7 Quick Takes — Episode II: Lords, Labors, and Liquidations

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I finished that somewhat depressing book on rabbits (which—gasp!—I ended up liking in the end, though I can't explain why), and now I have begun reading Evelyn Waugh's magnum opus, Brideshead Revisited, a touching tale about hardened agnostic serviceman and a soft-bodied Catholic Teddy-bear.  Well, there might be a bit more than that.  So far the title doesn't seem accurate (I'm closing in on half-way finished with the novel, and the eponymous revisiting of Brideshead has yet to really occur), but it's well written, and Catholicism is blatantly present, though not always truly followed.

 My gift to you for the day: Scar from The Lion King posing with a Teddy-bear.

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My new employment has been a roaring success so far: my manager wishes she could clone me for learning the concepts and processes involved so well.  The work is also oddly satisfying for being done almost entirely in a cubicle (though, really, I expected I'd like such work).

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In conjunction with my new work, I am learning more about bankruptcies and the legal system than I think I ever would...unless I was personally involved in a suit, in which case I'd probably obsessively absorb the information.

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Just a helpful tip I've learned the past week: if you want a phone service with low prices and fantastic plans, check out T-Mobile.  Hopefully, that will be the only advertisement I have for a long time, but, I must say, their plans seem too good to be true...yet they've been working so far for me!

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Did you know that, according to a recent scientific study, there is empirical evidence that performing some sort of ritual before eating actually makes food taste better to you?  As if praying wasn't a good enough reason, now you have a merely natural reason to bless your meals.

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Thanks to my new phone, I was able to get a free app of the entire Agpeya, the Coptic version of the Liturgy of the Hours.  I used to not like praying it, due to its length and (literally, from what I can tell) complete lack of variation between days.  However, lately I've been praying a reduced version of Prime/First Hour, and I am growing to like it more and more.  Some parts of Prime fit very well into the theme of this blog too.  Here's a sample from the post-Gospel prayers (troparia?):

"As the daylight shines upon us, O Christ Our God, the true Light, let the luminous senses and the bright thoughts shine within us, and do not let the darkness of passions hover over us, that mindfully we may praise You with David saying, 'My eyes have awakened before the morning watch, that I might meditate on Your sayings.'  Hear our voices according to Your great mercy, and deliver us, O Lord our God, through Your compassion."

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A hint to anyone making a large soup for only one person: know that you'll be eating it for weeks.  You might want to try eating it for both lunch and dinner to finish it quicker.  If not, it just sits there every day, staring at you, seemingly filling up at night, laughing at you behind its non-existent, aqueous eyes, mocking its capacity to be a Zeno's paradox, ever being reduced yet never being finished, always and forever and unto the ages of ages...  A full pot of soup for one person is the task of a lord, a Herculean labour of liquid liquidation.  And those are my 7 quick takes for the week.

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