Sunday, October 09, 2005

Pumpkin Pancakes

Well, if something was going to get me to post this weekend...

Yep, I tried a new recipe: PUMPKIN PANCAKES.

Now, before you go thinking "Geez, he's gone whacko" [too late for that] let me hasten to say that these were really quite delicious. We had a Candidates Weekend (men who are interested in joining the Society of Jesus come and spend a weekend with us and, following liturgy on Sunday, we have a nice brunch for them.) so Drew Marquard (my usual co-chef along with Denis Weber who, sadly, was away this weekend) and Mike Singhurse and I prepared the brunch. If you'd like to try this recipe, go to and look it up. As I keep threatening to do, if I can get around to updating the Recipe site I'll put my interpretation of this recipe on there.

In other news, things are going well here with me. I was glad to hear from my old friend Dianne Alaimo who was a fellow grad student at John Carroll. She left a message for me in the comment box and also sent me a very funny email which I think I'll post right now, since I have it available:


1. Summarize Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae in three succinct sentences. You may use your Bible.

2. St. Martin of Tours, Pope Clement VII and Karl Barth were not contemporaries. Had they known each other, how might the history of the Reformation have turned out differently?

3. Define a moral system that satisfies Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates, and the entire population of Ancient Rome, ca. 3 BCE.

4. Memorize the Bible. Recite it in tongues.

5. Imagine you have the stigmata. Would it affect your productivity at work? Would you still be admitted into fine restaurants? Would it be covered by your medical insurance, or should it constitute a pre-existent condition?

6. What would it mean to be eternal, co-eternal, and non-existent all at once?

7. St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo decide to rob a bank. The note to the teller is 1,200 pages long, not counting footnotes, complete with a promise of damnation if the teller does not accept immediate Baptism. In the middle of the heist, they engage in an extended debate as to whether or not the money really exists.

Are they committing a mortal or a venial sin?

8. Speculate on what the current status of salvation history might have been if Abraham had just stayed in Ur.

For those of you who are wondering, this is *VERY* much like my time at JCU where we debated esoteric points and engaged in intellectual agonistics that we might ascend to the heights of the academy.

Actually, our debates in grad school usually revolved around whether we wanted the "Red Dry" or "Sangria" at the pizza parlor or whether we wanted a full or half bottle of our chosen wine.

I have some pictures from Vow Weekend that I'll try to get up later this week.

Yeah, so that's all the news I've got. I've been pretty tired and sore but I think my medical malady is beginning to clear up. Teaching has been going pretty well and, it seems, I might one day make a pretty good math teacher. It's tough going, but I'm glad to have this opportunity even though it is SO MUCH WORK!!! Ah well, I'd have used the "spare time" on silly pursuits otherwise, like pleasure reading or developing new rice-krispie treat recipes.


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