Remember when I moved in you...

St. Albert's has been saved. The Archbishop announced today that the Weymouth church will reopen, in full capacity.

St. Anselm's has been saved. The Archbishop announced today that the Sudbury church will become a chapel of St. George's.

St. Jeremiah remains in limbo.

This goes to show all of those who said it couldn't be done, that you have all been wrong. Nothing is unacheivable, when a dedicated group put forth the effort.

And when my church is saved, I will laugh. No amount of persuasion is going to stop me from looking upon those who said we couldn't do it with my chin in the air.

-----

In other news, I'm owed an apology. And my shoulder will freeze until that comes to pass.

But now, you never show that to me, do you?

Some recent events have led me to question whether I've been completely honest about who I am on this website. So now, I'm going to clarify.

I am not a leader. I am much more comfortable in a role where I am not charged with the responsibility of deciding for others. However, when put into a position where I am forced to lead, I can fake it.

I am a good liar. If the situation arises, I can think on my feet and hold a story.

If I am fighting with someone, I tend to worry about how to fix it. I don't like being in conflict with people. I can plan what I'm going to say for hours ahead of time, but never have the guts to actually say it.

I will take the path of least resistance if I find it suitable. Even if it doesn't resolve everything for me, I will make things easier for myself.

I have and will always stand by what I write. I do not regret anything I put into print. And I will defend it when challenged.

I have the tendency to get defensive when my integrity is attacked. And I interpret an attack on my integrity freely.

I am cynical and sarcastic. I can be sardonic and caustic. But I do not cross into the area where I would become pessimistic and defeatist.

I am not in the habit of talking about people behind their backs.

I do not enjoy confrontations, but I am willing to have them if I need to.

I like making people laugh. If it's clear that that's what I'm doing, don't take me too seriously.

But when I try to give advice, I'm very serious. I don't do that lightly.

I am not perfect. I don't know everything. Even if I act as if I do, I don't. I know my own limitations.

I am confident. I am not arrogant, though I have been interpreted as such.

I know what I want, and I will stop at little to get it. This is not selfishness, it is determination.

I know who I am. Who are you?

Brief Note

Just a note to mention that I've opened up the comments function to all, not just Blogspot.com users.

What's real and going on below...

Open Letter to Father Calhoun:

I don't know if I'd ever have the courage to say any of this to you in person. Thankfully, I have this at my disposal, a tool which I've not only found useful, but effective in getting a message across to people. Apparently more people read this site than I originally suspected.

I was brought up to have the utmost respect for the clergy. You don't make jokes with the priest, you don't talk back to the priest, you don't turn your back on the priest. Stuff like that. For a very long time, it's served me quite well. I can't say I've known any priests as well as I've come to know you, though. I was too young when Fr. Murray left to have been able to make any appreciable connection. And Fr. O'Connor had the ability to be aloof. I'm sure he didn't mean to, but it was something I felt, as a child.

And then Fr. Maguire was taken from the parish after only three short years. He absolutely turned the parish around - revived the CCD program, restored attendance figures, and saved our church from the potential of a 'red-light' classification, a distinction of which I'm sure I need not clarify. Granted, Fr. Maguire was one for the more ritualistic aspects of the church, and thus didn't condone much loitering and idle chatter after the Mass ended. "The Mass has ended" meant "we're done; now go home."

But I will admit to getting to know you a great deal better than any of your predecessors with whom I was familiar. You've dined at my house on a number of occasions, and you're always willing to talk to us about whatever we wish, be it the dogs, the weather, or the church. And I thank you for that, and for your friendship. Don't think I haven't noticed that every time somebody you know comes up for the Eucharist, you address them by name.

But like I said, I have the utmost respect for anybody willing to take on the vows of the priesthood, and it's caused a lack of honesty on my part with you. On at least the most recent occasion that you visited my house, likely between Christmas and New Year's last year, I deliberately made myself scarce. I've disagreed with your stance on the church closing issue for quite some time now, but I wouldn't disrespect you or the office you hold by making this a grand point of mine.

"'The time has come', the Walrus said, 'to talk of other things.'" I played that strategy for a long time. Rather than being up-front and honest about what I thought about the position you were taking, I bit my tongue and instead conversed with you over other topics, if and when we ever spoke.

However, with this forum, I no longer will hide behind that shield. There are things I want to say, and right now, I'm going to say them in the way I best know how, through my fingers, rather than my tongue.

What will you do if and when this is all overturned? That would absolutely be a slap in the face to all you've tried to accomplish since your re-assignment. I will admit, I refused to consider the possibility last May that we would be listed to close. I didn't want to cross that bridge until we got to it, and even then, I didn't want to cross it at all. But now that bridge is crossed and burned. We can never go back to the way it was last April.

I have great faith that my church, my home church, will be open to see another Easter, another fifty Easters, another one hundred Easters. What will you say when this comes to fruition? 'Gee, folks, I wanted you all to go with me to St. George, but now that we don't have to, c'mon back!' I don't think it's going to fly that easily. We've been jerked around one too many times, and whiplash has begun to set in.

How will you bring back the flock you've tried so hard to move? As my journalism teacher would say, 'the toothpaste is out of the tube.' It's become painfully clear that even when you feel the Archdiocese is completely in the wrong, you're willing to bite the bullet and take what they give you. And while, for some, this is a respectable trait, I wish you hadn't taken that position. No, I'm not asking you to fall on your sword, like Fr. Fitzgerald and Fr. Bowers have. But even in private, when there is no threat to your job security, you've expressed a hope that we'd all just give up our Crusade and follow down the road.

But what I am doing is just that, a Crusade. In stark contrast to your homily today, I have never been sad about the situation I'm in. I have been in denial; I have been indignant; and yes, I have even, at one point, come to an acceptance of the fact. But that was short-lived, and now, I am defiant. Perhaps I am one of a small group of those who were never convinced it was over. The small group who never became 'saddened' by it. That morning, I shed nary a tear nor a sigh for my church, but the wounds inflicted upon me began to fester. And, as a dog which has been scarred in a fight, I come back stronger than I did before.

I can picture your response to this letter: 'I'm sorry you feel that way.' But I have no doubts for you to assuage, nor fears for you to calm. What I have is my wrath, and I will not let that be put aside so simply.

I do not write this as an act of disrespect. I write this as an explanation for my behavior over the past six months. I write this so that you may know that I cannot, out of my respect for your position, just allow this to happen. That respect is part of what drives me. You might feel that you cannot speak out quite publicly about your disapproval, so I am taking that burden upon myself. My grievances with you come from your attempts to stop me.

And I pray that you begin work on the speech of rededication for this parish, for I remain ever-faithful that you will need that in two weeks.

God Bless,

Adam

There was a time, you'd let me know...

And thus begins the most sacred week in the Catholic Calendar, Holy Week. The next few days are referred to as the Triduum. As I alluded to in an earlier entry, it could also be a very trying period of time.

Tomorrow is Holy Thursday. The day of the Last Supper. My plans are simple - eat well at night and go to Mass at St. Clement's, maybe stay afterward for a brief period of Adoration. (I have no plans.)

Friday will be a bit more interesting. I'm not going to skip my Friday morning class, so I'll be awake for most of the day. I found out that the Sacred Space, the small, non-denominational spiritual area here, is having a Good Friday service at noon. The leaders of that service will be Fr. Unni and Ms. Hwang, the Catholic chaplain and Newman Club head, respectively. I'm considering attending. I don't feel as if I'm betraying my own promise not to attend St. Cecilia's, if I were to do so. It's an interesting scenario. There's that, or there's a Stations of the Cross service at St. Clement's. I'm not sure if I will do either, if any, yet.

And then I go home at 1:30ish, to participate in the Good Friday service at home, St. J's. I'll be the voice of God for a procession during which sacred symbols are brought forward. That job was most recently held by our since-departed choir director, so I've got big shoes to fill.

Holy Saturday, AKA Easter Vigil, is a marathon mass. But I'm not doing it this year. They're holding that Mass at St. George, and I won't do that. I'm taking a similar attitude toward St. George that I am toward St. Cecilia. Won't go there. Only difference being, I won't go there even when St. J's is resolved.

And then Easter Sunday at St. Jeremiah. And like I said, if they give me a reason to walk out, I won't be stopped by the type of chair I sit in this time. And I probably won't do it as subtly as I did back a few months ago, when I got Communion and left.

I don't really have that much to say tonight, I just wanted to keep my streak going.

It's a cold, and it's a broken Hallelujah.

I want to think I've kept this journal somewhat more mental, more thoughtful than most 'blogs.' Much less superficial, if you will. I can't say with any kind of confidence whether or not I've succeeded, but for the purposes of this entry, I'll pretend I have.

I had a discussion today about how schedules for next year are going to pan out for the three of us (Justin, Ben, and myself). Ben remarked that next year's will suck for him because he's got to take a good deal of labs. I said something about how it seems that either he's always working or not working at all. A matter of extremes. Both of them then remarked that it seems like I hardly ever work. I told them that, yeah, I don't do as much as a given Engineering major or math major. But it sure as hell ain't affecting me. I had a 3.834 after last semester, and I don't see this semester being worse. Justin said he was working his ass off to keep a 3.0, and all I could do was just apologize for the way it's all working.

And I realized later that it's not necessarily that I work less than other people. It's just that I do it in a different way, and with different results.

I know how to play the system. My schedule is beautiful - two days where I have an 8 AM class and then the rest of the day off, two days where I start at 11:45, and one day where I start at 2:50. This isn't coincidence. Arts and Sciences majors have to fulfill some requirements for the core curriculum. I just found that I could take Natural Disasters and Catastrophes to get the Natural World credit. Other people go with Bio and have to do a lab. Then they complain that they have a lot of work and I'm not doing any.

My Fine Arts credit's out of the way with the Intro. to Music class I took last semester. No homework, no real tests, no textbook, none of that. It was a genuinely interesting class, but it didn't follow the classic 'class' guidelines. And I took that instead of, say, an Art class that would require me to go to the MFA once a week (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just inconvenient).

My Russian class is pretty simple. I will admit, I feel like I'm only studying for tests in that class, and not actually learning the language, but I'm starting to change that. I've actually just hung some index cards with Russian script on them all over the suite. These are words I should already know, but don't. My plan is to say the Russian word out-loud just about every time I see the card. It ought to succeed for the given words.

And then I've heard a couple people talk about long essays they have to write and how time-consuming it is. Writing has always come pretty easy to me. I may not necessarily write better than most people, but I definitely write faster than most. And at the risk of sounding boastful, I tend not to need to edit. I don't screw it up the first time. It's one of the reasons I'm good at what I do - I can sit down to write a column, finish a 8-900 word piece in less than 45 minutes, and not need more than 2 minutes' worth of revision before I feel it's fair to send. Yeah, it makes me sound like a jackass, but I don't edit myself cause I don't have to. That's how I think - in good grammar.

Yeah, so that's my little rant about why it might seem like I don't work at all, but I do. I put in a little bit of effort to get the classes I want when I want them. I put in enough effort to get the job done for most classes, and more if I actually give a damn.

----

I guess that while I've got this captive audience, I'll get a few other things off my chest that have been nagging at me lately:

1. Some people need to take life a little less seriously. There's certainly a time and place for righteous anger, like when you're missing the start of the big baseball game during Spring Break. But getting ridiculously angry while playing MarioKart with friends from the floor is neither. Yes, the game can suck at times. Believe me, I know. I tend to get the crap kicked out of me while playing, and it ain't because I'm a bad driver, it's cause items will hit me in waves, sidelining me for too long to get back into a race. But it's not worth getting worked up about. You'll give yourself an ulcer that way. I have a sweatshirt (and sundry t-shirts) that has a slogan on it; it's a philosophy I've tried to live by for a while: 'Life is Good.' Just remember that, Mr. Big Picture. Life is Good.

2. I don't enjoy my current extracurricular activity. I'm not really going to try and hide it anymore - it's not what I expected and I don't have fun when I'm doing it. When an activity stops being something you look forward to and starts becoming a chore, it's time to stop. And I've felt that way about this particular activity for quite some time now, dating back to mid-January. But I've (somewhat stubbornly) refused to quit because it would leave this group high and dry. I'm one of only three guys in the group, and they need all of us for any given piece. But after this semester, I'm done. I'd put it at about 95% that I won't be returning in the fall. I considered running for President in the next coming elections, so that on the off-chance I won, I could run things my way and see how it worked, but I'm not so sure. If I didn't win, I would leave the group, and I won't even give the appearance of sour grapes.

----

I guess that's all I have to say for now. I'm sure that I'll think of other stuff, though, as soon as I publish this post.

Jared's Exhibit

Jared's Exhibit
Originally uploaded by Cold Hallelujah.

Love is not a victory march...

Spring Break Column

Yeah, that starts out this entry pretty well. If patience allows, this entry will be pretty comprehensive for the last couple weeks.

March Madness. I get into it every year. I'll skim some team profiles and then make my picks based on that, and I usually hover around the mediocrity mark. I'll try to pick the right Cinderella, and while I might have them threaten to do it, they almost never pull it off.

I had a good year this year. It's not over, obviously, but I don't think I've got a chance anymore. But I got the Cinderella right in UW-Milwaukee. I also called the Vermont-Syracuse upset and the UAB-LSU game. However, my bracket pretty much bit it when I lost two Elite Eights (Kansas, Georgia Tech) and my tournament runner-up (Wake Forest) in a short period of time. I'm pretty psyched that my Austin bracket is still perfect, though. 12 for 12. And my Chicago bracket only missed two in the first round, and no Sweet Sixteens.

-----

This past week has been fantastic. It's unreal how great it was. Monday, I got an email from my editor telling me my Spring Break column was going to run Friday 'in all its' glory'. It's 1200 words long. It ran uncut. That is really, quite cool.

Tuesday saw the end of a fight my friend and I were having. Yeah, we fight occasionally, but this one was pretty bad. That's OK, though. No harm, no foul.

Wednesday was the best of all. I got to sleep until about quarter past one in the afternoon. Didn't miss any classes - my first one that day started at ten of three. That class, Natural Disasters, was comprised of ten minutes of note-taking, and then a movie about avalanches which was actually pretty cool. Oh, and it got us out half an hour early.

During that half hour, I got a phone call from Ben, my roommate for next year, saying we were supposed to pick next year's housing assignment at 5 PM. Well, I had a 4:30-5:40 class, so that wasn't going to work. I'd have skipped, but we had a test scheduled. Problem. I asked the professor if I could leave as soon as I was done with the test, and he had no problem with it. I did manage to get out after kicking the crap out of the test, but it wasn't in time:

I got another phone call as soon as I left Ryder Hall. It was Ben, and he had a room. All he needed was for me to sign off on it. It was a corner room in West Village C. Fan-freaking-tastic. I did it, not even giving it a second thought. I found Ben on my walk back from Ryder (what, did you think I was going to go back to class?) and got a few more details. Of course, while we were doing this, we were hitting up Outtakes for some food.

I get back to the dorm with Ben, who starts to look up the names of the people we're rooming with. He's looking, and I run down to the basement to check my mail. Two official-looking envelopes await. I bring them back upstairs before opening them, and they're, guess what, my Red Sox tickets. Three bleacher seats for the Friday night series opener against the Pirates in mid-June, and two Pesky's Pole field box seats for Orlando Cabrera and Lou Merloni's return to Fenway in early June. Also a series opener, and also a Friday night. Damn, I'm on a roll.

We go to dinner at Stetson West, and much to my glee, instead of the normal deli sandwich line, there's a dessert crepe line in it's place. Butterscotch mousse in the crepe, topped with warm chocolate sauce and homemade whipped cream, and then sprinkled with Heath topping. How frigging lucky can I get?

I decide to ride the wave of luck and get some scratch tickets, cashing an old one I still had for five bucks, and throwing in four of my own. While I didn't make all of the money back, I made a five dollar win on the last ticket.

Unreal.

Thursday started March Madness, and I did damn well that day. I also found out that the other group of guys landed a suite in West C, upstairs and across the hall from the room Ben and I are in. That made me quite happy, as I wasn't very confident that any of us would hang out if we were split up very far (think Willis Hall and Loftman Hall).

And Friday, until the Kansas game, produced more bracket success.

I can't believe how great a week that was. I got that test back today (the one I raced through to try and get to Housing) and got an A-. Only two people in the class of 16 did well enough that the professor isn't making us retake it on Wednesday. I also kicked the crap out of a Disasters test today, so the lucky streak continues.

---

Church stuff: I went to yesterday's Souvenir Sunday Mass at St. Clement. Nothing too surprising there, really. But this week will be a bit more interesting. I plan on going to the Holy Thursday Mass at St. Clement that night, and then heading home on Friday for Good Friday Services at St. Jeremiah. I will be the voice of God for a procession during which the sacred symbols are brought to the altar. Holy Saturday, I will not attend the marathon Mass. They moved it to St. George, and I've decided that should we be unsuccessful in our fight, I will not attend that church. I am not obligated to sing at that Mass, so I have no intention of being there. And then on Easter Sunday, I'll be back at St. Jeremiah again, hoping not to hear another anti-Appeals Committee homily.

I've walked out on one of those once, and it took fierce resolve to stop me from doing it last time. But if they do it on Easter Sunday, the holiest day in the Catholic Calendar, I will not stop. If they're going to try and win public support by trashing my committee on the day during which even the most apathetic Catholics go to Mass, I will walk out on whomever is speaking. And I won't be stopped by my own presence in the choir this time. So help me God, I will make it damn clear that I am incensed by the remarks.

Don't try me, Deacon.

----

Cory and Topanga came to life on Fourth Floor. Bonnie and Andy broke up for a few days last week, but got together again last night. Far as my memory goes to what they've said, they've been together 4 years.

I honestly didn't expect them to stay separated. Like I said, Cory and Topanga. Only it took three, four days instead of three, four episodes.