7 Quick Takes: Vacation Edition

1) I've got myself a new Ipad, and it's pretty awesome. My learning curve with it has been a little slow, but I'm figuring out why I wanted it, and why it will prob. become a big part of my everydays. I still have the rookie cover on it, and no keyboard, and I'm still figuring out which apps are helpful- but I'm coming to see that with it, I can do a whole heck of a lot of stuff that I love to do.
2) I downloaded my first book on the Ipad (I have the kindle app, but can't figure out how to get books into it... ) and it's Seven Storey Mountain, by Thos. Merton. It's one of those spiritual books that all the most holy people have read, and I never have. It's LONG! It's an autobiography, full of typos (is that an ipad books thing?) and I guess either Merton wrote it before honing his writing skills or it'll turn out to be awesome enough that the... (well, amateurish?) quality of his writing won't be a big deal, ultimately. He is a funny kind of guy, sort of curmudgeonly and at turns super-critical of anyone who disagrees with him philosophically, including his own younger self. And he includes weird tangential stories from his childhood that don't seem to have much to do with the greater narrative of the thing. But still, I'm hanging in there, despite the lovely and tempting books that keep popping up in my periphery.
3) Next, for instance, on my wish-list is... well, several books are tempting me. I still haven't read Bossypants, and want to- it seems like a much better suited-to-vacation kind of book than SSM. But also I'm wanting to read The Goal and Ideas. I think it's a new sense of liberation that my mind is feeling from being sprung from grad school. I love books and reading and hate being told what to do/read. Now that I can read whatever the heck I want, Amazon is my oyster.
4) But, shouldn't I be hiking? Or, walking, or something active? I've been thinking about the difference between being lazy and being sedentary. My Mom always called me lazy, and maybe I've had my lazy stretches, but I don't mind hard work or activity really. I work hard in my garden, and do my chores, and I used to love hiking when I lived by the woods and hills in my first apartment, and/or when I had a dog to hike with. But I also really love reading, I love watching tv, I love using the internet. My mind is, I reckon, much more active than my body is, by nature. I worry about time lost to sitting around, mostly because I see how my Mom's body seems to have withered from (in my estimation) lack of movement over the past several years. Like me, Mom prefers to sit. But I saw her struggle this weekend to get into a car, and worried about my own fate.
5) This week though, it's been raining and thundering every day, which means I'm stuck close to home, and as another convenient excuse, my foot hurts!  A few weeks back I was gardening and felt my big toe snap, and then a shooting stab of pain. I tried to take it easy on my right foot for the next couple of weeks, and was starting to feel good again, but now suddenly I feel like I have a bruise on the bottom of my foot- in the pad behind that big toe. What can you do but rest it, right? So maybe next week, I'll start that walking routine.
6) So here's the apps I have on my ipad, because I know you're dying to know: Slate, IMDB, Inkflow, NPR/WBUR/CBC apps, Pandora, Google Translate, a stunning Weather Channel app, Amazon, and Dropbox. Oh, and Bejeweled Blitz.
7) So in sum: I'm spending these few days off from work reading, sitting around, worrying about how much I'm sitting around, thinking about books I'd rather/should be reading, and trying not to eat carbs. I've got some other plans (something every day! I'm so active!)so my social skills won't completely whither away before I get back to work.

A Comment on Comments (with comments)

I commented on a blog! On an NPR radio show blog!
I haven't commented on a blog in years, and outside of some blogs I don't usually even bother reading the comments. I think the blog commenting process is similar to that of getting into a car and feeling safe enough to have road rage. Suddenly you're in a large cage that will give you the courage to flip off people who, outside the car, could kick your ass. When commenting on a blog, you sit in your jammies and use a false name and flip off the whole world. Whenever I've felt like commenting, I've been angry, and that is no mood in which to take to the internet.
Sometimes I read them out of curiosity and/or for humor's sake. Just last night, I read comments over at the Groupon.com blog about their Super Bowl ads. I was able to discern that most people were angry about the Tibet one, and I enjoyed one comment that said something like "shame on you, Groupon. Again. SHAME ON YOU." Heh, that still makes me laugh.
Anyway, today I was listening to The Takeaway, and they featured someone from Beliefnet talking about the new Confession App that everyone is sending me notes about these days. They said why has religion (who is this "religion" they're asking about?) been so resistant to technology and social media? They said the Pope hasn't exactly approved the app, but hasn't not approved it, either... and they wondered if the new model of church will be the online forum.
So many responses leap to mind.
1) can you imagine a church that's like an online forum? See above. I'll take a buncha people praying quietly together in one room any old day over that.
2) I don't know about "religion" but all we hear about these days from the RCC is about using technology and social media for evangelization, etc. There doesn't seem to be much resistance there, except here in Boston where everyone is assumed to be a child molester.
(oh, that's harsh. I should delete that.)
3) and here's what I said to the Takeaway people. This app is basically a back-lit version of the paper handouts at the door (or that should be at the door) of every Catholic Church that say "How to go to Confession." No big whoop. Sure it's got some bells and whistles but whatever. It's not a local, high-tech confessional. If what I hear is true, there's nothing there for the pope to be against. It's SUCH a non-story.
The bigger story, I'd say, is how popular it seems to be. It's 1.99 to download, which to me is a major commitment, app-wise. I'll spend .99 out of curiosity, but I would only spend two bucks on an app that I intended to use, and use... religiously. Ha! Sorry.
Anyway, maybe it's just me but that's the significant takeaway here. The app is listed at #22 top grossing and #23 top paid apps on the list. That's huge, no?
Last year our parish had surprisingly bigger crowds at Lenten Masses than we could remember, and when we offered Confession on Wednesday nights in Lent, people LINED UP to receive the sacrament. Why this renaissance? There's yer story.