Pizza and Grape Juice

We have a pair of sisters at the nursing home who do everything alike. They dress alike, always choose the same food, share a bed - everything. They even both have some degree of dementia.

On Sundays the residents get pie for dessert. We always put the desserts on the table when setting the tables, so the pie was already out when I went to ask them what they wanted for lunch.

Eleanor [pointing at Louise's pie]: What's wrong with this picture?

Me: I don't know. That looks like good pie to me.

Eleanor [picking up her plate]: No, look at mine. What is wrong with this?

Me: It's the same kind, it just tipped over.

Eleanor: No, that's not what's wrong. Look at how much bigger hers is than mine.

Louise: It's true. Look how much smaller her pie is.

Eleanor: It's not fair. She shouldn't get more pie.

Me: Alright, let me go to the kitchen and see what I can find.

All the remaining pieces of pie were smaller than Louise's. I headed back to the dining room to let them know. By the time I had gotten there, they had switched pieces of pie.

Eleanor: Look at this.

Me: What?

Eleanor: Look at how much bigger my pie is than Louise's. That's not fair.

Louise: Mine is smaller.

Eleanor: That's not fair.

Me: I don't know what to tell you.

Eleanor: Well, it's not fair!

Me [exasperated and heading back to the kitchen]: Well, only eat half of yours then, and it will be even.

About 10 minutes later I headed back out to the dining room to see if any of the other residents had come yet. One of their tablemates was just settling in.

Glenda [to Eleanor]: My, that's quite a large piece of pie you have there!

Oh for heaven's sake, ladies!

Book Review: "Great Expectations," by Charles Dickens

Ih. It was fine. I had never read anything by Dickens, so I now feel smarter for having done so, which is something. One thing I liked, though, was that at the start of the introduction to the edition I read there was this:
“The plot of Great Expectations turns upon a surprise revelation; readers new to the novel who would rather not have this information revealed in advance may wish to treat this introduction as an afterward.” – introduction to the Oxford University Press 2008 edition
I very much appreciated the spoiler alert. The Third Policeman did not have a spoiler alert so I read the introduction when I read that, and was very mad at them for the rest of the book. So thank you OUP.
Oh, and there's one passage that I really liked, but I'll post that later.

Book Study

I really enjoyed my book study. Sadly, I did not like the book ("After You Believe," by N.T. Wright), but that's okay. You'll never learn anything or expand your horizons if you only read books you like. I didn't agree with him on some of the things he said, and I found him tedious and the chapters long. Actually, quite a few of the people in my group didn't finish it.
We enjoyed discussing it, though. It was so nice to be with those people, and I got to know some people better than I normally would have. I'm hoping we'll do something like this again.
And the book wasn't all bad. I did like this thought: "...failure to worship the one true God leads to a failure to think, and thence to a failure to act as a fully human being ought." It gets you thinking.

Contrary to Popular Belief...

I am not dead.