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As of this post, I finished Day 271 on both the Bible in the Year and the Catechism in the Year by Father Mike Schmitz

This Tuesday morning I interview for a new job. It is legal services again, about which I have mixed feelings. It is mostly depressing, frequently stupid and sometimes evil. I greatly miss criminal law, which was always depressing, frequently evil, and sometimes stupid. But it was a lot easier for me as I think like a criminal which helped enormously. Both are better than insurance defence which was the most soul sucking, dead head void I ever had to pass through.

If I get this job, it will be a distinct improvement. The three or more hour commute will be gone. No more dark to dark hours. I waste about 18 hours a week driving along dirty and dangerous I-10 and have watched two wrecks occur which were absolutely hair raising. I suspect one was a fatality or serious injury. I've lost any count of the wrecks I have driven past. It is a continuous speed trap. Speed doesn't cause the wrecks. Dumb, distracted and aggressive driving causes those. That isn't policed. Speeding is easier to monitor and the fines are brutal. Dead animals, shredded tires, shed rubbish and pieces of vehicles mark the way. The state every once in a while makes an effort to clear the debris, but not regularly or all that often. I drive 2,000 miles a month, and have for a year and a half.

Anyway, the new job will take about 40 hours a week including the short drive, and pays better, and will put me in court again.

But I am sick of law to be honest. Never liked it much, I just thought the results were necessary, with criminal at least.

What I want to do is sacred art, and to write. Today after sleeping in - my routine and necessary Saturday oasis, I was able to poke around again with gemstones, metal and paint. Presently I have only a few hours each weekend to do what I love, what I hunger for. Hopefully I will recover about ten more hours without the commute.

Hopefully some day I can shift out of law completely, and move entirely into art. That is about the only time I am content now. 

My marriage is mostly remote admin and documentation for now. A necessary thing to cut through a lot of red tape, but scant nurturing of wife and step children, although I do talk to her an hour or so per day, and sometimes the kids peek from behind her and smile, or assess. My art work and reading time is a few hours for two days a week, while about seventy hours a week is driving and explaining to distressed people that pay day loans are bad, not paying rents results in evictions, not paying notes results in foreclosures, not paying taxes results in seizure and tax sales. Of course, when there is no health, no job, and no money, it is hard to pay all these things. Oops. You stumbled? Here. Have a few fines and penalties to encourage more diligence next time.

Fascinating, fullfilling and creative stuff I can tell you.

Give me my family, beads, candles and colors. I understand the whole sweat of the brow thing, but didn't Mary chose the better thing than drudgery, and wasn't that given to her? Most of life is in the rear view mirror and there are so many prayers and sacramentals and paintings to be done.

But life is an aggregate of our choices. We are supposed to shape it, not let it shape us. We bury ourselves when we bury our talent. So the car is out of gas? Get out and push.    Beer emoji, because I can.

If for some reason you want to change your username just contact Joshua or myself and we'll be happy to do that for you. We have had a number of requests where folks had a coded name (such as "Sportsguy") and wanted their real name instead. Easy-peasy, just ask....

Note: Only participate in this thread if you want to  

This just pop up on Hallow by Venerable Fulton Sheen https://hallow.app.link/VaX9JhjsvMb

If the link does not work, here is Venerable Fulton Sheen's quote from the link above: 

"Patience is power, Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is "timing." It waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way."

If you notice that directly under our banner at the top of the page is a strip that contains several links to move you around this forum. In case you haven't used them, the two that are really helpful depending on how often you come here are:

View Today's Posts: What that does is when you click on it, every thread with new posts in it from the past 24 hours will be listed for you. This is good to use if you come here at least once a day

View Unread Posts: If you don't come here every day or skip a day, click on this and it will list every thread that has posts in it that you haven't read.

You can just bookmark these link in your browser and skip the portal or main page, depending on how you get here. That's what I do.

I found out about this novena at the National Catholic Singles Conference, when the priest who said the masses mentioned it in one of his homilies. It comes from Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo, who is currently a candidate for beatification. Fr. Dolindo was a friend and spiritual director of Padre Pio. I have been saying the novena since I returned from the NCSC. It is part of my effort to turn my dating life over to Jesus. Is anyone else familiar with this novena? If so, what was your experience?


https://hallow.com/blog/how-to-pray-the-...er-novena/

This may come as a shock to some.  The authoress, Kathy, is really great.  I think Anne from Melbourne knows her, and maybe Liz from NZ:  https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.p...c-heritage

The Shroud has been reexamined using more current technology than in 1988, where they used carbon dating and said it most likely dated back to 1350. This time they say that it is just about 2000 years old putting it right about the time of the resurrection. They say that the technique is experimental, but this should open the door for further testing. Wouldn't that be something if they found the DNA of Christ on it after all these years?

Here's a link I found if you want more info.  Foxnews.com/shroud

This is awesome.

They recently announce a massive data breach where there were over 2.9 billion listings of personal data. There is a website that you can check to see if you were breached and I'll guarantee you that you were. I saw my name a number of times at several addresses that I lived or worked at plus PO box addresses where I got mail. This included birth dates, phone numbers and SS numbers. From what I read, they tried to sell the info on the dark web for a million dollars, but had no takers so they released it free. Very scary. To check how many times you were listed, go to Pentester

BTW, you can look up anyone that you want as long as you have their birth year. My search showed over a dozen entries for myself and a bunch for others with similar names. This including the last two digits of my SSN, which were correct in every case as were phone numbers and addresses.

I'm sure there are many other breaches that have our personal info in, the Internet has made it very cushy for the criminals and I haven't a clue how to deal with it. Right now I have a letter from AT&T about a breach and I haven't dealt with them in decades, but they still had my personal info in their database.