De Trinitate

One advantage of living in a college town is that there are plenty of overeducated people around, and some of them are willing to teach theology classes at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety. One such person is Mr. Nawlins, the man who gave me a five-page list of all the places I needed to see in the Crescent City back in August of 2005. (True story: when Katrina hit and I got my money back for the train fare and the hotel, I donated it to the relief effort, and then T suggested we go to Vegas, so I ended up sort of paying for two vacations. When I told Mr. Nawlins about our alternate plans, he said, "You couldn't go to Sodom so you're going to Gomorrah.") Mr. Nawlins is currently teaching a class on Augustine's De Trinitate, but I missed the first few classes and have been too intimidated to attend it since then.

However, last night I did meet up with the class at an Italian restaurant for Mr. Nawlins' birthday. (Have you ever noticed that, whenever you least want to go to parties and eat cake, suddenly everyone has a birthday? The first year I seriously gave up chocolate for Lent, suddenly everyone I knew was a Pisces and all offended if I wouldn't eat their birthday cake. I don't remember ever knowing so many fellow Capricorns before, but of course now that I am in "training" I had TWO parties for myself, then the Leprechaun and his wife, and now Mr. Nawlins! And now they're going to have a luncheon for all us January birthdays at work!!)

Speaking of training, at dinner everyone was talking about how things in the world tend to divide up naturally in threes, so I offhandedly mentioned the triathlon and - oops! Now I HAVE to do it because one other lady is really serious about doing it with me, and Anna Banana 2 might be interested as well! (She and I had long ago planned to attempt a baby triathlon, but we both kept getting injured or something, so it never happened.) We discussed how maybe this time of year a biathlon (skiing and shooting) would be a better option, and someone mentioned putting them together to do a pentathlon, and someone else said didn't that already exist? So we came up with our own pentathlon:

1. Swinging on a vine over a deep chasm.
2. Jumping into the river in the chasm and swimming out to sea.
3. Scaling a cliff rising out of the sea.
4. Jumping over the crater of an active volcano.

And wouldn't you know that I've already forgotten #5! Unless #4 was #5 and there was another one in there somewhere... If you have any suggestions for an appropriate #5, feel free to let me know. Nothing could be crazier than what the one-fourth Basque guy who was there last night told us about, an extreme marathon in Death Valley, which entails running 100 miles. RUNNING 100 miles?!?!? I've never even biked that far in one day! I've only barely made it 75 miles in six hours. That extreme marathon would take me three weeks to do!

Guess I'd better start training now!

Famous Hat