ash wednesday & lent

today is ash wednesday, which marks the beginning of lent (the forty-day liturgical season of fasting and prayer before Easter). last year on ash wednesday we had to meet friends in the city for dinner. we had dinner in the east village, where a lot of young & trendy people hang out. i remember wondering why so many of those young & trendy people on the streets had black marks on their foreheads. until i realized that they were catholics observing ash wednesday, with the cross marked on their foreheads with ash. i was impressed with how they were totally unashamed of their religious practice. today i'm meeting someone for dinner in midtown. i'm interested to see how many people in midtown will have the ash on their foreheads tonight.

for lent, i usually encourage my church members to fast from something worldly & feast on something godly. it think it's a great tradition which helps you to see how dependent you are on certain worldly things. this year, i will be fasting from a website called pbase & i will be feasting on the bible. pbase is a website that lets you see thousands of pictures taken by any particular lens or camera that you search. i spend way too much time researching different lenses on this website. for all that time that i would have been looking at pbase, i hope to be in the bible. maybe i will even get ahead on my one-year bible reading plan.

clover coffee machine

i recently went to ridgewood coffee company & had an amazing cup of coffee. they have a clover coffee machine, which is very rare & expensive. it brews one cup at a time, & they charge about $3.50 for a cup. they even give out copies of articles about this new coffee machine, which is expected to revolutionize brewed coffee. here's what i learned from the articles & the guy working at the coffee shop. the clover was created by stanford engineers. it costs $11,000 & only about 250 of them exist. & starbucks recently bought out the whole company.

friends from high school

i went to a funeral this morning for the mother-in-law of one of our church elders. i went to high school with the daughter (grace kim) of this elder. i haven't seen grace since high school. though it wasn't a cheerful occasion today, it was really good to catch up w/grace & to meet her husband.

last month i connected w/gene lee over facebook. i haven't seen him since high school too. it was really weird to hang out w/him & to see him play w/my son. i can't believe that i graduated from high school way back in 1991. & it's really strange to reconnect w/high school friends who are now in their mid 30s. my memories of them will always be as teenagers.