leapinggnome.org

Sheesh, it’s been over a month since I’ve updated here again. 🙁 Today we celebrate the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ. So far the weekend has gone quite well. Last night I attended my first ever Catholic Easter Vigil. It was quite interesting. The first thing that surprised me was the service started out with us all lighting candles. The candles each symbolized Christ’s light inside of us (I think). Much of the first part of the service was conducted entirely by candlelight. It was kinda neat.

The reason I found myself at a Catholic vigil is that a good friend of mine became a confirmed Catholic at the service. It’s kinda like the profession of faith we do in the CRC, perhaps a little more involved. There were several people being confirmed last night plus 2 water baptisms and a couple of first communions, I think. There was also a regular sermon and a general communion. We ended up being at the church for about 4 hours (!). It was nice that they served cake and ice cream at the end. It was neat and I’m glad I went. May the Spirit of God be with all those recently confirmed!

As a side note, I try to go to about 1 Catholic mass every year. It’s my quota. So far this year I’ve made it to 3, not including the 4 hour Easter Vigil confirmation spectacular. As far as I’m concerned, I think my quota for catholic services is met until about 2013.

Heh…totally called that one wrong. Winter Carnival is done and gone, but we had a good time. Statues turned out pretty well and the all-nighter was a blast. Now the statues are covered in snow and the signs indicating what place each took are looking pretty weathered. Mama’s Boys basically swept all the categories, which is pretty awesome. They won first in the overall category as well as statue. It’s nice to hear the hall is doing well at least in terms of participation, even though I am not very involved in it anymore.

The other great thing about winter carnival is lots of friends are in town. Carny brings in loads of people from everywhere. Most importantly it brings in old friends who have graduated or left MTU for other reasons. Curt and Tressa made the voyage up here from Ohio, and it was great to have them around for the long weekend. Unfortunately, a fairly hefty blizzard/cold front moved into the area Saturday (the week before last) and brought us wind chills of -30 and below. When Curt and Tressa were headed back downstate, they were actually turned away at Marquette – many of the roads south of there including most of US 2 and the Mackinac bridge were closed. Luckily they made it home safely, though they had to add about 8 hours onto their already long trip driving the long way around the lake. Time for bed…later.

Well, I said I’d do a post about my recent car troubles. The alternator went out in my car a couple of weeks ago. I think I first started seeing the battery light in my car on my way up from Christmas break. I sortof dismissed it as it had only flickered anyway, but then a couple of days later I noticed that my windshield wipers seemed to be moving slower than normal. And the battery light was appearing more frequently. It became fully apparent that I had a problem when we took my car to pick up Jeremy at the airport and…my car completely died a quarter mile after we picked him up. Luckily we were able to give Nik a call. He showed up and we charged my battery a bit using his car, enough for me to limp home anyway.

The last 2 weeks I’ve been placing my car on a makeshift battery charger overnight. My car can make it to campus and back about at least 3 times on a charge…in the daytime. At night my range gets significantly reduced. Anyway, I was able to get a deal on a used alternator on ebay and installed that in my car the friday before last. Let me tell you, it’s great to have an alternator again. Not only can I skip plugging my car in every night, but I can use the headlights, the blower fan, the rear defrost…it’s almost like having a whole new car! It’s true you don’t know what you have till it’s gone.

Well I think my alliteration quota for this year has been met. I’ll post again surely by next weekend (winter carnival!).