The Catholic Cricket

This time I’m using iBlogger, which looks much better so far. I need to play with it more to see how well it works, but it’s not bad. It supports multiple blogs, which is nice.

If it worked, there should be a picture of Evelyn holding a drawing of the new baby in mommy’s tummy (“she’s crying”, according to E). I’d like to be able to move that picture within my post, but it doesn’t look possible right now.

And this post should also include my current location.

Looks good, although it’s a bit cumbersome switching between edit text mode and the preview/extras screen that adds images, location, and links.

And to test the links, let’s add one:
Loudest Cricket
Yeah, it probably would have been faster to type the HTML code.

Well, I’ll give it a chance since I spent $0.99 on it. It’s definitely a steal at that price, if everything works the way it’s supposed to.

Edit: Well, it mostly worked. It used the wrong location in the Google Maps link. There must be a way to update it, otherwise the Location feature is pretty much useless.

Steve Skojec over at Inside Catholic made an interesting point in an article a couple of days ago.  The estimates for the number of people expected (at the time) to attend the inauguration of (then) President-Elect Obama was 1.5 million people (I haven’t seen “official” estimates of the actual number yet).  This is really close to the number of unborn babies killed each year through abortion.

Go look at pictures of how crowded the Mall was.  That’s how many babies were killed last year.

For another perspective of what abortion has done since 1973, look at the total.  Say there have been around 50 million abortions since unrestricted access to abortion was discovered in the Constitution (it’s hard to know for sure, since reporting is sketchy at best).  That’s the population of the west coast of the US.  Eliminate all of the people in California, Oregon, and Washington.  Or it’s the entire population of Canada one and a half times.  Or it’s half of Mexico.  Or it’s more than the populations of the 50 most populous cities in the US combined.  And that’s just abortions performed in the US.

This country has said for the past 36 years that it’s ok that we’ve killed about 25% of our children each year.

Pray for an end to this horror.

In an effort to update this blog more often, I’m trying out various blog-authoring apps on the iPhone. This was written with BlogWriter Lite.

It looks like it’s ok, and the full version is supposed to add some other functionality. But I’ll be trying other apps as well.

It’d be nice if I could scroll the text I’ve written so far, and if there was a preview button. ahh well, what should I expect from a free app?

Peter decided to draw a picture of a castle in Heaven.

The star on the top right is the one the wise men followed.  That’s Satan in the barred cell in the left-hand tower.  Obviously there are the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the castle walls, and a rainbow over the doors.  What I thought was an apple tree on the left is actually a tomato plant.

A quick and easy meme.  I’ve done the ones in bold.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower 
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language 
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied 
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car 
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day

Consider yourself tagged if you have a blog and still bother reading this rarely-updated blog that’ll probably change again in 6 months.

I haven’t updated Lily’s status in ages (partially due to the splitting of www.siekierski.com and catholic.siekierski.com), but since I’m messing around with things, and testing out the gallery plugin, I thought I’d toss in an update.

Lily is now 2.  Wow!  She’s a big sister, although I think her little sister is going to pass her up in size soon.  Her hearing, which was previously determined to be in the “mild hearing loss” range, is in the normal range now, so she’s been trying things without hearing aids for the past month, and will continue to do so for the rest of the year.  After that, they’ll evaluate her speech development and make sure it’s not stagnant (it’s definitely lagging).

She is receiving help through the Macomb ISD, where she has classes, and physical and occupational therapy.

Lily is on absolutely no medication now.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  She hasn’t needed a breathing treatment in months, either.  She’s come a long way.

Anyhow, a picture, if it’ll work.

So say some.

I think there are good reasons to argue so, and they’re listed at the above link.

I’ve heard various people make the claim that McCain lost the election, in part, because of voters’ dislike of what Bush did in office, and then go on a tear about how bad Bush has been.  The same people frequently, in nearly the same breath, complain about the bias in media reporting and how that bias incorrectly shifts peoples’ perception about the economy, the war, and pretty much everything else.

I wonder.  Do the people saying this realize that the same applies to Bush as applies to the reporting on the economy?  For years, the media has been talking down the economy.  Everything is doom and gloom, and so people come to think it’s doom and gloom, even if they personally are doing fine.  In the same vein, the media has spent the past 8 years talking down everything the President has done.  No news story about the President comes out that doesn’t have a negative spin.  And so people become very negative about what the President has done.  Said long enough, and loud enough, it became accepted as fact.

People didn’t vote against the Republican candidate because they were voting against the “failed policies” of 8 years of Bush.  They voted against the negative media-made image of Bush.

If people fail to recognize that, then the MSM will be able to continue misinforming us while influencing our decisions.

I expect that the next four years will be a riot of worshipful articles about Obama, where everything will be spun to put him in the best possible light, just as Bush was always shown in the worst possible.  It is no more true that Obama will have done no wrong than it is that Bush did no right.

Keep that in mind, and remember that your perceptions can be deceived, tricked, if you’re not vigilant.  It’s easy to miss something like this.

I’d like to see the phrase “thrown under the bus” get thrown under the bus.

The bus should then be backed up and run forward a few times, and then the driver can get out and kick the phrase a few times just to make sure it’s dead before pouring gasoline on it and tossing on a lit match, basking in the warmth provided on a cold autumn day.

Please?  I’m really tired of hearing it.  Find some new phrases, everyone.  Expand your vocabulary.

On my way home from work today, I took note of the gas price.

$2.15 (I round that extra $0.009 up)

It seems to me that during the summer, there were times I paid twice that.  $4.30

So what caused the price of gas to drop by 50%?  It wasn’t any government program that I’m aware of.  For all the talking they did during the summer, for all of the concern they expressed, and even that time during the summer recess when Republicans stayed after Speaker Pelosi turned off the lights, our government did nothing that changed the price.

It seems that while the government is ineffectual, the market took care of things all on its own.