The country is not quiet, for those who suggest a move to the country. In the country, your neighbors aren't quite as on top of you as they are in the 'burbs, but they're there, and they're more likely to have farm equipment, horses, geese, and chickens than your hoops-playing neighbors. They're also a lot more likely to have churches, which ring their bells rather loudly on Sunday mornings if you're lucky, at matins and vespers if you're only slightly less lucky, and on the hour every day if you're not lucky at all.

The country also has crows which caw louder than you could imagine for such a small animal, and at the crack of dawn. No matter how loudly you scream "Shut! Up!" at them, they just don't seem to listen. The country also has: owls, peepers (tree frogs), crickets, bullfrogs, and coyotes, so for all those of you who made comments about repetitive noise (to which I am very sensitive myself -- the sound of a window A/C compressor turning over makes me insane to the point of violence), you're going to be very, very unhappy in the country with all that repetitive chirping, hooting, peeping, and ribbiting.

And that's if you *don't* have neighbors with geese which get my vote as the Worst. Animals. Ever.

or sit on the back porch playing a concertina

Oh now see that is the absolute limit. Merengue, barking beagle puppy, geese, church bells, 1am trains, crows, woodpeckers, heavy-footed upstairs pothead neighbor... all handled with equanimity (mostly).

But a concertina?

A CONCERTINA??

No ma'am!

Susan doesn't wind up in Narnia in The Last Battle because she rejected Narnia. Peter is there, you'll notice, as are Polly and Digory. It's not because she grows up, or because she's female (???), it's not because Narnia turned its back on her at all. Its because she turned her back on Narnia, discarding it as silly and foolish childhood games.

She never wound up in "hell", she just didn't get to to back to Narnia with everyone else. She just ceased to be. It bothered me for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that how can this really be heaven for her family if they know they'll never see her again? Wouldn't that be sad for them, and therefore not heaven?

I was psyched that she was totally badass in this film, though (which I very much enjoyed even though it veers pretty sharply from the book, and it's my favorite of all the books to boot.)

In my experience (at least once a year) the median age on Aer Lingus is closer to 9, given the ferocious numbers of chizzlers being hauled back and forth to see gran. I've actually never heard a screaming child on an Aer Lingus flight, and I've flown 28 legs with them. Loud and chattery, yes, but reasonably well-behaved and no kicking or running in the aisles, either. Maybe its because they have strict Irish parents. The worst flight I was ever on had 30 teenage girls from Dublin going on a skiing holiday in New Hampshire. Now *that* was a sleepless flight.

Be grateful for those old ladies, though, their constant repetitions of the Rosary and liberal sprinkling of holy water as they shuffle down the aisle are what's keeping the plane in the air, you know that right?

Of course, they used to allow married priests

They still allow married priests, and if you look really hard you can find a few (I know one personally!) I'm not talking Byzantine Catholic, either, but bona fide Roman Catholic. These are generally men who were Anglican priests or Lutheran pastors, who converted to Catholicism usually due to dissatisfaction with the direction of their respective Churches. They have to get double-secret permission from the Vatican and study Catholic-specific theology, but since the religions are very closely related to begin with, they don't have far to go.