Heritage

There are times that my family's long connection with the institution where I work is complicated, but more often than not it is a benefit.

Sometimes it is funny. Sometimes it is bittersweet. Sometimes, it's just nice.

This morning my boss said, "I need someone to start a 'Centennial' box."

I volunteered.

So, sitting on my desk, looking for a place to live for a couple of years as we prepare for the University's Centennial, is an old magazine with my grandfather on the cover. The photo is totally 80s. The issue was actually published a few months after I was born. But right now, it's sitting on my desk, and my grandfather is there. And it's just nice.

10th Hour Breakfast

Eggs, waffles, pancakes, bacon, sausage, cereal, pastries...you name it, 10th Hour Breakfast has it.

Yes, that's breakfast. In the 10th hour post meridian (aka 10 pm). For 300 students. Who sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" table by table, led by the Jazz Band.

Welcome to Finals Week.

Extravagance

"What Jesus said to [Mary in John 12], and those around Him as well including Judas, was 'she has done a beautiful thing and wherever the Gospel is preached what she has done will be remembered.' That is an amazing commendation for someone like me who tends to work from the heart, who tends to work with precious and costly materials. I remember that the extravagance of Christ’s love for me prompted an extravagant response. Eventually, I came to connect what I do as an artist with Mary’s devotional act. Maybe that is the one act we can look to as the centerpiece for a paradigm of creativity."

~Makoto Fujimura

Men will grow in the oven.

I few weeks ago I needed to make cookies, and I had a hankering for gingerbread. And I also had molasses in the cupboard. And in the back of my brain was a memory that the best gingerbread cookies I'd ever had were from a Christmas recipe book that my uncle and aunt gave my mom for Christmas about 15 years ago.

So I called up my mom and described the book and the recipe I was looking for...the description went something like this: "It's the one Uncle Paul and Aunt Elaine gave you one year. Sort-of country-ish? Christmassy, though. Yeah, and there's a recipe in there. It's either for molasses cookies or gingerbread cookies. I don't remember what they're called. Oh, gingerbread? Yeah, with molasses in the recipe. Yep, that's them. Can you email me that recipe?"

I ran by the store and picked up a couple items I was missing and I came home to print off my mom's email - and opened it, and read through, and began to laugh.

The final instructions read like this: "Add more flour if making gingerbread men. Cut them out and place them on the sheet. Men will grow in the oven."

And my mom had added: "(yes the recipe says just that) :) See if any men grow in YOUR oven."

None did. Much as I tried. Instead, cookies came out. And they were a hit. A HUGE hit. All the college girls that ate them loved them. More than men.

I need cookies again this week. So I decided to see if men would grow in my oven again.

Still no men. But awfully good cookies.

I wish...

I wish I could say I had this delightful day wandering the streets of the City and topped it all with finding the perfect gift.

But, in reality, as most trips to the City do, it actually looked a lot like this:

And that perfect gift? The almost perfect one I found was about twice what I'd budgeted...so that won't work.

But, after all, I can say the day was nice.

Freedom to Flee - er, Fly

I get itchy feet. I haven't often, in recent years, gotten to indulge their itchiness. But I get them, just the same.

Next spring, I get to go. Hop on a plane and cross an ocean.

But I needed to update my passport. It was nearly at the end of its life. So I sent it off for renewal, and for the past month have had this horrid feeling that, if I needed to, I couldn't leave the country. I mean, not even for Canada.

Today the new passport arrived in the mail, all stiff and computer-chippy and fancy. And, for another ten years, I can go wherever I want.

Bright Morning

At a biblical university, even the geese walk on water.

It made me laugh, which was a delight on this bright morning. My sister wrote about comic relief yesterday, at the end of the surgery. She likened the moment to the steam coming off a pressure cooker - laughter.

And this morning, in the bright sunshine, I gloried in the silhouettes of trees against the sunrise. It brought to mind the lyrics of a favorite carol: Disperse the gloomy clouds of night / And death's dark shadows put to flight.

And I laughed at the geese.