The Clam Rampant

admin January 18th, 2007

I really need to learn HTML

But in the meantime, this will have to do. Thanks to the Canuck, I have now added a Site Meter. Wahoo!

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admin January 18th, 2007

Question for the Blogger-savvy

Anyone know how I can check the traffic on my blog? People seem to know how to do this stuff, but even Blogger Help hasn’t been very much…well, help. All it wants to do is convince me to put up ads on my blog (which I have no plans to do).

Got any tips for teens?

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admin January 17th, 2007

My cousin

At risk of airing even more family dirty laundry (or dirty dishes) than The Big Seester did over on her blog the other day, I have to tell this story. It involves some backstory too, so please bear with me.

TBS and I have three cousins on our mother’s side. The eldest is my age – he’ll turn 30 in March – and, while quite the ‘free spirit’, is pretty darned sane as our family goes. He lives on the West Coast.

The other two are siblings, and are nuts. One is 26 and currently living in Salt Lake City. We’re OK with that. Utah can have him. The other one is about to turn 23 and living at home. Since her mom nearly died last March, she’s made remarkable efforts to start to grow up. She got a job, for example, and is about to buy a car. She’s also talking about moving out on her own (to the West Coast, as it happens).

This dear youngest cousin – let’s paraphrase Mike the Geek and call her Beloved-But-Obnoxious Cousin, at least until I come up with a better pseudonym – has been a veritable font of amusement for her elders over the years. First it was because she was little and cute. Then, as she got older and became less cute and more difficult, in addition to often being a massive pain in the neck, she also would sometimes be very funny. Sometimes intentionally, mind you, but oftentimes not intentionally, and THAT is when she was her funniest.

Take, for example, the classic “Why do we always have to talk about WORDS?!” At a family gathering several years ago, we somehow got onto a discussion about some nuance of language. (I don’t remember the exact details.) Beloved-But-Obnoxious Cousin quickly tired of the topic, and finally had a mild tantrum that centered around her blurting “Why do we always have to talk about WORDS?!” Poor kid – that question has lived in infamy ever since.

Then, just this last Christmas (2006), TBS and I went to our aunt’s house for Christmas Eve. Our mother was off enjoying a Posada in Texas or Mexico or something, and since, as I mentioned, we nearly lost our aunt earlier in the year, we couldn’t very well decline her invitation.

We spent a good portion of the evening sorting through family recipes. Periodically Beloved-But-Obnoxious Cousin would say something like, “Why would you want a recipe for BREAD? Why wouldn’t you just BUY it?!” or “Why would you want a recipe for chocolate cake when you can just buy a mix?” At one point, she (apparently thinking she was delivering the supreme insult) said that TBS and I “probably make mashed potatoes out of actual POTATOES, not from instant!” Well, actually yes – if I’m going to consume that many simple-carb calories, you’d better believe they’re going to be real potatoes, and with plenty of butter, milk, salt and pepper to boot!

Well, Beloved-But-Obnoxious Cousin has just outdone herself. I keep an instant messenger client on my computer at work, both for business and personal use, and as long as I don’t let it interfere with my job, my boss doesn’t really care. Beloved-But-Obnoxious Cousin has idly chatted with me while I’m at work in past (commenting, by the way, that she can’t believe I get paid to IM all day, when she’s the one initiating and continuing the conversation). Yesterday Beloved-But-Obnoxious Cousin hopped onto chat and asked if I wanted to see the car she’s thinking of buying. I know she’s excited about it, and I am pretty proud of her for sticking with this long enough to bring it to fruition, so I say “Sure – link me.” She shows me a ‘92 Tempo with under 100K miles and a ‘97 Sunfire with about 165K miles.

Mind you, her primary criterion so far for buying the car, apart from price, has been that it has to have a CD player, because “I don’t like radio.” Now she tells me that she’ll probably go with the Sunfire, because the Tempo is a coupe and “I hate two-door cars.”

I used to have a Topaz, the sister car to the Tempo. It was junk – my father used to grimly joke that Ford must’ve engineered the car so that everything couldn’t work at the same time. If you fixed the water pump, the brakes went. When you fixed the brakes, the power steering went. And so forth. Now, it was a new model in ‘85 when my stepmom bought it, so obviously Ford hadn’t had a chance to work out all the bugs yet. I understand that not all years of Tempos and Topazes will be as bad as mine was. However, The Canuck’s parents had a late-80s Tempo, and while he doesn’t remember it being as bad as my Topaz, he did allow as how it had more than its fair share of problems.

That said, I’ve only known one person who had a Sunfire, and she hated it. She thought it was the worst car ever, and her Sunfire would’ve been pretty close in vintage to the one Beloved-But-Obnoxious Cousin is looking at buying.

So I suggested to Beloved-But-Obnoxious Cousin that she might want to look at Consumer Reports and see what they think about those cars in those year. I even mention that I think TBS might have a subscription, so if she calls and asks nicely, TBS might be able to help her out. (Sorry, TBS, but don’t worry – I don’t think she’ll be calling you.) However, please note that I prefaced my suggestion with “This is completely your decision, but you may want to think about…”

First she says, “This is my first car; it’s not supposed to be good.” I gently pointed out to her that, while one’s first car is certainly not expected to be The Best Car Ever, one can certainly try to minimize the amount one needs to spend on avoidable repairs. Cars break, but some break more often and more severely than others, and every dollar you spend on an avoidable car repair is a dollar you can’t spend on food, rent at some place other than your mother’s house, cigarettes, or wacky tobaccy (which she claims she no longer uses, but I said it for rhetorical purposes).

Then she says, “Well, I’m budgeting myself.” I said that I was sure she was, but reiterated the point about opportunity cost.

Then came the new classic line, which must and shall be remembered through the ages:

“This is my purchase, and I don’t have time to research the market!”

So I reminded her that I’d never said it wasn’t her purchase, that I’d actually made a point of noting that it WAS her purchase and her decision, and signed off with: “Have fun, and don’t complain to me if you buy a lemon.”

Because, of course, she WILL complain to me. And that’s really where my objection comes in. Well, that and because last I knew she didn’t do ANYthing besides go to her job: you know, like clean house, or cook, or mow the lawn/shovel snow without pitching a giant fit, so I’m not sure how she doesn’t have time, but that’s just self-righteous annoyance. :-p

The Canuck has suggested that, since my opinions are obviously not welcome, I should simply stop giving them. I think he’s right, although that pretty much means not talking to her, which won’t please her mother very much.

Oh well. I’m just one of those opinionated freaks who actually MASHES POTATOES to have mashed potatoes.

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admin January 17th, 2007

Woohoo! Paid my taxes!

I think I’m officially a grown-up now. Not only did I turn 30 over the weekend, but I just paid my first property tax bill.

Is it all downhill from here?

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admin January 16th, 2007

When it rains…

Good things never seem to happen in isolation. My checkbook just balanced (to the penny), and I bought gas for $1.859 yesterday!

I’m stopping by the frame shop tomorrow – I got a rough quote on getting my print of Velazquez’ The Immaculate Conception matted and framed. Think I’m going to go ahead with it.

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admin January 16th, 2007

Mortgages are depressing

I closed on my mortgage June 28, 2006. I know better than to look, but somehow I just couldn’t help myself….as of today, I have less than $300 of equity in my home. Gack.

Ah well – $277 in equity is better than when I rented, I suppose.

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admin January 16th, 2007

There’s Something About (The Blessed Virgin) Mary

OK. MARY!

I think pretty much everyone reading this knows that I’m in RCIA, and that Marian doctrine has been a massive issue for me. In fact (and I think I said this explicitly), if I knew I was going to die tomorrow and had to decide right now whether to become Catholic, Marian dogma would be the only really serious impediment.

So I was plodding through the books Father John recommended, making note of my questions/issues and planning to first pester Paul and then, if necessary, Father John with my issues.

I don’t think it’ll be necessary now. (Thanks anyway, Paul, and I may be pestering you about other things instead!) Here’s what happened:

Last week was the talk on Mary. It was given by Father Thomas, who is by all accounts a wonderful man and an excellent priest, but who also has a very thick Indian accent. I mean, it’s so thick that when he celebrates Mass, they pass out copies of the homily afterwards so people know what he said. There seems to be something about the cadence of Indian languages that makes it extremely difficult for native English speakers to understand Indian accents. I’m no linguist, but I think it has to do with the rhythm and tonal sequences; when Father Thomas (bless him) speaks, it takes my best efforts not to be lulled into a near-sleep state. It’s practically hypnotic. And frankly, I’m pretty good at languages and at understanding and replicating accents. At the very least, I’m better than most Americans at either of those. But I have not yet been able to wrap my brain very well around Indian languages and accents.

So I was a little disappointed that Father Thomas did the talk on Mary, because on top of the usual communication issues, I was fighting off a cold and the accompanying fuzzy-headedness. But I was bound and determined not to miss the talk on Mary – I’d been waiting months for it – plus I was scheduled to bring treats. All in all, not a good week to miss. So I dragged myself to church, kept myself awake through Mass and Scripture study, and then had to exercise levels of self-restraint I didn’t even know I had not to fall asleep to the soothing rhythm of Father Thomas’ voice. As usual, there were copies available AFTER the talk, which didn’t help me tremendously but was better than nothing; then I went to The Big Seester’s house and lolled on her couch for four or five hours. :-p

Anyway, being the annoying little Hermione Granger that I am, after I got over the worst part of the cold, I pored over the previous week’s readings about Mary. (For some inexplicable reason, they pass them out on the day of the talk; I’m trained to do my readings *prior to* the session in which something will be discussed.) I could understand a lot of the rational argumentation, but one thing in particular kept insistently poking at my woefully inadequate brain about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary:

NAGGING VOICE (NV): Psst!

MWIB: Um. I don’t know. That is pretty weird. Why wouldn’t He have just done that?

Anyway. Father John’s homily on Sunday touched, among other things, on how many demands there are on his time. (He prefaced it by saying he wasn’t complaining and that he wouldn’t trade his life for anyone’s, and it was relevant to the point of the homily, but I still felt a little guilty for all the e-mails I’ve sent him with complicated doctrinal questions!) So I resolved to try other avenues before bothering him with yet another question (there are two or three e-mails from me awaiting responses in his inbox, poor man, and one of them is LO-O-ONG!).

So first I tried asking my sponsor, who is an extraordinary and brilliant woman, but who had never really had issues with Marian doctrine. Then I asked our Scripture reflection leader for the week, who I have to say is a great guy who obviously loves the Lord tremendously, but had no idea what I was asking or why. I tried three times to explain what I was asking, but it had apparently never occurred to him as an issue, so he was very nice about it but unable to help. He also, bless him, suggested that some things just need to be taken on faith.

(I’d just like to take this opportunity to say that I understand that some things need to be taken on faith. However, when I know perfectly well that I’m going to encounter criticism from both secular and Protestant quarters for converting, there are some issues on which I need to be convinced so I can defend my decision. I’m not going to be able to justify my decision to some people, and I accept that, but I need to be convinced that I’m making the right decision and have reasons that I can give, irrespective of whether critics ultimately accept them. I need to have the reasons for myself as much as for the critics. Does that make sense?)

Then I thought, well, I can’t be the only person who has this question! So I asked one of the other candidates, with whom I’d been talking after RCIA last week, for whom Mary has been a big issue as well. She’d had the exact same question (probably right down to the slightly disturbing inner dialogue), and hadn’t gotten it answered yet. Then I realized there was an untapped gold mine in our midst: one of the RCIA sponsors/Scripture reflection leaders is a bona fide apologist! So I looked at the other candidate…and she looked at me…and I said, “Want to see if So-And-So will share her sponsor for a few minutes of questions?” And off we ran, to hover like opportunistic vultures. And bless her heart, So-And-So had no problem sharing her sponsor for what turned into more than a few minutes of questions; and bless his heart, her sponsor had no problem answering the questions!

He explained that we were slightly misunderstanding the explanation. God didn’t HAVE to give Mary a sinless nature in order for Jesus to be sinless; it’s simply that it was FITTING for Him to do so. Then he went on to explain some of the parallels of Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant (backing up with Scripture, which is always helpful) and some of the New Adam/New Eve details. What stuck out for me, apart from the Ark parallels (which were kind of eerie, actually) was his point that God created Adam from the dust of the earth: but from the pre-Fall earth, which was a paradise untainted by sin. It is, therefore, fitting that the New Adam (Christ) would be created from a source untainted by sin. Then he went into some of the Ark parallels (but I don’t have my Bible in front of me to reference the verses involved), including John’s vision in Revelation.

And the pieces started clicking.

And they kept clicking.

This is how I felt when I left church on Sunday:

And the pieces kept clicking.

And kept clicking.

And by the time I posted on Monday, this is how I felt:

The only thing I still have a little bit of trouble with is some of the language in certain prayers (i.e. the Hail, Holy Queen – I thought Christ was our light, our sweetness and our hope) and some of the particular devotions, but honestly, that’s relatively small potatoes. The point is, IT FITS! And I GET IT! And it’s all IN PERSPECTIVE!

Well, there is one other little thing I have, but it’s not Mary’s fault. :-p I have trouble, honestly, with the supremely loving and nurturing mother-figure, because my mother was neither loving nor nurturing for most of my childhood. But that, hopefully, will come with time; and I’m already vastly more comfortable with it than I was.

So strange, eh, the way things go sometimes?

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admin January 15th, 2007

HOLY SHAMOLEY! What a birthday present!

A breakthrough on Mary!!!

Gadzooks, egad, and shazam!

I can’t post on it now – a day off of work means I have even more work to do than normal – but I wanted to put out a teaser and let y’all know that one more prayer in the RCIA chain has been answered. Deo gratias!

More on Mary later!

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admin January 12th, 2007

My slightly disastrous day

My fellow Michiganders, particularly those 30 and older, will know exactly what I mean when I say that the Secretary of State’s office is worlds better than it used to be. Unfortunately, I still seem to need an efficiency expert for myself. I wasn’t going to post on this slightly embarrassing story, but then I realized that doing so might give readers some insight as to why The Big Seester is so…big seesterly and borderline motherly to me, despite the fact that I’ll be 30 in about nine hours.

When I started driving lo these many years ago, the Secretary of State of Michigan was a man named Richard Austin. By all accounts I’ve heard he was a great guy, but going to get your tabs renewed was something like the sixth ring of Hell. When I was finishing high school, he was replaced by Candace Miller, who has since gone on to become a Congresswoman, and has been replaced with Terri Land. I don’t know what Miller and Land stand for personally, but I know that from a customer service standpoint, they’ve done great things with the SOS office. A lot of it was made possible by technological advances (i.e. the Internet), but they’ve done a lot.

My plate will expire tomorrow. My only beef with Miller and Land is that they have jumped thoroughly on board with the “a zillion plates” cash cow bandwagon. For as long as I’ve noticed license plates, Michigan has had blue plates with white lettering. Ontario has had white plates with blue lettering. That’s just the way it’s been. I don’t know when Ontario introduced their plates, but according to the SOS Michigan introduced our blue plates in 1982.

Well, over the last 10 years or so the state has been coming up with creative new plates for people to spend money on. First it was the (atrocious) Car Centennial plate, which was given to me by a sadistic SOS employee when I had to get my first plate on my first-ever car that was legally mine. I didn’t have the stomach to tell her I thought it was butt-ugly and to please give me a standard blue plate. My bad – I was 19 and worried about offending people. A few years later I splurged and treated myself to a standard blue plate, and was happy with it until that car finally gave up the ghost (at the Lodge and Linwood, thank you very much).

So now Terri Land has decided that Old Blue is old news, and has to pave the way for a new design. (Well, to be fair, I think it was the Legislature that decided that.) Since my birthday is fast approaching and I needed to go renew my plate tabs, I decided to leave work early today, go downtown to the SOS, and get it all sorted out before picking The Canuck up from the train in Windsor. I don’t think they’ll let me get away with the “You can have my blue plate when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands” bit, so I’ve resigned myself to the classless, soulless, ugly new plate.

I get downtown, and discover that there is no metered parking right by the SOS. Fine – it’s right by Cobo, after all. So I drive up to Fort and find a spot – it’s only a block away. I feed the meter and walk down to the office. It’s a rare fine day, probably 45 Fahrenheit, and I’m feeling good. I get into the office and take a number. 91. Check the board – they’re currently serving 69. Eh, ok – I brought a book. So I sit down…and realize I’m staring at a placard on the counter that reads “We do not accept credit or debit cards.”

Realizing that I had forgotten this crucial fact, I start thinking. Do I have my checkbook with me? …no. I certainly don’t have $75 cash on me. So I go ask the guard if he knows where there’s an ATM nearby. He recommends Cobo. I have a momentary flash of “I’m an idjit,” thank the man, and walk across the street.

I find the ATM, take out the money, pay the surcharge. Meanwhile, since I’m still getting over a cold, I’m coughing up a storm and generally feeling yucky. So I decide to buy a bottle of water. The first place I see that might sell it is a vending machine. No dice; it’s just pop. I don’t want pop. So I walk along, find a Baskin Robbins, and ask for a bottle of water. I had forgotten that refreshments at Cobo are like refreshments at Cedar Point or Comerica Park: a 20 oz bottle was $3!!! But I’m really thirsty, so I shell out the cash.

I head back over to the SOS. As I’m walking into the building, I spot another sign: No food or drinks allowed. (You’ve got to be kidding.) I stow the $3 water in my bag and sit down.

They’re about 10 customers before my number by now, so I decide I’ll start getting things ready for the clerk. I had misplaced the renewal information they sent me a month ago, so I go digging for my registration.

And I dig.

And I dig.

Yup, that’s right – I didn’t have my registration. Don’t ask me what I did with it – I have no idea. Don’t ask me how the SOS is supposed to renew my registration when I can’t even prove I own the car.

I walked out. I’ll have to hit a Super Center tomorrow, assuming I can find either the renewal docs or the registration itself by then. Sometimes I really wonder about myself.

And all this is to get a new plate that I don’t even want. If I’d planned ahead I could have renewed online or by mail, but of course I was hoarding my money to the last possible moment. This is what I get for procrastinating.

Ain’t The Big Seester and The Canuck wonderful for putting up with me? Yes, I’m usually like this, to varying degrees. Trust me, it loses its charm after a while. :-p

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admin January 9th, 2007

Prayer request

I sent this to some of my readers already by e-mail, but would really appreciate if any of you could take a few moments to pray on this request.

My friend Jessica has sent out an urgent prayer request for her grandmother. She is very ill, and may be close to death. While she considers herself Jewish, she (a) does not believe in God and (b) is very angry with Him. (I chose not to point out the logical contradiction.) She is also angry with Jessica and her father for becoming Christians; she sees them as betraying their people and their faith, and has told Jessica’s father that she doesn’t care to see either of them again. When he went to visit her yesterday and mentioned that Jessica hadn’t come because of that, she said she has no intention of apologizing and that Jessica “can just come to my funeral.”

I would appreciate it if you would pray for all three of them. Jessica particularly requested that people pray for her grandmother’s heart to be softened toward the Lord, and that she come to know Jesus before she dies, but I am praying for reconciliation among their family as well.

Thanks very much, and please feel free to ask others to pray as well. If I can bring myself to do it (not fully convinced on saintly intercession yet), I may ask the intercession of St. Edith Stein, as her mother died without ever being fully reconciled to her daughter’s conversion and vocation.

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