With only 45 days left here at Kenrick Seminary in Saint Louis, I must admit that "deacon-itis" (a seminary version of the dreaded disease known as "senioritis" in high schools and colleges) has started to set in. I can also tell that my classmates are starting to get a bit restless. It's an exciting time, but sad as well. We're about to scatter across the Midwest, and the seminary we know is about to be radically renovated.

Anyway, this slideshow has snapshots from 2006-2011, which is the time I spent here. They, of course, make sense to those of us who lived through it all.

God Bless,
-Deacon Jason

Spring has arrived in Saint Louis. The daffodils appeared back in February, but are all in bloom now. And the flowering trees, one of which is seen here, are really taking off. I went out and took snapshots of this huge, magnificent magnolia tree (at least that's what I think it is). These flowers never stay around long on this tree. Once it gets windy for a few days, they're gone. Back in North Dakota we have a few flowering trees, but Missouri is loaded with them, which makes spring especially interesting.

As an aside, some construction has already begin here at Kenrick seminary. In May, everyone will evacuate the building for a year while a massive remodel is underway.

-Jason

A while back four of us (Deacons Kevin Vogel, James Weeder, and Marco DeLoera) stayed at a lake cabin / hunting lodge for the weekend as part of our "spring break." We hiked, kayaked, went out on the water, and watched a lot of episodes of "24." Apparently Marco is addicted to the series, so we watched Jack Bauer save the world for a while.

It was a good time. Now, back to the books. According to the countdown timers on my desktop I have 51 days left in the seminary and 98 days until ordination to the priesthood. These last five years have gone fast.

-Deacon Jason

Today, while wasting time on the Internet when I should have been working, I came across a nifty "toy" that creates "word clouds" from whatever text you give it. For example, below is a word cloud of my graduate thesis. The bigger words are the ones that appear more frequently in the text. You can try it out yourself at www.wordle.net. And for fun, see some word clouds of books of the Bible in this Youtube video. Alright, now ... get to work.

-Jason