.... I'm not late. I have until at least 6 January to celebrate Christmas and if I'm feeling _very_ energetic or very behind on the sending of Christmas presents, I have until February 2nd. So there.
December has gone by in a bit of a blur due to scheduling demands. Nightshift does weird things to your brain. For me it gave me very, very vivid and strange dreams when I slept during daylight hours. It also contributed a bit to my uncharitable thoughts about my neighbors (yelling during hours of daylight) and apartment maintenance (leafblowing in the afternoon...seriously not cool).
I spent my nights off awake and a little bored. A lot of things that I think should be open are closed at night, such as shops, museums, aquariums, movie theaters, and restaurants. I discovered the handful of 24 hour places, mainly 2 Walmarts, 2 IHOPs, a Subway and a Denny's. I know some people can do 'extra long days' and switch to daytime hours for their off time but I knew that wouldn't work for me. Once I switched to nights I had to make a serious commitment and I did. It worked pretty well. I was blessed to have Christmas off and was able to go to my favourie local liturgy. Looks like I'll also have New Year's off, and my glorious plan for that day is to pack like someone who's forgotten how to pack smart in anticipation of visiting Tbro and sister-in-law. It occurs to me that I either don't have a nickname for her or I have forgotten it... either way, I shall have to come up with something.
In other news, I have (sort of) come to terms with the fact that I have curly hair. This isn't exactly a revelation, but since my earliest days I have had difficulty coping with what Nature has seen fit to bless me with. I have only saved myself from years of heat-damage from straightening irons because I have been afraid of burning my ears. I have only saved myself from damaging my hair with scary, industrial strength chemicals because I am cheap and couldn't justify paying THAT MUCH for something that might result in my hair becoming brittle and breaking like...graham crackers. Or something. Graham crackers doesn't seem to be quite apt but it'll do for now.
Anyway, point being, my hair is relatively healthy and quite definitely curly. I've decided to start respecting it more. To this end, I'm experimenting with a better way to clean and condition it than the products I'm currently using. I'm just starting to think though how drastically different my life might have been if I'd figured this out as a teenager instead of going around with poofy, dried-out and unhappy hair. Well, you live and you learn. Thinking about going with a dramatically shorter haircut that respects my curls. Not sure if I can pull this off properly considering uniform requirements. Just read the regs governing hair again and I think the biggest problem might be the two inch rule plus the fact that curls are no symmetrical.
Still thinking.
Anyway... Things to clean, stuff to make ready, etc. Literally 24 hours left of work until leave!
Showing posts with label holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holiday. Show all posts
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Merry-Christmas-and-Happy-Feast-of-St-Steven-the-Protomartyr!
There, now I'm not behind! Hurrah!
So what can I write about that hasn't been written about regarding Christmas? Pretty much nothing. So, in the absence of new subject material, I will go after some older material, after I air one grievance-
The lyrics of 'In Dulci Jubilo' are FAR superior to 'Good Christian Friends Rejoice'. It is NOT 'hard Latin' and it has substance, where 'Good Christian Friends Rejoice' is a fuzzy bit of marshmallow fluff. Only not even that because marshmallow fluff is kind of tasty (while being simultaneously disgusting- think of how much sugar that is!!). I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that lame hymns are a contributing factor to people leaving the church. Why? Because I've found people remember bits of songs far more easily than say, the Eucharistic prayers. I've found myself randomly humming bits of the Divine Liturgy and I've quoted parts of it (sometimes while singing it) to people who ask me about 'my faith and what it means to me'. If you have good solid doctrine in your hymns and not just fluff, people may find it easier to understand aspects of their faith. What a thought, right?
Okay, rant over. Promise.
So Christmas in the vicinity of Ft. SINYF. It's SNOWING! What the heck? Not complaining, just shocked! I thought it wasn't supposed to snow here! The locals seem for the most part to have taken the smart course of action for them which is to stay indoors and cower. This strange precipitation from the sky might be a harbinger of nuclear winter or something. I mean, it's sooo weird... It's like rain but not!
Seriously people? It's not even accumulating. You don't get to complain about snow unless there's two feet of it outside, you are completely snowed in with intermittent power, and your mom decides to make 'colonial herb bread' with the last of the food in the pantry. Then and only then may you complain that said bread tastes like sand and was probably the sole reason for a high mortality rate in the colonies.
Yesterday and Christmas Eve, I had people over for food/games/socializing. The food was good if I do say so myself as the person who bought and prepared almost all of it. The exception was a strange sort of salmon quiche made by one of my guests with the salmon I bought but didn't have time to prepare. The rest of said salmon will probably be my dinner tonight. Yum!
So what else... we played a rather outdated game of Outburst which was still fun, even though we had to remove from play cards like "Famous Baseball Pitchers 1960-1990", and "College Football Team Nicknames". This second was more due to the guests than the age of the game. On the whole, we are not sports fans. That would be far, far too normal. What is normal anyway? Why should I care about sports? I don't know any of the athletes personally. I feel a sort of... not quite patriotism, but I guess a sort of back-yard nationalism... ooh that sound bad too. Um... micronation-sentimentality... No, that won't do either. Regional pride sounds daft. Er...
You know, that feeling about a geographic region that you either currently inhabit or have inhabited or have relatives from, that you feel a sort of fondness for. You'd like to go back and vacation there, maybe even live there, but you can't say truthfully that you're FROM there. Whatever.
Anyway. When did this get to be about sports? Sorry... back to party stuff. I think everyone had a good time. I'm not much for hosting parties. I mean, there was a housewarming party ages ago, and then this. And I forgot so many things that I meant to do or get before it started. Planning a party is complicated. I think it requires more free time and energy than I actually had. But all things considered, it was not bad. I think people enjoyed themselves and that's really the main thing.
All right, now I'll turn to a more serious thing. Today is the feast of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, and according to the New Rite, also the feast of the Holy Family, more on that later.
St. Stephen was the first martyr, hence the title protomartyr. It struck me today that this is pretty interesting. I mean, there were twelve apostles and St. Stephen was 'just' a deacon. You'd think that one of the apostles would be the protomartyr- maybe St. Peter because he had a history of doing rash things (hacking off an ear?) and saying rash things ("I'll never deny you!"). You could just picture St. Peter saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the right time and getting martyred for it. But it was this other guy, St. Stephen instead. So what do we know about him? Not a whole lot, I don't think. He understood that Jesus was the son of God, he was a deacon, he was tried by the Jewish religious court and sentenced to death for blasphemy ("God forbid that God should have a son..."). St. Paul acted as a coat-stand at his martyrdom, not actually getting his hands dirty in this instance but complicit. Did the memories of that stoning come back to haunt him during his conversion experience? Did St. Paul's temporarily sightless eyes see a young man dying a terrible death for the truth?
Looking a little further ahead on the calendar, we can see the feast of Holy Innocents. I love to think of them as Jesus's honor guard, his _comitatus_ (the Old English sense of the word, nothing to do with Hungarian counties or Bulgarian administrative units).
People want to celebrate the joy of Christmas and Christ's birth, but if you leaf ahead a little, as it were, you can see that it's not going to be all eggnog and presents. It's going to get very, very bad. Innocent people will die for the crimes of existing and telling the truth. But when it's bad, think about Christmas and Christ's birth. He was the only one who was ever born to die, to set us free, to open the gates of Heaven for us. With Him, our suffering and even our deaths will not be in vain.
NB: Yes, I know, some people move St. Stephen's feast to the 27th. I still say it's the 26th, because I think Boxing Day is lame. All right?
Additional NB: Perhaps this should have been several posts instead of one large post? Thoughts?
So what can I write about that hasn't been written about regarding Christmas? Pretty much nothing. So, in the absence of new subject material, I will go after some older material, after I air one grievance-
The lyrics of 'In Dulci Jubilo' are FAR superior to 'Good Christian Friends Rejoice'. It is NOT 'hard Latin' and it has substance, where 'Good Christian Friends Rejoice' is a fuzzy bit of marshmallow fluff. Only not even that because marshmallow fluff is kind of tasty (while being simultaneously disgusting- think of how much sugar that is!!). I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that lame hymns are a contributing factor to people leaving the church. Why? Because I've found people remember bits of songs far more easily than say, the Eucharistic prayers. I've found myself randomly humming bits of the Divine Liturgy and I've quoted parts of it (sometimes while singing it) to people who ask me about 'my faith and what it means to me'. If you have good solid doctrine in your hymns and not just fluff, people may find it easier to understand aspects of their faith. What a thought, right?
Okay, rant over. Promise.
So Christmas in the vicinity of Ft. SINYF. It's SNOWING! What the heck? Not complaining, just shocked! I thought it wasn't supposed to snow here! The locals seem for the most part to have taken the smart course of action for them which is to stay indoors and cower. This strange precipitation from the sky might be a harbinger of nuclear winter or something. I mean, it's sooo weird... It's like rain but not!
Seriously people? It's not even accumulating. You don't get to complain about snow unless there's two feet of it outside, you are completely snowed in with intermittent power, and your mom decides to make 'colonial herb bread' with the last of the food in the pantry. Then and only then may you complain that said bread tastes like sand and was probably the sole reason for a high mortality rate in the colonies.
Yesterday and Christmas Eve, I had people over for food/games/socializing. The food was good if I do say so myself as the person who bought and prepared almost all of it. The exception was a strange sort of salmon quiche made by one of my guests with the salmon I bought but didn't have time to prepare. The rest of said salmon will probably be my dinner tonight. Yum!
So what else... we played a rather outdated game of Outburst which was still fun, even though we had to remove from play cards like "Famous Baseball Pitchers 1960-1990", and "College Football Team Nicknames". This second was more due to the guests than the age of the game. On the whole, we are not sports fans. That would be far, far too normal. What is normal anyway? Why should I care about sports? I don't know any of the athletes personally. I feel a sort of... not quite patriotism, but I guess a sort of back-yard nationalism... ooh that sound bad too. Um... micronation-sentimentality... No, that won't do either. Regional pride sounds daft. Er...
You know, that feeling about a geographic region that you either currently inhabit or have inhabited or have relatives from, that you feel a sort of fondness for. You'd like to go back and vacation there, maybe even live there, but you can't say truthfully that you're FROM there. Whatever.
Anyway. When did this get to be about sports? Sorry... back to party stuff. I think everyone had a good time. I'm not much for hosting parties. I mean, there was a housewarming party ages ago, and then this. And I forgot so many things that I meant to do or get before it started. Planning a party is complicated. I think it requires more free time and energy than I actually had. But all things considered, it was not bad. I think people enjoyed themselves and that's really the main thing.
All right, now I'll turn to a more serious thing. Today is the feast of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, and according to the New Rite, also the feast of the Holy Family, more on that later.
St. Stephen was the first martyr, hence the title protomartyr. It struck me today that this is pretty interesting. I mean, there were twelve apostles and St. Stephen was 'just' a deacon. You'd think that one of the apostles would be the protomartyr- maybe St. Peter because he had a history of doing rash things (hacking off an ear?) and saying rash things ("I'll never deny you!"). You could just picture St. Peter saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the right time and getting martyred for it. But it was this other guy, St. Stephen instead. So what do we know about him? Not a whole lot, I don't think. He understood that Jesus was the son of God, he was a deacon, he was tried by the Jewish religious court and sentenced to death for blasphemy ("God forbid that God should have a son..."). St. Paul acted as a coat-stand at his martyrdom, not actually getting his hands dirty in this instance but complicit. Did the memories of that stoning come back to haunt him during his conversion experience? Did St. Paul's temporarily sightless eyes see a young man dying a terrible death for the truth?
Looking a little further ahead on the calendar, we can see the feast of Holy Innocents. I love to think of them as Jesus's honor guard, his _comitatus_ (the Old English sense of the word, nothing to do with Hungarian counties or Bulgarian administrative units).
People want to celebrate the joy of Christmas and Christ's birth, but if you leaf ahead a little, as it were, you can see that it's not going to be all eggnog and presents. It's going to get very, very bad. Innocent people will die for the crimes of existing and telling the truth. But when it's bad, think about Christmas and Christ's birth. He was the only one who was ever born to die, to set us free, to open the gates of Heaven for us. With Him, our suffering and even our deaths will not be in vain.
NB: Yes, I know, some people move St. Stephen's feast to the 27th. I still say it's the 26th, because I think Boxing Day is lame. All right?
Additional NB: Perhaps this should have been several posts instead of one large post? Thoughts?
Monday, December 6, 2010
Happy St. Nicholas Day!
Happy feast of St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, Defender of Orthodoxy, Wonder-worker, and Holy Hierarch! He is the patron saint of children, Russia, sailors, the Navy, archers, thieves, students, and the cities of Aberdeen, Amsterdam, Barranquilla, Bari, Beit Jala, Fribourg, Huguenots, Liverpool, Siggiewi, and Lorraine.
He also punched Arius and we've got the icons to prove it!
St. Nicholas is a truly awesome saint. According to something I read, in life he was only about five foot tall and may have had a broken nose (I wonder if Arius punched him back...) yet his generosity has been remembered for a very long time now. In his memory and in honor of his name-day, I brought lots of chocolate for my class. We're having a tough week. We have a big scary test tomorrow and another one tomorrow. I'll be hitting up the Wonderworker of Myra with my prayers for the octave after his feast!
In other news, class has been extended into next week. Argh. etc.
He also punched Arius and we've got the icons to prove it!
St. Nicholas is a truly awesome saint. According to something I read, in life he was only about five foot tall and may have had a broken nose (I wonder if Arius punched him back...) yet his generosity has been remembered for a very long time now. In his memory and in honor of his name-day, I brought lots of chocolate for my class. We're having a tough week. We have a big scary test tomorrow and another one tomorrow. I'll be hitting up the Wonderworker of Myra with my prayers for the octave after his feast!
In other news, class has been extended into next week. Argh. etc.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving sort-of snuck up on me this year, but I have to say so far it's been amazing! For breakfast today I had sweet-potato pie (one of the few regionally southern things I appreciate so far). I then proceeded to clean the bathroom and do two loads of laundry. It felt very productive for a holiday so I had to make up for it by watching Dr. Who while folding the laundry.
Then I went to the command Thanksgiving party. It was an experience! Next time I won't get there quite so early. It's weird to be somewhere too early because you thought they might need more help and they don't but you're standing there awkwardly looking for something to do while people much older than you with much more energy run around doing a million and two things and won't let you help out... Tasty, tasty food and lots of it- turkey, ham, casserole, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, more pie and cake than you could shake a stick at. The guy who put it together was a professional chef prior to Navy life and it showed. The Important People showed up and shook hands all around, and despite them the mood was still festive though sadly non-alcoholic.
After the festivities, I volunteered to join the group taking the leftovers to the watchstanders and that was nice. It was awesome to be able to surprise people with plates of still warmish food. There were even a few whole leftover pies. They had leaf decorations on them made out of crusts- detailed to include lines on the leaves. Really magnificent presentation.
On a more personal note, on Thanksgiving I am particularly thankful for:
My family (near/far, sane/otherwise)
My friends (the family one gets to pick!)
My coworkers (peers and superiors- don't have any subordinates)
My domicile (which will be even cleaner by the end of this four-day weekend)
My roomie (who has the patience of one of the beatified if not a saint)
My job (hurrah for gainful employment)
My car (which will also be cleaned this weekend)
My health (which aside from another round of shinsplints couldn't be better)
My faith (which praises the often forgotten virtue of gratitude)
All in all, it has been a wonderful day.
Then I went to the command Thanksgiving party. It was an experience! Next time I won't get there quite so early. It's weird to be somewhere too early because you thought they might need more help and they don't but you're standing there awkwardly looking for something to do while people much older than you with much more energy run around doing a million and two things and won't let you help out... Tasty, tasty food and lots of it- turkey, ham, casserole, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, more pie and cake than you could shake a stick at. The guy who put it together was a professional chef prior to Navy life and it showed. The Important People showed up and shook hands all around, and despite them the mood was still festive though sadly non-alcoholic.
After the festivities, I volunteered to join the group taking the leftovers to the watchstanders and that was nice. It was awesome to be able to surprise people with plates of still warmish food. There were even a few whole leftover pies. They had leaf decorations on them made out of crusts- detailed to include lines on the leaves. Really magnificent presentation.
On a more personal note, on Thanksgiving I am particularly thankful for:
My family (near/far, sane/otherwise)
My friends (the family one gets to pick!)
My coworkers (peers and superiors- don't have any subordinates)
My domicile (which will be even cleaner by the end of this four-day weekend)
My roomie (who has the patience of one of the beatified if not a saint)
My job (hurrah for gainful employment)
My car (which will also be cleaned this weekend)
My health (which aside from another round of shinsplints couldn't be better)
My faith (which praises the often forgotten virtue of gratitude)
All in all, it has been a wonderful day.
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