Tomato Soup

Saturday, September 25, 2004

I found smaller gloves.

They're still a little clumsy, but I can still type. (I just can't feel what I'm doing as well, but I still seem to have pretty decent accuracy with my fingers.)

This is ridiculous. No one should have to wear gloves in South Carolina in September.
Sarah - 4:02 PM - 0 comment(s)

Friday, September 24, 2004

Facelift

I meant to do this a long time ago. I even set up a test blog. Which I did't use. Go figure.

No more tables. Just CSS. If the background images aren't loading, force a refresh. And let me know if there are any problems.

If you are my friend and you have a blog or something and it:
a-Has never been linked from here, or
b-Used to be linked from here...
...that would be because I don't know where it is. Tell me. Please?

They told us yesterday that when we cover up our air conditioning vents, it causes the air conditioners to freeze up. (FREEZE? How cold do they have those things set?) Result: I am freezing instead of the air conditioner. I was seriously wearing gloves earlier. I would be wearing them now, but I can't type in gloves.

Discovery: If you put imitation vanilla in caffeine free Coke, it takes a little getting used to but it's almost like Vanilla Coke with no caffeine. (Real vanilla extract doesn't work. It's too strong.)

Today we learned about CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education), which we get to do next summer. All summer. I hope to be accepted by a center (read: hospital) in Ohio—there are three around Dayton and three in Columbus, I think (and they're all hospitals—it doesn't have to be a hospital, but the six on my list are all hospitals).

Of course, driving an hour there and an hour back for a full work day (8-4 or some approximation thereof) for twelve weeks, including about one day a week of being on call for twenty-four hours, is not exactly a vacation. But, still. It would be Ohio. I could get Tim Hortons on the way out in the morning! And also live at home for free. Hmmm...
Sarah - 7:43 PM - 0 comment(s)

Monday, September 20, 2004

WARNING!
If your name is "Salli", or starts with the letter "S", or in fact ends with a letter of the alphabet, do not watch the Mystery! video version of The Pilgrim of Hate.

It's worse than what they did to Faramir. We thought St. Peter's Fair was sacriledge. We were wrong. Thankfully, Olivier does not appear, an omission which is the only saving grace of the entire thing.

There. You know all you need to know to satisfy your curiosity. You don't need to know any more. I have made a great sacrifice to get you this information.

At least they had the sense to change the names of the most egregiously butchered characters, although of course that leaves you with the notion that you're expected to believe that sane English parents would name their children such bizarre combinations as "Luc" (French) and "Ciaran" (Welsh) and "Melangell" (Welsh, I think) and "Walter" (!!!). But, really. Melangell was such a dear, sweet, sensible girl—what harm did she do to them?

It's almost hard to be offended by the other changes (since they are so extreme that it's really a different story), except that the general effect is nauseating. The Pilgrim of Hate, despite its title, is actually about grace and forgiveness, and it has the most incredibly rich cast of characters. Even more than in the average Cadfael book, there's an element of faith at the center—faith in God and in the good things about human beings. The video is not just different. It's not just getting the wrong spirit—it's ripping the spirit out, killing it and replacing it with a zombiefied counterpart. I don't approve of taking a message of hope and forgiveness and turning it into this condescending, suspicious, pessimistic nonsense. The word "travesty" is probably not too strong.

Forget about me. It's disrespectful to the author.

(P.S.- This is a cool site.)
Sarah - 9:14 PM - 0 comment(s)

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Guess what?
I know the names of the emperors of the Roman Empire for 47 B.C. - A.D. 138. Yup. Really useful. If I'm asked for dates, I'm out of luck...and I don't care. There is absolutely no reason why I should have to know the dates that Vespasian was emperor of Rome for my New Testament class.

I also know the location of Tyre, Sidon, Ephesus, Phillippi, Masada, and Jamnia. To name a few. I am still working on getting Tyre and Sidon in the right order, and where the heck Gadara, Pella, and Gerasa are, and also I'm not sure I can find Samaria on a map other than the one it's labelled on.

There's really nothing serious to be said on the subject. I mean, really. If we would, say, learn the locations of places as they come up in class, I would have no problem. But this just seems silly.
Sarah - 9:36 PM - 0 comment(s)

Friday, September 10, 2004

Yeah.
I'm in a contest here. You know the drill. I happen to think mine as the cutest, since she is wearing my old nightshirt. ;)

I don't think I've shown this here yet. It relates to my current pixel-shading problem. (Yes, problem. It's addictive.) It was kind of a joke. And also I like the person who is running the contest, and she needed more entries, and I felt like pixel-shading something that didn't have a lot of energy invested into it. So there you go. There's a version on the site with just the center one, because it turned out to be surprisingly symbolic or metaphorical or something.

I think this pixel-shading experimentation is related to an identity crisis or something. I haven't entirely figured out who I am here, so I try to get back to some things that are familiar, but I can't quite get into the routine.

I feel like I've burned all my bridges, but I don't want to have burned all my bridges (and I don't think I really have, at least I hope not!), but I feel that way, and I don't know how to relate to my friends because of that. I'm trying, for example, to learn how to be a physics person at seminary without being obnoxious about it, because if I stop being a physics person, then I lose an important part of what got me here in the first place. And, of course, I feel hopelessly inadaquate most of the time because I don't have the life experience that so many people here have, and I don't make friends as easily as they seem to, and hey, I'm really good at praying out loud - with eight-year-olds.

The only gifts I've had a chance to excercise have been academic, and I know that a lot of people would be happy to trade a few years of experience for some academic gifts at the moment (*cough*Greek*cough*), but that doesn't really make it any easier. And I know I have gifts for ministry, but very few of them seem to relate well to sitting around in a classroom talking about ministry.

And on top of that, I haven't talked to any of my old online friends (or, what the heck, called my sister, or any of my friends from college, or checked my college email, or called my aunt who lives in town) in weeks, months...and I'm afraid I've screwed up really badly this time, because I don't even know where a lot of my friends are anymore, and the last time I tried to poke my head in on the Wing Commander group the reception was rather cool, and I don't know what to do. I just don't have the emotional energy left over right now, but what's the pointing in spending all day talking about community and relationships and people if I can't even handle it in my own life?

And yes, I do have friends here, but I feel like there are whole parts of me that most of them can't understand. For one thing, I can hardly tell them that I'm concerned about online relationships when most of them don't really believe in online relationships. And it's really hard to get support from someone when you have to stop and explain basic terminology before they can even grasp the basics.

And obviously this goes a whole lot deeper than I thought, because 1-I did not intend for this to be a "serious" blog post and 2-I started crying halfway through and I really don't know what exactly set me off. I think I need to admit I have Issues and stop trying to behave as if I don't.
Sarah - 10:00 PM - 0 comment(s)

Saturday, September 04, 2004

This post stops when the pizza gets here.
That adds to the excitment. Will it be in only five minutes? Will it be in five seconds? You just don't know.

My ability to read emails, make phone calls, post on my blog, and visit message boards is inversely related to the amount of Greek and (now) Hebrew that is being stuffed into my head. At least, that's my theory. As a theory, it pretty much makes sense. As an excuse, it's probably pretty lousy.

The schedule here is just bizarre. It's different every single day. There is no consistent set of time periods for classes. 8:15 one day, 8:00 even the next. I spend half of my time worried that I'm going to miss a class and the other half worried that I'm going to miss an assignment (because the assignments are bizarre, too - maybe you meet twice a week, but one time is a lab and there are different assignments for class and lab, although it's really the same class).

I haven't been working on a lot of dolls, either, so it's not like I am neglecting my friends in favor of my website. (You'll note that I have updated it about twice since I got here, not counting the site revamp which was really more or less done en route.)

In the past two months or so, I have learned Koine Greek (really, I'm supposed to be "competent" now, they tell me) and the Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew is really cool), flown to and from Ohio, pushed some physics apparatus around a yard, gone to the zoo, slept in a sleeping bag in the woods in the mountains, led chapel three times (reading the lessons twice), and purchased two clerical shirts and an alb.

I have an alb. I mean it. Really. An alb. It's mine. I paid for it. It's just my size. I get to wear it. The clerical shirts are almost an anti-climax after that, except I got them first. I bet you didn't know that seminarians wear clerical shirts. I thought I had four years to get used to the idea! They are apparently making the same shirts they started making in the 70s when they were first ordaining women - mostly polyester, puffy sleeves, too many gathers, crummy fit. I had to get a size 8 because it's the smallest they had. I don't wear a size 8. The blazer and dress skirt and slacks my mother bought for me are size 2.

The pizza is here. I said I would leave when it got here. And I meant it.
Sarah - 6:42 PM - 0 comment(s)

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