Speak of the Splendor

To tell y’all that the Arizona Diamondbacks won their season opening @ the Cincinnati Reds. Yeah. The solo home runs from Eric Byrnes, Jeff Salazar, and Chris Young (my man, my man!) were enough for Webby to tie off the 4-2 victory against the Reds.  We’re off to a good start! 

Oh, I’m so happy! Baseball is back! 

and I am reveling in the glory of our Lord.

I slept in ’till 10:00 am…and ate banana pudding, lemon tarts, and Devin’s Delight for breakfast. Posts are forthcoming on all Easter food.

I went out with friends for lunch.

I worked on a family project.

And now I am finally posting a little quiz/meme thing I have had in my inbox for about a month.

Here are the directions:

1. Go to http://photobucket.com

2. Type in your answer to each question in the search box.

3. Use only the first page. (But cheat and use the other pages if there really isn’t anything good on the first page….says Devin)

4. Copy the html and paste for the answer.

What is your relationship status?

Who is your celebrity crush?
and because one picture isn’t enough…

Who is your favorite band?
(at the moment)

What is your favorite movie?
(Barbary Coast – one of my all time faves)

Where do you live?

Where do you work?

What do you look like?

What do you drive?

What is your favorite TV show?
(this is like the only Robin Hood pic on photobucket, within the first few pages, that has the real REASON for me liking it so much in it: Richard Armitage!)

Describe yourself.
(ehh, ‘Catholic,’ ‘Catholic Girl,’ ‘Irish Catholic,’ and ‘Devin’ all had real bad results.)

What’s your favorite candy?

Happy Easter Monday, y’all.

As Pope John Paul II said, “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”

A HAPPY, HAPPY Easter to all. I am so joyful and ready and excited for Easter–ie. I am sooo done with Lent.

Rejoice today and put aside all of your troubles…revel in remembering that a very marvelous man AND our glorious God, out of His free will and choice, decided to die for our sins and then rise so we would have life everlasting.

The Mass of Easter Day (readings):

Reading 1
Acts 10:34a, 37-43

Peter proceeded to speak and said:
“You know what has happened all over Judea,
beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and power.
He went about doing good
and healing all those oppressed by the devil,
for God was with him.
We are witnesses of all that he did
both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.
This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible,
not to all the people, but to us,
the witnesses chosen by God in advance,
who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
He commissioned us to preach to the people
and testify that he is the one appointed by God
as judge of the living and the dead.
To him all the prophets bear witness,
that everyone who believes in him
will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23

R. (24) This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
Let the house of Israel say,
“His mercy endures forever.”
R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
or:
R. Alleluia.
“The right hand of the LORD has struck with power;
the right hand of the LORD is exalted.
I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the LORD.”
R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
or:
R. Alleluia.

Reading II
Col 3:1-4

Brothers and sisters:
If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.

or

I Cor 5:6b-8

Brothers and sisters:
Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?
Clear out the old yeast,
so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,
inasmuch as you are unleavened.
For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast,
not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Gospel
Jn 20:1-9

On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.

Blessed be our Lord and Savior on this day the memorial of Him rising from the dead to give us life everlasting.

Now, go and FEAST!

productive

Main Entry: pro·duc·tive
Pronunciation: \prə-ˈdək-tiv, prō-\
Function: adjective
Date: 1612
1: having the quality or power of producing especially in abundance
2: effective in bringing about
3 a: yielding results, benefits, or profits b: yielding or devoted to the satisfaction of wants or the creation of utilities
4: continuing to be used in the formation of new words or constructions
5: raising mucus or sputum (as from the bronchi)
— pro·duc·tive·ly adverb
— pro·duc·tive·ness noun
                 1. The feeling one has when lemon curd in all its yellow lovlieness is cooling on your counter.

Making one of her final Lenten sacrifices (ie. not eating any of the lemon curd before Easter–it’s TORTURE, I tell you, TORTURE!),

 Splendor

as you read the words and story of a gentleman, Tony Clark:

Clark ‘disappointed’ with D-Backs
Nick Piecoro
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 23, 2008 09:17 PM

Tony Clark says he isn’t bitter. He’s not angry, either. In fact, all things considered, he sounds pretty pleased to have ended up in San Diego, his hometown, playing for a Padres team that, thus far, has been treating him better than he could imagine.

But his first choice was always Arizona, his adopted home, to stay with the Diamondbacks, and he remains disheartened by the way his off-season transpired.

“I’m disappointed,” he said. “Not that I’m not a Diamondback, but by how I became an ex-Diamondback.”

Clark had a two-year, $3 million offer from the Diamondbacks on the table for weeks. But in the days leading up to Dec. 14, when the Diamondbacks made three trades involving 14 players, Clark got a phone call from General Manager Josh Byrnes informing him that the offer was no longer there.

The last time Clark and Byrnes had spoken was three weeks earlier. In that conversation, Clark came away thinking the offer was still on the table and that ultimately he would have a take-it-or-leave-it moment. That never happened because the Diamondbacks needed all of their open roster spots to complete the three trades.

What if the club had given him a deadline of, say, Dec. 1, to accept or decline the deal once and for all?

“I would have accepted the deal,” Clark said. “The only reason I was out on the market was to make sure the offer was fair.”

One of the holdups was the club’s policy not to include performance bonuses in contracts. Clark wanted to make sure that if his role changed – if he went from being a bench player to an everyday player – his pay would, too.

But the market moved slowly this winter, and despite a handful of teams that Clark said had expressed interest in him early in the free agent process, none came forward with a firm offer.

Clark now has no doubt the offer the Diamondbacks made was fair. He just wished he would have known it was going to expire when it did.

Byrnes declined to comment, but the club’s perspective appears to be that the offer was out there for weeks and Clark couldn’t have expected a multi-player deal to be held up because of it.

Clark wound up accepting a one-year, $900,000 deal from the Padres on Feb. 14, well below what the Diamondbacks had offered.

“I have no regrets, none,” he said. “And, literally, all the while, I wish Arizona the best.”

We can only wish him the best…and I personally wish (along with many a D-back fan) that he could still wear the Diamondback red, or at least have had a better parting with the orginization.

(We love you, Tony!)