Close Call

Well, this happens to multitaskers... I got engrossed in: an IM chat with my Mom in New Orleans; posting my assigned essay on Dante on the CTU student website; fixing the template issues on this blog and recovering some of my links--all while keeping simmering on the stove (with the timer on) a sugar-water and grapefruit peel concoction with hopes of turing it into candy like my godmother, Toodie, used to make. And so here I was... until the sharp scent of burnt caramel reached the community office. A pot (lost, I'm afraid) of smoking black gunk was threatening to set off our fire alarm at any moment. (Once we had a whole crew of firefighters come in to inspect a pot of eggs that had exploded on the stove when the superior forgot that she was boiling them.) (Now that was a problem! Bits of egg everywhere. At least sugar water tends to, uh, congeal.)
I had so many more serious things to post after a few days' absence from blogging (in intense activity, not in absence, actually). One of those concerns the phenomenon of professional theologians and other activists who are worried sick over the results of the conclave. The papers have been full of dire prophecies: women leaving the Church en masse out of frustration at not being candidates for ordination; the repeated reminders that most Catholics do their own thing when it comes to sexual morality, making Church teaching irrelevant... Yes, obedience is hard! But when you are pushing the envelope, you've gotta know when you've been ... licked.