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Earthquakes, aftershocks, and hurricanes! oh my! This was definitely the biggest earthquake I remember ever having felt. This one reached 5.8 on the Richter scale and the aftershocks hours later came in at over 4. The first shake down really flipped me out since I was home alone and couldn’t get ahold of anyone using my cell phone after it happened to make sure it wasn’t just our old building (complete with fallout shelter in the basement) about to collapse.
I signed on Facebook after several unsuccessful attempts to call and text my husband. Sure enough, others had felt the earthquake as well, not just across town but across a number of states.
Yes, I do realize the irony and huge margin of error I was running by checking FB for weather and news updates, but news stations didn’t mention anything about it over the internet for several minutes after the tremors subsided. People pulled out their phones and were updating their status messages right quick, though.
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What goes missing must be found. When I was young, my mom and grandmother went on a pilgrimage to Mexico. They got a beautiful gold cross necklace while they were there. They couldn’t find anything like it back in the US, so they had another one made so they could each wear one. When I turned eighteen, my mom had the same cross made for me. A while back my grandma’s cross disappeared and not too long after another resident at her nursing home showed up wearing it. My mom, Kevin, and I joked that my mom should have had the following engraved on my grandma’s necklace: This cross stolen from Marilyn… It turns out that the woman who started wearing it had gotten confused and thought it was something sent to her in one of the mailings she received from various religious orders. She called around trying to find out what religious order had sent it, and she wasn’t able to figure it out.
When I was over visiting my grandmother last week, the woman saw me and asked me where I’d gotten such a unique cross. After telling me her theories and about her search, I told her that the only three crosses I’d ever seen like it were my mom’s, mine, and my grandma’s, which was missing. Last night, the woman, true to her word, returned my grandma’s cross to my mom in an envelope.
What a relief, all crosses have been returned to their rightful owners.
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No Youtube videos, please. Last evening my husband and I finally had to do the grocery shopping and prescription pick-up we’d been avoiding due to already being tired by the time we got out of 5:30pm daily Mass. Of course, Thursday was the one night it rained torrentially so far this week. I sincerely hope that no one saw (or much worse was recording) my mad dash to the car last evening. I splashed through several inches of water in the parking lot in my sandals while juggling four large containers of water. I was laughing in the rain at the irony of getting water during a torrential downpour in case we need some extra on hand if Hurricane Irene hits us hard. By the time, I opened the back door of the car, realized I had the newest batch of Danielle Rose FREE concert posters there and reconsidered, shut the door, popped open the trunk and dumped the jugs of water in, then climbed into the car, I was absolutely drenched. Though amusing, it won’t be on Youtube for you to laugh over, so I guess you’ll just have to keep going back to the Anderson Cooper clips from earlier this week if you are in need of a good giggle.
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Caught in the act. Since I am a voracious reader and have reviewed many books, I’ve gotten in the habit of counting the number of books I’ve read and reviewed when I go into Catholic bookstores. The two local ones I frequent are the Religious Goods Shop and The Church Mouse. Wednesday, a friend asked me to meet her at The Church Mouse so she could look around. While there, I looked around, then I began counting those volumes on the shelves I’d already read and reviewed. The storekeeper caught me, so I explained what I was doing. She asked for recommendations of what books to put on display, so I kept going through the stacks and letting her know which ones I liked the best. It was fun. I have thought about printing out a few of my book reviews and leaving them for local shopkeepers along with my blog info in case they or other avid readers are interested. -5-
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Thumbs up! My mom and I had lunch together, then we got food from a couple different places for a dinner she needed to cater at the office. On the way, a mother and her son who were carrying a number of purchases started to cross the parking lot in front of my car. We waved them ahead. The mom waved thank you as best she could with her arms loaded up, but the boy who I’d guess was about 10 or 11 looked up, saw my Choose Life license plate, got a big smile on his face and gave me a huge thumbs up. Very cool! -7-
Top two reasons to buy this book right now: it’s a delightful read by a remarkable priest and all profits go directly to Reiser Relief Inc., an organization Fr. Bernard Reiser founded which helps the poorest of the poor in Haiti.
Check out Jennifer Fulwiler’s 7 Quick Takes Friday series and her high-traffic for good reason blog Conversion Diary.
