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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 #402
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words, but not a single letter.
Line 2: When I first started playing Wordle, I watched a video of a guy who used the words “tubes”, “wordy”, “champ” and “fling” to get as many letters as possible used. The strategy isn’t bad, but as I’ve played, I’ve modified it a bit. Wordle rarely makes 4-letter words plural, so by changing my starter word from “tubes” to “beast”, not only do I have a better chance of getting the “S” in the correct place, I’ve also exchanged the “U” for the “A”. The switch for this, then, is to change “champ” to “chump”, which I do here.
Line 3: Wow. The thing that made this work in 3 was the “H”. The letter “H” generally doesn’t hang out by itself unless it starts the word, which we already know it does not. Therefore, trying to find another consonant to pair it with (basically “GH” or “CH”) and not use “A” or “E” took me a few minutes of thinking. I entered in “cinch”, not necessarily expecting it to be the solution, but was pleasantly surprised when I saw that it was. From 0 to 5 in three moves – amazing!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #401
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. Only the “E” is in the solution, but in a different position
Line 2: Chose a word with new letters except for the “E”; moved the “E” to the end. “E” is now in the correct position.
Line 3: Went for a word with four new letters, using the “O” as the vowel, ending with “E”. Very happy to get the “L” and the “O”
Line 4: Considering what was still left for consonants and vowels, I pondered something that might be another consonant to start the word, but as soon as I thought of “elope” I figured it was worth trying.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #400
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. Only the “E” is in the solution, but in a different position
Line 2: Chose a word with new letters except for the “E”; moved the “E” to the end. “R” is new, but in the incorrect position.
Line 3: This may be a result of doing the puzzle before 6am on very little sleep, but I thought to myself “Let me think of a word that starts with “E” that has an “R” in it… The word that I actually was grasping for was “ephod” (which I loved to play on Words with Friends) but at that hour of darkness and brain haze, I thought to myself, “Ephor it is, by golly!” Only after playing it, I realized that I had no idea what it was, or why it was accepted by Wordle. However, it did give me correct placement of the “R” and additionally, the letters “O” and “P”.
Line 4: By this time, I guessed that this was a word ending in “ER”. I also guessed that the “O” had to be in position two… Let’s try something that starts “PO” and ends “ER” – Yay! there’s an easy word that fits!
Line 5: “Poker” is not the answer, so logically, it really had to be “power”!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Inspired Design
This isn’t a new video, but I only recently saw it for the first time.
Dancing robots, oh my! I have enough of a science background to understand a little bit about how incredibly difficult it is to get robots to dance. They have to be built to be capable of this type of movement – and robots are not known for being graceful on their feet – but then they have to be either very specifically programmed for the routine, have incredibly advanced artificial intelligence programming to keep them from making mistakes like running into each other, or some combination of the two. With these particular robots, I suspect it is the latter, because not only do they do the dance routine (which could be pure programming), but they “acknowledge” each other and get into sync with each other (which lends to the idea of machine “decision making”).
These are very advanced, very expensive machines that a huge team of scientists have worked on for years upon years. What is striking – and even more so if one digs into some of Boston Dynamics’ other videos to see the evolution of these designs – is how much these incredible robots mimic the forms of nature, namely a human male, a dog, and an ostrich.
For those who are strictly evolutionists, there is the idea that all forms of life on this planet developed over millions of years through minute changes in living organisms at the cellular level. Not only is the complexity of systems in animals something that makes me give long pause to this theory, but also the fact that we generally observe systems devolve into entropy rather than improve themselves on their own.
Given this, when I see dancing robots which take the form of living things, it makes me see the actual living things as the blueprint, the inspired design if you will, that which is created by God, and the robots as the copies, which, as advanced as they are, are still not human (or even animal). These are wonders of technology, but the wonders of God’s creation is even greater.
To God be all glory!
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Wordle #399
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. Only the “E” is in the solution, but in a different position
Line 2: Chose a word with new letters except for the “E”; moved the “E” to the end. “I” and “M” are new, but in incorrect positions.
Line 3: This is tough; I want to move the “M” to the first postition, but then the obvious word to play is “movie”. The problem with that is that “movie” has already been used in Wordle. It would be quite devious to use it again, of course, but I go for “moire” even though it can’t be the solution, due to the position of the “I”. On the other hand, I wanted to see if “moire” even registers as a word on the word list.
Line 4: Hmm… “G” often precedes an “E” at the end of a word, but how many 5-letter words might start with “MI” and end in “GE”. Is “minge” a word? WordPress doesn’t seem to think so, but Wordle obviously accepted it.
Line 5: Seriously? There’s another letter that can go between “MI” and “GE”? “D” seems most promising, so here we go… and it works!
After looking up the definition of “midge”, I do seem to recall coming across the word before. However, “Midge” – a diminutive of the name Margaret – conjures up images of the spinster great-aunt in 1950s television more than anything else!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #398
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. Nice to get “ST” correct.
Line 2: Lots of words end in “ST”, looking to find which vowel will be used.
Line 3: I actually thought of “tryst” here, but decided “trust” would be more helpful if it weren’t tryst.
Line 4: Really, there aren’t many words which use “Y” as the only vowel. “Tryst” is one of these, which was obvious already having “TR” and “ST”
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Discovering Lilla Rose
For the latest Lilla Rose posts, please check out the following:
The author of this blog is a “Flexi Rep/Affiliate” with Lilla Rose, and is not employed by Lilla Rose. Purchases made through this link <https://www.lillarose.com/katja> will earn the author a commission.
Four months ago, I had never heard of Lilla Rose. However, back in January, I had finally had enough of elastic-band ponytails. On the one hand, my hair had reached a length that even keeping it up in a ponytail didn’t keep it out of the way doing everyday tasks (and mind you, hair tips meeting the inside of the hot oven door while I was trying to pull food out do not make for a pleasant smell).
Hence, the search for alternatives for putting up my hair began. Youtube was instrumental in teaching me how to use hair sticks and hair pins, which is a skill I didn’t manage to figure out in the 90s, when that sort of stuff was “in”. Suddenly, not only was the neglected hair stick with leather “cover” that I’d purchased two decades ago finally useful to me, but I was entering a world of incredible possibility when it came to better ways to put up my hair.
Then, as I was going through my Gab feed one day, I saw a woman had posted about a monthly contest for a Lilla Rose Flexi-clip. I had never heard of either Lilla Rose or their Flexi-clip, but who doesn’t like to win free stuff? Of course I entered!
Surprisingly enough, I won one of the Flexi-clips that month. I got it in the mail, and I had to try it out. It seemed interesting, but I have hair that is really hard to get to stay put – besides being long, it’s baby-fine but there is a lot of it. I wouldn’t be too disappointed if it didn’t end up working out.
Then I tried it – and it worked! What I received was an extra-small flexi-flip, and if I put the pin in the “backwards” position, I could put up about half of my hair and the clip actually stayed put remarkably well.
This got me interested in more of what Lilla Rose has to offer, and after many a night of “oohing” and “ahhing” over clips and sticks and hairchains and what have you, I ordered a couple more things.
Inspired by an 1870s style demonstrated in Morgan Donner’s epic “I tried 500 years of Haircuts” video. Then, the crazy idea of actually becoming a Lilla Rose stylist came to mind. I remember going to a Tupperware party or two as a kid (as well as how much my mom disliked going to them) but by now, I’ve also met people who are really good at doing direct sales without making others feel uncomfortable to be around them. As these things seemed to converge, Lilla Rose rolled out a promotion this July, offering a special startup package for $49. I was in contact with the woman from whom I won the Flexi-flip, Paula Ramm, and she was incredibly helpful and full of encouragement with getting started.
Lilla Rose sells a variety of hair and beauty items, but their Flexi-Clip is their patented and unique item. The Flexi-Clips come in seven sizes, from XXS – XXL. What is nice is that there was thought put into each size, and so even with the same design, they are slightly different in order to “work” with each size.
My Flexi-Clip collection so far… at the top, the XXS (or mini) size, then XS, then Small, Medium, and Sport. I don’t currently own any Large or XL clips, but the bottom clip is an XXL and it is massive! 
From what i understand, the Flexi-sport is fairly new, and advertised as having a hold that is so good that it stands up to all sorts of activity. I did a ton of driving the other day and had the Flexi-sport in my hair the whole time. I had my hair in a medium-high ponytail, which was at the point where it did a fair amount of bumping into the headrest of the car I drove for hours. About 15 hours later, the Sport was still in, and still pretty much where I put it in the morning – without pulling!
The pin rolled to the side a little, but the clip stayed put! https://breathofhallelujah.com/2022/07/20/a-long-day-indeed/https://breathofhallelujah.com/2022/07/20/a-long-day-indeed/ 
Selfies of the back of the head are ridiculously difficult! f any of you are interested in checking out Lilla Rose, this weekend is the time! Lilla Rose is running their “Christmas in July” promotion today through Monday, where everything on the site is at least 30% off, with many items discounted to 50% off. Furthermore, purchases made through my link <https://www.lillarose.biz/katja/> help me out as well.
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Make Aldi pizza great
It’s such a wonderful thing that Aldi still offers take’n’bake pizzas for reasonable prices. I think the last time I bought one, it was $6, whereas even some of our favorite frozen pizza has gotten to be so expensive that it’s kind of ridiculous.
In any case, while Aldi pizza may be a great value, there’s no denying that their pizzas are very, very plain. However, without too much effort (or expense) this small shortcoming can be rectified.
Aldi pizza! 1. Use a pizza stone
The pizza stone will help create an even, slightly crispy bottom to your pizza. Aldi pizzas are big, so even with this 16″ pizza stone, there’s a small amount of the crust that goes past it. However, if the pizza is centered, this should be somewhere around 1/4″ or less. The tricky thing is that the stone should be preheated with the oven, so when you put the pizza on it, it’s already hot.
2. Add oregano
Adding a little bit of seasoning does wonders for this pizza. A bit of oregano is all it takes, but for anyone who is more creative, there are many that can be used
3. Brush the crust with olive oil
This step does wonders for the crust, giving it just a bit of taste as well as helping give it a nice golden color when it is baked.
4. Add cheese and toppings (optional)
We usually have a bag of mozzarella cheese from Costco in the refrigerator, so I usually take a little bit just to supplement what is on the Aldi pizza. Of course, other cheeses could be used. Since no one seems to agree on toppings around here (besides none) I will also sometimes add toppings on certain parts of the pizza for specific people (feta and red bell pepper is one of my favorite combinations). One thing that I have learned is that if you do this, do not add the extra cheese in the same places as the extra toppings – doing this could result in uneven cooking of your pizza.
5. Enjoy!
Bon Appetit! -
A long day, indeed
Today, I probably ended up driving at least six hours. I typically avoid interstate driving without another adult in the car due to the fact that I’m nearly blind on the left side, which leaves me with a huge blind spot. This day, however, it couldn’t be avoided. Truth be told, though, it wasn’t all that bad. The only thing was that traffic was slow in the afternoon getting past Milwaukee and at that point, I just wanted to be out of the car!
On the other hand, it was good facing the fear and getting through it. The stuff that needed to get done got done. I can’t begin to express how much I enjoy driving on the back roads and seeing so much that is quaint and curious and just quintessentially American.
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Getting things up off the ground
Ideally, with launching a new blog, it would have been nice to have things everything set so that a lot of the little things – pictures, what have you – would have already been ready, or I would have had the time scheduled out to work on this at greater length. As I posted before, it just seemed to feel like this was the time to just go with it, so I feel much more scattered and disorganized that I would like. This week has been fairly busy “IRL” and so it’s taking me a little bit longer than expected to get things more up “off the ground” so I ask you to be patient with the glitches and the sporadic posting.
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Breath of Hallelujah 