MD

 I guess this is a milestone, post number 1500.  Very exciting; I guess it means I am alive, still.  And I have a lot to say, even if it is not about that much.  I sort of had an exciting day; Palm Sunday Mass to start -- quite nice, and my tradition of not joining the collective shouts of "Crucify him" remains intact.  The text was the Gospel of Matthew -- one odd thing is that he does not mention the Good Thief; just that the revolutionaries taunted Jesus as well.  Interesting.  Then it was a brief trip to the food pantry with a big bag of canned goods (I remembered) and an inspection (I think we are winning the rodent war, for now), it was off to the next adventure.

Today was a fundraiser dinner at St. Vitus, so I decided to go there and see what it was about.  Driving there -- Broadway to 55th to St. Clair -- was certainly interesting, seeing the sites, or lack of them.  Certainly plenty of empty ones, but closer to St. Clair, it is certainly an interesting mix.  The area around the parish itself reminded me of that around St. Stan's -- not much parking in the church, so people just park on the street or wherever they can.  The site is not very handicapped-friendly; I helped an older lady in a roller walker get in, and she had a hike to get there in the first place.

The dinner was fine -- decent chicken and potatoes, bakery was good, and I was certainly full, so that was good, and of course, one should support our urban ethnic parishes.  I then decided to hop across the street and see the church itself; this took a little while, as Mass ran long -- Palm Sunday!! -- but once it was concluded I got to look around.  Quite pretty in there -- not St. Stan's nice, of course -- but I did get a good look at the altar and the ceiling murals.  I also liked the stone grotto chapels to the Blessed Mother (even if they have electric candles); it was certainly an aid to the contemplative moment.

I had a couple of more errands to do and then it was home to watch the women's national championship game.  It was...fine?  The officiating was craptastic (who calls a technical on the best player in the game) but for a team to put up 100 in women's basketball is impressive, as was Kim Mulkey's outfit... to use a phrase of my parents, I hope she didn't spend any money on it...