7 quick Takes - Lent & Oprah!

1. I should start with Lent. I really should. But here's the thing.. When I called my closest friends this week and asked them, "Ohmygosh! What is the bestest thing that could ever happen, that I've wanted forever and that will complete my life?" They didn't say sainthood. They said: Oprah Tickets.

2. Yep. I got 'em. In the last season of the Oprah Winfrey show to the Saturday Night Live Reunion! If there is anything besides Oprah that I'm obsessed with, it's SNL! This will be my dream day. My brother is an actor and in the same theaters that people like Amy Poehler, Chris Farley and Mike Myers got their start! He'll be on SNL someday, mark my words, so.. He's goin' with me! I can't tell you how excited I am!

3. Now, onto Lent.. Well, not quite. :) I officially gave up Facebook and honestly, if God had asked me, "Caitie what would be the worst thing that could happen while being off Facebook?" I would have said, "Uh.. You get me Oprah tickets and I can't tell anyone!"

Done.

I had so many people that said, "Oh, Caitie! This is like your biggest moment! You can cheat this one time!" But I called my friend Rita (who also gave up Facebook -- she changed my password and I changed hers) and she said, "No way! Sorry, sister. This is what Lent is about!" Grr! Stupid holy friends! ;)

4. In all honesty, I'm so thankful for Rita this Lent! She has really challenged me to make this a productive time. Facebook was much easier than we thought and we were both just substituting the time with other online junk.. Much like my friend who gave up Facebook last year and who ended up playing Tetris for 3 hours a day. Seriously. So Rita helped me carve out a new plan that really just got me off my laptop. Big help! Love those holy friends!

5. Rita and I decided to start reading Choosing Beauty: A 30-day Spiritual Makeover for Women together. I'm also reading Women Food and God (an amaaaaaazing read!) and re-reading Pride and Prejudice. So, with my calculations, by the end of Lent I should be pretty, skinny and married to a rich man.. Success!

6. I met our neighbors across the street today. Beautiful family. Been in the house for 25 years, have 5 children and 16 grandchildren. Apparently they are the big partiers of the neighborhood and have tons of people over to BBQ all the time. I can't wait! (Mostly because it sounds like there might be some single guys there..) They'll be sorry they invited this party-animal, but I'll make up for it with my newly famous dirty martini dip!

7. I'm gonna just use number 7 to say: go visit Jen @ Conversion Diary! Not because I'm out of things to say, but because her series on the words of the Our Father is so fantastic, sending you there is far better than making you hear one more thing about Oprah! :)

Seriously. Go! I'm about to talk about the semester I scheduled classes so that I could catch the show each day..