pool, the one on the picture, a lagoon pool, a heated pool, and a hot tub) It was a really nice day. Tomorrow we plan to venture over to the beach on the gulf.



This is going to be a quick message because I failed to pack the power cord to my computer, and my oldest daughter had to mail it to me. It should arrive some time tomorrow. Then I will have more time (and power) to blog.



One thing though. The elevator has an animated voice that we have dubbed Sarah. There are times when she has just about as much attitude.



I am reading a very interesting book called Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King. Having seen The Agony and the Ecstasy I knew some of the story, but there is so much more to how and why the Sistine Chapel Ceiling became the obsession of a sculptor rather than a painter. I promise to write more later.



Time now for bed.



Pax