Evidently her name is "Dancer with a Flat Hat," by Phil Levine. I like "Girl With Flat Hat" better and that's what I've always called her.

I just changed the URL to girlwithflathat.blogspot.com. Previously macrina.etc... (see first post) but I decided I liked girlwithflathat better. The reference is deliberately obscure, but those of you who, like me, spent seven years at the University of Washington traversing the skybridge between Schmitz and Meany Halls, you'll know what I'm talking about. (Well, the skybridge was out of commission when they were renovating Meany during my junior year, but, you know.) I do not often wear hats and those I do wear are decidedly poofy. In fact, I am pursuing a PhD so I can get that really poofy one with the robe and all.

Last Sunday was the annual How Berkeley Can You Be parade. Although I live less than a mile from the parade route, my only experience of HBCYB was walking straight through it on the way back from mass. I didn't see the naked men but later saw pictures on the Internet (it's never the ones you want to be...). Justin and I cannot ever hope to be that Berkeley, at least outside our own home.

When I was received into the Catholic church at Easter vigil two years ago, I chose the confirmation name Macrina. Father Gregory asked "Elder or Younger?" I think we were impressed with each other for knowing there was more than one. I chose the fourth-century saint because although she was never formally educated, she taught her brothers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa everything they knew--or a lot they knew; Gregory didn't have the fancy Athenian education either. I'm a grad student studying early Christian thought and it seemed appropriate. Also appropriate at the time was that I was single and could identify with a virgin saint. But then I met my very non-Catholic husband-to-be.

My fiance is really the one who should have a blog (I keep telling him) because he has opinions about politics and things, whereas I just blather about myself given the space to write. He deserves more than a blogspot--his own server, his own talk show, a regular spot on the McLaughlin Group--I'm biased, of course, but really, he can freestyle on this all day and night, and does, especially under the influence of certain substances...but this is my niche, for what it's worth.