To try and find a new blog reader, as Google Reader is dying in just over 2 hours.
First, I tried Feedly, but for some reason, I cannot get this to work on my laptop and the app for my phone is a little clunky.
Next, is Bloglovin.
I’m hoping that this one works a little better.
Ugh! Decisions, decisions.
What have you found that works well?
Sorry for the long hiatus. I have been pretty sick lately. I’m feeling even worse now, if you can imagine, but this has been bugging me all day, so I thought I’d toss it out there to all of you.
I dragged myself to the 8 am Mass, where I attempted to actually participate, but more just tried to hang on to consciousness. I kept looking at those wooden pews and knew that they would hurt on the way down.
Anyway.
During the Prayers of the Faithful, the lector — reading about the dead — said the phrase, “finally freed from their bodies…”
Wait.
What?
That sounds rather … gnostic … to me. Doesn’t it?
Today is the feast day celebrating Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Did you know that you could obtain an indulgence today?
That’s right!
According to Indulgentiarum Doctrina, “The faithful who use with devotion an object of piety (crucifix, cross, rosary, scapular or medal) after it has been duly blessed by any priest, can gain a partial indulgence. But if this object of piety is blessed by the Pope or any bishop, the faithful who use it with devotion can also gain a *plenary* indulgence on the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, provided they also make a profession of faith using any approved formula.”
God bless!
The latest “trend” is for people to share recipes on Facebook.
I love FB, don’t get me wrong, but I find it near-to-impossible to be able to go back and look something up — whether on your wall or someone else’s.
And I can guarantee you that I won’t be making that delicious-looking recipe tonight!
If it’s on FB, it might not have a link to a site. Which means that I can’t Pinterest it (where I keep most of my suggested recipes). And I don’t want to pay membership fees for one of the recipe sites to be able to upload the recipe there.
So…
Unless you suggest a better way (please!), I guess I will post them here, for future reference. 🙂
Doesn’t this just look delicious?!
And here’s how you make it:
2 lbs chicken tenders or 4 large chicken breasts
2 sleeves Ritz crackers
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup whole milk
3 cups cheddar cheese, grated
1 teaspoon dried parsley
Sauce:
1 10 ounce can cream of chicken soup
2 tablespoon sour cream
2 tablespoon butter
Crush crackers. If using chicken breasts and not tenders, cut each chicken breast into 3 large pieces. Pour the milk, cheese and cracker crumbs into 3 separate small pans. Toss the salt and pepper into the cracker crumbs and stir the mixture around to combine. Dip each piece of chicken into the milk and then the cheese. Press the cheese into the chicken with your fingers. Then press the cheesy coated chicken into the cracker crumbs and press it in.
Spray a 9×13 pan with cooking spray and lay the chicken inside the pan. Sprinkle the dried parsley over the chicken. Cover the pan with tin foil and bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Remove the tin foil, bake for an additional 10-15 minutes, or until the edges of the chicken are golden brown and crispy.
In a medium sized sauce pan combine the cream of chicken soup, sour cream and butter with a whisk. Stir it over medium high heat until the sauce is nice and hot. Serve over the chicken.
So… Who wants to come over and try this with me?! 🙂
I’m starting to get hungry for lunch, so I opened my box of organics to see what I have. I found a new kind of mango in there. Smaller, yellow.
Sorry, I have no pictures. It was devoured too quickly.
I’m addition to being perfectly juicy; it had a wonderfully mangoey flavor, plus something unexpected…
It was sour! Not in a bad way, but like a Sour Patch Kid!
YUM!!!
I hope they still have these for my next delivery! I might order a ton! 🙂
Some days, you just can’t help but sing! 🙂
Me and Mary at Christ the King Catholic Church, just prior to the second Adoration of the day! 🙂
You are my sunshine!
My only sunshine!
You make me happy,
When skies are grey!
You’ll never know, dear,
How much I love you!
Please don’t take my sunshine away!
I have a habit for finding trouble. And for being impulsive. Which sometimes gets me into trouble. I have yet to master that “prudence” virtue…
Here is my latest tale:
How It Began: I had noticed the signs advertising a blood draw in our office building when I came in yesterday morning. I didn’t really think too much of it. But when I was headed outside to enjoy the sun during my lunch, I decided to peek my head in there. Of course, they weren’t busy and one of the nurses saw me and invited me in. The next thing I know, I’m signing in to donate.
Of Not Being Prepared: Of course, I didn’t have my ID on me, so when I went back upstairs to grab my wallet, I let my boss know that I was giving blood. I think I said, “There are vampires downstairs. I’m going to give them all of my blood!”
I returned and had gone through all of their preliminary material to prescreen the people who should NOT donate. It was mostly concerned with things like Hepatitis and HIV. There was nothing which applied to me. I answered only the questions that they asked. I did not volunteer any additional information. I mean, if you tell people that you have a terminal illness, they tend to get a little apprehensive about doing random, unnecessary, invasive medical procedures on you. Especially if there are other, healthy individuals to be had.
Why Do I Do These Things? I can’t really tell you why I was so determined to give blood. I’m not really sure myself. I remember growing up that my mom used to give blood all the time, and I thought that was a great thing to do. You could help out a bunch of people. Working in General Surgery, I know that blood tends to be more in demand in the summer months and that insufficient quantities of blood products in the blood bank can delay surgeries from being performed. So, it’s not something to be taken for granted.
And, I just like to help others.
During the Procedure: There are some things I know.
1. I have 3 genetic hypercoagulabilities. So I tend to bleed slowly and clot the needle. This means that the poor nurse attending to me had to constantly re-position the needle and press on my arm to ensure that the blood flowed well. It kinda hurt to have her press like that the whole time and keep playing with the needle. She was nice and made comments about how I was going to have her fingerprints embossed on my flesh. I told her she could autograph them.
2. I don’t deal well with losing blood. I’m not afraid of the sight of blood or anything like that; I just don’t react well. I get nauseated and light-headed and have been known to pass out. I prayed that this wouldn’t happen.
3. This means that I kept up a string of Hail Marys for the duration of the procedure. And since I was hurting (see #4 for additional reasons), it was hard for me to focus on the actual words of the Hail Mary. This happens a lot. So, I have developed a habit of praying “Half Marys” — just “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners NOW and at the hour of our death. Amen.” It’s all I can manage at times.
4. HOWEVER… Even during the procedure, I could feel myself getting nauseated, colder, and the fingers on the arm that had the big needle in it were going numb, even though I was rolling the little paper cylinder that they give you.
5. I think the other nurse actually called me “slow” to my face. The nurse who was playing with my needle the whole time said I was “very patient”. I like her better.
After the Giving: They directed me over to the corner of the room to grab my juice and cookies. I am still a little bitter that they don’t have sandwiches and T-shirts, too, like the Central Florida Blood Bank does. That’s one classy operation, right there. 🙂 Anywhoo, I was already late getting back to work, so I asked the guy if I could just grab my juice and go. He was a little hesitant, as donors are *supposed* to wait there 10-15 minutes to make sure that they are okay.
I couldn’t wait, so he loaded me up with 2 juices and a package of cookies and hoped audibly that I wouldn’t be found lying in the hallway on the way back to the office.
Pfft! Of course not! I wouldn’t do that!
Catastrophe: I would wait until after I was back at my desk before passing out! Good thing for me that I typically have a lot of presyncope symptoms and can tell when this is happening. So, I had time to get out of my chair and lay down on the floor (and text people, LOL!) first. While I was laying there, I could hear people asking each other, “Is she okay? She’s laying on the floor.” Um. Way to wonder about me instead of coming over to *see* if I’m okay???
Well, this passed soon enough. And my boss got to comment on how white I was. “You are like white-white-white. Whiter than you normally are.” Which is basically transparent. 🙂
I drank both my juices and ate my cookies and eventually I was able to get off the floor and go back to work.
Am I in Trouble? Close to the end of the day, I got an e-mail from a manager in the Public Relations department, asking if I had given blood at the NCAC (my office) that day. Um…. yes? Was I in trouble? For leaving the blood donation site early? For having problems when I got back to my desk?
As it turns out… NO! 🙂 I had won a prize! Apparently, in an effort to get more employees to give blood, they entered everyone in a drawing. So, I won a duffle bag full of U of M swag: an umbrella, a USB fan, a T-shirt, a Frisbee and a travel cold-cup (for my Starbucks, of course). 🙂
Now, that almost makes it all worth it right there!
(If, of course, it wasn’t ALREADY worth it due to the helping save other people’s lives and stuff….)
My life… is always exciting! 🙂 I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Aftermath:
It turns out that I ended up getting nerve damage and had a T-Rex arm (unable to fully straighten it without a lightning bolt of pain from elbow to wrist). Fun times.
God Bless!
For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at Conversion Diary!
Oooh! Shiny object!
The distracted data miner is totally me. I don’t necessarily to this on the internet, but I do find that even when I am reading something, I interrupt myself to look up some tangential fact, etc.
And I don’t know how to be still and not think.
Okay! I didn’t do so well on the last reading challenge, probably because I started it with only a few days left, so here I will try again! 🙂
Duration: June 1, 2013 – August 31, 2013
We are a YA Book Club, so all books should be young adult.
You have 3 months to read 10 YA books that satisfy following requirements:
1) Read a book that from ALA’s 2013 Teens’ Top Ten Nominations list. The list can be found here. If you find nothing you want to read on that list, you may read from other other years. The full list is here.
2) Read a book that is a new release published in June, July, or August of 2013. GoodReads offers lists of the most popular new releases by month, they might help you to make your choices – June, July, or August (If you have difficulties obtaining these new books, you can read a release from the same months in 2012).
3) Read a book set in summer or that has a summery cover (beach and such).
4) Read a book whose title starts with one of the letters of the word SUMMER.
5) Read a classic title.
6) Read a book with a cover that does not have a person on it. [This may be harder than you think!]
7) Read a book that involves traveling: a road trip, a trip or moving to another state, country, or continent.
8) Read a book that is funny.
9) Read an author’s debut novel (a list of this year’s debut authors can be found here.)
10) Read a book which is a 5-star favorite of one of your GoodReads friends (if you’ve yet to make any GoodRead’s friends, choose a 5-star favorite of a co-moderator – and friend them if you want!)
And, as a reminder to me, I should post my progress on their page. I’m not sure how Goodreads tracks this…. 🙂
I’ll try to keep this post updated with my progress, as well!
What are you guys reading this summer?
Today is a day for trying new things! 🙂 So, after seeing a bunch of my friends joining in on this link-up thing, I decided to join in! (But only the fun ones…)
Hallie runs a website called Moxie Wife, and she hosts Five Favorites on Wednesdays. And that’s all you have to do. List 5 of your favorites. However you interpret that. 🙂 Sweet! 🙂 And good thing for me that it is weekly, as my preferences change quickly!
So here are some things this week that I am enjoying:
This weather. Maybe not the rainy days, but the sunshiny warm-but-not-sticky days. I usually don’t do this, but lately I have been enjoying going outside on my lunch hour and spending some time in the sun at one of the picnic tables. I try to ignore the fact that everyone in the building can look out their window and see me. 🙂
Photography.
These are some wildflowers at the edge of the wadi (?) on the front lawn of my workplace.
Learning. I don’t think I will ever stop learning. I go to school as much as I can (afford). I am currently in the middle of pursuing a Master’s degree in Theology, but I read everything I can get my hands on. And I tend to look up things I don’t understand. Like the word “wadi” used in the last Favorite. 🙂 I kept hearing that term when reading the Bible, but I had no idea what a wadi was. So, I asked Google (who knows all).
I found out that a wadi is a dry riverbed or drainage course that is typically dry, except after heavy rains. This is pretty spot-on for what we have surrounding our office building, so I keep calling it a wadi. 🙂 I think most other people around here (and me, previously) would have called it a creek. (The creek is dry; the creek has water in it from the rain…)
Here is my wadi:
Prayer. I am working on reinvigorating my prayer life. And adding more discipline into my life in general. But this week, I have added more time in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, recommitted myself to praying at least an hour per day, recommitted to journaling when I pray, and am starting a new fast. For various medical reasons, I don’t do fasting from food very well. So, I will be fasting from Facebook. I’m on FB *constantly*, so this really will be a sacrifice for me. 🙂 I get that I’m still on Twitter and the internet and blogging and stuff, but I want to pick something that I can do and stick with it. I can always expand later when it becomes a habit, but what I don’t want to do is to make it some huge thing that I will be unfaithful to in a week or so. I think that small things, done with great love and faithfulness tend to have more import than short-lived grandiose offerings. 🙂 (And I like St. Therese of Lisieux, which might explain things a bit…)
Challenges. I’m very competitive. Even with myself. 🙂 I had spoken previously about a challenge that I found on my Goodreads group, but unfortunately, due to the lateness of finding the challenge and the hours of the library surrounding the Memorial Day holiday, I was unable to complete it. However!!! There is now a new challenge, and since I’m finding out about it sooner, hopefully I will be able to complete this one! 🙂
I suppose a corollary Favorite would be reading. This extends to all kinds of media-consumption: music, movies, etc. 🙂
I’ll post about the new challenge shortly. (Just don’t hold me to today… No guarantees!)
And I’m still plugging away at my C25K program, although I have been getting very tired recently and having more pain, so there’s been more time between running sessions than I’d like. Keep cheering me on; I need it! 🙂
Until next time! Join me at Hallie’s for some more Five Favorites!
Paroxysm of Giggles / Critical Mass 