So if life is not not a dress rehearsal, what is it a dress rehearsal for?

Another opening, another night!

I mean, I get that dress rehearsals are the most important of the rehearsals, but they are still second to the opening night and the nights that come after that. So I do get the platitude--rock each night like there's a paying audience, not like anything less.

So I do get the platitude--rock each night like there's a paying audience, not like anything less.

Yeah, but the dress rehearsal is precisely the one where you're doing your damnedest to rock it like there's a paying audience.

I missed the Great Awakening question but got the rest.

And I know there are platitudes that annoy me, but my mind's gone blank on them all of a sudden.

I finally got the online Pew survey to load, and the questions they've selected for the online version are far and away the easiest out of the full 50+ question survey. (The full PDF is available here: [link] )

I don't know. I think by Buffista standards even the harder ones aren't more than middling.

Things I love about living here: My dad just stopped over out of the blue, and I made him a bologna sandwich (his request). Nice. Happy.

Amy, I'm glad the move is working out.

Except now I want a fried bologna sandwich (one of my Dad's favorite lunches).

Timelies!

I was raised in a fairly devout Catholic household but the tone was set by my liberal Catholic father and it was post-Vatican II. When I went to public school, I had CCD every Sunday. After 6th grade I was sent to Catholic schools.

I can't remember when I learned the term "transubstantiate". I remember laughing when I heard and recognized it in "The Vatican Rag" so I must have learned it in my early double digits. However, I guess I never paid a lot of attention to it supposedly being the literal body and blood of Christ. To me it was so clear it was symbolic that I didn't care what the doctrine was. My Catholicism was full of that cognitive dissonance until I could dissone no more around age 16. Then I just kept up appearances for my family until I went to college.

I learned about Judaism in a very light way via Judaism being the foundation for Christianity. I wasn't aware that certain surnames were Jewish or anything until my mid-teens. I found out a classmate of mine was Jewish when I was working on a youth employment program and was hired to clean her parents' house. I remember being "Oh. That's different." I didn't learn more details about the practice of Judaism including the various Reform, Conservative, etc. until college. Not in a class but just by meeting people and talking.

I started learning about some of the basic concepts of Islam in high school as part of my history class as well as a class on world religions