0 Guess who found her password?

(It doesn't necessarily mean I'll be blogging more... but you never know...)

2 Requiescat in pace

Please join me in offering up a little prayer today for the repose of the soul of my cousin Ohdrán on what would have been his 18th birthday. Sadly, he died on 12th November in a car accident.

Requiem æternam dona ei Domine; et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.

0 Especially for my husband

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

18. It's not that the man did not know how to juggle, he just didn't have the balls to do it.

19. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

21. A backward poet writes inverse.

22. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

23. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

24. Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

3 The Princess And The Chick Pea (plus a little breastfeeding rant!)

I'm linking to this from Breastfeeding Moms Unite as it is something I wish I had read in the early days after giving birth to our beautiful daughter. Having struggled with breastfeeding, especially for the first 3 or 4 weeks, I have nothing but the utmost respect for mothers who manage to breastfeed their babies, even if only for a few days. I had read various things about breastfeeding but nothing really prepares you for it. I just wish I had known just how small a baby's tummy is when he or she is born and why they need to feed little and often.

The maternity hospital promoted breastfeeding at every turn -- almost to the point of putting me off it -- but when it came down to it, it was just lipservice. In the four days I spent in hospital, only one midwife was any help whatsoever (an Indian lady whose name I have forgotten, but who was an absolute angel, and who obviously learned these skills from her own mother rather than on the job) and by the time I had left, Zoë was already on "top ups" of formula, having had it pushed on me late at night when I was wondering why she had been feeding almost constantly for 4 or 5 hours and didn't seem to be satisfied... (My milk hadn't come in yet so therefore I must have been starving her. Yeah. Ever heard of colostrum?!) Then they were concerned about her not gaining weight according to their charts, so I wasn't "allowed" to stop the formula top ups. Being a clueless first time mum, I spent the first two months fretting about her weight and her feeding and having absolutely no confidence in my ability as a mother or in my body's ability to keep my own child well fed. As a result, we fell into the combined feeding category, hearing "Ah, why do you bother breastfeeding her at all?" from the formula feeders and "You should go cold turkey with the formula! Breast is best!" from the breastfeeding activists (or rather, lactivists :-) ) I can't help but think how things might have turned out differently had I had a bit more practical support in the first few days and not had that first bottle of formula pushed on me late at night by some clueless young one with no kids of her own when I was exhausted, emotional and hormonal.

But anyway. I think at the end of the day you do whatever works for your child. In our case, despite my regrets about not being able to get back to exclusive nursing, combined feeding is what worked this time for this child. Who's to say it will or will not be different next time around? At least then I will know about the chick pea (and the grape and the walnut). :-)

3 Cute pics

Just because. :-)

3 Shicking

It has been over a year since I posted anything on my blog. Shicking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

It's been a busy year, summed up in three words:

Our daughter, Zoë!

1 Happy Christmas

Catholic Analysis has a great post today, which I think it would do no harm to remember...

The Revolutionary Facts

Here they are:

1. Conceived into scandalous circumstances which placed his mother in deep suspicion;

2. The foster father and expectant mother needing to travel a long distance in obedience to foreign oppressors requiring a census;

3. Desperate for overnight accommodations and happily settling for a place reserved for animals;

4. Sharing the joy of His birth with lowly rural workers and exotic foreigners traveling from far away who also had to dodge the power-mad local political boss.

The lesson: don't let your circumstances determine your destiny. Trust in Him. He went through the worst and conquered. He can conquer your circumstances, too. And, in the midst of objectively bad circumstances, you do get consolation and direction as they did: angels and good people appeared, and the Lord protected and guided them every step of the way.

We need to retell the same historical facts but try to see them afresh so that their revolutionary aspect comes back into focus because these facts are the only ones that have ever really turned the world upside down and so are the only events really able to rescue each of us. There has never been a story that can compare with this one, and we are still talking about it today. And, yes, let's put our useless pride in our back pocket and admit that each of us needs to be rescued. The rescue is at hand. This is the real bail-out.

Wishing you and yours a very happy and holy Christmas.

1 If the Catholic Church was a programming language...

I just read this post on the Curt Jester on the question "What if the Catholic Church was a programming language?" After listing off a few others from a list he read (comparing C to Judaism, Java to Fundamendalist Christianity, C# to Mormonism, etc), here is what he has to say:

Now what would we call a programming language similar to the Catholic Church? How about C†† (pronounced C Cross Cross). Like St. Paul the Church teaches Christ crucified and the cross is never missing from our lives. The C of course stands for Catholic and the universal binary that the code produces. The universal binary is of course accessible by all operating systems. Though while we see the good that is common to many programming languages we hope that all will come to accept the fullness of C††. As programmers we don't want to be triumphalists, but to help to spread the good code to every nation.

The basics of the language C†† would be fixed. Though interfaces can be later added on that help to access the underlying language. The code structures would be based both on apostolic programming tradition and the reference book. The compiler also known as the magisterium would rely on the CDF (Coding for the Doctrine of the Flow) to ensure wayward code was corrected and brought back into fullness of the code specification. When bad code is detected the compiler would throw an anathema.

C†† would certainly be strongly typed. An object created yesterday or even a thousand years ago would remain exactly the same object today. Though this does not mean that we can not understand an object more deeply over time, only that an integer value will not become a string just because it is currently fashionable in the culture for this to be true. What is set to a state of true today remains true tomorrow. For example this is how you would set a true and a false value in C††.

boolean item = dogma;
boolean item2 = heresy;

Other keywords include Fashion (which can hold any value, but is not used for anything serious), Absolute (which holds one constant value that never changes), Discipline value can change over time based on a prudential decision), Hierarchy (An ordered data structure).

Multiple coding styles known as rites can be used to write the code. These rites though will all compile to exactly the same code whether using an Eastern or Western style. Some traditional programmers prefer to only program in Latin, but you can choose a vernacular language as long as you don't use and edition approved by ICEL in the seventies which does not give the full nuances of the keywords.

The reference for C†† would be maintained by the Vaticode. The head programmer/maintainer at the Vaticode is called His Geekiness and he has final say on the language definition and its interpretation. The Vicar of Code is infallible only when speaking on code and compilers. The Nerds in union with His Geekiness are the authentic teachers of the language. New definitions can be added to the language that conform to the reference and apostolic programmers. Sometimes a movement among programmers (geekus fidelum) can lead to the Vaticode adding a new definition.

Here is a sample "Hello World" program in C††

After all "Let there be light" was the original Hello World program by the Divine Programmer. Every C†† requires a "faith" method which is the main entry point to the program. Remember faith() without works() and your code is dead.

If only there was a programming language like the Catholic Church. Right now there are so many denominations of programming languages that keep splitting. Like C+ going into schism from C and then C++ going into schism from C+. I pray that there be but one language.

Nip on over to the Curt Jester to read the rest of the post, as the whole thing is well worth a read!