A Few Things While We are Waiting for Me to Write Something

There is hope!

Of course, it's 88F at the moment, but that's ten degrees cooler than it has been for most of the month. I really shouldn't complain.

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Why I like the new translation of the Mass.

Well, I can't do it and I bet you can't either. Almost every time I go to Mass, I say "...for our good and the good of all His church--holy church." And then I make the face. Our church is pie shaped and from where I sit I can see about half the congregation and I can tell all the way across the nave when somebody gives the old response because they make the face. Sometimes it's accompanied by a little shrug. 

I can look right at the text of the Creed and follow along with my finger and still not be able to read what is written there. My favorite change is, "Lord I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed," but I'm pretty sure that I've only said it correctly three times.

Now the reason why I like this is because when I say, "...church--holy church," my neighbor does not hit me over the head with a missalette; she turns to me and smiles. This is because she knows that pretty soon she will say, "It is right to give Him thanks and praise." And when the priest makes a mistake, as mine did Saturday, although I don't remember what it was because that was 30 hours ago, nobody accuses him of heresy. So, that's why I like. We are just all in there messing up together, and we all know it.

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More of these big white birds, which, now that I can see them better, I know to be Great White Herons. This is fairly surprising because we used to see quite a few Great Blue Herons (which should really be called Great Gray Herons) and maybe two whites a year. I'm not sure that I've seen any blues this year at all. I suppose the Great Whites are this year's bumper crop, which is very nice. Bill took these with his much better camera. We still haven't been able to get a picture of a really big group of them, though. Sometimes we come around the corner and see about 100 herons in the area that's pictured below.

Then there's this guy. I'm not sure what he is.

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And then there's one more thing about the election. I'm a little worried that if Romney wins, in 2020 Paul Ryan might run for President with Rand Paul as his running mate. Now, aside from the horribleness of these two names in close proximity, there is this:

I mean, it's not like they are twins separated at birth or anything, but they just look too much alike. Lose the widow's peak and dye RP's hair black and we are getting perilously close. And if they get those matching ties like Obama and Biden . . . So, I'm just warning y'all.

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Now, I thought I might really write something later today, but believe it or not, this took two hours, so I would guess not. Orientation was Friday, so the worst is over, but my head is still stuffed full of who needs an academic reference and who needs three transcripts and 15, 000 details that still need to be taken care of. I have another really busy day coming up tomorrow and hopefully after that I'll get back to a more or less normal schedule.

AMDG