More thoughts on packing and being done

Well, I'm mostly packed now. I've got some more things to deal with, like toiletries, that I'll pack away in the morning before I leave. But I've actually emptied my desk (except for scissors, tape, and a permanent marker).

I'm feeling bittersweet about this whole thing. I got to play the 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th before I packed up my stereo. I enjoyed it. While the main "Ode to Joy" theme is indeed fun, I really like a lot of the other passages. I like the turbulent 4th movement opening, the tenor solo, and the double fugue, in particular. I keep trying to sing along with the tenor solo, which probably sounds awful when I do it in falsetto (I'm a bass/baritone). I should restrain myself sometimes, especially after screaming the "Blanziflor et Helena" from "Carmina Burana" while packing this afternoon.

But my desk and bookshelf are clear. My clothes are packed away. I'm sad to be leaving; I'm going to miss people. Going to Iowa will be exciting and scary at the same time; it will be a totally different living and academic environment. But I really should see a big university physics department, with lots of grad students and postdocs, before I apply to physics grad school.

But now it's after 2:30. Time to shower and sleep.

Home, baking, and Catholicism

So I got home this afternoon, making good time back from Swat. It's always weird to get back home at first, because you get so used to college life.

Right now I'm baking raisin bread and waiting for the dough to rise. We're going to my Grandma's tomorrow and my mom wanted me to do some baking for them. It's nice to think that my baking has improved from my first ever attempt to bake bread, which was a fiasco. I was using really bad flour with an insufficient gluten content, which didn't help. I think I also was trying to halve the recipe and forgot to halve the salt. So I ended up with a flat, oversalted frisbee, essentially.

And now, in the great SWIL LJ tradition, a post about religion. Perhaps this will be one of those that generate a gazillion comments.

I'm rather shocked to read in the news that a bishop in Colorado is threatening to deny communion to Catholics who vote for politicians supporting abortion (I'm Catholic). Also my local bishop took a rather strong stance in a similar vein about Governor McGreevey of New Jersey, saying something about him being a bad Catholic for his support of abortion. I'm not sure what to think. For me, in politics, abortion is not the issue that's going to make me favor one candidate over another. And traditionally, Catholics should care about other issues, ie social justice. I just hate it when people in the Catholic Church overpoliticize things.

It was interesting when I was talking to my dad about this. We wound up talking for a bit on power in the Church. (he didn't agree with the Colorado bishop's actions either). One interesting tidbit -- apparently Pope Paul VI or whoever it was that published the encyclical condemning artifical contraception did that over the objections of a lot of bishops, which was something new.