Wow. I feel so accomplished. I finally finished my own template. It took me hours to do but now I look at it and I am satisfied. I've never learned any HTML I just thought myself, so I m pretty proud of this one.

It seems sort of irrelevant to be typing this out now. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and we had a prayer service at my school. I wrote this down in my notebook while the teacher was talking about something like what she ate last night.

Ash Wednesday today and I feel kind of guilty, I mean this is the first year that I have decided not to get ashes, Granted, every other year when I though how I looked mattered a great deal, I would "accidentally" wipe the ashes away. God forbid I look foolish. But at least then I didn't feel guilty. After all I had received my ashes, I would just make up all sorts of lame excuses about why they got whipped off, and sadly enough I would myself believe it. But this year was different. I didn't get the ashes at all and there was no excuse to make anymore, it was plain and simple. I got up and walked right past the priest and sat down. When I sat back down is when I felt the guilt. It was almost as though I was being judged. I mean walking down the halls I had certain teachers, mainly the religion teachers, staring at my forehead like I had some sort of plague. In history class we were talking about the "hidden transcripts" which are small forms of protest. In a way I feel that not receiving the ashes I was creating my own silent and small protest. I mean I analyze it and I think it really seems sort of cultish. Just not to the extremes of putting on a pair of tennis shoes and drinking cool aide. On Ash Wednesday Catholics walk up to the priest in a single file line as though they are zombies they receive this huge black cross on their forehead and wear it around all day as a "sign" I am catholic, I do believe in much of what the church does say, but then there are some things, like ash Wednesday, that I do not believe in. maybe I am a bad catholic, maybe I will be condemned to hell for not wearing ashes on my forehead for a day, but I do not believe such an awesome and loving god would do such a thing. Maybe I am wrong, but who knows.

then || now

7:34 p.m. || 03.06.03