Days 3 and 4

Whoops! Forgot to post last night- I was distracted by the FIVE sitcoms I watched all in a row, accompanied by a block of cheddar and glass of wine. How I love comedy night on NBC! How I love fattening, fattening cheese. AND how I love the fact that Jameson goes to bed easily and allows us to actually have grown up time at night. (He did actually fuss a bit last night, but he's been sick- of course!- the last few days, so it was an aberration from his norm, which is to coo while being swaddled, sigh and close his eyes once his back hits the crib mattress, then turn his head and fall asleep. Miracle child!)

Anyways, so: favorite TV show. At the moment my favorite show is probably 30 Rock. I mean, it never fails to deliver. And Alec Baldwin is so deliciously detestable, on screen and off, no?

But I kind of think the point of these sorts of blogging projects is to let people get to know you a bit better, so I'm actually going to reveal an OLD favorite show, which I watched reruns of in high school. You've almost undoubtedly never heard of it, and there were only a few seasons, but for whatever reason I LOVED this quirky show. (It was also on this show that I first heard Sarah Mclachlan's music, so it had that going for it too.)

I present to you... Due South



This show is also one of the reasons that Benton is permanently on my list of possible boy names.

On to day four! Favorite book. ACK. I have no idea, so I'm just going to tell you about the book I'm currently reading and love: Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris. I've never read anything of hers before, and picked up this book by chance from my in-law's coffee table while I was nursing Jamie and looking for something to entertain me. It is SO GOOD, you guys. I thought it was going to be some kind of devotional, Bible study type book- which was fine- but it is so much different, and so much more fascinating, than that.

It's written by a woman who was raised a Presbyterian, left her faith for twenty years, became an author, writing teacher and poet, and then by happenstance ended up spending considerable time at a Benedictine monastery and in the small town church in which she was raised and had long ago left. She is now a pastor as well as a lay Benedictine- so she's Protestant AND Catholic, something I didn't even realize was... a thing. This particular book is about the language of Christianity, and each chapter examines a "scary" word that is often off-putting to both Christian and secular audiences- judgment for instance, or hell. (There's also quite a bit about feminism and religion, which I really found interesting.) And then she gives her own take on it, from the context of her considerable theological and church history studies as well as her own experiences.

There is SO MUCH I didn't know or realize about, for instance, how different the King James Version is from the original Greek and Hebrew texts, how much gets lost or mangled in the translation. So much I didn't know or understand about Catholicism. It's just a great, fascinating, eye opening book that makes you consider things in a totally different way. It's gotten wonderful reviews from lots of different sources, most of them nonreligious, so I can tell you even if you have no interest in Christianity per se, I think it's very interesting simply as a collection of historical and cultural essays. I (obviously) highly recommend this book. IN FACT, I love it so much that anyone who leaves a comment on this post today or over the weekend will get entered in a contest to win their own copy. (Seeing as how I need to order a new one for my father in law anyways, as I spilled my coffee on his copy. AHEM.)