Weekend Assignment #361: Giving It Up!

For Weekend Assignment #361: Give It Up!, I asked...

Weekend Assignment #361: Give It Up!
Lent has begun, and in certain denominations, people are "giving up something for Lent" - in other words, not indulging in some pleasurable food or activity between now and Easter. Have you ever abstained from something for a period of time for a religious or spiritual purpose? What was it? How successful were you at avoiding it?

Extra Credit: Regardless of whether you believe in doing so, if you were to give up something you enjoy between now and April 24th, what would it be?

For years, Father Smith at St. Michael's has sort-of advocated against "giving up something for Lent," suggesting instead that one do something positive. Some years I've made a special effort to read specific parts of the Bible, catch up with my webmastering duties for church, do some kind of volunteer work, or some other attempt at a Good Thing. Often, though, I fall back on the same kinds of Lenten sacrifices that many folks do. I've given up, or tried to give up, a number of things over the years:

Mahjong. One year, I gave up playing Mahjong on the computer for Lent. It was one of the games on a Disney Mulan software package, and I'd become quite addicted. Giving it up cold turkey was a really good thing to do. Did it bring me closer to God? I'm not sure, but I certainly don't regret my choice that year.

Ice Cream. Okay, this one is not very original. I think I held to it pretty well, though.

Carbs A disaster. Trying to lose weight in general, or do a low-carb regimen, has never worked for me during Lent. Maybe it's too ambitious - or maybe, that's more about doing something for myself than doing something for God, and not applying any discipline or motivation. I'm not likely to try this one again. Not at Lent, anyway. Now, a New Year's Resolution, on the other hand...!

So what am I doing this year? I'm giving up french fries. Yes, it's seriously unoriginal. Thing is, though, I hit fast food and hamburger places fairly often, and it's all too easy to automatically go for the combos. I'm not even that big a fan of fries, so why do I get them? Well, for now I'm not getting them any more, and at least trying to make this a sacrifice rather than a self-serving thing. I'm not sure how to do that, to be honest. Also, I accidentally ate one french fry the other day.

But I'm trying to do a positive thing, too. I'm taking over the church newsletter, The Messenger. I'm a little nervous about it; it's been more than a decade since I last edited a newsletter. But I'd better tackle it soon: it's due out in two weeks!

Karen

See also: beliefnet: What I'm Giving Up For Lent

EMPS: Mardi Gras = Pancake Day

Carly's looking to celebrate Mardi Gras is the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week, but
instead I'd like to show you a related tradition for that very same day. "Fat Tuesday" (which is what Mardi Gras literally means) is basically one last blowout before the fasting and penance of Lent, which starts tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. In New Orleans and elsewhere, this takes the form of a Carnival, with parades and costumes and parties and lots of cheap beads. But in the more buttoned-down culture of England, and in Episcopal and several other Christian sects, the celebration is a bit tamer. In England, and at St. Michael's, today was Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as Pancake Day.

Father Smith serves the Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper at St. Michael & All Angels.

So after work today, I picked up my friend Kevin and headed over to St. Michael's, where pancake-flipping was already in progress. Father Smith had specifically invited John as well, but John, as always, declined. We had a good turnout, though. The church treasurer and several past and present Vestry members did most of the cooking, making dozens of pancakes and several kinds of sausage. Father Smith served up the pancakes - limit two per person to start, please!

Coffee or juice?

There were several kinds of syrup brought in by parishioners. Beverage choices ranged from coffee to diet cranberry-blueberry drink to apple or orange juice.

Al DeAugustine finally gets to taste what he made.

But yes, there were Mardi Gras beads as well!

The idea behind Shrove Tuesday is to use up certain foods before fasting begins, and to fortify yourself for Lent. That's why it's called Fat Tuesday; it's the time to indulge in all that food before the self-denial begins. Like New Year's Resolutions, Lent is a time when people tend to go on a diet, or try to give up smoking or drinking. "I'm giving up ice cream for Lent" is a sentence one hears a lot this time of year in certain quarters. But really, the idea is meant to be about penance and sacrifice as a way of growing closer to God, not about doing something for your waistline. (Father Smith likes to encourage people to do something positive for Lent, rather than giving something up.) Still, there's no reason you can't do both!

Karen

EMPS: Easter Preparations

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #32: Spring Holidays And Observances, Carly is looking for photos related to upcoming Spring holidays, primarily Easter or Passover. Yesterday was an important precursor to Easter, Palm Sunday, at which I tried out my new camera at church for the first time. So I'll have a selection of those shots for you, plus a more secular image I set up for Easter itself.

The church's most important week of the year (technically, a week and a day) is not around Christmas, but the week from Palm Sunday to Easter, known as Holy Week. Liturgically, it recounts the events from Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem at the height of his popularity to the Passover seder now known as the Last Supper, through his final vigil, arrest, trial, torture, death, burial and resurrection. Quite a week! My purpose in this entry is not to convince you of anything in particular, but simply to show you the beginning of the commemoration of these events in the Episcopal Parish of St. Michael and All Angels.

At St. Michael's, Palm Sunday begins outside in the Creswell Courtyard, named for a now-deceased former parish secretary. At this early part of the Mass, palms are blessed and distributed in remembrance of the scene in the Gospels in which Jesus rides into Jerusalem on an unbroken donkey colt, and people spread palm branches and garments before him. One of these same Gospel passages is read, and then the people enter the church, singing.

Former senior warden Peter approaches to help distribute palm branches.

Proscovia distributes palms to the acolytes, including me.

John the Acolyte - the Bart Simpson of St. Michael's

Inside the church, the clergy and acolytes process to the sanctuary once the people are seated, and the large ceremonial palms are laid before the altar. There is incense and prayer. The liturgy takes a drastic turn toward the sombre events of the rest of the week as the Old and New Testament readings are, er, read.

And this is where my camera had its first real test. My photos inside the church have always tended to be dark and grainy, because it's indoors and not brightly lit, and a flash isn't usually helpful from a distance in a large space. (Flash photography can be distracting in the middle of Mass, anyway, so I try not to use it.) With the new camera, darkness is less of a problem, but if I don't use the flash blurriness results, especially if I'm photographing people in motion through a cloud of incense.

After the Old Testament reading, the Psalm and the Epistle, members of the choir sing the Passion story, this year from the Gospel of Mark. One of the men sings the role of Jesus, another sings the other major male parts (Peter and Judas and Pilate), our cantor David sings the narration, and the rest of the choir handles the crowd dialogue and bit parts, including David's sister Mary as the servant girl who gives Peter grief about whether he knows Jesus. After that there's a sermon, a prayer for the baptismal candidates who will be baptized at Easter, and the rest of the Mass as usual. I believe the whole thing took about two hours this year - and there will be at least two longer services later in the week.

Okay, I promised you something light and secular to finish up. How about an Easter basket?

Most years, John and I don't give each other candy, but we've kept stuff around from the years when we do. In this basket, which was a fruit gift basket from Harry and David's, you can see a variety of plastic and cardboard eggs suitable for carrying candy.

That's it from me for now! Now go see the other EMPS entries from this week and last!

Karen

RRPC: Shrouded in Purple

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge, as suggested by Vicki of the blog Maraca, is "The Color Purple." As Vicki notes, it can be a challenging color to photograph, because somehow, some cameras have trouble capturing that shade. This is a good time of year to photograph purple, because it's Lent. Purple is the ecclesiastic color of Lent. It symbolizes repentance.

The Altar of Repose

From Lent at St. Michael's 2009

During Lent, all the statues, crosses, paintings and other religious icons at St. Michael's and other churches are either covered up with purple cloth or otherwise hidden away.

Purple cloth covers up bits of the pulpit.

The exact shade of purple seems to vary a bit, but for the most part you can tell they're trying for the same basic color.

I think the idea is to cover up Jesus and angels and saints - persons, in other words. So it doesn't matter much if there's a bit of sky, grass and a flower poking out the bottom of this painting.

The church was not lit Friday afternoon when I took these photos. Most of the lighting came from my camera's flash. Here is what the camera saw of the sanctuary without the flash.

I have more photos along these lines, but let's move on. After St. Michael's, the dogs and I crossed town, got Pepper's license renewed and visited a different dog park (see entry below). The sun was setting as we left Columbus Park, so I drove to the most famous place in southern Arizona for watching a sunset: the top of Gates Pass.

Sunset at Gates Pass.

From West Side Story

As long as a little sun remained above the horizon, there was more yellow than purple in evidence.

But overall, yes, there was purple in that sunset!

Is this purple enough for ya? Totally unedited tone and color in the two photos above.

How about this one? It's also completely unedited except for size and sharpness.

I'll have more photos of this sunset Saturday night. Meanwhile, let's go see everyone else's purpleness!

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Karen

Weekend Assignment #258: Hobby of Mine

Hi folks! I've been agonizing all night about what to go with for a Weekend Assignment this week. The one I've finally chosen is from guest professor Laura, slightly tweaked by me:

Weekend Assignment #257: Are there any hobby activities you've always wanted to try? What is their appeal? Also, what's stopping you from pursuing them?

Extra Credit: What was the last hobby activity you did?

Now to me, "hobby" is kind of an old-fashioned word. It conjures images of stamp collections and ballroom dancing, model trains and playing the accordion. Oh, and knitting. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

But it leaves me wondering what I do that counts as a hobby these days. Certainly I don't do anything on the list above, or anything like that. I'm not coordinated enough to knit or crewel or embroider or macrame, even iif I was interested, which I'm not. The last time I collected stamps was when I was eight or ten years old. In the same era, I collected pennies and nickels and dimes, only to raid the collection to buy Popsicles. Even now, I have a folder for state quarters that I haven't added to in over two years.

So what do I do as a leisure activity? I take digital photos, but so do many people, especially bloggers. Does that count? Maybe, but I don't have much to say on the subject that I haven't already said. Writing doesn;t count as a hobby for me, nor online activities, nor watching Doctor Who, nor reading. I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't read nearly as many books as some of you folks anyway.

Oh! Birdwatching! That's a hobby. I haven't done much of it lately, but it's definitely a hobby of mine.

But that's not the assignment. The task at hand is to identify a hopy I want to do, but haven't. Okay, this is going to sound a little unlikely, but I've been intrigued by the idea of hang gliders since the first time I saw one on tv many years ago. It seems that would be about as close to flying as we can get, this side of our dreams. I expect it would take a fair amount of money to take up hang gliding, and the right terrain (not Tucson, methinks!), and a high degree of physical fitness, and good ankles for the landing, none of which I have. Also, I think if it came right down to it, I'd be too scared to try it. Ditto skydiving.

But I could parasail.

I saw parasailing on the beach in Puerto Vallarta in early 1988, when I was there with my mom on a brief vacation. I had just enough money to try it, but wasn;t sure I had the nerve, and my mom begged me not to do it, and then I sprained an ankle, and I ran out of time and money. But I should have done it.

Here in Tucson, the equivalent of parasailing is ballooning. I looked into the cost of a balloon ride two years ago for my 50th birthday, and it was more than we could comfortably afford. But I would totally do that if I could. And if I liked it and had the money, I'd probably take it up as an actual hobby. Well, maybe.

Now let's return for a moment to my musings about things I do that constitute a hobby, and try to identify one I've done recently to satisfy the extra credit. How about collecting Madeleine L'Engle books? That's definitely a longstanding hobby, and I still had that new (old, but unpublished until recently) novel of hers on my desk. That'll do. Yes, that's a recent hobby activity.

How about you? Is there a "hobby not taken?" Write about it in your blog, and please include a link back here in your entry. Then leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week with a roundup of responses. Like this:

For Weekend Assignment #257: Giving It Up, we asked about stuff you've tried to give up, for Lent or other reasons, and how that worked out. Here are excerpts from the responses:

Julie said...

I gave up sugar in tea and coffee, but not out of any particular conviction. One day we were out of the stuff, and I discovered I liked the taste better. The fact that it's probably better for me anyway is a bonus, but there ya go.


Laura said...

I tried going vegetarian in high school for one summer. However, when I went to donate blood in the fall my iron count was low, and I decided I was not doing a balanced job of the vegetarian diet and went back to eating meat. I should add that because I was kicked across the barn by a cow on my grandfather's dairy farm, I've never felt the slightest guilt about eating cows.

Florinda said...

For at least the last ten years - and I can't recall exactly when it started - I have given up bookstores for Lent. I am not allowed to buy books for myself or order them on Amazon.com. I can buy books as gifts for other people, but sometimes the temptation in the environment is just too much. The fact that my birthday almost always falls during Lent - an event for which I often receive bookstore gift cards - really makes it tough to hold the line until Easter sometimes, and since most of the stores are actually closed on Easter Sunday, I still have to wait to release that pent-up demand.

Mike said...

About eight or nine years ago I gave up pop (soda for you people who call it that). I was drinking Sprite all the time, all day long. I mean, I was sweating lemon-lime. It was kind of cool when you think about it. So, I figured it would be a good idea to give it up. It worked out better than I though; I stopped drinking pop for good, though I would have one occasionally, with certain types of food. You cannot tell me that water tastes good with pizza. It just doesn't.

That's it for now! I may have a photo for this entry later, but for now I'm letting in go out nekkid. Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing about the hobbies you like to try someday! and while you're at it, please continue to supply me with topics for these Weekend Assignments. Thanks!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #257: Giving It Up

I had a topic worked out for this week, and then a vague memory surfaced of a similar discussion months ago. So I'm shelving that idea for further research and returning to our guest professors for help. This one is from Florinda, and is very timely this week:

Weekend Assignment #257: Have you ever given up anything for Lent - and if you have, what was it? Did you make it stick for the whole forty days? (In deference to those of you who have never observed Lent at all, let's expand this to giving up anything for religious, ethical or health reasons - cigarettes, for example.)

Extra Credit: Have you ever given up eating meat, either as a fast observance or as an ongoing change?

Here's my answer:

Over the years I've tried to give up chocolate for Lent, or ice cream, or anything from a snack box or food machines at work (wherever I was at the time), or high carb foods in general, or just generally tried to lose weight. I've also tried giving up late nights at the computer. (Ha!) Do you see a pattern developing? I tried to use Lent as an excuse for trying to take better care of my own health. To some extent that's a valid idea. We should be good stewards of our own bodies. But when Lent is basically the same thing as a New Year's resolution, it's got little more chance of success than those have. Giving up for Lent has two advantages, though. It's for a finite period of time, and in theory you can keep yourself in line with the idea that if you eat that ice cream bar, you're letting God down!

I know there have been times when I managed to at least cut back on the chocolate or whatever it was, but I don't recall ever completely avoiding a forbidden food for nearly two months leading up to Easter (40 days plus Sundays is how it's calculated).

Even so, I did once manage for quit something cold turkey as Lent began, and never went back to it. What was it? This:

A children's computer game? What?

Well, I was a big fan of the Disney movie Mulan, and among my gifts that Christmas were a limited edition Mulan fashion doll and this suite of Mulan-themed computer games. Most of them had extremely limited appeal for a childless woman in her early forties, but there was one game that appealed to my serially-addictive personality. Can you spot it?

Did you spot it, the real adult-friendly game hidden in the kids' stuff? Perhaps this will help!

I had never played mah-jong before, but the computer version was simple to learn, and so much semi-mindless fun that I was soon playing it for hours every night, much as some people play card games on their computers at work - or used to, until greater temptations came along. So giving up computer games for Lent that year - no Muln mah-jong, no computer Monopoly - was a big doing-what's-good-for-me sacrifice to make. And for once, it worked!

As for giving up meat, for Fridays in Lent or any other time, I'm really not all that good at it. If it's Ash Wednesday or a Friday in Lent and if I remember, I may forgo meat as leniently defined by the Church, meaning animals that don't come out of the sea. For Ash Wednesday this year, I managed it, although I had to drive around a bit, because I had my heart set on a shrimp or fish sandwich after church, and Popeye's was completely out of shrimp. Ever hear of Lent, you guys? Anyway, I can't imagine giving up meat completely, but I applaud those who do so.

How about you? Have you tried to give something up before, either temporarily or for the long haul How did that work out for you? Tell us about it in your blog, with a link back to this entry, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week to post the results. Meanwhile...

For Weekend Assignment #256: Is It Tax Time Yet? I asked you about your tax filing habits. Here are excerpts from the responses:

Laura said...

So, this is a topic with which I am intimately familiar. My husband is a lawyer and accountant specializing in small business law in the Russian community in Brooklyn, NY. As a result of this, I am basically single between February and April 15th every year, which is why I am keeping myself busy by taking so many classes this semester. One of the few bonuses is that all I have to do is sign the returns. We generally do our taxes fairly early because past years have proven that if we wait, he becomes overwhelmed with work for clients.

Florinda said...

We had planned to get to work on our taxes this weekend, but as plans often do, it fell through, partly due to the somewhat more urgent matter of replacing Tall Paul's car. We're not usually in a real rush to get our taxes done anyway, since we are in the unfortunate subcategory of "have to pay" on our Federal taxes. And even if we don't owe the state of California any additional taxes, they'll owe us; they'll be issuing IOUs instead of refunds.

Mike said...

Let me start by saying we don't do our own taxes. I know that there is software out there that makes it so easy a child could do it, but I know I'll mess up something. I don't want to go to jail. I'm too fragile. Either that, or I'll end up missing out on some good exemptions. We all need every exemption we can get.

New participant Savvy Working Gal said...

I always prepare our taxes and do so manually. As I mentioned above, I have experience with both TurboTax and TaxCut, for me it is just easier and cheaper to file manually. It took me an hour and twenty minutes to complete both returns. I did use the amt calculator on the irs.gov web site to make sure I didn’t owe AMT. Wisconsin is offering free electronic tax filing this year, but I didn't take advantage of it.

That's it for now! Remember, I'm always looking for Weekend Assignment topics, so don't be shy!

Karen

The Purple Season

I've been sitting here all night, trying to think what to tell you about all the vague ideas that have been swirling in my head. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, so I didn't eat much all day. I worked at St. Michael's in the afternoon, and was one of only two acolytes serving at Mass in the evening. Lent has begun, that season of repentance and abstinence, of taking stock of one's life and amending it for the better. Everything at church gets covered up with purple cloth, signifying (as some religious book I had as a kid put it) sorrow for sin.

Well, in theory that's what Lent is for. We prepare for the memorial of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and review and renew our relationship with him. Traditionally that involves going to church a lot and not eating meat on certain days, confession of sins and so on. The most famous manifestation of it all is the idea of "giving up something for Lent." Father Smith at St. Michael's has argued against this concept for years. Instead of giving up chocolate, which doesn't accomplish anything spiritual, one should do something positive that brings you closer to God.

But...how do I do that? Every year I try to find a way, but somehow Lent always ends up seeming like a missed opportunity to accomplish something meaningful.

So that's one track of what's been on my mind. Overlay onto that the continuing discouragement of no job interviews - not even a nibble! - and the suspicion that I won't get a job anytime soon, and what is wrong with me, and how can employers know without even picking up a phone that they should pass me over for all those jobs that they list that seem to fit my skills perfectly? And the CPA review thing is a longer and harder slog than even I expected, let alone John, who is restless over what seems to him like a lack of progress on my part. And yes, I should put in more hours each day on the studying. There, I said it. But doing it won't be that easy. There are no quick fixes here, no magic way to prepare for the CPA exam as fast as John wants, even if I do the diligence of eight hours a day studying. There's too much material I've forgotten or never knew. It will take months and months to get through it all. Even if it were all relatively fresh in my mind from school four years ago, it would still take months and months. Sorry, John.

Sorrow for sin. Yeah, I've got that. The sin of despair. The sin of giving myself a break, or not trying long enough or hard enough, of not washing the last dirty pan or getting the last bit of dried food off that section of counter. The sin of being stuck.

Yeah, I'm sorrowful. Okay, I repent. Now what? Now I try to do better, right? Except John would echo Yoda, "There is no try." Phooey on that. I can and will do better, but I know it will never be enough. That's human nature. When I worked for Buzzard's Nest Records all those years ago, I used to say to myself, "I have to be perfect this week," because anything short of that would be pounced on. But it's an impossible standard. Nobody can be perfect this week, or any other week.

On the other hand, who says I have to be perfect now? What John is looking for is visible steady effort and noticeable results. Well, okay, let me recommit to the effort. But I can't guarantee the results.

Karen

Is It a Sin to Eat Steamed Sparrowgrass?

There's a joke John does every year, on the first Wednesday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, or whatever the arcane calculation is. When I get home from Ash Wednesday Mass, he tells me there's a smudge on my forehead, and makes to wipe it off for me. First it was funny; then it got annoying. Now it's a tradition. This year he was already in bed by the time I got home from Mass, so it's perhaps just as well that he got the joke in Tuesday afternoon, over the phone in anticisayitpation.

I got to serve at Mass tonight, carrying the cross in for a change. I used to do that more often than not, but then a nice man named Alex was trained as crucifer. Since that's the task he knows the best, he gets to do it if he's there, and I'm a "torch" (candle bearer) instead. But tonight I was scheduled to do it. Hooray!

In fact I ended up doing three tasks as an acolyte. It's become standard procedure now for the crucifer to torch during the Eucharistic Prayer whenever we're shorthanded, which seems to be almost always. And Father Smith asked me to take the second chalice tonight and serve communion with him on one side of the aisle. I'd only done it once before, served all of two people and messed up one of them. But tonight it was more like forty or fifty people. One person spilled, but that was the only disaster. It wasn't my fault, that one, honest!


Still, when the time comes for a proper Lenten observance, especially a Lenten fast, I'm anything but a paragon. Just thinking about fasting makes my digestive system start torturing me, until I have to eat something just to get rid of the pain. Sometimes I manage to hold it in check with Mylanta and crackers or something of the sort (which is still cheating), but this year I didn't even really try. Well, I sort of tried, but failed utterly. See, my company fed us breakfast (which included sausage or bacon), and later fed us lunch if we presented a ticket, all as part of the Chicken Something. It seemed silly to turn down free chicken, potato salad and a brownie, so I didn't.

But aside from a 100-calorie pack of Sun Chips, I held off eating again until after church. My plan was to go for two filet from McDonald's. I was kind of counting on it. But there was construction surrounding my local McDonald's, and I didn't want to drive over the metal whatever-it-was blocking the driveway. So I "settled" for shrimp at Popeye's. Their new butterfly shrimp is hardly bigger than their popcorn shrimp, and half dough. It wasn't bad, but I'd have preferred the rectangles of processed fish on a bun across the street.

And I was still hungry. I managed to leave Popeye's without buying a little fried apple pie, but at home I gave in and ate something else. John and I recently discovered steam-in bags of vegetables, so I had a bag of asparagus. Was that a sin? So far, this doesn't look to be the Lent in which I get my eating under control. Then again, it's only just started.

That's not really what Lent is for anyway. Doing something good is as valid a response as giving something up, perhaps better, and it's supposed to be something you do for God, not your waistline. And if I'd actually done anything good, I wouldn't be bragging about it. Jesus and Father Smith both talked about doing the fasting and good works in secret. Seeing as how I failed to do it, though, I figure it's fair game to talk about it.

May your Lent be secretly successful, as we prepare for an early Easter.

Karen

Karen

The Google Primary Pancake Chicken Penance Rant

I don't think I took any pictures today, so here are two from, um, maybe Sunday. I forget. Yesterday it was pouring rain and cold during the day, but cleared up later. These could be yesterday, except I think I got home later than these shots seem to indicate.

Onward.

I've been trying to post after midnight every night for OCD-level consistency, but clearly it's contributing to my 2 AM and 3 AM arrivals in bed. And I have to be at work before 7 AM for the Chicken...Something meeting. I honestly don't remember the official nickname of it, but it's a sales rally thing. Presumably the mucky-mucks didn't realize when they scheduled it months ago that it would fall on a day reserved for penance and self-denial. It's not the most compatible message to go with the sale of big ticket items! Anyway, while all that is going on I have to park extra-far from my building, so I've been getting my walking in at work, mostly. Poor Tuffy!

I've been staying late to build up comp time for my trip to Gallifrey One in a week and a half, but tonight I left at 5:30 PM to go vote and then eat pancakes at church. I drove to the elementary school as usual, but there was no voting going on there. So I drove home, and John and I both hunted for the sample ballot that listed the polling place. It was a bingo hall, and I'd never seen or heard of it. Google Maps placed it directly under the traffic light at Golf Links and Kolb, and told me to take a U turn at that intersection, with no instructions beyond that. That was supremely unhelpful. It was more like five blocks south of there, almost at the David-Monthan sentry gate. Inside people were milling around, looking at a yellow-highlighted precinct on a large map, trying to figure out whether they were in the right place. I was, and the computer knew it, because I was on the printout.

So I voted, and then drove to the Parish Center, where the Shrove Tuesday pancake supper and informal primary postmortem was already in progress. I was an hour late, and all the food was room temperature by then. But I had fun listening to someone's rundown of Obama biographical highlights, a discussion of whether anyone would even ask who you voted for before dishing out free food at the Clinton primary party, and the consensus that nobody would be devastated if the Other frontrunner won the nomination. Oh, and I also talked birdwatching with the 2nd-most political person in the parish.

John had asked me to bring him some "Catholic pancakes," and I hadn't even said the pancakes were Episcopalian, which come to think of it is kind of a funny line. But there were no pancakes left by 7 PM, not even cold ones. So I stopped off at Denny's and bought him a Grand Slam to go. When I got home he said he was just bantering; he wasn't really asking for pancakes. But he loved 'em anyway.

Meanwhile I heard from my friend in the hospital. She wants to go home, and sounds better than yesterday, but I really don't think she's ready to go anywhere. She was highly amused that Father Smith, with whom I spoke this morning, had trouble working out the proper way to wear a surgical mask when he came to see her. I think she's going to be fine - eventually.

Back at home I tried to get online updates on the primaries. There was a Google Maps thing on which Twitter boxes were popping up every few seconds, supposedly with live political updates and commentary. But it seemed to all be a handful of the same comments over and over. I said a few things on Twitter, and it certainly didn't pick them up on the map! Nor were there any instructions for directing comments that way. Maybe it was broken. They weren't the most globally useful comments anyway, just short versions of a few things I've said here. But the thing is, the eight or so cycling comments on that map thingy weren't terribly useful, either.

Oh, and I did a little editing on chapter seven, before 2 AM for a change.

Bed. Sleep. Now.

Karen

A Good Friday

The reading of the Passion according to John

I don't mean to be flippant about one of the holiest days of the church year. It's just that it really has been a good day for me.

After the service, a stark reminder
remains of what the day commemorates.

It didn't start out great. I spent half of my work day trying to track down a $2400 discrepancy. I narrowed down the source of the problem, but was unable to solve it. Drat. Eventually I ran out of numbers to check and had to give up on it for this week.

Father Ed Harnsberger

At 11:00 AM I went to Confession, during which I was given a suggestion for amendment of life that will be fairly time intensive. We'll see how far I get with that one, but I'm not rejecting it out of hand. While I was there I finally got a decent photo of one of the priests. (Previous attempts at photographing him had not turned out well.) It's now edited and uploaded to the Clergy page, replacing an old, not very good photo which didn't even match the others in format.

I also tweaked the formatting on the Holy Week listings on the web site's main page. Somehow I'd forgotten to finish setting up the days and dates to look consistent all the way down through the table. It's still missing a space after one comma, but oh, well.

Father Smith, subdeacon Howard, and Rev. Angie

Once I had that page (almost) fixed, it was time to go off to church. I didn't serve, but I did take pictures, obviously. The clergy and subdeacons are breaking in some brand new vestments, including these red ones, after the parish saved up for years to buy them. I was also reminded that I still owe two of the three people above a picture of themselves from Palm Sunday, wearing ecclesiastic berets. Too bad those photos didn't turn out very well, but I need to send them along anyway.

Back at home after church, I discovered that the Wikipedia admin that closed the debate on the future of the Barbara Bauer article let an interpretation of Wikipolicy trump the clear majority of people who believed that the subject was sufficiently notable and the criticisms well-sourced. The article was deleted. This may surprise those of you who have followed my tribulations as I've worked on the article over the past 11 months, but I'm not heartbroken that it's gone. It was a tricky thing, trying to have a fair and balanced article about someone for whom nearly all the extant information is either negative, factually suspect or both. I did save the Google cached version to my hard drive, though. If this lawsuit she filed ever gains traction and there are mainstream news reports about her, that may affect whether she merits a Wikipedia article in the eyes of those who wanted it deleted before. In the meantime I don't have to worry about it any more.

What else have I don't tonight? I've watched some Doctor Who, researched the agent I'm submitting to next, and finally broken through the tricky bit of dialogue I've been stuck on in the Fayubi and Jor scene. It's posted on the fiction blog, and I'd appreciate a comment from someone just to know that it's been read. Can you guess where the sticking point was?

The agent I have in mind this time is one who wants three chapters, so I won't be doing simultaneous submissions. Nor will I mention his name here unless he expresses interest in my work. Suffice it to say that I'm going after an agent who is the very antithesis of Bauer, a highly respected and respectable one who nevertheless, according to his web site, is still interested in signing new authors. He charges no fees, of course, only commissions. I've had this particular guy in mind for years, ever since reading some advice he wrote in one of the annual writers' resource books. The only reason I'm not going to name him here is that I don't want to give the impression that I'm complaining about him if things don't work out between us.

Enough. Good night!

Yours Truly, K.C. King

Weekend Assignment #159: You've decided to become a writer under a pen name. What pen name do you choose?


Well, I'd almost forgotten about it, but I already have been published under a pen name. Back in 1989 I wrote a foreword to Fixing a Hole, a book about unreleased Beatles recordings (i.e. bootlegs). The author of the book called himself L.R.E. King, a play on Ellery Queen. In keeping with that, I called myself Karen C. King - Karen because I'm pretty much irrevocably Karen, C. for Christine, my original middle name, and King because of L.R.E.

The book is long-since out of print, for several mostly-depressing reasons. The good news is that a lot has happened since then in terms of Beatles recordings and scholarship. Things that King figured out by listening to two recordings at the same time, or speeding them up and slowing them down, are now fairly well known and cataloged. Even better, an awful lot of great music that was once available only on illegal vinyl records is now commercially available, thanks to Anthology, George Martin, Paul, George, Ringo and Yoko. Karen C. King did her minuscule part in the darker times before that, and now she's done.

Another pen name I've considered over the years was a variant, K.C. King. Come to think of it, I've used K.C. King, too, as my byline for a fan novella, Paradox: Two Doctors in Time. It was a crossover story between the Seventh Doctor of Doctor Who fame and Sam Beckett of Quantum Leap, with a rather large supporting cast. I'd show it to you, but like all of the fanzines I edited, it's apparently in a box right now. Ha! Paradox in a box! That rocks! Okay, maybe not.

Farther back in the mists of time, somewhere around junior high school, I planned to use Casey Jensen as my pen name. This was a combination of an homage to my mom and my youthful dissatisfaction with my own first name. Casey was a nickname I tried to cultivate in seventh grade, but it didn't take. It was short for K.C. = Karen Christine, of course. Joel used it a little bit, I think, and so did Mr. Hennigan, my seventh grade social studies teacher--sort of. He called me K.C., with a noticeable pause between the two syllables. Jensen came from Anne Jensen, my mom's preferred nom de plume. Anne was her confirmation name, I think, which she used as a middle name instead of the one she was born with, Louise. I discovered a year or so ago from her passport that Louise was still her legal middle name toward the end of her life. She was born Ruth Louise Johnson, but became Ruth Anne Funk, and later, Ruth Anne Johnson or even just Anne Johnson in some circles. But I gather than the Johnson of her father's family was once Jensen, part of the Viking Irish gentry part of my ancestry.

Will I even use a pseudonym again? Well, aside from the fact that "Mavarin" as a screen name, user name, etc. is technically a pseudonym, no, I have no particular plans to conceal my identity or obscure a writing credit ever again. For one thing, I'm a raging egotist; for another, I'm deliberately trying to build name recognition for Karen Funk Blocher, so that people will buy my books when the time comes. When my novels come out, I fully intend for them to have three names on them, the better to connect the books with this person who has been blathering at you online since 1992 or so. Karen. Funk. Blocher. That's as real a name for me as Karen Christine Blocher, probably more so. I'm pretty sure I registered my maiden/middle name with Social Security after I got married. Funk is the name I suffered for as a kid, and it remains part of me.

Extra Credit: Using this Anagram Maker, share an amusing anagram of your name.

Karen Funk Blocher produced a long, rather boring list, with lots of references to Ken and err. I've done some rearranging and punctuating, but there's nothing great here:

Knock, hear elf burn.
Ah, elf, burn knocker.
Clerk, fork a hen bun.
Breakneck flu horn
Cerebral funk honk!
Blacken her funk, or…
Back here, nor flunk
Kneel back, fur horn
Back, elf honker, run!
Black here, fork nun
Rehab clerk: funk on!
Rehab neck, folk: run!
Re flunk: ban choker.
Ban knuckle for her.
Elk fun, hack reborn!
Freak nobler chunk
Freak born: luck hen
Learn bunk for heck!
Her luck: fan broken.
Ah, beckon err flunk.
Rank cherub en folk
Rank be luck, ref hon.
Heck, ref lunar knob.

Plain old Karen Blocher produced a shorter list with slightly better choices:

Barrel? Heck, no!
Baron Heckler
Earn her block!

And Rani Fost was kind of interesting:
First, a no.
A rift, son.
Is not far…
For Saint!

Enough. Between the Maundy Thursday service, the Round Robin announcement (go see what it is!), setting up a Google Calendar and a 1:30 AM vigil, I've tarried too late again. Good night!

Ashes

I remember that I am but dust

Okay, maybe I'm not quite that depressed. But that sentiment is part of the Ash Wednesday mass: "The Lord remembers that we are but dust," (sung repeatedly during Psalm 103) and, at the imposition of ashes, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I'll be fifty years old in a few weeks, but I haven't really been thinking about mortality this day. I'm too caught up in my depression over where I am right now, what happened last Friday and what I'm going to do about it. I need to shake the brooding and move on, move into Lent and the reflection about becoming the Karen God wants me to be, the Karen who is most useful, neither self-destructive nor self-pitying, giving but not in ways that encourage misbehavior, forgiving but not a pushover, moving forward instead of being stuck in old habits and past sorrows. The good news of the day is that Father Smith and a few others will take it from here on the church directory; I'm off the hook for that obligation now that they have my 106 photos to work with. And my dad's birthday was today, and he seems to be doing great as usual at age 80-something. He can't remember ever having his birthday on Ash Wednesday before, and played hooky from church to go out to dinner with Ruth and two other birthday couples. Sounds good to me! Meanwhile, for those who worry, let me reassure you I got almost 11 hours of sleep last night. The alarm didn't go off! When I awoke, I was helping to outsmart the odious (Principal Snyderesque) principal of a magical school. Ah, well. Back to the real world!

Karen

Ash Wednesday Evangelism by Lauren F. Winner (excerpt from Girl Meets God)