David Ancell's Virtual Home

Working Out with Peloton

  /   Saturday, January 28, 2023   /   Comments(0)

I have not always been one to want to exercise, and I did it off and on for most of my life. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve really wanted to try to get in shape. I’ve been more consistent. Since this past November, my company has offered a new benefit that has become the tool that I use – the Peloton app.

To be clear, I am using the app on my iPad. I don’t own a Peloton bike, but I do have an Inspire IC 1.5 bike (that didn’t cost as much as what shows here) that I got as a Father’s Day/birthday gift a couple of years ago. It works. I also have a few dumbells for strength training, but they aren’t the ones made by Peloton. However, you can use the app with non-Peloton equipment just fine (read on for my workarounds). It’s actually cheaper than using it with the bike, but there are some things you don’t get. I don’t need the leaderboard trying to motivate me by telling me I’m in 12,684th place, though some other features would be nice.

The first thing I will say is that I have to be careful what workouts I choose. The app lets me see what songs will be playing, and this is very helpful because a number of workouts use music that is morally problematic. I have only taken classes from male instructions (mostly Ben Alldis and Bradley Rose) because the female instructors are often not dressed modestly. They are not wearing a proper shirt. It should go without saying that I also avoid the yoga and meditation classes as the spirituality involved is problematic.

I am still able to find classes that I can take. There are cycling classes that allow me to push in intervals that help me to do a better job getting exercise than I would get on my own. There are some classes I take when I really want to do an all out workout, and then there are others that are a bit less intense. Ben Alldis has a number of ten-minute stretch classes that are really helpful when I’ve been riding. After a little over a month, I added in some strength training. That helped with the weight loss.

For me, it’s helpful to have the instruction call out a specific cadence (pedal speed) on the bike and the amount of resistance to apply. It gives me something to help me figure out if I’m doing what the instructor has in mind. I don’t think I did as well when instructors in some other apps used a “rate of perceived exertion.”

Since I don’t have a Peloton bike, I can’t exactly correlate the resistance, but I’ve used a couple in hotels and have a little bit of a feel for it. I connect a Wahoo cadence meter to the app so I can see my cadence, and a Scosche heart rate monitor to display my heart rate (or I use my Apple Watch). I also use the Inspire app on my phone, which also shows my cadence but, more importantly, shows my resistance level (I didn’t really like their classes.). The Inspire bike has 40 levels, and I’m using their level 20 for a Peloton 20 and their 30 for a Peloton level 50.

The other exercise apps I have tried before are the Inspire app and Wellbeats. I didn’t get a good feel for the Inspire workouts and did very few of them when I had a year’s free subscription. They were challenging but otherwise felt kind of blah to me. Wellbeats was more corporate and professional, so I didn’t have to worry about immodestly dressed instructors or bad music. After a while I started to not like it as well. I think I was using too much resistance, which meant I wasn’t quite doing the workouts as well as I could have been. Also, Wellbeats doesn’t seem to release new classes anywhere near as often as Peloton does.

I just really like the energy and atmosphere of the Peloton class better. It can be hard sometimes, especially when I’m tired, but it’s just so much more fun. So, while I don’t appreciate the fact that I have to be careful of what I take on Peloton, I have found a number of good classes that I have really liked. It has kept me engaged in exercise better than anything else I’ve used.

Now, I’m sure at least some people reading this have a question for me – “Would I buy a Peloton bike?” I’m honestly not sure. When I have tried a Peloton bike in a hotel, it’s an amazing ride. Still, the bike is very expensive, and then I am locked into their classes as their screen won’t show anything else. I may still want the option of using another platform without a big screen that I wouldn’t have a use for in the way. I may one day consider something like a Stryde bike (with an unlocked screen) or even a bike that would be used in a gym, with the idea that it would last me a very long time. However, I do like the Peloton experience and may consider it some day if I can. Peloton gives a great workout, and I’m really enjoying using it.

Category: News on My Life


My First Impressions of Fiverr

  /   Tuesday, September 27, 2022   /   Comments(0)

I’ve now been a seller doing voice over on Fiverr for a couple of months now. Business has been rather slow, but I have gotten a little business and great ratings for the jobs I’ve done. There are people saying good things about the platform and others who positively hate it. For the most part, I like it, but there are some things I wish it had. Oh, and if you want to hire me, click here. I even have a gig on there with reduced prices for Catholic projects.

The site is set up well for the most part, with a place to put the relevant information as to just what it is you are selling. It took me some time to find where to enter the FAQ, though. Otherwise, I think I got everything filled out right away. However, getting back to my gigs to do an edit is a pain.

I got my first two orders within a couple of weeks of starting my profile. At first, I was a bit nervous. One was an accomplished voice over artist needing me to play the part of a caller to a radio station. The second was someone who had been buying on Fiverr for years and ordered the voice over for the 988 public service announcement. Both turned out to be great people to work with. My third order was from a student needing a voice over for a video for her portfolio. That was fun, too, and the young lady was nice enough to send me a video clip of what she made using my voice. I loved it!

There have been some, well, rather interesting characters that I’ve dealt with also. One of them was offering $10 for a 1700 word script with the possibility of ongoing work. Another wanted to pay $1 per script for scripts ranging from 3 – 10 minutes long. I realize that I’m going to be working for lower rates until I establish myself, but me working for those rates is just not going to happen.

From what I understood getting into Fiverr, they seem to have an expectation that both buyer and seller will conform to the terms that were communicated in the gig description (A “gig” is basically their term for each service you list for sale.). When I started, I wondered how well they would really uphold that and whether they would be fair. I will say that their support has been good and responsive when I’ve needed them.

Someone who obviously didn’t read my offering placed an order on my phone menu gig for a narration of his YouTube video. Although my gig description says that I don’t do profanity, but the very first sentence of the script contained the s*** word. I reached out to cancel right away, and later I reached out to support asking that they not count the cancellation against my stats. The support person agreed and took it off my stats because the person “did not read my description and ordered a service that I do not offer.” Oh, and if people give you problems, you can block them.

Now, there are a couple of features I really wish the site had. The biggest feature I want is the ability to accept or reject an order placed directly from my order page. I am simply not going to voice anything in violation of my Catholic faith. I’m not voicing scripts for questionable “make $1 million working 15 minutes a day” schemes. Being a health care professional, I don’t want my voice used to promote questionable health care products. I also need to avoid anything that would constitute a conflict of interest with my full time employer. Having to list this in my gig description means that I have to use a sizable block of space talking about what I won’t do, and I’d prefer not to have to do this.

The other feature I’d like to have is a kind of variable delivery commitment time. I’ve made the decision not to do voice over on Sunday. Because of this, I’ve had to put my delivery commitment as three days even though every project that I’ve done had been delivered sooner than that. The site counts an exact 72 hours once the clock starts. I’d like to be able to configure it to show a two day time not counting Sunday or something like that. Maybe it could also include some kind of “office hours” feature that shows I’m not available on Sunday. Some of us our just not going to be into the hustle culture, especially since I have a family.

Fiverr is giving me a great opportunity to do something I’ve thought about for years but never was able to start before. Time will tell if the platform will have respect for the fact that I won’t do anything in violation of my Catholic faith. As of now, I’m enjoying being on the platform and hope to gain some great experience in voice over and earn a bit of extra money as well. And, really, I want to get a good Catholic project that will allow me to do more to evangelize through media.

Category: News on My Life


Voice Over Work

  /   Monday, August 22, 2022   /   Comments(0)

Lately, I’ve decided to do a some voice over work on Fiverr in my spare time (no plans to quit my day job, though), and I may expand to other platforms in the future.  I was honored to be able to voice this public service announcement for the 988 National Mental Health Hotline.  I really hope this new hotline makes it easier for anyone in need to get help, and I am praying for all who need it, especially those who will see or hear this.

Click this link to see the video.

If anyone is interested in having me do some voice over for them, click here to go to my profile.  I have set up a gig for general voice over and for outgoing phone messaging, and I also have a “gig” (Fiverr’s term for each offering) with special pricing for specifically Catholic projects (but if you are an organization of which I am a part, please just contact me).  Note that I will only work on projects that are in conformity with my Catholic faith.  I want to support good, honest businesses or causes that need a voice.  More details are on the gig pages.

Category: News on My Life


I’m Still Here

  /   Tuesday, April 27, 2021   /   Comments(0)

It has been busy around here lately, but I have not given up blogging.  In the meantime, if you’d like, you can listen to the latest version of my RCIA talk on the Church’s teaching on human life (click here for the handout).  This year, I gave all three of my talks over Zoom, but I have a new microphone that lets me connect it to my computer via USB and then run another connection into an audio recorder using an XLR cable (the standard cable for connecting microphones).  I liked it because it let me record myself but no one else.  That way, anyone who didn’t want to be recorded wasn’t going to be recorded.

Anyway, hopefully you’ll hear more from me soon.

Category: News on My Life


Adventures in the Dental Office

  /   Thursday, June 15, 2017   /   Comments(0)

Not too many people will associate the dental office with adventure. Maybe that word isn’t quite the right one to describe it, but oh well, I’ll use it for now. I went to a different dentist than I had been going to for a checkup. I’ll refrain from mentioning names here. I had been to the dentist maybe seven or eight months earlier, and no cavities were found. Needles to say, I was a bit surprised to be told by this new dentist that I had eighteen teeth that needed at least a filling, or was I?

Well, maybe a bit surprised is accurate. For the record – no, I don’t believe that I need that much dental work. I believe the dentist believes it. He showed me these pictures from the digital camera and the x-ray showing how I had these bad places in my teeth. The thing that they didn’t seem to understand is that they can show me as many spots on pictures as they want, but this doesn’t mean that it’s beneficial to the tooth to drill it out and replace it with artificial stuff that will ultimately have to be redone later. Fillings don’t last a lifetime.

You see, this isn’t my first dental adventure of this sort. In 1998, my home town dentist told me that I had a couple of cavities that needed to be filled. I was away at pharmacy school and didn’t have time to get back home to have the work done. I made the mistake of going to a dentist near where I was in school only to be told that I had a whole bunch of cavities. Not only that, but the dentist told me that I had better get these done as soon as I can or they will get much worse. His near-threatening tone of voice should have convinced me to flee. I let him do maybe two or three. I shouldn’t have. I stopped letting him do these and went to another dentist in my home town, and was told that I needed only one filling, but still he worked with other procedures as implants, which is important since choosing an experienced implant dentist, such as PermaDent, is critical to the success of your treatment in Torrance, CA.

I had similar incidents in 2003 and again in 2010. Granted, during both of those times I had waited way too long to go to the dentist. The one in 2010 wanted to do over $10,000 work of work in my mouth. Both of those times, I didn’t need or have nearly as much work done as those dentists said that I needed. I went somewhere else. If I truly needed all that work done, my entire jaw and maybe even my nose should have rotted off by now. I have more than my share of dental work in my mouth, but I still did a lot less than was originally suggested once I got a second opinion.

So, what’s the point of this story? I can make a couple of points here. First, if you get a dentist who tells you that you need a lot of work, it’s a good idea to seek another opinion before you get it done. There are dentists who seem to think that they need to fill anything that doesn’t look quite normal. Others are more conservative and question whether drilling it out will be of benefit to the tooth. There’s a good possibility that one of the “cavities” that I was told that I had in 1998 has never been filled to this day. If so, it definitely didn’t progress too much. I still have all of my teeth except for my wisdom teeth.

My second point concerns something that may be a little harder to explain to non-medical people. There are different opinions out there in any medical science about what does and does not need treatment and why or why not. Medicine is not the exact science that everyone wants it to be. Some problems will be diagnosed differently by different doctors.

It’s odd that, when I visit a dentist, a more conservative dentist normally understands why more aggressive dentists want to do more fillings. They will rarely disparage the more aggressive dentist. However, more aggressive dentists have never seemed to understand that there are more conservative dentists who may see reason not to do certain treatment. When I mentioned that I hadn’t been told I had cavities to the dentist I just saw, he couldn’t understand why they weren’t caught. I think I know why not, though, and I am a pharmacist, not a dentist.

Still, it’s not abnormal for one doctor to see a scan and think nothing of it and for another to choose to observe it for now. In my case, the past experience with my teeth and the supposed cavities told me that I don’t have dire need of fillings. I have the past history to justify that, and the dentist to whom I just went didn’t seem to understand that. Relying on that, I can come to a good conclusion of what to do, or, in this case, what not to do.

Category: News on My Life


Trying to Figure Out This Election

  /   Thursday, October 27, 2016   /   Comment(1)

If I were looking for an attention grabber, I’d could start this post with some statement about how this is the worst presidential election in the history of the United States. Well, it could be, but how would I know? I may not be young anymore, but I haven’t been around long enough to speak for our country’s entire history. I can say that this is the worst one I have ever voted in. In every other presidential race, I have known how I would vote well in advance. This time I am not sure what I will do. We have our usual two major party candidates, and neither is fit to be president.

I can’t think of any way that a Catholic, or any Christian for that matter, can justify voting for Hillary Clinton. The fact that she is very pro abortion is enough to disqualify her. And, no, you can’t say she is just respecting other people’s decisions). She is a supporter of the radical LGBTQ agenda. I know these aren’t the only issues out there, but these are two very important issues that are non-negotiable. Oh, and don’t get me started on her Catholic in name only running mate.  

If she continues along e trajectory of the Obama administration, then it’s likely that the only Christians who will be able to own a business or even practice certain professions will be the ones who are compromising the Faith. It’s her party that is in a dispute with the Little Sisters of the Poor because they tried to mandate that all employers provide free contraception in their insurance plans. She’s even made mention before that deep-seated religious beliefs need to be changed. Some may believe that the statement was taken out of context and/or magnified, but the fact that the phrase was uttered at all is very concerning.

Donald Trump’s conduct during the campaign is highly problematic, and it has gotten worse towards the end. I don’t think he would have done much worse if he were trying to lose the election. He is alienating people who otherwise might support him. His character is problematic, as evidenced by the disgusting conversation from years ago that was released and his response to the revelation.

On the other hand, his public policy statements suggest that he will support more pro-life, pro-family policies than Clinton, and he has chosen a very pro-life running mate. He has even sent a letter to the folks at Catholic Vote stating he will protect religious liberty. However, I am unable to find a past track record to back up what he states are his policy positions, and the possibility that he won’t follow through deserves much consideration.

The Libertarian party candidate Gary Johnson is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, but may be somewhat better than Clinton in protecting religious freedom. The former Green Party now independent (at least in Tennessee) candidate Jill Stein has a similarly problematic platform in those areas with no mention of religious freedom on her platform page of her web site. While I don’t agree with everything on the platform of the American Solidarity Party (I’m strongly against a single-payer health care system.), their platform poses no moral problems and is overall more in line with my thinking. The problem is that their candidate is neither on my ballot nor certified as a write-in candidate in Tennessee last I checked, and his profile online doesn’t really help me to understand how he is qualified to be president. One independent who is a certified write-in candidate is Evan McMullin, and there are a lot of good things in his platform also.

So, really, the only two viable choices I see are voting for Donald Trump or writing in an independent candidate, probably Evan McMullin. I have seen quite a bit on Facebook accusing people who would vote for Trump as voting out of fear. However, there is a legitimate basis in Catholic moral theology for deciding in good conscience to vote for a not-so-suitable candidate in order to limit the evil that the other would cause if elected. Some people who are voting for Trump may see the people voting for independent candidates as really allowing Clinton to win by taking votes from Trump. There is a risk of causing that outcome, but there is also a practical strategy that may be employed.

Having a practical strategy for doing the best that we can do for our country is important. I have a hard time taking people seriously who say to just vote for the candidate you like without taking practical considerations into account. We need to consider the potential consequences of what we are doing. I’m a big believer that I need to support someone who has a realistic plan of winning, and I strongly believe that I have a better chance of becoming the next pope than a third party or independent candidate has of winning the election in the usual manner.

Fortunately, though it’s a really long shot, there is another practical strategy that could work for a third party. In this climate, a third party candidate might be able to win a state or two with just enough electoral votes to prevent either major party candidate from getting a majority, in which case the House of Representatives will choose the president from the three candidates with the most electoral votes, and the candidate they choose could be neither Trump nor Clinton if there is at least one other candidate with some electoral votes. This could be the independent candidate who carried a few states. If the thought of voting for either major party candidate is repulsive to you, this is something you can try to bank on. I don’t think it has good odds, but neither can I suggest that it’s a waste of a vote in this election. In fact, I just might do this myself.

So, to recap, I’m saying that I can either vote for Donald Trump (as this Catholic blogger is doing), because he is better than Clinton from a policy standpoint, or I can vote for a third party or independent (probably Evan McMullin) and hope that he can prevent the major party candidates from getting a majority. If I do the former, I vote for someone who has a much better platform but risk him either not keeping his promises or causing other problems in other areas (e.g. immigration, foreign relations, scandalous conduct in general). If I do the latter, I risk making it easier for Hillary Clinton to end up winning, which would be a huge problem for being able to carry out my mission to serve Jesus Christ. Now, it’s time to pray, discern what to do, and go vote. Early voting is going on now in Tennessee. For whom will I vote? Well, I have no plans to reveal that on this site.

Category: Morality, News on My Life


Reflections on Being a Catholic Young Adult

  /   Wednesday, July 23, 2014   /   Comments(2)

My birthday is coming up.  Depending on how “young adult” is defined, I’ll either have one more year left as a young adult, or I haven’t been a young adult for a few years now.  I think I’ll take the former.  A few things have been on my mind as I reflect on the fact that I will soon make my exit from young adulthood.

The most exciting thing for me has been being a part of the movement of young adults who are embracing orthodox Catholicism.  We were able to find out the truth and beauty of the teachings of the Church that had somehow been lost when we were in CCD or PSR or PRE or whatever you called it.  There were many moments of “Why haven’t we heard this before?”  In a number of places, better catechesis is now available, but there is still a lot of evangelization work that needs to be done.

When I first attended religion classes in high school, I expected to be far behind the others.  Little did I know that there really wasn’t much doctrinal content in the course materials in use at the time.  In fact, I came to a disturbing revelation.  I knew more than they did.  When I went to campus ministry in college, it was mediocre at best.  I actually was jealous of evangelical Protestants because they seemed to be much more enthusiastic than most Catholics that I knew.

After graduation from pharmacy school, I joined a catechetical young adult group.  For the first time, I saw people who were concerned about following what the Church teaches.  I discovered a lot of good Catholic books and publishers that filled in what I had long misunderstood.  However, at this time, and in the place where I was, it still seemed that I had to figure a lot out for myself.  I didn’t always know exactly who to trust to tell me what is true. Apparently, my experience was not unique. I believe it was Colleen Carroll Campbell who mentioned in 2002 that college students were growing in their faith despite the official campus ministry. The same could be said of other official ministries.

This was the 2000s, and the young, orthodox, well-formed priests were just beginning to be ordained.  A lot of ministries and resources have since become available to help teach the faith that weren’t available just as I was coming of age.  For example, Ascension Press, if it existed at all back then, hadn’t yet published the Bible Timeline Seminar or the Theology of the Body resources.  Catholic Exchange started as e3mil sometime in that era.  The campus ministry group FOCUS was still in its infancy.  Catholic Answers had been around for some time, but for some reason I wasn’t as interested in them at first.  Thankfully, more ministries are being formed, and more resources are available to help teach the Faith.  Just watch Life on the Rock on EWTN, and you’ll hear about a lot of them.

Back then, my focus was mainly on apologetics, probably because I was put into a situation where I needed to learn to defend my faith.  Unfortunately, I was too focused there.  I was looking for just the right argument.  I really needed to learn more than that.  I can thank Incarnation Church in Collierville, TN for letting me join their RCIA team and forming me as a catechist.  They even let me teach some of the sessions.  In fact, I can’t thank them enough.

I now see signs of things becoming even better even better.  We still see some of the orthodox young adult Catholics in our area who are ten or more years younger than I am, and they are very faithful and joyful.  They seem to have received better formation, too.  However, I know that their experience and formation isn’t universal in the Church.  It needs to be.  We would set the world on fire if it were.  There is still a lot of work to be done in evangelizing my generation and the people who came after us, but we have more people who are in love with Christ and his Church who will bring others with him.

Next blog, I want to share my thoughts on young adult ministry . . .

Category: Catholic, News on My Life


My Redesigned Web Page

  /   Saturday, May 17, 2014   /   Comments(0)

Ok, hopefully this is the last post about my site.  I finally decided how I wanted to my site to look, and I found out it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought to accomplish it. I have more work to do, and I think I will just make updates to this post rather than keep posting about the site.

From about 2005 – 2010, I had a site and a blog that were similar in appearance and developed on a content management system that I had personally created. However, the need to move the page resulted in my creating a new site rather hurriedly because the new server couldn’t support my system. I could not remake a blogging system, so I used WordPress with a theme that didn’t match my page. I have realized that my blog is the main thing that gets content, so I decided to make it the focus of my site. From now on, going to www.davidancell.com will take you to the blog that now has the name of my web page. If you use the old address, you will be redirected.

I built my own WordPress theme, and I literally learned how to do this last week. I used my old blog from 2005 as the model. Needless to say, it still needs some work. I still need to:

Recreate my links and blogroll. Update: Links and blogroll are back up, as well as the page of recommended books.

Restore the ability to comment Update: Comments are working again!

Replace that logo. That picture of me looks like my toddler kept me up for three nights straight, but it’s from 2005, when he didn’t exist.  Update:  I did it!  My wife took my picture for a new logo, and now I’ve got it up.

And last but not least . . . Make this design responsive so you don’t have to zoom on a mobile device. I just had it but lost it. Update: I have started on this. If you use this site on a smartphone or tablet, you should notice that the sidebar drops to the bottom. My next project is to add a menu and search that can be accessed from the top of the page when using a mobile device.

I hope you will enjoy the new site!

Update #1:  I just added an RSS Feed link so you can subscribe to the blog.  I also managed to get my links to my Twitter feed, Google+ page, and main site back on the page.

Update on 6/28/2014: As I am learning some tricks, I have done more with this site than I thought I was going to do. I have added custom fonts and changed the look of the sidebar a bit. The biggest thing you will notice is that I have added a top menu bar. Even on a mobile device the button that reveals the hidden menu looks like the menu bar. The main thing I need to do is fix the logo at the top. I just need to get a new picture taken. Any ideas for what that should look like?

One thing that I will say is that, while his page should work on older browsers, I am targeting newer ones. I know it looks funny on any version of Internet Explorer older than version 9.

Update on 7/6/2014:  My web page has now been officially redesigned.  I’ve accomplished what I set out to do.  In the future, I want to revise the code for HTML 5, but that’s an under-the-hood project that may not even be noticed.  It will take a long time as I need to read up more on HTML 5.  Of course, as I learn more, there may still be some design changes.

Category: News on My Life, Technology


New Look for the Blog

  /   Tuesday, April 29, 2014   /   Comments(0)

I haven’t liked the template I was using for this blog for some time. In fact, I don’t think I have ever liked it. Finally, I picked another one. It may change again given that my main site due for a redesign. However, I expect it to be a long time before I get that done.

I had one important goal in mind. Have you noticed those sites that look very nice on your smartphone without your ever having to zoom in? That is what I want. Geeks like me call it responsive web design. If you are on a modern smartphone, you will see that this site has similar design to what you get on a computer (unlike those ugly mobile designs), but the elements are immediately positioned so that you can read them. I still wish all my links would appear, but this will work for now.

I probably read many more blogs on my phone or iPad than I could ever read on a computer. So, making the blog render well on a mobile platform is very important to me.  Now, I just need to learn how to make the rest of the site work like this. I am looking for resources now.

Category: News on My Life, Technology


Am I Still Blogging?

  /   Thursday, November 07, 2013   /   Comments(0)

You have probably noticed that I don’t post anywhere near as often as I used to. Maybe some people think I should just give up the blog. Lots of people have come to the conclusion that it was time to stop blogging. Well, I’m pretty stubborn, so I want to keep going even if I don’t publish much. After all, I’ve had a blog for over 11 years. Why stop now?

I have a few things I want to say a little about, so here goes …

Me: My biggest news is that I now have not one son but two sons. Our little Benedict was born just over a month ago. The new baby is doing well. How do I write a post with two young kids around? I type it on my iPad whole I’m watching to make sure the older one stays asleep. The big brother really is excited about his little brother. How could he not be? The little guy is awful cute!

Affordable Care Act: As a health care professional, I’m watching it closely. As someone who has insurance, I’m seeing a higher premium for less coverage. Really, I don’t mind paying if it means that others can get the health care they need. However, I don’t care to pay higher premiums so that people get free contraception. Besides that, I see plenty of places where something can go wrong. First, there isn’t a lot of support from the states. A lot have not expanded Medicaid, so some people who would have gotten Medicaid will not, and they won’t be able to get a subsidy on an exchange. So, they may not get coverage. It’s hard to say that people who do get coverage they can afford will be able to afford the cost-sharing if they had to use it. There’s not much use in getting coverage if you can’t afford to use it. Also, if the young and healthy don’t sign up, it’s going to cause premiums to skyrocket if the insurance companies want to be able to afford to do business. Finally, it seems like an awful lot of money will be needed to give all those subsidies. How is this even possible?

Medjugorje: I just read the news today about the letter from the Papal Nuncio to the US Bishops regarding Medjugorje. My thought on this is simple: if the Church hasn’t approved it, then don’t put a lot of stock in it. I wouldn’t even consider a pilgrimage there right now. Putting a lot of faith in an unapproved apparition sets one up for a potential crisis if the apparition is ruled not to be authentic.

My web page: I finally got around to adding Scepter Publishers to my list of recommended Catholic publishers. It’s about time, for I have been using their In Conversation With God series for almost three years now. I’ve just found a lot there that is highly beneficial to my spiritual life.

That’s it for now. Hopefully, I will be back here soon.

Category: News on My Life


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