The Boys Update

The Boys both had half-birthdays this week. Anthony turned 1½ and Damien 3½.

18! Does that mean he can vote?

42. The ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything poopy.

President Obama, the Closet Pro-Lifer

Wedding Photos

The complete wedding photo album is now online! It only took nine years!

From the FB Archives

Just a little thing the "boys" did on Facebook some time ago.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Being of unsound mind, I decided to investigate that dark and frightening world known as Gregorian Chant notation software. Consider this your official warning: that way lies madness.

So far as I could determine, there are six options:

1. Chanter
2. Gregoire
3. GregEdit
4. Caeciliae
5. Gregorio
6. Build a time machine, go back to the sixth century, teach Pope Gregory the Great modern music notation, then come back to the present and use MuseScore, because Gregorian notation will never have existed.

So far as I can determine, option 6 is the simplest and least frustrating method.

What brought this on was a desire to be able to make fresh copies of the chant I use in choir. Sometimes, a chant will be photocopied to illegibility. Sometimes, I swear that we're using the original copies written by Brother McShakyhands of the Order of Blind Friars as he was dying of bubonic plague in the 13th century. Either way, sometimes it's nice to be able to fix up a score.

As our test case, I'll see which software can best duplicate the Alleluia Tone VIII that I've been using:

Week in Review

For the imaginary reader who isn't also Facebook friends with me, I'm going to start archiving some of my statuses and links from Facebook here.

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The Bad Catholic drinking game.

It will be hilarious when Marc's readers die of catastrophic liver failure.

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On Monday:

What is wrong with me?!?! While driving today, I noticed the shadow of the car in front of me rotating about the car as it made the sharp turn through the cloverleaf on-ramp to the freeway. My thought, "Oh, real-time
rendered shadows!"

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Pick a random patron saint for the new year!

I got Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, patron against arthritis and scrupulosity and for final perseverance. I wonder what's in store for me this year?

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So, after hearing from all my Facebook friends with South Bend/Notre Dame connections about how awesome the football team was, I decided to tune into the game on Monday and they got demolished. They must be seriously overrated.

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Quote of the Year/Century/Millenium:

‎"The essence of modernity is the death of the spiritual. A modernist is someone who is more concerned about air pollution than soul pollution. A modernist is someone who wants clean air so he can breathe dirty words. 

"A modernist cares about big things, like whales, more than little things, like fetuses; big things like governments, more than little things like families and neighborhoods; big things like states, which last hundreds of years, more than little things like souls, which last forever." —Peter Kreeft

 Good ol' Peter Kreeft, channeling the ghost of GK Chesterton, it appears.

Christmas Letter 2012

I think everyone I love/care about should have this by now, so I'll post this for the rest of you peons.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx_r0Pcz6kTkZFdFNGhkZGdmSHM/edit

This letter kept escalating. What was supposed to be a quick thing to write the day after Christmas and mail out by that Friday became an increasingly big project, with multiple trips to Office Max for toner, paper, and  more cards (after we ran out!), and to the post office. We finally did mail them before Epiphany, if only just.