Linking up with Kelly.

—1—

Life at the office is mostly back to normal after the building collapse on our block. Still no heat or hot water, but I really can’t complain too much—at least it’s finally spring. There’s lots of construction/excavation going on outside, and the office is still barricaded off, but the barricade has gradually been moving further down the street. It feels like a whole different neighborhood with the huge empty space where those three buildings used to be, but life just keeps rolling forward amid the dust and rubble.

—2—

A while back I came up with ideas for INFP theme songs, based on Jen’s challenge last year…I am fascinated by MBTI personality types, and I love seeing what people come up with in attempting to find songs that capture what it’s like to be inside their head. If anyone has any other ideas for personality theme songs, I’d love to hear them!

—3—

I am the champion of my bracket pool. Okay, I am the champion of the four-person bracket pool amongst my friends…I entered the same bracket in my family pool and ended up in eighth place. (My family does not mess around with bracket competition.) But hey, I won something! The name of my friend bracket group was For Glory and Baked Goods, and the prize was cupcakes, brownies, and blueberry muffins—all gluten- and dairy-free. Heavenly.

I would have preferred, though, for Notre Dame to beat Kentucky than for me to win the bracket pool…but they fought valiantly, and all in all, we had a great season, albeit with a heartbreaking ending. (Villanova, of course, did not fare as well.)

—4—

Happy Easter! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and Triduum. I was excited to find out that my parish does a midnight Tenebrae service on Holy Thursday going into Good Friday…I had been to Tenebrae twice before, once at Notre Dame at midnight (which was incredible, with the Liturgical Choir singing) and once in Philadelphia around 6pm. There’s something special about having Tenebrae at midnight, when everything is totally dark and still. If you haven’t been to a Tenebrae service, it is when the Blessed Sacrament is removed from the church before Good Friday. There are Latin chants, readings from Lamentations, and rows of candles around the tabernacle that are gradually put out until the whole sanctuary is dark, save for one candle beside the tabernacle itself. Then the Blessed Sacrament is removed, along with the last candle, and when everything is completely dark and empty, there is a sudden, loud noise called the strepitus, representing the earthquake that took place at the hour of Jesus’s death. It’s a powerfully somber service that helps me better reflect on Jesus’s sacrifice going into Good Friday.

—5—

It was nice to be home for Easter—it had been a few years since I’d been able to spend Easter at home, living in California. My sister and cousin defended their title as Egg Toss Champions, and we reminisced over videos of egg tosses and spoon races from years ago.

If you can eat Cadbury eggs, please go and enjoy some on my behalf; they were always my favorite Easter candy, but I can’t eat them anymore because of my milk allergy. My Easter basket now consists of various forms of Haribo gummies instead. But I feel like somebody needs to make up for my lack of Cadbury consumption!

—6—

Favorite book I’ve read recently: All the Light We Cannot See. I savored this book and was sad when it was over; the writing style is gorgeous and the characters really came to life for me. I want to read more by this author now—I saw that he’s written a memoir about a year spent in Rome, which sounds right up my alley.

—7—

Hosting people at our apartment lately has given me the opportunity to break out my studio playlist from college. DJing late nights in architecture studio was one of my favorite things to do—finding just the right mix of songs to keep everyone awake and energetic, and yet with enough low-key songs mixed in so that we didn’t forget to actually work on our projects instead of dancing around the room all night. I still listen to my studio playlist even though I’m not in studio anymore, and I’ve found it works well for low-key parties. Highlights:

The Longest Time, Motorcycle Drive By, Free Fallin’, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Magdalena, Born to Run, You Make My Dreams, Slide, I Told You So, I’ll Make a Man Out of You.

[I have 670 songs in there total, which is over 42 hours of music. With the amount of time we spent in studio, we used to burn through that in a weekend.]

Have a great weekend!