Only the Beginning .....

Pressure's On

Actually, that's both literally and figuratively speaking! Evil cold-like-illness struck yesterday morning, inspiring me to concoct a "Top # Reasons Colds Stink" list, but felt too gunky to even write it. That, plus we had some big thing at school that had started out as a not-so-big thing that I had to do music for and it was just a very very very very long day. Went to bed pretty much as soon as I got home (9:00?!?!?) and woke up at 2:00 with the lower half of face imploding .... one of those things where I couldn't blow my nose b/c it made my ears hurt too much and besides, it didn't blow anything out anyway. After lying there for two hours, sucking down a couple Advil, I realized that I really only had two classes today and it was going to be just taking them to the library so they could work on presentations, so I decided to stay home. Of course, when I re-awoke at 6:00 for Morning Prayer, it had shifted to "just a cold" so I felt a little guilty, but a housemate assured me of swollen glands and the need to not get kids sick. So I had a day of lots of sleep, lots of snot, and a long-neglected Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince --- the only problem with it is that it's not the most conducive for lying-in-bed reading. But, nevertheless, I survived and am halfway through .... though I read book five so long ago I don't remember all the details they keep referencing.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with why I'm posting.... and unfortunately, there's too much evidence here to the contrary for me to blame this latest round of randomness simply on my illness.

As an aside .... helping aforementioned housemate find some fun saint patronages for her kids tomorrow, I discovered a patron saint of suriphobia, which apparently is a fear of rats or mice. As I told her about it, I was struck by a thought:

Suriphobia = fear of rats and mice
Using my unbounded knowledge of etymology, I dissect the word into its component parts:
suri + phobia
And, knowing that phobia means fear of I determine that suri must mean rat or mouse.

Unfortunately, in the haze of my snot-filled delirium, the thought ended there. But I can't help but think that there must be a deeper meaning in all of that somewhere .....

But, I have digressed from my non-existent point.

While I'm still off-track, though, I'd like to point out that I just discovered the difference between "entymology" and "etymology" .... funny how one little letter can mean the difference between the study of worms and the study of words!

And yes, I'm well aware that worms technically aren't insects and therefore that was a flawed and faulty funny, please don't ruin my fun or I'll be forced to sneeze on you!

The figurative pressure comes from discovering that our monastery webpage now shows a "Coming Soon" heads-up about the new look. Which makes me realize that I really need to get this Teen Page thing up and running. So pressure's on to find a fun cool name that gives a sense of spirituality without stagnation, of faith that's still fun, of religion with rebellion, of Benedictines not boredom, of holiness that's humorous, of piety that's punny, of vocations that are vacationable and not vacant, of nuns that are none of what you'd expect.

Any thoughts? PLEASE?!?!?

The Plot Thickens .... or the Bible Thinnens?

E-mail sent from a certain religion teacher to the Assistant Principal In Charge Of Books:

To: Assistant Principal In Charge Of Books
From: Aforementioned Not-So-Nunly-Nun
Subject: You're the Book Lady, right?

We have a slight problem ..... one of my students is missing a gospel. Now I know all about stuff like "The Lost Gospel of Judas" for example, but she's missing the more mainstream versions. More specifically, her Bible seems to have misplaced everything from Mark 4 through Luke 12. Considering that we will be focusing on the gospels this year, I think this might prove to make her semester a little more challenging than we anticipated.

Yeah, I know .... not nearly as interesting as this e-mail thread from last year. Maybe if the ANSNN had gotten more people involved ......

Komments from the Konvent Kitchen

Hypothetical situation here, but as I was contemplating life today, I had this grand revelation that I felt might help some folks out there, so I decided to share it with you.

If you're ever hanging out in the basement of a nun's house while a housemate nun is doing laundry and you notice an ice cream maker and think that this could be a wonderful long weekend kind of activity (perhaps Labor Day?) ..... it might behoove you to check and make sure the thing works before you have it all loaded up with ingredients and ice!

On the plus side, we actually had another machine that did work and, since it was a bigger machine, our smaller amount of ice cream mixture made us OK with the fact that we didn't have enough ice to pack the thing all the way. And it still managed to taste pretty good, too!
I forgot .... I was speaking hypothetically!