the styrofoamy textured ones.

And they stick to the roof of your mouth and it takes a while to scrape them off....

ION, birthday happies juliana!!

Our communion wafers were little kernels of doughy bread that looked like pillow mints and tasted like ass. And, of course, we had a grape juice chaser. (I recall someone from another church being horrified that we didn't use wine, and thinking "So you buy wine being magically transformed into 2,000 year old blood that still looks and tastes just like wine, but the same happening to unfermented grape juice strains the bounds of credibility?")

ION, The HIV Travel Ban Is Repealed

This is the ban that prohibited people who were HIV+ from entering the US.

Andrew Sullivan has been pushing this for a while now. This is what he says:

I'm not usually speechless but I'm ecstatic to report that the Senate just passed PEPFAR without the Sessions amendment, and Senator Biden, who managed the bill, just said they will probably avoid a conference with the House and send the bill forthwith to the president's desk. Barring some unforeseen event, the HIV Travel Ban - a relic of the days when HIV was a source of fear and stigma and terror - is finally over.

Obviously, the bigger achievement in PEPFAR is the funding for continued help for those with HIV and AIDS in the developing world - people whose plight is unimaginably worse than mine or so many others trapped by this HIV law. Bush's legacy in this is one for which he is rightly proud. But for those of us who have long dreamed of becoming Americans, and have been prevented by 1993 law from even being able to enter or leave the US without waivers or fear or humiliation, this is a massive burden lifted.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's one of the happiest days of my whole life. For two and a half decades, I have longed to be a citizen of the country I love and have made my home. I now can. There is no greater feeling.

eta:

...

I've lived with this awful sense of insecurity, of fear of leaving the country, of visiting my family, of the lingering sense that my virus rendered me potentially deportable, that any roots I put down might be dug up suddenly one day - for fifteen years. The lifting of this threat - the sense that I now have a home I know will be secure for me and my husband - is indescribable.

Oh, yikes and yuck indeed, Allyson. And, yes, how horribly surreal.

Did anyone on that other blog ever respond to your incredibly thoughtful, eloquent post refuting some of the worst nonsense and explaining your family's and your position? You might want to keep it on hand and just keep re-posting it. Unless responding at all will just make it worse.

"So you buy wine being magically transformed into 2,000 year old blood that still looks and tastes just like wine, but the same happening to unfermented grape juice strains the bounds of credibility?"

Jesus didn't water into grape juice, Matt.

If he had, that wedding at Canaa would have blown.

Happy birthday, juliana!

I've got 95% less teeth-freakout this morning.

And, I just realized, an all day meeting tomorrow. Gack.

Jesus didn't water into grape juice, Matt.

I think there's a verb missing there. Or maybe you are just being more blasphemous than usual.

And, I just realized, an all day meeting tomorrow. Gack.

Yikes! bah! I may have jury duty tomorrow. And I don't have anything to read! yikes. I have a friend bringing by some books tonight though. And my number is kind of high so maybe I won't actually have to go.

I hope YOU have a great birthday Juliana. Don't get into too much TROUBLE.