7 Quick Takes, Rainy Friday Edition

1) It's Friday, but a GOF Friday which means we should probably be getting ready to go in to work. I should also be putting the final touches on my teaching (it's Baptism tonight!) and of course... reading Fundamental Moral Theology. Are you sick of hearing about how I should be reading for this class? I'm sick of saying it. Sorry. I am going against every instinct to really read our stuff and not skim it, not read only the subtitles, not only read the last paragraph of every section or the last sentence of every paragraph. I'm really trying to be an actual student because it's my last class and I feel like the professor really expects us to read it all, and... I do want to say something reasonably intelligent in class, but I have to tell you it is miserable stuff. I have new respect for philosophy majors, and a new hatred of philosophy.

2) I teach the parents of younger kids at GOF, and love it. They are a wonderful group and are so good to work with. They respond back to me, they speak to each other when prompted, they nod their heads. I tell them how much I love and respect them (because I DO) and how wonderful they are to even give a little bit of a crap enough to go to a thing like GOF with their kids. I always try to hi-hosey this group (there are enough teachers around that we could switch often and take turns) but I always grab them. This summer our DRE asked for feedback from a few of the parents who had been there throughout our 8 year history of GOF (not just about my teaching but overall opinions about the programs) and one person said "She is great! She must be getting sick of us after all this time though!" which makes me think, hmmm... maybe they're hearing a little too much of me. Maybe THEY are sick of ME. It's possible. This would be a great semester to hand off this responsibility to another capable teacher, and I'm gonna. But I'm going to miss them, and I hope secretly that they miss me...

3) yesterday was Graduate Project Orientation and I was one of the near-graduates there. I don't want to jinx myself by saying how doable it seems. There is a much harder option, where you write a 50-75 page thesis, but why on earth would anyone pick that? The PhD students there said that sometimes people choose it if they "have their eye" on a PhD program (oh God no) but that by the way, their PhD program did not want a 50-75 page writing sample upon admission. So, you'd have to be nuts to choose this. There is also an artistic option. You can make a piece of art, or do a performance! I won't choose this, which I'm sure would be a shock to my undergrad self. In freshman year of college we all had to do some kind of project/production for a freshman intro class that was required of all of us. I wrote a poem about how everyone reads into poems too much, put it on a big white board, and called it a day. Got an A. I am gifted, I guess, at finding the minimum requirement and then doing that impressively-enough well. But not this semester. I'm looking forward to my paper. First Draft is due January 5!

4) I had a conversation with a fellow red sox fan last night and understood everything that was said, and knew what to say back. It wasn't a super deep statistical kind of stuff but I totally sounded like I knew something about the sox, and I did! How cool is that?

5) My parents have bequeathed us their bird feeder, which is called a "Yankee Flipper" but should be called a "Squirrel Hurler" or a "Hurl-A-Squirrel." It has a MOTOR on the bottom that will fling anything heavy that tries to get on it, thusly:

What you can see at about 1:35 is that although the squirrel can't hang on, the spinning does shoot out a ton of birdseed, which the little bugger can eat off the ground once he's done feeling woozy. We have not yet seen a squirrel give it a spin, but we have come home just about every day to a half-pound of bird seed on the ground under the feeder, and a menagerie of birds and critters literally stuffing their cheeks, happily.

6) I've got nothing for number six, let's just move on.

7) So I wrote this whole thing on here about my new understanding of how God works, and it took me a month to even get up the gumption to write it, and I tingled when I posted it, and outside of one (good) comment (thanks Cate), I've gotten no response. I kind of thought this was the thing that would make me a theological rock star, and was ready to entertain (and then reject) offers from PhD programs, but... no. Ah well. Still, I hope it makes sense to people, or doesn't, enough to make them want to send me a note. I'm more than willing to hear that it's CRAP, even.

OKAY, time to get showered and ready for work. Baptism excitement here we come! Hope you have a wonderful weekend! Check out ConversionDiary.com for more 7-Quick-Takers.