Author: Maria Johnson

advantages of social networking…

You get to discover so many cool things that others bring to the table. Inge Loots, over at SQPNconnect, follow the link to the right to join us, shared this video with us in the chat room this morning, and so I thought I’d pass it on to y’all. It’s amazing. Enjoy!

so, I never win ANYTHING

100_6967You can imagine how skeptical I was when I checked my twitter one morning last week and discovered a bunch of congratulations (and a few bitter, but funny insults) about having won a MacBook Pro.

Yeah, right.

The beautiful thing is that it happened quite by accident. I innocently re-tweeted a message from Pat Padley, (run, don’t walk and check out the podcast he does with his brother Nick–InBetweenSundays). I didn’t notice a tag at the end of his line, but evidently it was enough to get me a chance at winning the laptop, and … well … the rest is history.

My skepticism was so great that I actually got a direct message from the guys running the contest to tell me that, yes, indeed, I had won and it was real. LOL! Consequently, I will no longer be playing the state lottery because I’ve used up my allotment of luck for the year.

So that brings to me to a couple of things. First, my sincere thanks to guys at MPORA who ran the contest on Twitter @mpora and gave away all kinds of cool prizes, including my MacBook Pro. Of course, the prize was a nice lure, but I bounced around their website and found that it’s pretty cool, and while not the kind of thing you’d see my lazy butt doing, filled with amazing videos (the kind, I think, that my brother and sister-in-law and their friends would think is cool).

Check out Nick and Pat at InBetweenSundays. Afterall, I am enjoying creating this blogpost thanks to them.

And, MPORA, cuz you know, it’s pretty obvious they deserve a shout out, too!

r.i.p. Poker

My mom and dad’s faithful poochie, Poker, a.k.a. Poketon died today. My dad sent this picture:

poker

My uncle, Emi, eulogized the poochie much better than I could. Poker was a constant companion, in the true sense of constant, which for a dog, I suppose, means unconditional love. His peos will be missed.

the hubs is in on the pictures now!

Nancy called it: it would be a matter of time before we tried to attract different kinds of birds. Look, it didn’t take long at all!

My honey got these pics just a day after putting up the feeder. LOL!
hummingbird2hummingbird

Bird Watching

translated from the Spanish post at Petalos de Maria

My husband and I have recently adopted a new routine after work. He’s at the office before 6 AM and I am usually there at around 7 AM, so we’ve put in a full day’s work when most people have finished lunch.

By 4:00 o’clock, we’re thinking about dinner. When did we become those people having the Early Bird special at Cracker Barrel? Oh my! We’ve become the butt of our children’s jokes, but funnier still is our post-modern realization that we have become the butt of our own jokes.

That’s okay. I’ve realized that the earlier we eat, the sooner we can sit outside and enjoy the beautiful weather and our recent addition of a bird bath and feeder. We’re not really experiencing the empty nest because we’ve adopted a family of beautiful cardinals. Every afternoon we sit on our porch with our coffee and watch the cardinals. We also get some random pigeons, a few thrashers, and even a menacing blue jay.

It’s a lovely way to wind down after a long day at work. It also gives us time to reconnect. What better way to do this than while basking in the late afternoon warmth and being in communion with nature?

We reconnect with each other, but in the sometimes long silences that we sustain from years of intimacy, perhaps we slip into our own minds and hearts for this late afternoon breather. We’re together, but we’re also somehow alone with our own thoughts, and often they turn to wonder and appreciation for the world our God has created.

St. Augustine observed in his Confessions to “Let Thy works praise Thee, that we may love Thee; and let us love Thee, that Thy works may praise Thee….”

It may be centuries later, but I am experiencing the same wonder that St. Augustine had at the magnitude of Creation, and the magnitude of God! The Catechism tells us that through “the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe” (CCC 32). What a wondrous gift to have a glimpse into His Beauty.

It’s a humbling realization, and a fitting way to put our days in perspective, when we can see that we have a place in this world as part of God’s Creation.