Your results:
You are Supergirl

Supergirl 87% Superman 80% Spider-Man 75% Wonder Woman 67% Green Lantern 65% The Flash 65% Batman 45% Iron Man 40% Hulk 40% Robin 37% Catwoman 10%

Lean, muscular and feminine. Honest and a defender of the innocent.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

On my way to work yesterday, I decided to change things up a bit by stopping at Crane Coffee for a latte, as opposed to my regular Starbucks stomping ground.

The drive-through line was a bit long as I ordered a tall Caramel Dream.

When I approached the window to pay for my latte, I discovered that the woman one car ahead of me already paid for my drink.

“It’s just a random thing,” the barista informed me as she leaned out the little window and handed me my latte.

That most certainly made my day. Nothing like that has happened to me at Starbucks.

Perhaps I’ll do the same and make someone else’s day by picking up the tab on their favorite caffeine drink, be it hot or cold.

Remember when I panicked after learning I had a cholesterol score of 234?

It was all bullshit.

I had blood drawn Saturday for a second cholesterol test by my doctor.

The phone call came shortly after 4 this afternoon.

High cholesterol? Hardly! My new score: 179.

In the words of the nurse, “Excellent.”

Not sure why I received such an outrageously high score the first go around. And here I’ve been living the past few weeks, readying myself to change my diet, exercise more and ingest some cholesterol-lowering drug promoted on weeknight TV.

But not anymore.

Please pass the fried chicken. I’m starving.

Details, details, details: http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/05/02/mac-switch-mac-bore/

Part of the experience at the doctor’s office is getting weighed. On Friday, I stepped on the scale and, to my surprise, discovered I weighed 123 pounds.

However, I have a scale at home and know I weigh around 115 pounds.

I immediately spoke up and said, “Um, I think the scale may be broken. I don’t weigh 123 pounds.”

{I knew I drank a lot the night before, but didn’t eat much. Could I have consumed 8 pounds of alcohol in just six hours?}

The nurse smiled and said, “No, it’s not broken. I just weighed myself this morning!”

I convinced the smiling nurse to try another scale. I stepped on and confidently smiled when the digital display read 116 pounds.

Here’s what’s weird about this experience. If I really weighed 123 pounds — but thought I only weighed 115 pounds — I wouldn’t have minded a bit. My clothes aren’t fitting any differently and, for the most part, I’m happy with how my body looks.

However, when I thought I weighed 123 pounds, I wouldn’t stand for it — not when I knew I weighed 115 pounds.

Why the hell does my brain work this way? Weight is just a number!

I had two tubes of blood drawn this morning. I requested the nurse use my left arm, as my right arm does everything from write to shift my Hyundai.

The last time I had blood drawn, a massive, sprawling bruise bloomed the next day where the needle punctured my skin. I am 99 percent sure the same will happen later today/early tomorrow.

My digital camera will document the bruise’s progress, should it decide to show up.

In the meantime, my left arm is killing me.

Ouch!

This morning, while eating a bowl of cereal, I watched Thursday’s episode of “The Office,” which I DVR’d this past week.

Hot tears ran down my face during the last few moments I watched Pam and Jim.

My reaction was completely unexpected given the show’s reputation of insanely witty humor, yet, perhaps, expected given my life at the moment.

Thieves strip art from walls of church

BY CHRISTOPHER BURBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Thieves working in stained-glass-filtered daylight spirited away seven paintings from the sanctuary of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in south Omaha.

They took six of 14 Stations of the Cross paintings that parish officials believe date to the original Immaculate Conception Church in the 1890s. They also cut a 6-foot-high depiction of Jesus – a painting valued at $15,000 in its home country of Poland – from its frame.

The Rev. Anthony Espinosa said the thefts occurred sometime in the afternoon of May 6, between a Mass celebrating a parish family’s special occasion, and a regular Saturday evening service.

Espinosa discovered the empty frames when he went into the church, 2708 S. 24th St., for the 6 p.m. Mass on May 6. It took him a while to conclude it was theft. Workers had been painting and making repairs to the church interior, and the Stations of the Cross paintings had only recently been returned to the walls.

And, he said, it was unthinkable that someone would steal such items from a church.

“They were targeted,” Espinosa said. “Either someone knew the historical value or just really wanted stations.”

He could not place a monetary value on the Stations of the Cross paintings, saying only that they are “historically irreplaceable” and a link to the church’s heritage.

The larger painting, depicting a Polish saint’s vision of Jesus as the Divine Mercy, is one of three of its kind painted in Poland, the historic homeland of Immaculate Conception Church’s founders and many of its current parishioners. The two in Poland are valued at $15,000, Espinosa said.

The Stations of the Cross traditionally adorn the walls of Catholic churches. There are 14, and they tell the story of Jesus’ Crucifixion. Catholics use the images as prayer aids, especially during Lent.

Immaculate Conception members sponsored the paintings in 1897, said Joyce Urban, the parish’s administrative assistant. Her grandparents, Anton and Maryane Smolinski, donated the 13th Station, one of the eight that were not taken.

Several families still in the parish stem from those founders, she said.

The stations paintings had been stored in a church basement until children discovered them in the mid-1980s. The pastor found them beautiful, and parishioners paid to restore them and return them to the walls.

They hung in wood frames with metal titles. The frames were left behind by the thieves. Among the stolen paintings was Station 4, “Jesus Meets His Afflicted Mother.”

The parish took down the remaining stations out of concern the thieves would return to finish the job.

Police are investigating.

“I’m really sad about it,” Urban said. “I’m not angry. I’m just sad. The Stations of the Cross are very much a part of our lives and our faith. How could they do that? What were they going to do with them? They belong to God. This is God’s house.”

That said, she said it could have been worse, and the crime doesn’t shake her belief in the goodness of the church’s neighborhood.

“Are we going to miss them? Yes,” Urban said. “Can we replace them? No. We can get new stations, but they won’t be the same.

“But no one was hurt. And they’re material things.”

Espinosa affixed a printed note to a church wall inside the empty frame of the Divine Mercy painting. The note was, he said, “a way of making a dreary situation spiritual.”

The priest’s message reads, “Long ago, a thief repented to Jesus on the cross. Today we hope a thief will repent and return our picture of Jesus, Divine Mercy.”

Nothing says Happy Friday like mashed potatoes and warm chocolate chip cookies from the oven, though not together but the prior following the latter.

My tummy is finally full.