Personal Photoblogging

A picture is worth a thousand words, so this post is really about 3000 words. Ahhhh, sooo much easier than writing end of term papers, and it even has a structured progression of ideas.

La Pocatiere

It is such a blessing to travel throughout Canada and discover little corners of the country. This summer I spent some time in La Pocatiere, Quebec, a 5000-person town on the south bank of the St. Lawrence.

It was all good times. Despite its comparatively tiny population, La Poc is actually quite spread out, and one definitely needs a car to get around. Unless of course you're a single person who doesn't have heavy loads and only lives there in the summer, in which case you can probably get away with a bike.

This entry's going to be basically another installement in my "travel blog", so if it smacks of "come, sit through my vacation photos!"...well, that's exactly what it is.

• One thing that confused me for a while when I first got there were the names of the meals. In Quebec, breakfast is dejeuner, lunch is diner, and dinner is souper. I was used to the France model, where breakfast is petit dejeuner, lunch is dejeuner, and dinner is diner.
• I lived in residence with about 150 anglophones of varying French fluency levels. I was quite amused that there was created in that speech community a dialect specific to the French learners. That is, people made mistakes, but they tended to make the same kinds of mistakes, and after a while some of these mistakes even got entrenched as the norm (that's not to say that people weren't good or didn't try - it was just a normal part of the second language acquisition process). One example of this that readily comes to mind is when people would say c'est d'accord, intended with the meaning of This phrase would never be uttered by a Francophone, even if their French did contain a large number of borrowings from English. The reason is that d'accord, in French, is used to mean ok, but only with the meaning of I agree, not with the meaning of I excuse you. And d'accord would never take the subject it (c', from c'est), but only ever I, you, she, we, etc.
  

Quotes and advice

The weather's awesome, school has almost restarted, but today is one of the last remaining vestiges of freedom...

• Someone's a little too obsessed with their image...

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
P J O'Rourke

• This one speaks for itself:

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
Anonymous

Lastly, some excellent advice dispensed by my brother, but never actually practiced by him (or by me, really):

Sebi: Go to sleep early. Wake up early, and give yourself half an hour to do nothing in the morning. Then maybe you'll start doing stretches and other exercises.

This actually reminds me of a fitness instructor early riser that I knew. One day she brought in a pan of baklava that she had made because she had some extra time in the morning. Imagine that; I don't even have time to feed myself, some mornings.

It also reminds me of Seraphim, a 6 year old boy whose family visited our parish this week. His question left me impressed with his understanding of God, and wishing that if I have kids, they will say stuff like this too.

Seraphim: Do you know how my daddy serves God? [or the Church, I forget which]
Me: How?
Him: He gets up at 5 am, and gathers all the ingredients, and makes the prosphora.

Tuning your voice

Years ago I asked a music student what instrument she played, and the response I got was,

"My voice is my instrument".

I nodded politely, but had a curious and bemused feeling inside me. At first sight I thought it sounded quite pretentious, but now I see that she was completely right. *

We think that because singing is such a natural thing, and because some people are good at it that it's basically a quality that some people just have, sort of like blonde hair. This leads to laziness and people saying "I can't sing" and leaving it at that. Not true. You can sing. You have a voice, and with patience and hard work you can learn to master it and sound just as good as the best of 'em - and a thousand times better than you thought you could. No one is born knowing how to sing. You have to find your voice, and the more you engage in singing, the more likely you are to stumble across it.

For some people it comes easier than others, but ultimately it comes down to concentration and practice. Of course you need a qualified teacher to guide you, but even then you'll mostly end up doing a lot of plain (and even boring and tedious) voice exercises to improve - the equivalent of dribbling for 15 minutes around a gym, or spending two hours just taking shots, so that you can learn to be a good basketball player.

To master an instrument takes book learning of music theory, training at mechanical techniques, practice of the techniques, and of the songs, and especially, unending hard work in the form of practice, practice, practice. The voice is exactly the same. To be a successful singer, such that people will enjoy listening to, you have to first settle down and get the nitty-gritty:

• How to breath properly.
  
• What position to hold your body in.
  
• How to tell if you're singing the right note.
  
• How to sing the right note.
  
• How to get a clear sound.
  
• Etc, etc, etc...

And at the end, you have to keep all these in mind at the same time. I even think that in some ways it's harder to sing than to play an instrument - I mean, when your voice is your instrument, unlike with all other instruments, you cannot peer into your vocal folds while you're singing and check out what's happening.

As daunting as I think I've made this sound right now, I feel I have to point out that it's TOTALLY doable, and completely worth it. Singing is so much fun, and (this may surprise some people) highly therapeutic. After you've been in choir practice you are left with a feeling of headiness and wellbeing. Then you want to do it more and more. It's like an addictive drug, but with positive side effects instead of detrimental ones.

Hmm, I guess I'll end this with a song I like, which may or may not lead you to want to sing:

* As an aside, I distinctly remember this conversation happening, but have no idea anymore who the girl was or when or where I met her.

In Communion

I really like the site In Communion, the journal of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, whose advisory board contains such well-known and wonderfully canonical members as the Archbishop of Albania, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Fr. Thomas Hopko, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Mother Raphaela Wilkinson, and others with whom I'm not familiar. As a sample of their content, here's a nice story from the Spring 2008 issue (and, since Pascha was on April 27th, my post is only two months too late!):

Nicholas Arseniev recounts an event that occurred in Russia, one that is quite characteristic of the faith of the Russian people.

During a public conference held in Moscow at the Polytechnic Museum during the fierce repression of believers, a Bolshevik commissioner in charge of education violently attacked the “out-dated faith” of the people, crying out that it bore the mark of capitalism and was not believable.

At the conclusion of his presentation, the orator invited his hearers to engage in a brief dialogue. No one was to speak for more than five minutes and, of course, only after having properly identified himself.

A priest from a rural background timidly stepped forward and was greeted by the orator with obvious contempt.

“Remember, no more than five minutes.”

“Yes, very well. I’ll be brief,” the priest replied.

Climbing toward the podium, the priest turned toward the audience and declared:
“Brothers and sisters, Christos voskresse!” [Christ is risen!]

They all answered with one voice, “Voistinu voskresse!” [Truly he is risen!]

“I’m done,” added the priest. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

— from Michael Quenot’s book, The Resurrection and the Icon St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997

From the Pascha / Spring 2008 issue of In Communion / IC 49

You know you're in BC when...

Many people are under the impression that all of North America is one big uniform culture, and all cities are carbon copies of the same consumerist, car-oriented prototype. But not so! There is lots of regional variation, and I love BC's local environmentally-friendly culture. Here are some of the things I saw in my short 4-day trip in May/June:

• A guy rode a unicycle and walked his dog at the same time! Awesome!
• There's tons of those old Volkswagon Scooby Doo vans from the 70s.
• My cabbie took less tip than I actually gave him. (I'm told this isn't a general thing, but it was really cool)
• People are so environmentally conscious that they try out diaper-free parenting. (I've had some interesting heated conversations with friends about this topic - they all seem to think it an impossible absurdity - but really, when you think about it, what did people do before the invention of diapers, even before cloth diapers? And what do poor people worldwide do with their babies?)
  
• At least in Victoria, people are just as likely to ride their bikes or take the bus somewhere as they are to drive.
• Cooperative food boxes for low-income people emphasize locally-grown, organic fruits and vegetables.
• Many stores and businesses put out dishes of water for dogs passing by.
• Everywhere is filled with beautiful flowers.
• The mountains and the beach. That's all.
• People randomly do cool stuff, like play haki sak.
  
• The escalators at Vancouver airport slow down when noone is using them, to conserve energy.

The West Coast is pretty cool. In another life I so would've lived there and been a part of All Saints of Alaska Orthodox Church. For now though, I'm happy to just visit whenever possible.

The mountains are magnificent Georg...

Oddly enough, this is turning into a bit of a travel blog, but I've been neglectful of it lately so there's some blog catch-up to do.

The title refers, not to the Austrian Alps, but the Canadian Rockies. I only got a quick look at them through the airplane window on the way to BC last month, since Air Canada put me in the most middle of the middle seats, as far away from a window as you could get. They were quite majestic white and grey peaks rising out of the clouds. I didn't want to bother 3 different people to take a picture, but I would definitely like to actually visit them in person someday.

I did get a nice shot off of Wreck Beach in Vancouver though:


The flight coming into Vancouver was spent mostly sleeping, as much as was possible in such a constrained environment. One thing that amused me was that Air Canada called their seats in French "fauteuil", and the equivalent word in Romanian, "fotoliu", means "armchair". Those are definitely not armchairs.

Following that flight I got a connecting flight to Victoria, where I had an amazing time catching up with my wonderful friends.

Then I took the last ferry back to Vancouver, at 9pm, switched about three buses late at night to try to get from the ferry terminal in Schwartz Bay to UBC where I was staying, finally got lost somewhere in a residential area (that oddly enough, I was half-familiar with it from past visits, so maybe if I'd been more awake I would've successfully navigated it), got fed up and took a taxi to the rez. By that point I'd been awake for about 23 hours and just collapsed, and the small hard rez bed felt like a princess' four-poster bed with a down mattress.

Food by colour

I just had my wisdom teeth out today and am trying to live through the experience as painlessly as possible. So far my mouth is a bit sore, and my throat hurts, but thankfully my bottom lip has unfrozen. It is good too to have my tooth extraction buddy Marcio (who also got his out today) to compare experiences of the healing process. I was asleep under general sedation for my surgery, but I think he was high on nitrous oxide. I only got a bit of the laughing gas at the beginning, to make me cheery while my IV was being put in. I think it also made me really talkative and kind of tactless:

The nurse tried to put the IV in my left hand vein about three times and didn't manage. It's not her fault, I have small veins and was dehydrated, but I got a little weird.

Nurse: Usually I'm really good at IVs but this one is hard.
Suzi: Well it's good to hear that IVs are your specialty.
*after she puts the IV in my right hand*
Nurse: I got it!
Suzi: Great! I'm happy for... me.

After she started pumping drugs through the IV, all I remember is her putting something in my mouth to prop it open. Then next thing I know there is something in my mouth, but it is not the prop, it is gauze, because the operation was over and the gauze was there to stem the bleeding. It was kind of unexpected. Like, what they're gone already?!?

So now I'm eating all kinds of cool food. What I've noticed is that it is very colourful:

Orange: mashed yams, fresh squeezed carrot and apple juice
Yellow: scrambled eggs. yum. hopefully some soft polenta soon too.
White: yogurt

Ok I have run out of colours. Hopefully I will eat some colourful jello soon. I like jello.

Randomness

Random thing #1:

LOL! Being a nerd myself, I find this comic really cute.


















Random Thing #2: Loituma

I love this video. The melody rocks and the singers have beautiful voices. What's more, they're so happy and expressive while they're singing, as if it's what they'd rather be doing most in the world at that moment. Plus, I like that they look like normal people, especially how they're dressed. It just gives off such a wholesome impression.

(credit goes to Nikita for pointing it out to me and Youtube for providing the video)


Random Thing #3: Oh the childish innocence





(click on it to see a bigger version)

Myrtle Beach in Pictures

I just got back from a family vacation in Myrtle Beach, and here are some thoughts about it:

I discovered how utterly beautiful Virginia and West Virginia are. They're both filled with rolling hills and forest. They remind me of France or Romania. Though you gotta watch out for the deer that are everywhere at night. We saw many of them in various states of decomposition on the side of the road :(

Myrtle Beach is a lovely place - it's full of soft sand, calming waves, and beautiful dunes. And of course it's very well maintained with beautiful palm trees and hotels, restaurants, theaters, etc.

I really recommend Neutrogena 45 SPF sunblock lotion. I only put a bit on a little bit in the morning and didn't get a burn (that day) at all! Of course, I didn't get a tan either, but let's be positive here!
My beach reading material, The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. He is a professional linguist but also writes a lot of popular linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics. It's very fascinating stuff, and it keeps my brain well-oiled in the absence of classes. Still haven't finished it though.

Kiwano melon was the fun new fruit I tried out. At first it looks very exotic - orange and spiky on the outside, and slimy green on the inside. Then you taste it and find it sweet but somewhat bland, and eventually it turns out that it's really just a cousin of the lowly cucumber. Considering its exorbitant price, I wouldn't go out of my way to buy it again, but it was quite yummy.

The Greek Orthodox Church in Myrtle Beach is just beautiful. It's all done with iconography on the inside, and the warm climate of South Carolina allowed it to be built more or less like a church in Greece - white, with big windows and large flat domes. And

we chatted with their priest, who is nice and very young, with a lovely family. They also have a full-time secretary! How cool is that!
While I was there there was a church tour for home-schooled kids, which I thought was a neat way of reaching out to the community . Plus they had lots of literature about Orthodoxy around the place, and of course, a really wicked bishop's chair (pictured left)!




We went on a nice river boat tour, led by Cap'n Jim in his electric boat! Very comfortable and relaxing, and we heard some amusing stories from the Cap'n.
One of the things I still don't get is, what on earth does this sign mean? Maybe, drive slowly so you don't wake the alligators?
We didn't see any gators, though there was apossibility that we would, nor did we see those short, thick black poisenous water snakes they have there, (though there was an even bigger possibility we'd see them) but we did see sunbathing turtles, cypress trees, Canada geese, and an assortment of other ducks and geese. The tree picture shows some stalagmite-like structures that are called Cypress knees, which are apparently part of the root system of the cypress tree, and help it to get oxygen. I thought that was pretty cool.


We also ate some seafood, which was delicious. I really need to move near an ocean somewhere to eat more fruits de mer. Though they didn't have any lobster - I guess lobster only grow in colder waters. Anyway, here I am confused about how to open this rock-hard oyster shell with the ineffective nutcracker:
Now the nice waiter gave me a flat knife-like implement, attractively called a "shucker", which I'm using the pry open the animal. I guess since the shell did not open during the cooking process, the oyster must've just cooked in its own steam. That makes it both highly nutritious and kind of sad.
It was surprisingly easy to open, and once inside I triumphantly ate the delicious invertebrate:

It was also Bike (motorcycle) Week while we were there, and all of Myrtle Beach looked a bit like the following picture (except, in focus!). I also realized just how loud bikes can be, but no matter, it was fun to see them all driving down the street. I also found it interesting to see that many people, possibly even a majority, didn't come down on their bikes, but drove a big SUV and towed their bikes in a trailer. To me that kind of defeats the purpose, but hey, what do I know about motorcycle culture anyway.

I've given up on telling people to comment, but I still like comments!

Summer Reading List

Since I am free of schoolbooks for the summer, I'm taking the opportunity to read fiction, and various other books purely for interest! It seems like such a luxury! So far, I've already gone through:

• The Undomestic Goddess, by Sophie Kinsella
• My first foray into Sophie Kinsella chick lit. A very light read, funny and pleasant and easy to digest. Sort of like jello - it's nice and goes down easy, but it doesn't have all that much nutritional content.
  
• A Year in the Merde, by Stephen Clarke
• The story of an Englishman who moves to Paris and adapts to French culture. Hilarious and biting humour. I highly recommend it for anyone who's not too sensitive or easily offended.
  
• A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews
  
• A Mennonite girl who doesn't fit into her community tries to adapt to her mother and sister's abandonments. I'm sure it's a very deep book with lots of insights about human nature, but I don't know how accurately it portrayed the Mennonites. It made them out into a hypocritical and judgmental cult whose youth are all druggies, whereas the impressions I've heard from people who have dealt with them is that they are kind and gentle.
  

Currently I'm on:

• The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker
• Exciting exposition that human nature does exist, is encoded in our DNA, and there's no getting away from it.
  
• Rereading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

And I still want to read:

• Anil's Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje
  
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
  
• For the life of the world : sacraments and orthodoxy by Fr. Alexander Schmemann

I'm also open to more suggestions, since it won't be long until I'm finished with the current selection! Anyone recommend anything they've read lately?

Blindness

I read in the paper a few days ago that one of the top films at Cannes this year is Blindness, an adaptation of the novel by the same name by Jose Saramago. As far as I know that's his most celebrated novel, but I haven't read it because I don't like dystopian world-gone-wrong fiction (in this one, most of the world has lost their sight). However I did read, in high school, one of his other novels, All the Names:

The main setting of the novel is the Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths of an unnamed city. This municipal archive holds the vital records for all residents of the city stretching back several centuries. The main character is called simply Senhor José (Mr. Joseph). Senhor José is fifty years old and has worked as a low-level clerk in the registry for more than twenty years. His residence adjoins the registry. Senhor José's hobby is creating dossiers about famous people. One day he realizes that having their birth certificates would complete the files. He begins sneaking into the registry late at night to obtain them. One evening he stumbles across the records of an ordinary, unknown woman. He becomes intrigued and embarks on a search for the woman. Along the way, he commits various illegal and unprofessional acts.

Although it wasn't your typical story with the usual kind of plot I couldn't put it down, and I think I even cried at the end. I loved it, and Saramago is undoubtedly a literary genius. He took a lot of liberties with his writing style - I remember for one super-long sentence took about 24 lines! He would also often write whole pages of philosophizing that were a puzzle for my brain. I recommend that everyone should read something like it (modern? post-modern? I'm bad with these terms) at least once. It was fun and exciting to read something that broke all the "rules" of fiction, but after that it was also a comfort to come back to regular literature.

Christ is Risen! - Easter moments

Last night was the Easter service at St. Nicholas Mission. We met around 9ish and took turns reading from the Book of Acts. Then at midnight we had the Easter service where we received the Light, and then the procession outside the church, then sang the Paschal Canon and served the Divine Liturgy. We were done that around 2:30, then we all ate and I left the church around 4:20. Here were some of my own personal favourite highlights:

• While we were reading the acts of the Apostles, I went to get something from the back room, and saw Fr. Nicholas sitting with Anamaria, practicing reading the Gospel in Romanian. He put so much effort, it was so cute! Then later, during the Liturgy, hearing him read it was really nice as well. What a great man.

• Hugh coming in wheezing halfway through our reading of Acts. I was afraid he was having an asthma attack or something, but it turns out, the poor guy biked there from work. Darn you TTC union, for striking at the worst time ever!!!

• Andrew reading in Spanish from Acts, and four different people reading in French. What a great parish :D

• The following quote:

Suzi: I like the French text better than the English.
Nick: Why?
Suzi: I dunno...
*later*
Suzi: Probably because the English (version that we were reading) is archaic and the French is modern.
Nick: I thought it might be that. But I was thinking it differently: The English is beautiful, while the French is plain.

• During the procession, having everyone singing at different times lol.

• The four verses that the priest sings, in front of the closed door. "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered!"etc. Lovely melody.

• Singing Hristos a Inviat in Romanian with Anamaria.

• Fr. and Anamaria singing Christ is Risen in French.

• Hugh and Nicholas singing Christ is Risen in Greek.

• Kissing and wishing everybody Christ is Risen in a variety of languages after the Paschal Matins.

• The Gospel, John 1:17, read in English, Slavonic, Romanian, Spanish, and French.

• Two very tired little boys, 6ish and 9ish, fast asleep at the back of the Church during the Liturgy. We served Liturgy till about 2:30 am, so no wonder the poor guys were exhausted. So adorable though! And then during Communion their mom woke them up and was standing behind one of them with hands on both sides of his head, basically keeping his head up.

• All the FOOD!!! Wow there was probably enough food for triple the amount of people we had. I lost my egg-cracking contest with Anamaria, but that's ok, because I wanted to eat the egg anyway. It was all delicious! Meaty, cheesy, and eggy. Andrew also made a salad, to keep us all from blocking all our arteries right then and there.

• Andrew telling us about a radio show he was listening to where they were discussing the public transit strike, and this one Greek man calls in and is MAD, saying "DON'T THEY KNOW IT'S ORTHODOX EASTER?? HOW COULD THEY DO THIS, THIS IS RIDICULOUS, PEOPLE NEED A WAY TO GET TO CHURCH, WE NEED TO CALL IN THE ARMY!" (I may have paraphrased it from Andrew's paraphrasing, but the army part was definitely said).

• I have no idea what they were talking about, but I caught this snippet of conversation from the priest's side of the table:

Fr. Nick: ...again and again in peace let us pray to the Lord...

• One of the little boys woke up, and as we were clearing everything up he was playing scary movie suspenseful death music on the organ/keyboard. LOL it was completely clashing with the whole theme of Pascha (Easter).

• Trading Easter eggs with people, since we all brought sooo many, and going around at the end giving out the last of my eggs. "Here have an egg" and I'd just hand it to them. It was a lot more effective than announcing that people should help themselves to eggs.

• In the car on the way home at 4:30 am, Anamaria telling me about the trends in Orthodoxy within the last century. It was a surprisingly animated discussion considering it was the middle of the night, and the day had been exhausting.

And one from two nights ago, from Great and Holy Friday, after the service:

• In the choir we couldn't agree on a particular point that we were going to sing, so we asked the priest how it should be done:

Andrew: Fr, help us out, we're having a sort of Proto-Pentecost here, all speaking in different tongues. (this is especially hilarious b/c Orthodox don't believe in the whole "speaking in tongues" thing that some Protestants practice).

All in all, the services were lovely. Though next year we are definitely going to master the Paschal Canon. Definitely.

Easter and the Mountains

Continuing my sporadic Easter countdown from last time...

Only 4 more days till Easter! I can't wait for the service and all the accompanying celebrations. Even though it's not exactly traditional (or at all traditional), I'm going to (attempt to) make tiramisu for our post-Liturgy meal.

On the topic of food, I recently successfully made these date squares which were quite good, so I recommend it. I think the orange zest is the key to the deliciousness.

I also found one of the funniest Orthodox blogs ever: http://orthromance.blogspot.com/ Great writer who is very accurate in his descriptions.

Today I thought about my trip to Romania from last year, and went through some of my pictures. There are so many beautiful things there, but I thought at least I'd share this one of gimmicky tourist shops in the mountains (better resolution if you click on it).

Voyages

First of all, only 12 more days till Easter! Yay! I'm starting to fantasize about eggs! Red eggs, blue eggs, green eggs, yellow eggs, eggs with tacky plastic stickers, burgundy eggs with beautiful parsley leaf motifs, and, most of all, egg-cracking contests!

This summer should be relatively eventful - I'm going to the Canadian Linguistic Association's Annual Conference in Vancouver at the end of May, then at the end of June I'll be spending a month in La Pocatiere, Quebec. Probably by the end I'll be talking like a hick from deep in Gaspesie. :D

Cool thing of the day: the McGurk effect, and how to hear with your eyes! To see what it's all about, check out this video. First close your eyes and just listen to the audio. Then actually look at the video and listen carefully. Once you are thoroughly perplexed and perturbed, check out Wikipedia for an explanation.

Lastly, thanks to Lyra for this super-cute video! Poor mommy! and poor babies!

Bachelor of Arts' Hicchoughs

Cool thing #1:

As of yesterday at 6pm, I have officially finished all the classes in my undergraduate career. Of course, I missed the my last hour of class ever for my BA, but we'll just say, uhh, that that was a very effective method of avoiding any potential sentimentality. (right...)

Cool thing #2:

If you've ever wondered if those hokey cures for hiccoughs, such as getting a sudden scare, or hopping on one leg in a circle actually work, the answer is no. However, I have something that does work, and you will all love me for posting it. I learned this trick from an amateur actor a few years ago and have had the occasion to use it every once in a while, including today. Apparently it's a very well-kept secret in the theater industry.

You will need a glass filled to the top with water. Then you need to bend forwards from the waist such that you make a 90 degree angle with your body, and while in that position you need to drink at least four or five mouthfuls of water. It will probably be hard to impossible to drink from the regular side of the glass, so you will have to drink from the opposite side, that is, tipping the glass away from you. Or get a straw. Then stand up, and TA-DA! you are cured.

You can thank me later. I take cash and personal cheques.

Cool thing #3:

The title of this blog contains all sorts of cool linguisticky phenomena. We have instances of each compounding, homophony, modification, and irregular/archaic spelling.

No one says I have to upload every day...

... but I figure, while I have the momentum, I should.

Rifling through the Romanian community newspaper today I found this lovely bit of poetry translated from Romanian:

Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed the sole of your foot, wouldn't you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss?...
Nichita Stanescu, 1933-1983

This is a random picture I found while going through Facebook groups and I loved it I loved it I loved it. For the confused among you, the person whose hand is being kissed is a priest.

Lastly, don't forget to comment!

Fleecestudio

I got the urge to start a new blog tonight - well ok to be honest I've had this blog for a while - I guess it's more accurate to say I got to urge to actually post on this blog. The main motivation was probably the fact that I have to write a paper for Monday (as of right now it's 25-30% done) and when there's work to be done I always have cool ideas (during last term's exam session I wanted to paint the kitchen).

Since I already have another blog where I write about personal woes and joys I'm going to attempt to keep that to a minimum here - it would be much cooler to make this the happy blog - the place where I post all the random awesomeness I've encountered recently. Being a stickler for giving credit where credit is due, I have to admit that this is in no way my own innovation - in fact I stole the idea from, well, everybody.


To start with, here is a picture of my old bird, Bobby. She was with us for about seven years and has now passed on to birdie heaven (I'm sure I'll get called a heretic for saying that :D). She's closing her eyes here against the flash.

Since it is Lent and our Orthodox church services are filled more than usual with beautiful hymns and prayers I'll include one of my favourite lines.

Now the powers of heaven invisibly with us do serve
Lo the King of Glory, the King of Glory enters
-Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

Lastly, I like comments! Feel free to write something, whatever!