Last week, Fr. Jeremy Paulin, OMV (vocation director) and I celebrated our respective birthdays - mine came first and fell during the week, so we decided to celebrate on Saturday. The day of my birthday was pretty normal, with class and study and our common prayer; we also attended a wake in the evening, for the father of Dr. Lang, our in-house philosophy professor. His father's name was Earl - may he rest in peace.
On Saturday, Br. Jerry made some Adobo ribs and pancit - great authentic Filipino food, and I got to use chopsticks, a rare occasion around here. I received several cards from my family and friends; my creative sisters' handmade cards incorporating Latin and Spanish and even a bunch of Gregorian chant certainly stand out, and thoughtful greetings from friends rounded out the bunch. The community card depicted Charlie Chaplin's tramp, captioned "Distinguished yet Youthful," and incorporated some inside jokes and a little Greek. The funniest one, however, was Fr. Tom's card. I managed to decode the binary code on the outside of the envelope - "Paul" - and was feeling pretty good about still being able to do that, sans references, when I pulled the card out. On the front cover was a birthday cake in the shape of a Mac Mini. Then I opened it. And the entire inside of the card was printed in binary ASCII!! In my obstinacy to solve it without assistance beyond myself, I wrote a tool to decode it, though binary translators are freely available online, for occasions such as this.
And as I caught up a bit with friends and old acquaintances on Facebook, I found myself writing, "I'm doing well and enjoying everything, but we could have a little snow," in response to their various inquiries. And today, we finally get some! These pictures were taken about two hours into the snowfall, and it is expected to continue into the night with an accumulation of a few inches. Aside from the decent snowstorm we had the weekend of Deacon John's ordination and the March for Life, and the Halloween snowfall, Boston has not seen snow this winter! About time!
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
No comments:
Post a Comment