Today we honor Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Priest and Martyr (died 1622). Born in 1577 at Sigmaringen, Hohenzollern, Germany as Mark Rey, he was a lawyer and philosophy teacher. Disgusted by the greed, corruption, and lack of interest in justice by his fellow lawyers, he abandoned the law, became a priest, became a Franciscan friar with his brother George, changed his name to Fidelis, and gave away his worldly wealth to poor people in general and poor seminarians in particular. He served his friary as guardian, and worked in epidemics, especially healing soldiers. He led a group of Capuchins to preach to Calvinists and Zwinglians in Switzerland. The success of this work and the lack of violence suffered by members of this mission were attributed to Fidelis spending his nights in prayer. He was, however, eventually martyred for his preaching in Switzerland. Today is the second day of the first weekend of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival; today’s featured artists at Jazz Fest are Better than Ezra, My Morning Jacket, and Simon and Garfunkel. And, today is the birthday of my old friend Meredith, who I grew up with in West Virginia, and who I found again on Facebook.
Last night, after I completed my Daily Update, Richard and I left the house at 5:00 pm, stopping along the way for a twelve-pack of beer. We made our way to the new house of our former neighbors, and in due course were eating boiled crawfish, along with potatoes, corn, and whole mushrooms. I also found out from our former neighbors about MyCokeRewards.com; on many different Coke products are codes, and if you sign up with MyCokeRewards and enter the codes on various Coke products, you earn points which can be used on various Coke things. I was intrigued by this; since I drink a vast ocean of Caffeine Free Diet Coke and other Coke products, it only seems right that I get something out of the deal besides the value of the cans at the recycling center. (I append all of this information, not to promote the website, but to let any of my Five or Six Loyal Readers who are as addicted to Coca-Cola products as I am that this resource is out there.) We left about 7:00 pm, after having seen all of the Assembled who are sons (and one daughter) of our former neighbors, including the youngest son who has been in Japan for the past few years with the Navy. When we got home, we put a new flea collar on Blackjack, our younger black cat (the other one, Faust, still had her collar), and for the next half hour or so, poor Blackjack looked at us as we had suddenly turned into werewolves; it took quite a lot of petting and reassurance to get her back to her usual Tribble-sound self. So, I did not get to bed until past 8:00 pm, and did not get to sleep until closer to 9:00 pm.
When I awoke this morning, part of my was screaming that I should call in; the rest of me got ready to go face another day in our own little slice o’heaven. When we got to the casino, we did Chinese Fire Drill, with Richard signing the Early Out list (making us the #4 and #5 dealers) while I parked the truck. This being a Saturday with at least one Event going on (a Bull Roping, or Cow Chip Tossing, or some such thing at the Pavilion), no one got out early. For my part, when I got to the Mini-Baccarat table there were four players; by 4:30 am, the last of them was gone, and I had no guests for the rest of the day; so I spent a lot of the day chatting with my floor supervisors, watching people walk by, and providing directory assistance as needed. On my breaks I worked on figuring out the best date for me to go up North to visit Liz Ellen and Nedra; it looks like the third week in October might be the week I go up. I determined that my PTO that I will have built up by then will be quite sufficient to take seven work days off; and that Richard and I will have sufficient PTO built up so that we can take off two weeks on and during the Wedding of our son and his fiancé on December 18th. One final note: I did not eat my breakfast hard-boiled eggs today, because I ate some egg rolls from the cafeteria line late in the morning (love those egg rolls). So I do not need to peel hard-boiled eggs tonight for my breakfast tomorrow.
On our way home from work after our eight hours, I wrote an E-mail to Liz Ellen outlining my projected dates to come visit her. I then sent a text message to our son, asking on her behalf if there is any problem with him getting care packages of baked goods; his reply was that it’s perfectly fine, and that care packages come in all the time, and I relayed that information to Liz Ellen in another E-mail.
Once home, I set up my medications for the coming week (no prescriptions need to be refilled at the pharmacy), then ate a bowl of cereal while reading the morning paper. I then got online, and went to MyCokeRewards.com, where I signed up, made sure my BlackBerry is signed up (so that I don’t have to be at home to enter codes from Coke products), and entered the code from the last 12-pack of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke cans we opened up, thereby earning 10 points. I then went to the Adoration Chapel, where I spent my hour of Perpetual Adoration reading the April 26, 2010 issue of my Jesuit America magazine. I then went to McDonald’s, where I ate my usual lunch while doing my continued reading in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle. I had a gift card for McDonald’s that a friend at the casino had given me before our trip out West last fall; I thought I had lost it, but then found it again, and today I used it. It paid for my lunch, and I still have 43¢ of credit left on the card for next time I use it. Finally, I stopped at the convenience store and got my Powerball and Louisiana Lotto tickets for tonight’s drawing. And once again, I was struck by how in the song “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis, which was playing on the radio, they sing “Champagne Supernover”.
When I returned home, I double checked the PTO log on my BlackBerry with the PTO log that I keep separately on the computer, and got online to submit a comment on a film review in my Jesuit America magazine. (The film reviewer had listed several characteristics that movie theatres and churches share in their mystical potential; I commented that many of the characteristics also could indicate the inside of a casino resort.) I also decided to not go to 4:00 pm Mass (actually, I had decided this while at work); the reason is that if I had gone to Mass, I would not get to bed before 6:00 pm at the earliest, and probably later, while now I have a fighting chance of getting a full eight hours of sleep, starting at 5:00 pm. And I am now eating dinner (round steak, rice & gravy, and corn), and will shortly go to bed after I finish eating and finish this Daily Update to my satisfaction.
Tomorrow is Sunday, and the last day of the current pay period. After we work our eight hours, in the afternoon I will do the TV scheduling and hopefully watch an hour of Previously Recorded Television. And I will not be going to the only other Mass open to me, the one at 6:00 pm on Sunday night, because I want to get my eight hours of sleep on Sunday night as well as tonight.
Our Parting Quote this Saturday evening comes to us from Estée Lauder, American cosmetician. Born Josephine Esther Mentzer in 1906 in Corona, Queens, New York, much of her childhood was spent trying to make ends meet with most of the nine siblings helping out at the family’s hardware store. Until World War I she wanted to be an actress. After the war she started her career in selling cosmetics when she agreed to help out her uncle, Dr Schotz, a chemist, and helped him sell some of the creams he made for the company, New Way Laboratories, that he formed in 1924. She sold creams with names like Six-In-One Cold Cream and Dr Schotz Viennese Cream to beauty shops, beach clubs and resorts. In 1930 she married Joseph Lauter (which later became Lauder). The Estée Lauder cosmetics company was created by them in 1935 in New York during the Depression and later in Miami Beach, Florida. They separated in 1939 (when she moved to Florida), only to remarry in 1942. In 1948 she persuaded the bosses of New York City department stores to give her counter space at Saks Fifth Avenue. Once in that space, she utilized a personal selling approach that proved as potent as the promise of her skin regimens and perfumes. In 1953 Lauder introduced her first fragrance, Youth Dew, a bath oil that doubled as a perfume. Instead of using their French perfumes by the drop behind each ear, women were using Youth Dew by the bottle in their bath water. In the first year Youth Dew sold fifty thousand bottles; by 1984, the figure had jumped to one hundred and fifty million. She was a subject of a 1985 TV documentary called Estée Lauder: The Sweet Smell of Success. She was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1988. Even after forty years in business, she would attend every launch of a new cosmetics counter or shop. Lauder was the only woman on TIME magazine’s 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century. She was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 (died 2004): “”Beauty is an attitude. There’s no secret. Why are all brides beautiful? Because on their wedding day they care about how they look. There are no ugly women – only women who don’t care or who don’t believe they’re attractive.”
