Follow-on to the review below:

If you are a catholic blogger who needs a steady supply of free, top-notch spiritual reading, I see that the The Catholic Company is still accepting new reviewers.  Highly recommended program, well-run and I have never, ever, had any difficulty picking a new book from the list of available titles.  There are usually a dozen or more options across a wide variety of mostly non-fiction genres.  You pick one out, they ship it to you, you post your review, you pick a new one out.  Very well-run.

–> My next pick (so look for a review one of these days) is Jimmy Aiken’s The Salvation Controversy, which promises to set me straight on my TULIP problems.   Well-timed.

Also look for a review here of the DVD Father of Mercy, my first blog-review for Tiber River.  Finished watching it (once in English voice-over, then with much relief again in the original Italian), just need to type up my thoughts.  (Hint: I don’t pick lousy product.)

So that should be posted soon, assuming no more exciting sub-plots here at home.  Been one of those weeks, hehe.  And also maybe a review of John Hathaway’s Prayer CD “Hide Me In Your Wounds: Daily Prayer with the Saints”, soon as I get through the whole thing.

In real life: We’re doing a math-n-craziness theme at school this summer.  New school year starts August 15th, and I’m planning to pretty much hit it running from the get-go.  Oh and we joined the YMCA.  Man I love that place.

I was nominated for something !?!

Take a look: http://thecrescat.blogspot.com/2009/04/and-nominees-are.html

I’m there under  “Best Under Appreciated Catholic Blog”.

I think there must be voting soon (nominations end May 1).  You could vote for me.  Which would be a way of find out, not whether I was the *best* under appreciated catholic blog, but more likely, whether I am the least-appreciated under-appreciated blog.  I think I have a better chance of winning that distinction.

Meanwhile I will have to cancel all plans to clean house and educate my children, so that I can write lots of articles for voters to appreciate.  Or not.

(PS: I’m so excited.  If the person who nominated me would kindly speak up, I’ll thank you in person.   Gosh, I might have to create a whole new link category: People Who Nominate Me for Blog Awards.  That would be fun.  Mighty fun.  UPDATE: Thank you Julie D. This is twice now I owe you your own link category.  And I see that you have more blogs than I knew.  Wow.   Putting the thinking cap on to come up with a good category title . . .)

About that international dateline . . .

I’m looking at my schedule for the weekend, and estimating that ‘Friday’ will show up on this blog sometime Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, my thought for the weekend:

How ’bout a square-feet-per-occupant guideline on that housing bailout?  Not persuaded that the bailing-out is the best way to proceed.   (Said by a person who is very keen on affordable housing and owner-occupied housing.)  But I’m certainly sympathetic to those who were faced with the choice of ‘if you want to own a home, you have to buy at this ridiculous price’.   We were fortunate not to have needed to relocate during the big bubble.

So my thought is this: If I am going to be subsidizing your housing, I would like it to be reasonable housing.  Kind of rankles to imagine someone went out and mortgaged a McMansion, and I have to pay taxes to make sure the poor folks don’t have to downsize to a house like . . . mine.  Just envy speaking, don’t mind me.

Plus I’m curious to see what the government would come up with as a ‘normal’ home.

Schedule will tentatively resume next week, topics may be a little disorderly until I catch up on the promised book reviews.  Tendons are not really better, but I think the pitiful amount of writing I do here isn’t going to be a problem.  We’ll see.  Meanwhile, please pray for the repose of the soul of Michael Dubruiel, and the consolation of his family.

Dark Night of the Tendons

Hands are still limping along here.  Finally got my review of Dark Night of the Soul posted over at the homeschooling blog, after multiple technical failures (and of course plenty of the other kinds of failures as well).

In the success column, yes I can confirm the rumor that I finally got to meet Mr. & Mrs. Curley this weekend.  Super nice folks.  Except that Jim pointed out I’d been rather quiet on the blog lately.  Ahem.  So I’ll just come out and solicit tendon prayers from readers who want to see me get back to the regular schedule anytime soon.  Meanwhile, chugging along on the sick-leave plan, the review of Embryo is up next, to be posted here.

Hiatus updates

–> For anyone who was excessively worried, cut it out.  Minor case of tendonitis.  Am laying off the archery and (mostly offline) writing binge that was December, and switching to catching up on some reading.  You know, of those paper things, what do you call them, books?  What people read when they aren’t surfing the internet.

But the hands really do need a break.  I am, as a result, setting aside the schedule for a little while.  Next post out, barring some surprise, will be a review of Robert George & Christopher Tollefsen’s Embryo: A Defense of Human Life.  (Which I have just finished reading, and highly recommend, but won’t be getting to the review for a little while.  Summary: It’s worth purchasing.)  And after that, The Relation of Church and State in the Middle Ages, published by Requiem Press and which is short, affordable, promises to be interesting, and is currently on order — so I haven’t any idea what I’m really getting, just that it looked like my kind of topic.  (And if you read here, probably yours, too.)

Over at the homeschooling blog I’ll be putting up my review of Dark Night of the Soul, followed, I hope, by a review of RP’s children’s book about the story of Our Lady of Victory, and another children’s book I picked up for the godchildren and read last week.

Not sure what else is in the pipeline.  Once DNS goes up I get to pick another Catholic Company book to review, but I haven’t looked to see what the current choices are.  Still a little ways away from that.  Oh and have a pile to work through thanks to my several relatives who sent book money for Christmas (thank you, relatives), so some of that will eventually get here.

Will let you know when things return to normalish at the blog.  Hope you are having a good year.

July is here, time for me to start putting up new articles.  Since tomorrow’s the first Friday, look for an economics article.  Topic will be “structures of justice”, and will tie into the living wage articles I’ve put up from my old blog.  Forecast is for the article to go up later in the day rather than sooner, so smart money says plan to come read Saturday morning.

See you then.

****

Hey and here’s the tentative schedule of articles for whole month – subject to change, but I don’t think it will:

First Friday, Economics: Structures of Justice

Second Friday, History: Squeamishness

Third Friday, Book Review: _A Day in a Medieval City_ by Chiara Frugoni

Fourth Friday, Education: Surprising Foreign Language Helps