This 'n That

I have one more Louisiana post in me, but I'm taking a little break today to catch up on questions, answers, thoughts, and meanderings:

1. What have you all found to be the best service for alerting you to new entries? I am missing too much with my haphazard system of clicking on my links, and then on their links, and then on the links of the links. I need to get going on the massive online changes ahead of me -- part of my AOL vanished a couple of weeks ago. My email is no longer visible unless I go through Internet Explorer to My AOL, and my favorite places have vanished into space. (And yes, I have reinstalled it, and tried everything else short of torturing myself with a telephone call.) Almost time for the big switch. I just have to get a new printer first so that I can finish copying all of Midlife Matters -- I broke the printer quite awhile ago when the lovely daughter's absence prompted me to try to insert a new cartridge all by myself. Those little pieces of plastic are just not too durable, are they?

2. If I change my template, will I lose anything other than my links? I'm getting really bored with this black background. If I copy my links, flickr, etc. to Word and then repaste them in, I should be fine, right? I just don't want to lose my entries.

3. I've just started a course in medieval history. Not sure what I think yet. There is an undergraduate in the class full of questions to which I hope my 9th graders know the answers, so I am thinking it might be sort of slow going.

4. I'm reading God's Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power -- A History of the Jesuits by Jonathan Wright and The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell. Jesuits in Paris and Rome and Jesuits in Outer Space. How cool is that? In fact, in a few minutes I am going to curl up in bed under a down comforter with The Sparrow as a way of avoiding grading 8th grade paragraphs on New England villages. I was going to go over to school this afternoon and write up my last set of report card comments, but I'm going to read instead.

4. Two of my students just IM'd me. They're working on a bio report on sea turtles. I suggested a field trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

5. I've had a very church-oriented week or so. Last Sunday I taught our adult education class on Ignatian Spirituality, an experience in which I am currently totally absorbed. This past week my 9th grade world history class covered the Reformation. I LOVE teaching church history to my Jewish students -- they take religion so seriously that they are completely fascinated by and full of questions about other traditions. (I've been reading up on the Reformation (in which I loosely include the counter-therof). Really, you could vomit. I'm not sure why anything that occurs in the Mideast is surprising to those of us who are the inheritors of either the Roman or the Protestant tradition. Our ancestors were neither the meek nor the peacemakers, that's for sure.) Then I spent most of this past week-end on a working retreat for church elders just prior to the ordination and installation of new elders and deacons this morning. We went to a Catholic retreat center on the other side of town -- a magnificent place, both inside and out, with beautiful facilities, incredible food, and a lovely 40 acres for hiking.

6. In the more-than-you wanted to know category: my thumb is killing me. I was in a rush between events at church this morning, went to the bathroom, couldn't get the TP to unroll, went to grab a paper towel, knocked my thumb against the paper towel dispenser, cracked it right across the middle, and then couldn't pull my corduroy pants up because my jagged thumbnail kept catching on the fabric. Just so you know that Presby elders are always functioning decently and in order.

6. My brother turned 50 this week-end. He was four when our mother died and in his early twenties when he had testicular cancer. Now he's happily married (second try), a successful businessman, and the proud father of a young lady about to graduate from college. Yay for him and Happy Birthday!

7. Sparrow and comforter, here I come!