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Sunday Gratitude – 5.IV.2026
To those celebrating today – Christ is Risen! – Happy Easter!
And then there are the “weird” ones here who are still waiting another week, among which I count myself. There have been a lot of services already – yesterday, I think I was in church for nearly four hours. I’ve really struggled this Lent; from the beginning, I felt less ready for it than most years and this year… wow. For the greater part of Lent, I believed that the Orthodox were also going to be celebrating Pascha today, and it was only looking at the calendar more carefully a couple of weeks ago when I realized that no, there’s a one-week difference. I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting to spend so much time in church this weekend, but I was at vigil last night, and I certainly had the feeling of moving from the darkness into the light, and by the time the service was over, there was an air of hopefulness and joy there. For that I am grateful. (My brain did fight against this on the way home, though. *sigh*)
I am grateful for the more spring-like weather, and the opportunity to be outside. I’m also grateful for my neighbor who invites me to come walking with her.
I am grateful for friends who take the time to talk even in the rain.
I am grateful for making it home in a storm the other day; I wasn’t expecting it, then all of a sudden, I was driving down this country highway with lightning flashes all around. I don’t think that they were very close, as there was only a tiny bit of thunder, but what a show! The next day, driving down those same roads, I could actually see how high the water is, and I’m grateful that there were no issues with low-lying stretches of road or the bridges.
Time to take the Christmas wreath down! I am thankful to have had a little bit of time to be outside with my kids, and I’m thankful that they have places around that they can enjoy riding their bikes through, and that they’ve been fine with this “exploring”.
I am thankful for the joy of singing.
I am thankful for the things that are showing signs of life (and even blooming) even after a very cold winter and long periods of neglect.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have been in contact with a number of people on this day, in the joy of Easter.
I am grateful for yet another sign that I’m not alone through the hard stuff.
Thank you so much for being here! Christ is Risen!
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Sunday Gratitude – 29.III.2026
I really hate it when it seems like I blink and yet another week has passed. Somehow so much of this time ends up feeling like a blur, and it seems like all that is left is a growing list of things that should have been done long ago, but haven’t been done yet.
In the meantime, though, I’ve been trying not to lose a sense of gratitude, and to also try to make the most of the days at hand. We’ve had a couple of days that have hit 70F, which has been amazing, and especially as the days are getting longer, it would be terrible if we didn’t do something to take advantage of the warmer weather. My younger son had a day off of school a couple of weeks back, and the two of us went out on our bikes and rode ten miles together, and it was amazing. He also started taking pictures with my camera that afternoon, so I’ll be sharing a few of those in this post.
A couple of weeks after the real birthday, my youngest, in kindergarten, had her first real birthday party. It was a bowling alley affair, and, per the terms of the contract, was less than two hours long, but for a group of 5 and 6 year olds, it was fine. I was completely stressed out over this for at least a week for a number of reasons, but it turned out really, really good. Even the weather held out, kind of… It started raining about the time that the party started, and it was still raining as people left. Had we started a couple of hours later, everybody would have been going home in sleet, because we had a blizzard come through the next day. The kids were thrilled to get the day off of school, and despite the crazy wind, we never lost power. The next day, our dear neighbor made a path for our car using a snowblower.
I’m grateful that even though I managed to break a spoke on the one bike (a different one than before), this happened in a place where I could ride to a place where I could leave the bike for a couple of days, and which was very close to the bike shop. On the night that this happened, I was also able to get a ride back home with one of the ladies from church. I’d never talked to her before, and she’s incredibly sweet, and lives just a couple of streets over from where I live.
I’m grateful for the amazing time I had at St. Haralambos in Niles a couple of weeks back. Not only were some very dear “real life” friends there, I finally got to meet Fr. Andrew Damick in person. We have been online acquaintances (friends) for over 20 years, and it seemed like high time to meet him in person. He actually recognized me by sight as well, which is crazy because it’s been a looong time since I posted any photos of myself that he might come across. 🙂 That was a lot of fun, though.
Breezy days and kites! I am grateful, as well, for the opportunity to visit an old friend and just enjoy sitting on the front step, having a conversation in the sunshine.
In many ways, I feel pulled very, very, very thin. There have been a lot of good things, to be sure, but there have been a number of very, very frustrating things as well. I don’t know; at this point, I’m not sure that I’ll ever have things “figured out”, but there’s a path to go forward on, and that’s the way through this all. Forgive me again for the blog silence – I truly am grateful for you.
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Wordle #520
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: So… “Brave” gave me a misplaced “A”. Better than nothing, I suppose.
Line 2: Moved the “A” to the beginning, and added an “I”, and did well with both there. As for consonants, not so great.
Line 3: The first consonant! Yay!
Line 4: You can tell when I’m having trouble when I start playing words I don’t know are actually words. I was looking for something that would give me an “SM” ending, so I made it up; it happened to work, but it’s not what I was actually looking for.
Line 5: Without “SM”, there were very few choices of what the letter between the “I” and the “M” could be. “O” was definitely a choice, but which of the remaining letters could then fit between the “A” and the “I”. One by one, I started trying to match these things up, and as soon as I got to “X”, it clicked. It just took awhile to get there!
Just a note – this week has been kind of crazy, and I have been feeling incredibly tired. I mean to post more than Wordle, but life has a way of making me try to focus on other things.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #519
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Wow… “Avert” really worked out well here. Makes me wonder about having the game curated now.
Line 2: “Crave” it is not
Line 3: But “brave” it is. Crazy quick puzzle.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Sunday Gratitude – #8
It’s been a cold week, and so all the winter things have been pulled out from various closets and containers and purchases have been made to “fill in” where an item or two has been needed. I am grateful to be at a point where when one of the kids says they need something for school (usually in the morning as I’m trying to get them in the car) that there’s usually something that will work, or at the very least, temporarily make due.
I am grateful that I can spend some time doing what I like – in this case, blogging – and that it’s been wonderful starting to get to know people in the community.
I’m grateful that even when things seem to all be going wrong and stuff seems to be falling apart right and left, I have faith that God has given that this is a season, and that things do get better.
I’m grateful for my dentist and the dental hygienist where I go – they are both fantastic people.
I feel as though this is a period of not loneliness, but of going through something alone, in phase not exactly of resignation, but of just being silent and enduring, of having the choice of giving up which would lead to disaster, or allowing God to use this fire for a better end, as tough as that is.
On this day nine years ago. Lake Michigan in Milwaukee
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Wordle #518
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: I was not expecting this word to do well, and I wasn’t disappointed!
Line 2: With a better word, some progress. The “T” is good, now there’s going to have to be some shuffling of my two favorite problem children.
Line 3: Wow! The main thing that I came into this guess wanting to do was find the places for “A” and “E”. We see from guess #2, that they aren’t in 2 and 3, and because of the “T” a the end, they can’t be in 3 and 5, so I decided to go for a word that started with “A” and put “E” in the middle. “Avert” was the first thing that came to mind, and I was shocked to see it be the solution!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Help for a Church Building Project — Orthodox Help
St. Herman of Alaska Church is located in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Fr. Lawrence Farley, author of the No Other Foundation blog at Ancient Faith Ministries, is currently the priest there. They are in the midst of a large building project that was already greatly interrupted by Covid-19. In any case, there has been a […]
Help for a Church Building Project — Orthodox Help -
Wordle #517
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: This is something different – a single “H” in the wrong place.
Line 2: I found where the “H” goes, at least!
Line 3: With no “T” and no “W” or “C”, there are only a couple more letters to pair with the “H”… and the “G” isn’t the one that it is.
Line 4: So.. there is no “E” ” or “I” or “O” or “U”. I could either play a word here with “A” – though “graph” wouldn’t work because the “R” isn’t in the puzzle… And then I thought of an alternate with a “Y” as a vowel… “Glyph” – and it worked! This was a lot of fun! 🙂
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #516
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: “E” and “R”… Good to have something, but they are two very common letters, this doesn’t tell me a lot.
Line 2: I made “ER” “RE”, but didn’t have any better luck.
Line 3: So… I had originally thought of playing “where” but wanted something that didn’t have the two “E”s. It’s obvious I was tired, because I changed the word to “whelp” and didn’t realize that I had dropped the “R”. I was just happy I had two letters correct and in correct positions.
Line 4: Since the first letter wasn’t “W”, I figured it was very likely to be “T”. I did well on that, and got back to words with two “E”s. I did well with that as well. But I wonder what that missing letter between the “E”s could be…
Line 5: I still didn’t catch the missing “R” here.
Line 6: It was at this point that I realized that I had dropped the “R” after line 2, and that I’d need it to solve the puzzle. It was a horrible, sloppy win, but it was a win nonetheless. Sometimes it happens that way, and sometimes there are ones that are played well that are lost.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #515
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Hmm.. “A” and “R”. At least not “A” and “E”, right? (Of course, I didn’t play “E” here.
Line 2: Let’s move the “R” to the front – still not right. However, the “A” is now correct, and I got the “E” in the correct spot right off – woot!
Line 3: I *think* “gamer” was the answer to a Wordle way back when (apparently it was) but I played it anyway, and I’ve got the correct spot for the “R”.
Line 4: I was really, really torn here about whether to keep playing “expert mode”, so to speak, and just try to figure out what the two missing letters were in those two slots, or find words that used a lot of the letters left to eliminate letters more quickly. I couldn’t think of any good words that would help me significantly more than just choosing letters to go in those two slots, but the decision made me really nervous that I wasn’t going to get this puzzle.
Line 5: There actually weren’t as many combinations out there as I had imagined, but I was still very pleasantly surprised to get this one. “Baker”!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong – ‘Tis the Season Cinema
I am tagging a long a bit with Lisa at Boondock Ramblings and Erin at Cracker Crumb Life with their Christmas movie watching (‘Tis the Season Cinema). I haven’t really watched much for movies in ages, some of it comes down to time, and some of it comes down to not knowing what’s worth watching. For those reasons, it seemed like joining might be a good way to change things up a little bit.
A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong Promo Shot – (not my work) Oh, boy, was this something else. From what I see, the cast did a special called “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” and people who had seen that may have known a little bit better what to expect. Having never heard of this before, I had no idea what was coming.
First of all, the total run time in 51 minutes, since it was a BBC special. Secondly, the premise of this is that it was a BBC special but because of “circumstances” the BBC actors have been replaced at the last moment by members of the theater troupe of a local polytechnic college.
I must admit, even with the short length, I didn’t watch this all in one go, but actually in three chunks. Oddly enough, I think this kind of helped, because I was very confused by the beginning, and by stopping and thinking about what happened, it made figuring this out a little easier – I think. I think, now that I know what is going on a bit better, watching the whole thing might be a lot of fun.
“A Christmas Carol” is one of the most well-known and most-filmed books in the Western canon, and putting a new “spin” on it is difficult. What took me a while to grasp here is that this isn’t actually about “A Christmas Carol” but that the story is a backdrop to another story going on, one in which just about anything that can go wrong does go wrong, there’s a huge clash of personalities, and somehow it works to the end.
I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about this, but on the other hand, there were places where I was laughing out loud at the humor and absurdity of it all – and these days, it seems like humor takes more and more courage to do. In some ways, it might be easier creating humor with a piece that is well over 100 years old, but none of the humor was inappropriate for younger audiences. This seems to be rare, too. Did all of the jokes and pranks work? Probably not, but I do feel that I want to see it again and that it might work its way into “things to watch just to laugh” list.
I haven’t read the other reviews, but if you’re interested, Lisa’s review is here: https://lisahoweler.com/2022/11/17/tis-the-season-cinema-a-christmas-carol-goes-wrong/ and Erin’s is here: https://crackercrumblife.com/2022/11/17/tis-the-season-cinema-a-christmas-carol-goes-wrong/
P.S. If you would like to watch this, it’s available on YouTube for free (with ads) and can be found here:
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Wordle #514
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Maple didn’t start out too badly – misplaced “A” and “L”
Line 2: And… second verse, same as the first.
Line 3: Yay! I got the “A” in the right place. But I forgot to use the “L”. At least I got an “N” as a replacement, I guess.
Line 4: I hadn’t played “U” yet, but since I played “E”, “I”, and “O” and none of them appear in the word, I got to thinking there was a good chance that “A” was the only vowel. Then I started thinking about how the “L” and the “N” could be placed in that circumstance. “S” still hadn’t been played, and could be combined to make “SL” or “SN” words. Even though “N” could be combined with a couple of other consonants, things like “slank” aren’t words. Switching to “SN”, as soon as I saw “SNA” and the “L” in spot 5, “snarl” came to mind quickly.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Breath of Hallelujah 