"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places..."

The characters' 19th century British circumstances don't resonate with me, but their psychological dispositions do. I especially like the Rector at the end talking sense to Sir James, who opposes Dorothea's marriage to poor Ladislaw: "Like many men who take life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth occasionally to those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper."

I have enjoyed my time at B.U. The summer in London was what originally attracted me, and that proved absolutely worthwhile. I've been under the tutelage of experts and feel privileged.

But I am now a master (mistress) and don't plan on ever returning to school.

Now back to reading Middlemarch.

This is Jonathan and me at the U.S. women's Olympic trials on Sunday morning. They looped through downtown Boston, across the river to Cambridge and back again, several times adding up to 26.2 miles:

We ate Sunday brunch at the Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown - ah memories! I reminded the owners who I was, and they cheerfully remembered their former waitresses Hope and Tami, the best in the business:

Ben at the 25th mile. He finished 235th overall and, even better, smoked Lance Armstrong by 8 minutes. We cheered from our lazy spots on the Comm Ave median:

The silver sea of finishers in Copley Square:

A couple highlights from the weekend, besides the marathon itself: we had a pasta party at our house Sunday night, sauce courtesy of Lutheran choir friends/Ben's grad school friends Chris and Anne, and are now indulging ourselves in the leftovers. Three sauces - one with capers, olives and tuna, one with chicken, spinach, and cinnamon, one with veggies - mmmmm. Also, the weekend seemed to be full of praise songs that rotated through our heads, and at one point we turned the forgettable tune "Come Now is the Time to Worship" into an unforgettable a capella chorus full of soft, rich harmonies. I never thought it could sound so good.

Ten things that make me angry, week of 1/13-1/20 [I recorded only three]:

1)The way that my cousin ignores me when I try to give him a friendly 'point' greeting.

2)People laughing at non-humorous parts of a movie and then trying to explain an already obvious joke.

3)The boy in CHOW Art and Music who, after hearing a well-known Beethoven sonata, shouted, 'Can anyone tell me what movie this song was in?'

Ten things that please me, week of 1/13-1/20 [again, only three]:

1)When friends who I didn't even have last year call me regularly by my first name.
2)The cup of Ghirardelli hot chocolate given to me by my roommate after a cold day.
3)Waking up to a square of sunlight fixated on my Radiohead poster to the left of my bed.

A Waitress Who Rhymes:

"Amanda always came into work singing, and after fifteen years of waitressing she had grown too accustomed to the nauseating smells of hot oil and bacon grease. In fact, she was in the middle of a project to announce the menu to patrons in a unique way - she made it rhyme.

'A bit of lamb goes well with lime jam,' she once told a customer. 'And how about some tea with your broccoli?' That particular customer accepted the rhyming gleefully and laughed. But not all of them did.

It was an old, stodgy man who first resented the playfulness. Amanda approached him and chanted, 'Today our special is venison stew. A nice side dish would be honeydew!' He grunted. 'And juice with goose would spruce you loose. How 'bout it?"

He frowned. 'Just stop the nonsense, okay? Bring me some breadsticks for a starter.'

'Might give you gas you cranky old farter!'"

(Foreman added that last line himself.)

Boston.com's 20 ways readers save is full of good ideas. I especially like the homemade dog food.

While I understand their motives, I also find the grammatical inaccuracies of America's signage endearing. After all, whatever would do without websites like this?

Other than that I was glad to see Jon do his Bush imitation, not because it's good, but it's somewhat charming. Interesting also to see the special effects - they used fishwire to simulate Aasif Mandvi's reporter's notebook flying out of his hands as he "fell" several stories, evoking the collapse of the financial markets. No toss, though. Disappointing. Jon Stewart's a bit boring between takes, too, keeping his head down, not doing anything crazy. He seemed like more of an old pro than Colbert. Also, people asked the stupidest questions during the Q and A. What do you expect on St. Patrick's Day in NYC.

Watch the episode here.

Starring (the voices of):

Reese Witherspoon as a giant woman
Rainn Wilson as the evil alien Gallaxher
Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D.
Seth Rogen as B.O.B.
Will Arnett as Missing Link, a half-ape, half-fish
and
(drumroll please)
Stephen Colbert as the crazy President!

Could they lump together any more of my favorite people? (Add Steve Carell and we're all set, but I guess he's paid his animated feature dues with Horton Hears a Who.)

It's also the first animated feature shot in 3-D. Not coming out until next year, but I'm already excited!

"What could be worse than Monday, Garfield? Ooooh, how about Monday with Nermal around?"

"Oh no, they never do things like that on cartoons! Cartoons teach you you should be sweet and nice and always agree with everyone!"

All the columnists and Christian talking heads now talk about how Christians emphasize different issues, such as the environment, poverty, social justice, and torture. People like Rick Warren and Jim Wallis lead the charge to "take back" Christianity from the clutches of the religious right. The rest of the world welcomes this change with open arms.

While the evolution of Christian political emphasis is laudible, I'm worried that Christianity will still get yoked to a few issues, as it did before with abortion and homosexuality. Even more, the mass media is noticing how people of all different faiths unite in solidarity on these issues. It's a sign of God's common grace that we can bridge our differences and fight injustice in this world, but I'm worried that, as a result, Christians will lose a sense of the transformative power of the Gospel and how it touches every area of our lives. Our faith cannot be reduced to our reactions to a few, albeit very important, issues.

I was inspired to comment on this when I read a Metro column about Jim Wallis' visit to Park Street Church last week. Several of my friends attended this event. While I can't say much about Wallis himself since I've read and seen only snippets of him, I noticed that he talked almost exclusively about poverty. This troubled me because, although Christians absolutely have to be involved in eradicating poverty, it strikes me as reductionistic. Jesus himself cannot be reduced to these issues, so neither should our faith.

I disagree with Wallis' political philosophy (which is shared by many Christians) that we shouldn't want to hear what a political candidate believes, just that he or she has a good "moral compass." While this sounds good, and indeed gets cheers from a secular crowd, it's not quite in line with true religious freedom. I believe that political candidates, whether Christian or not, should feel free to talk about what they believe in (and they do). Additionally, as Jim Skillen points out in his essay Faith and the Presidency, we need an altogether new, holistic Christian political philosophy, one that is driven by Kuyper's idea of sphere sovereignty.

Am I way off base?

A friend told me about the atmosphere at an Oscars party they attend every year: the whole evening is spent taking jabs at evangelicals and Republicans. I don't understand. What material do they have to play with? The whole point of the evening is to make fun of Hollywood celebrities, most of whom aren't in either category, in fact quite the opposite. Those who focus their critiques elsewhere are really missing out. Of course I also like to criticize/admire the fashion.

Speaking of best pictures, Heidi and I watched Lawrence of Arabia last night while babysitting. I hadn't seen it since I was a wee pup, and the only scenes I remembered were the kid drowning in quicksand and Lawrence getting flogged. Yes, I must have been traumatized. I noticed there are no women in the movie, besides a couple nurses and some Muslim wives. None of them speak. Appropriate considering both the military and Muslim cultures of the time. But my modern movie senses kept expecting a belly dancer to emerge who would steal Lawrence's heart because she was "different" from all the rest, free and loose and brave, but of course that didn't happen, and thankfully not, because that didn't happen in real life. Not only did Lawrence not have a relationship, he was also rumored to be a homosexual - also extremely taboo at the time.

After spending a day in the "virtual waiting room" of the Red Sox website, I'm very angry with the latter. All I want is to see my beloved Cardinals play here at Fenway. But no, I didn't get picked, and most of the lucky schmucks who did are just scalpers who buy up all the tickets and make you take out a second mortgage to be able to afford one of them. Argh! It was enough to make Heidi and I discuss the possibility of "affordable baseball tickets," much like the notion of "affordable housing." Baseball should be available to everyone, not just CEO's kissing up to their clients. All I want is to see one game at face value; is that too much to ask?

Capitalism's good for a lot of things, but this is where it goes wrong (that, and when I have to march past first-class on the plane). Baseball, a game for the common person, trumps it mightily, and doesn't deserve to be so maligned and inaccessible.

(Disclaimer: I know that Red Sox tickets are hard to get, no matter what the price. I just wish scalpers wouldn't resell them at astronomical rates.)