For those not in the know, Tightwad Hill is a hill just behind Memorial Stadium that is high enough to allow very good viewing of the games in the stadium. For just about every Cal football game there can be multiple hundreds of fans watching the game from this free location.

Well, it turns out that there is an official website (Hat tip: The Seventh inning Stretch)

I found a great quiz. You should try it out! It’s a quiz with various statements regarding who God is. You have to try and pick the correct ones (from a Christian perspective) without picking some false ones that reflect some heresy in the early Christian Church. The one clue I will give you is that there are no 1/2 right statements so there is no need to pick anything other than the two extremes of Agree/Disagree (it’s a range of 5 between the two). The goal is be 100% Chalcedon Compliant and 0% on any of the heresies (of which there is a bunch including Arianism, Gnosticism, Adoptionist, Nestorianism, Donatism and Pelagianism).

As an FYI, Chalcedon Compliant means in compliance with the Fourth Ecumenical Council or the Council of Chalcedon held in the fall of 451 AD. For more information on the Council see here.

Below is a graphic with the GPS routing of all of the driving I did over the course of the vacation. Here are some metrics:

-Total hours driving: 44
-Miles driven: 2680
-Average speed: 61 miles an hour (officer, I was NEVER over 65…)
-Longest individual trip: 610 miles from uncle Rick’s ranch home
-Shortest individual trip: 70 miles to and from Wendy’s Parent’s house from home
-Earliest trip start: 7:00 AM when leaving uncle Rick’s ranch for home
-Latest trip start: 6:00 PM when leaving for Vegas Bowl
-Earliest trip end: 10:00 AM arrival at Wendy’s Parent’s house on Christmas day
-Latest trip end: 3:15 AM arrival in Vegas for Vegas Bowl
-Highest elevation: 6070 ft. when entering Yosemite
-Lowest elevation: 20 ft. at Tim’s Wedding in Oxnard
-Northern most point: Latitude 39.522 N at Wendy’s Parent’s house
-Southern most point: Latitude 34.228 N at Tim’s Wedding
-Western most point: Longitude 121.613 W on drive to Wendy’s Parent’s house in Gridly
-Eastern most point: Longitude 113.833 W at uncle Rick’s ranch

Here’s the picture (click on picture to see full size image):

As I said in my vacation post, I went to my brother-in-laws wedding on Saturday.

Well there was one thing that bugged me very profoundly: the “minister”. Wendy’s family is not Catholic and although they went to a Christian Church for a number of years, it didn’t really stick and none of Wendy’s immediate family attend church on a regular basis. Tim, being 5 years younger than Wendy probably doesn’t even have many meaningful memories from going to church as a boy as he was pretty young when they peeter out.

For whatever they decided to get a minister to do the ceremony but instead of finding a church that they wanted to attend and finding a pastor associated with that church, they decided to get what I will forever more call a rent-a-minister. I doubt this guy has any formal religious training to justify the term minister (at least in the traditional American use of the term) and even more importantly, didn’t seem to view his job as being all that religious in nature. It was clear from the conversations I had with Tim, the “minister’s” planner and the “minister” that Tim and his fiancee only met to arrange the logistics and payment of the wedding ceremony. The ceremony was outside at a golf course and had no association to any church.

It was clear from the beginning of the ceremony that he didn’t know these two people and was just spouting out some canned ceremony he got from somewhere (maybe he downloaded it from the place he got his “minister license” on the Internet). Then to top things off, he read from scripture and picked about the worst verse I could think of that has the word love in it. I forget where he started, but I think he skipped the beginning of the passage or maybe just a few lines, but here it is from the beginning up until where he stopped:

“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.
A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away.
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak.
A time to love…” (Ecclesiates 3:1-8

I’m pretty sure avoided the kill part in that passage and he definitely stopped with ‘a time to love’ because verse 8 continues:

“…and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. ”

What kind of IDIOT picks a passage from the bible in regards to marriage that is not about love but just includes that word in a long passage of positive and negative things for whick the point is “all things will come to pass”. A book that starts off “Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” The book of Ecclesiates is a book about the transient nature of life and that we must look to a higher source for our meaning. Traditionally the Jewish people have had a hard time with the inclusion of this book in the Hebrew scriptures (which is of course the Old Testament) because many thought it over-emphasized that lack of meaning of our lives. Point being, this is not a book you should be quoting from as a sign of our earthly love for our spouse unless it is part of a larger sermon about needing to place your faith in God above all things (and that will sustain your marriage). But that’s not what he did, that’s the only scripture reference he made. In fact, outside of saying “in the presense of God” he made no indication of God having any role in the marriage in any form other than quoting from Ecclesiastes and saying “this is this couple’s time to love”. And don’t even get me started about that statment!

It really ticked me off. I would have much preferred that the ceremony just be done by a Justice of the Peace as they call them. If you’re going to deny the religious importance of a marriage by not actually being concerned with having a real minister do it, why put up the charade of a rent-a-minister? I’m sure Tim and his new wife have no idea what this “minister’s” theology is and what the religious nature of a marriage is in his book. And they don’t care. So why would they have him come and preside over their wedding as a “minister”? At least with the Justice of the Peace, all that their saying is that this ceremony is to legally bind the couple as man and wife, which is something that all couples that are getting married are interested in. But if you’re not interested in making a conscious statement about the religious nature of the marriage (and to do that it seems appropriate to me that the person performing the marriage has the same view (not just A view, but the SAME view) of the religious nature of the marriage) just make it a non-religious ceremony and get on with it. But to hire a rent-a-minister… that was an injustice to God and everyone seated there including Tim and his new wife.

As I said in my big vacation post, Wendy and I went to a small parish for our Chirstmas Mass in Oroville. Oroville is a pretty small town (20K people?) to begin with but its Catholic community is even smaller. The church only fix about 100 people. It had an old California Mission feel to it, but that’s not what was noteworthy to write about.

What was noteworthy was that despite the REALLY crummy music by three elderly ladies with guitars you could feel how close-nit the community was. Everyone knew everyone’s name and everyone knew we were visitors. They were welcoming and you could tell they were serious about their faith and understood the importance of community. I don’t get that feel at the VERY large parishes we have down here in the Sacramento area. All of these 3000 family parishes that seat 800+ people in the sanctuary and have 6 masses every Sunday (there were only two in Oroville) really create an impersonal feel. Unless one makes a conscious effort to be involved, one can go to Mass every Sunday (or not) and no one will know the difference. That wasn’t the case in Oroville.

Seeing that close-nit community made me yearn for a smaller parish. Sadly, until the Priest shortage is rectified, there is no reason to hope that we can add the 4-8 additional parishes in the Roseville/Rocklin/Granite Bay region necessary to get the more manageable community sizes that would facility actual community.

Such a shame.

Well, I’m back at work after two weeks off, and what a two weeks off it was! Read the below post about the beginning of the vacation and the Las Vegas bowl where the Cal Bears beat BYU! This post picks up where that one left off.

After the game in Las Vegas ended around 9 PM, Brian and I went to my Uncle Rick’s desert ranch outside of Yucca, AZ. Uncle Rick and Aunt Garnette had come up from their vacation ranch to watch the game with us and we caravaned to the ranch with them. I would tell you how to get there but it’s WAY back (like 20 miles back) off some gravel roads from Yucca. I made sure to get GPS coordinates for the place because I don’t know if I could find my way back without them!

The route to Yucca, AZ from Las Vegas took us over the Hoover dam, another place I’d never been. I was surprised just how narrow the canyon the dam was in. From that standpoint the dam was pretty small. However the depth of the dam is AMAZINGLY deep. We didn’t stop, but from the Car not only could I not see the bottom of the canyon, I couldn’t see the lake’s water (which I’m told was low) from the top of the dam. It was a very impressive canyon. I was also suprised by how deep in the canyon the dam was. We were probably a good 200 feet (heck, maybe 500) below the top of canyon when on top of the dam. Finally, it is clear that dam puts out a LOT of power. The power lines coming out of there are as big as the power lines coming out of a nuclear power plant. I’ll have to go back there sometime during the day and walk around to see the entire facilities…

We arrived at my uncle’s ranch at about 11 PM and since it was dark, I couldn’t see much other than what was inside their small vacation house. When I woke up in the morning, what I saw was amazing. There were Joshua trees everywhere and TONS of cactus. One always stereotypically thinks of the desert as miles and miles of sand with a cactus every couple hundred yards. That was not the case here. Not only were there tons of different types of vegitation it was as dense as a redwood forest. Of course, most everything here is under 10 feet tall so it doesn’t have the enclosed feel of a redwood forest, but there really was that much vegitation. We were only there for one day (two nights) but we managed to take a hike up to a nearby hill to see the entire valley, play a round of frisbee golf (uncle Rick has a full 18 hole course, all that is missing are cart paths and a score card), and visit with some of their neighbors who live there year-round.

That evening we got a call from my wife Wendy. She had been called by the Yucca fire department saying they were towing my car. I had left my car at the empty lot right next to the fire station and uncle Rick drove Brian and I into the ranch in his really nice truck. Since the roads to the ranch were all gravel and somewhat bumpy, we thought it best to leave a Jetta in town. Well, apparently the fire department didn’t take to kindly to that. After talking with Wendy we realized that they were only threatening to tow the car and it may still be there. Nevertheless when uncle Rick and aunt Garnette drove us to pick up my car to head home the next morning (now the 24th, the game was the 22nd, we spent the 23rd at the ranch) there was some question as to whether the car would be there. Both Rick and I were somewhat confident that the car would be there because Yucca is such a small town that it would be a hassle for them to tow it and they wouldn’t do it for a few days. Thankfully we were right.

Brian and I made the 9 hour trek back to Roseville (interestingly, although Yucca is two hours from Vegas, since they are off of I-40 and I-15 respectively and those two freeways meet in Barstow which is where one cuts over to Bakersfield, the driving distance from my house to either place is about the same) arriving there about 5:15 PM on Christmas eve. Sadly because of some miscommunication between Wendy and I, she wasn’t expecting me back because of the towed car incident and had stayed at her parents place not expecting me until late at night. I was pretty exhausted, so I slept in Roseville (Brian drove home to Oakland) and drove the hour and a half to Oroville to meet up with Wendy and the boys in the morning. We had a nice Christmas day, including Mass at the small Parish in town (more on this in a later post), in Oroville and came home in the evening after dinner.

Think that was the end of my travels? As Al Pachino says, “I’m just getting warmed up!”

The following day (the 26th) we all got in the car and drove to Yosemite. It is somewhat of a Christmas tradition for my Mom to take me and Brian to Yosemite around Christmas time. We haven’t gone for the last few years because of having little babies both inside and outside of Wendy. This year with our youngest being nearly 1, we decided it was time to go again. Yosemite usually has light snow in the valley and heavy snow on the top of the walls. This year it was BONE DRY. It even rained for a day while we were there. We took Gregory and Andrew up to Badger pass so that they could play in the snow but despite the fact that there was snow up there, it was raining and the boys didn’t have any fun. Thankfully, Gregory loves bus rides so the trip up to Badger pass wasn’t a complete loss.

We stayed in Yosemite for three nights and then drove home. For those counting, I’m now up to 31 hours of driving (9 to Vegas, 2 to Yucca, 9 home, 1.5 to Oroville, 1.5 home, 4 to Yosemite, 4 home) and I had only been off of work for a week! Thankfully I got a full 6 days at home to relax, watch football (stinking USC and Oregon killed the Pac-10 bowl record!) and catch up on some ToDo items.

But it wouldn’t be any fun if that’s where it ended, would it? Last Thurday, Wendy, the boys and I got back into the car and made the 6 hour trip to Oxnard (in Southern California between LA and Santa Barbara) to go to my brother-in-law Tim’s wedding. His fiancee’s (now wife) family is from Oxnard. We had a fun time down there and the wedding, particularly the reception was a lot of fun (more about the ceremony in a later post). But the driving, particularly after a week of so much driving took its toll and after the 7 hour trip home (we took a route up the coast to Pismo Beach to have a little more scenery) we were all (particularly the boys) very glad to be home.

For those counting I spend 44 hours, more than a full work week, in the car on my Christmas break. That was a bit too much but the trips were a combination of fun and important and was glad I went on them all. Tune in next month for my update: the month stayed at home.

(Actually expect a couple more posts, as indicated above, soon)

UPDATE: updated to include my brother’s contribution to the trip

Well it seems of all the Cal Bloggerbacks that I read, I’m the only one who actually went to the game. So here’s a wrapup of both the game and the event:

My brother Brian and I left Sacramento on Weds. the 21st at 6 PM headed for Vegas after I had a long day of work trying to wrap things up before my Christmas break. Brian works an early day (5 AM to noon) and met me at my place for the trip after driving up from Oakland. 9 hours and a refresher clutch driving lesson for my brother later we arrived in Vegas (my first ever trip) and checked into the Hard Rock Hotel, the official hotel of the Cal Bears for the Las Vegas bowl. The Hard Rock Hotel is about 6 blocks off the strip and let me tell you it was DEAD. Granted, it was 3 in the morning, but there was absolutely ZERO sign of a partying Cal contingent. When I woke up, after remembering just how loud my brother can snore, I showered and we checked out of my room, the place had transformed itself into a Cal dominated hotel, but a very mellow one. I thought we were in Vegas?

Besides driving the strip to see the various hotels, Brian and I knew one of the important sights to see in Vegas was the buffet line. After a long decision making process including calling one of Brian’s long lost friends who lives in Vegas and accounting for Brian’s numerous food aversions, we ended up going to the MGM grand for a lunch. The cash register lady looked none to pleased to see us approaching, knowing it was a losing proposition to let us eat…

Tailgating at Sam Boyd stadium was relaxed and jovial. Cal fans just aren’t experienced tailgaters. May have something to do with the fact that there is no where to tailgate in Berkeley… BYU fans seemed to be similarly as inexperienced at tailgating because despite the fact that Cal fans were greatly outnumbered in the stands, Cal tailgaters outnumbered BYU tailgaters 2 to 1. The first true sign of us being in Vegas was the cadre of Cal fans (OK, only two of them) who came over asking for food because they spent all their money on beer.

Sam Boyd stadium is nice enough and has a TON more legroom that Memorial stadium. The entire seating areas is elevated, so even being in the 6th row, we had pretty good depth perception and no visibility problems. The stadium also has remarkably little sideline room so the stands are VERY close to the field. The TV announcers greatly over estimated the dominance of the BYU fans at the stadium. Basically the BYU fans took one side of the field plus the endzone while the Cal contingent took the other side (the second endzone having no stands). I’d say the crowd breakdown was 15K to 25K in BYU’s favor. While their cheers were loud, the fact that they were opposite the press box I think made them sound louder than they were compared to the Cal fans who were below and facing away from the announcers. In other words, Cal fans made plenty of noise. In fact, there seemed to be moments where the BYU players seemed a little surprised to hear so much Cal noise when they were expecting a home crowd.

OK, on to the game.

I think Cal played below their potential and BYU played above theirs. They also got some VERY generous penalty calls and Cal didn’t get any penalty breaks. Said another way, there was only one way this game could have been closer than the 35 to 28 Cal victory that occured: Cal turnovers. That is the #1 thing to be happy about in the game. Cal made ZERO big mistakes. No bad penalties, no turnovers, no special teams mistakes, nothing. In fact, the worst play of the game was a 50 yard pass play that the defense gave up. Other than that Cal made BYU earn every point they got and didn’t leave any points on the board that they should have got.

Levy played OK. Mistake free, no doubt, but his accuracy left something to be desired. It’s harder to see on TV, but receivers had to make a lot of corrections to get to his balls. In fact, the just before halftime touchdown catch and run was facilitated by a bad throw that required the receiver to make a correction (and the defender was unable to adjust). He also threw a number of low balls that hurt the ability of the receivers to get yards after the catch. All and all, he did his job, but he didn’t impress me for next season. I’d take him any day of the week over ‘booya in reverse’, but he’s not the QB who is going to take us to the Rose Bowl or to a National Title.

The BYU quarterback on the other hand was pretty darned good. He threw a number of VERY impressive passes and did a very good job of keeping out of trouble. One has to remember that both of his interceptions were off of balls thrown as he was hit. The reality was that he kept them in the game by making key throws to some VERY tight spots. The Cal DB’s did a very good job of pass coverage, particulary on the ouside and deep and the few passes they made there were because the QB threaded the needle. The one place the Cal defense could have played better was protecting the underneath passes to the TEs. A great deal of the offense BYU had came from those plays. For some reason Cal had a tough time adjusting to that. I think they were trying to get more pressure on the QB and as a result were one linebacker short on the underneath protection.

I watched the TV coverage of the game when I got home and laughed to see them spend time focusing on number 76 or “lunchbox” the offensive lineman of BYU. This guy was PATHETIC. He looked like a pregnant woman woddling on and off the field. He couldn’t block, was falling down all over the place, and was useless for just about anything. For those watching the TV coverage, they may have noticed that they didn’t focus on him later in the game. He was basically benched in the 2nd half for not getting the job done.

Looking forward to next season, I’m really optimistic if we can just find that QB to give us balance. Everyone knows Ayoob isn’t it and it is my opinion that Levy isn’t it either. We could be 9-2 with him but not the 10-1 we need to be to get to the Rose Bowl. I’m hopeful that either Longshore or Reed will be the QB we’re looking for. Everything else seems to be falling into place. We’ve got great and improving WR’s, the offensive line will have a lot of experience after this injury plagued year for the graduating seniors, we seem to have enough depth at our DB positions to make up for the loss of our safeties and our defensive linemen are all back next year. I don’t even need to mention how awesome Lynch and Forsett are…

GO BEARS!

In our busy lives, it is easy to let “normal” activities dictate our calendar. This is even true when we plan our vacations. How often when we’re thinking of our next vacation, does it inevitably focus on relaxation, tropical locations, Europe or the other “normal” vacations.

But what about building up our faith?

While the daily and weekly and annual patterns of our faith do a great deal to help build our relationship with God, there is something unique that comes out of explicitely taking a vacation from our regular daily lives to go on a retreat or to attend a conference for the purpose of building up our faith. Towards this end I’d like to take a moment to speak to the LA Religious Education Congress that I have attended a couple times.

The first time I attended “Congress” (as it is usually called by those who regularly attend) I was overwhelmed by the number of people there and the number of options for activities to participate in. Which Masses should I go to? Would Tridentine or Celtic be better? What evening entertainment should I try out? The concert or the prayer session? Should I get up early to have some prayer time? And of course, what workshops should I go to? There were a number of workshops that I knew off the bat that I didn’t want to attend. Things like: “Soul Formation – the Foundation For Positive Self-Esteem Synopsis” (an actual workshop for 2006). No thank you, please keep your touchy-feeliness to yourself! But beyond that I wasn’t sure what I was interested in. So, when regisitering, I dabbled here and there to try different things and get a taste of everything.

That turned out to be a very wise way to go about it. Not only did I get the opportunity to discover more about what interested me, I also got an opportunity to stretch myself into areas I was less comfortable in. I learned about things I would have never thought to learn about. I also examined areas of myself I had never thought to examine before. Doing this forced me to grow.

And that’s really what a retreat is about: growing in one’s faith.

I haven’t made it to Congress the last two years but I am going to go in 2006. For me, that’s not going to be enough conference or retreat time for 2006 so I’m looking for something else to do. I recommend to everyone to try and do at least one retreat a year. There are LOTS of retreats out there with TONS of different themes. Some are very simple and are mostly an opportunity to go somewhere and pray. Others have workshops galour and a packed schedule.

You’ll have to decide for yourself what best fits you, but I encourage you to make the effort to go, no matter where it might be. Give Congress a try if nothing else. It’s only $20 a day!

I read this news story, Ruling: Pregnant moms can harm babies at will, with horror. Yet again the mindset that until a baby is born they “aren’t a person” continues to rear its ugly head. However, it seems that we are SO blinded by this false perspective that we can’t even see when it doesn’t apply.

There is another premise of the ruling that I disagree with: that when she smoked the drugs that killed the already born child is relevant.

If a pregnant woman sets up a gun on a trip wire as she leaves the house knowing the next time the door is opened a shot will fire through the lower corner of the doorway (knowing that when her husband comes through the door the newborn in a carrier the newborn is likely to pass through the door in this location) should that woman be free from criminal prosecution when the child is killed because she set up the gun before the baby “became a person”?

Of course not!

Yes, there is a difference in this case in regards to intent, which is why the manslaughter charge is the right one instead of first degree murder. But none of this changes the fact that an action of the mother killed an ALREADY BORN child and therefore, even by our ridiculously lax standards, an “already a person” child. In other words, the fact that the child “wasn’t a person” when she smoked the drugs is not relevant because the child “became a person” before the mom’s drug use killed him.

I believe that in a world that wasn’t completely corrupted by this notion that a baby “isn’t a person” until it was born would not only see the falacy of the “isn’t a person” idiology but would have the clarity to see the false logic of the timeline loophole that is being used here.

Roe vs. Wade must end and it must end not only because it is a tragedy for unborn children but because it warps our ability to think clearly. Or as the best Catholic blogger on the planet, Mark Shea, puts it: “Sin makes you stupid”

For today’s (OK, it’s really yesterdays and there will be another one later today) reflection, I want to focus on the importance of Mass. We often hear the phrase “keep Christ in Christmas” from people who are frustrated with the over commercialization of Christmas. We hear this for good reason because many forget “the reason for the season” as they say. Heck these days Christians are fighting just to keep the word Christmas around as stores move to the slap in the face phrase “Happy Holidays”.

But lost in the phrase “keep Christ in Christmas” is the other half of the word: ‘mas’ which of course is a reference to Mass. Most people don’t know this but there used to be a number of ‘mas’ days. There was Candlemas celebrating the Presentation of Jesus in the temple as an infant. There was Michaelmas on September 29th to celebrate Michael’s victory of Lucifer. There was Childermas that commemorated the slaughter of the innocents by Herod. And there were others.

All of these celebrations/commemorations centered around Mass and with good reason. It is through Mass that Christ is made present to us in the Santuary, just like he was presented in the temple. It is through Mass that we celebrate Christ’s victory over death, just like Michael’s victory over satan. It is through Mass that we commemorate and tap into the slaughter of innocent blood in Christ that is our salvation. And finally, it is through Mass that we are able to recieve Christ in the Eucharist just as the world recieved Christ on Christmas day.

So as we prepare ourselves for the Christmas season in this season of Advent let us prepare ourselves not just for the celebation of Christ’s birth but also for that which he came into the world for: for Christ’s Mass.

(I give credit to The Fith Column’s blog entry How the Christians Stole Christmas for the inspiration for this reflection.)