A lot of my homework that I mentioned last week has turned out to not be necessary: I don't have to turn in the first draft of my thesis, and I don't have to do more lab work. Yay! Of course, the reduced stress has caused me to procrastinate. But my current project (a play about John Keats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, creative genius, inspiration, and bipolar disorder) has captured my interest. I hope to have that finished tonight and focus on my 20-page paper over the weekend.
I have been Facebook-less for about a week now. Do I miss it? Yes, and no. I find myself wanting my Facebook back when I am bored, procrastinating, or depressed. When I am happy or doing something worthwhile, I never even think about it. This just confirms my belief that Facebook isn't good for my soul, because I seem to use it as a sort of short-term narcotic. (I think of soma from Brave New World.)
One exception: I also wish I could post to Facebook when I read an article that I want to share with the world. I was a page admin on What We're Reading, a page where we'd all post the cool articles we'd stumbled across. It was pretty cool. I just discovered when I went to look up the link that you can read this page without even having a Facebook account. So much for the little productivity I had left! But seriously, go check it out. We're all interested in different things so it's a fairly eclectic (that's the polite word for random, right?) bunch of stuff.
I need to go to the grocery store....I decided not to go yesterday so I could go to a Mass in a language I don't speak with liturgical dancers. But it's supposed to snow tomorrow. I guess it will be a bus grocery store trip! I would wait for better weather, but looking at the weather forecast, I think I'd run out of food and starve before the weather got better. Also if I don't go before Sunday the flyer will change over and I will have to make a new shopping list. I hate making grocery lists, so this is good motivation.
About that Mass, no, it's totally not my normal style. So why was I there? It was a Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe. My friend invited me to go with him. He tells me that Hispanic culture has a tradition of dancing as worship. I take his word on this; I'm not Hispanic. So I wanted to see what it was like. While I see that the style could be a form of worship, I think it was badly integrated into this particular Mass; they just stuck some dancing before the presentation of the gifts. Since it didn't accompany any actual liturgical action, it really felt like a performance. Disappointing. The music was also disappointing; the balance between singing and accompaniment was off and the microphones were terribly distorting.
On a side note, I totally get now why some people don't like Mass in Latin. I've never been in a Mass where I had so little orientation as to what was happening. On the other hand, if I had had the text and translation, as well as a crash course in how to pronounce Spanish, I think it would've been fine.
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