A Chance to Win a Chance to Win

 

Today at Mass at the far east side church I didn't really mind the rock band, because we sang some of my favorite Christmas carols for Epiphany, obvious ones like "The First Noel" and "We Three Kings," but also "What Child Is This" and "Hark the Herald." Then we went to the East Side Club, where they had a beautiful Christmas tree.

The Packers were pretty lackluster, and we thought, They're going to lose at home against the Bears! But then they came roaring back, and they were up by one point with 45 seconds to go.... and they let the Bears get a first down, so they were close enough to kick a field goal. Why give us false hope, Packers? We also didn't win anything in the raffle. There's a 50/50 raffle, where you can win half of all the money taken in, so someone won like $250. There's also a meat raffle, and random prizes like koozies and free drinks, and our favorite: pull tabs. These are lottery tickets, so when you buy a raffle ticket, you are buying a chance to win a chance to win. That's so lame that I said it had to be my blog post title.

Then we walked at East Towne Mall, and they have a very big Christmas tree.

We walked as fast as we could for almost twenty minutes, and yet my FitBit said this wasn't nearly enough exercise. It is constantly thinking up new ways to drive me crazy: walking 10,000 steps wasn't good enough for it, so it came up with this thing called "active minutes," and I'm supposed to get at least 22 per day, based on an elevated heart rate. When that didn't prove to be much of a challenge for me, now it has this new thing called "Cardio Load," and I'm supposed to get 52-74 (no idea what the units are) per day, but this vigorous walk that left me exhausted only got me... 8 cardio load! I would have to freakin' kill myself with aerobic exercise to get 52 cardio load! I may just ignore this new directive from the FitBit. It seems unattainable. It's so hard to exercise this time of year, because it's too cold to walk outside, and the health club is inundated with resolution people so it's hard to go there.

Tonight at band practice I tried to convince my bandmates that we should add "John Barleycorn" (the Traffic version) to our playlist. They politely listened to it, and that's probably as far as it will go. After the rock jams at the East Side Club and jamming with my uncle, I find our music kind of boring. I'm not sure if DuoLingo's music course is really teaching me anything either, because now I know how to find B flat and E flat, which are notes I'd rather ignore as a mandolin player. Who needs these keys?? Silly me, thinking the course would help me identify a hemiola or the Phrygian mode. Still, I'm enjoying it.

Here are photos of stuff I have acquired recently. At Atomic Antiques, I got this rosary (on the right) and prayer beads made of rose quartz on the left. The medals on it are puzzling; they seem to have a floral design and maybe stylized Arabic writing? But it's the right configuration to do a Sacred Heart Chaplet.

These are the least practical things I got at Atomic Antiques. The toy clarinet is so jazzy-looking, and today I discovered it does actually make sound, like a deranged harmonica. You can kind of change the pitch with the keys, but not in such a way that you could play a recognizable tune. The thing on the right was described as "a jar of glass squiggles." I cannot think of the circumstances that would call for such an object, but it wasn't that expensive, and it's kind of pretty. I'll probably take it to work and set it on my desk.

These are the rosaries and trivet I got at the Holy Family Shrine in Nebraska. The rosary on the left was made by a local artist, and the one on the right was made in the Czech Republic.

We stopped at an antiques mall east of Lincoln that we had stopped at on our last trip to Nebraska, and Travalon found stuff he liked, but all the rosaries I found were like cheap plastic ones that they wanted way too much for. I did like this crystal of fossilized oysters, so Travalon bought it for me for a second birthday present, besides Black Light Bunny.

Tune in tomorrow when I will finally post Travalon's photos from his trip to the zoo and the glorious sunset he saw on Thursday.

Famous Hat