Alas, my best friend's kids don't have to be told to hug me—they yell "UNCLE MATT!"on sight and proceed to use me as a jungle gym for the length of my visits. Hence about 2/3 of the colds and flus I've come down with in the last 5 years. But I'm perfectly comfortable telling anyone whose children I don't know and love to keep their little snot-and-germ machines away from me.

But I'm perfectly comfortable telling anyone whose children I don't know and love to keep their little snot-and-germ machines away from me.

"Don't take this personally, but your kids make me sick."

megan, the haircut looks great, but more importantly it really flatters your face. You look gorgeous in that picture.

bon, I didn't love the counseling at all. Kind of a grit my teeth experience. Also, I'd been baptized in the Catholic church which meant I didn't have to convert which might be an issue with you.

As JZ notes, it depends on the parish. It could be one all day session of counseling and digging up your baptismal certificate (as it was for me), or it could be a more extensive process which would be more onerous.

However, I really think it has more to do with you. What is your gut saying about your comfort-level with the whole Catholic ceremony and vows?

I've been to a few and it didn't bother me as far as the ceremony. ISTR my aunt getting married in the church and her husband and his family didn't take communion and it wasn't a big deal. I am just not that familiar with their expectations for the pre-wedding stuff.

This does sound like I'm going totally 'zilla like too early. It's just that the place Bob likes wants the prep done and a priest chosen before you can even reserve a date, that's why I'm trying to figure out if it's worthwhile now.

I adore Rob. His attitude toward games is very much my family's. Not that I watched tonight, but I vaguely intended to, solely because of him.

re "go hug auntie whoever" It's the "you are under orders to pretend to feel affection" thing that I get from it. As a child, and now. Why do that? Why do you care? I like hugs from people who genuinely want to give me a hug. Not so much from people who have been told they're supposed to.

forced to perform like a trained seal of baby love and hug all those semi-strangers goodbye and call them Auntie and Uncle Whoever.

This does sound like I'm going totally 'zilla like too early.

Dude, not at all. I realize I'm possibly influenced by spending the whole weekend with my father, but the actual wedding ceremony is kind of the most important part of the whole thing, you know?

Megan E., you are very pretty.

So had my usual argument over religion with dad. He thinks religion is evil. Me, I think it is neutral, a tool in the human toolbox, me lacking that tool, but it can be used for so much disaster and hope. Humans can use any tool for good or evil or neutral. Anyway, that lead eventually to my reading Farewell to Manzanar and my horror at it as a preteen. And how teenage me'd sworn to never accept that again. And now there is Guantanamo. And I've failed. I've written letters, but it doesn't redeem my teenage horror. And it really pisses me off.

I'm cranky and impotent.

So had my usual argument over religion with dad. He thinks religion is evil. Me, I think it is neutral, a tool in the human toolbox, me lacking that tool, but it can be used for so much disaster and hope. Humans can use any tool for good or evil or neutral.

DH and I have the same arguement.

I am on your side. Was your dad in a place wher ereligion was forced upon him?

and on a completely different note

[link]

code monkey dance

I had that same experience at a similar age, but with the Holocaust. I'd never even heard of the Japanese internment camps until I saw the TV movie of "Farewell to Manzanar," when I was about 13. I got into researching the Holocaust when I saw a TV movie (hmm, a recurring theme) about the capture of Eichmann a year or two earlier, and was horrified, but couldn't imagine it ever happening in the world again.

Now, I'm not only shocked by Abu Graib and Gitmo, but also the immigrant camps in Texas where families are being held with very little rights, including education for the US-born children living with their illegal parents.