What's Up?

So in answer to the questions I get from people who I had no idea read my blog, and also in answer to my friends who are curious:

It turns out I need another part-year of pre-MA studies. It's extremely disappointing and discouraging, but there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm trying to look on the bright side, so here it is:
* This means another year in Winnipeg. We are so involved at St. Margaret's, and so happy with our involvement, that I'm in no hurry to leave the city.
* I don't need to be full time next year, so I might take advantage of this opportunity to take a few courses that always looked interesting but that I didn't have time for. Like etymology, and Chaucer.
* After a year at U of M I don't know very many profs, and those I do know I don't know all that well. One more year gives me more chance to make an informed decision about a faculty advisor.

In other news, Jan and I are hosting a Seder Supper in our home on Friday. If I have any Jewish readers they will no doubt wish to point out that Passover isn't until Tuesday. I know. But try inviting people to a dinner starting at 8pm on Tuesday night that includes four glasses of wine. So we're having it on Friday, demonstrating again that Christians may talk the talk of ritual, but when the rubber meets the road we don't walk the walk.

Okay seriously, it is one of the tenents of Christianity that mercy triumphs over judgement and grace superceeds the law. That means that while we follow the law, we aren't bound to it.

It is a big feast, with as many people (or slightly more) as our apartment can hold. I wish we could have invited more people, but we really are pushing it already. We haven't heard back from everybody yet, but if every invited person comes, it will make 13--the same number as Jesus' last supper.

But I hope ours goes better for us than his did for him.

A sedar supper, for those who don't know, is the ritual meal of passover. It is the meal Jesus was eating in the upper room with his disciples. It is both a feast and a service, and every part of the meal has ritual significance. We've been running ourselves like mad trying to get everything ready--buying groceries (including Kosher Wine), cleaning the house, checking with our invided guests. Now it's Thursday and all Jan and I need to do is finish cleaning, buy some more wine, buy ground almonds (no flour is used during passover), buy more matzah bread, buy the lamb (bone out, but keep the bone), prepare all the food we can ahead of time, run through the liturgy together to make sure we know it, and to get a sense of the timing, figure out seating, find two white candles, clear our home of leaven, and we'll be good to go.

Unless I've forgotten something.