Federal Hill at Spruce Street. I have to see what’s going up in this spot as that building had been there next to forever.  

Close up of demolition on Spruce St.  

The prayer card from my grandmother’s funeral. Thanks to those that attended.  

Interesting RC Church Experience

Today we buried my grandmother. But the church service was most interesting.

When the priest was greeting and consoling the family he came to me and just shook my hand and didn’t say anything. That’s odd I thought. But then I realized, I wear this face of utter disgust when I enter a church. But this priest looked like he was scared of me. Am I the anti-christ? I thought that title already went to Benedict the XVI.

What was more interesting was that of a group of 40 people in the church, only six went up for holy communion. So the normal 45 minute services was about 27 minutes.

Blogs and Newsgroups

I find it amusing that when one expresses their opinion they’re labeled as an ‘incorrigible ass’. Are people that afraid of confrontation? What my detractors don’t realize is that lables like that are more complimentary to me than they realize.

Since starting and publishing this blog I’ve been accused of ceaseless self promotion which is rather suprising to me. I’ve been one to make that same accusation of others.

The Catholic Church in America

As a seriously lapsed Catholic it seems to me that the best thing for all of us would be for the Catholic Church in the U.S. to break ties with the Vatican.

I believe that we should have women as priests. I believe that our priests should be able to marry. I believe that we should value every participant and not villify people as an agenda item.

But this will fall on deaf ears. The hierarchy controls all. The Vatican is the biggest corporation in the world.

But who am I to say this. My views on religion and faith are somewhere out in left field. On any test I’ve ever taken with regard to religious views, it always comes back that I’m either heavily Unitarian Universalist or Secular Humanist.

And socially I come out somewhat to the left of Ghandi.

Charles and Gina 

The Annual Shipping Company Debate

Personally I use USPS. At the very least I live in a region (02903) where they actually seem to have their act together. Having participated in mail and package delivery studies with Price Waterhouse for several years I used to get reports on delivery accuracy, timeliness, etc. USPS always came out in the 94-96% range for each. Not too bad.

I’ve hated UPS for some time since they love to do tag and run with residential delivery. Matter of fact I’ve busted them quite a few times when they did this and made a stink about it. Needless to say my packages got delivered wherever I said they should be after that.

But someone on another blog posted a wonderful name for UPS: “UPS is absolute shit-wrapped-in-chiffon, though.”

I guess UPS invites this – they do keep calling themselves Brown. Whenever I hear “What can Brown do for you?” some very evil thoughts cross my mind.

My Flickr Site

You can see all the photos at Flickr

And this is Cosimo in all his Maine Coon looking glory. He does have several of the characteristics of a Maine Coon besides his obvious size. He’s very fluffy, has tufts of fur on the pads of his feet and most importantly he’s polydactyl.

Some ruminations post-Christmas/Saturnalia

So all in all it wasn’t such a bad day. It was just a sort of subdued day. For once dear old dad was right, Grandma was going to die.

A totally expected event.

The gathering was just four of us which I liked better than if we’d had the eight or more. If you look at one of my prior posts you’ll see that this bigger/better thing doesn’t necessarily jibe with me.

I’m happy with what I got. Since I’m of the Seth Brundle School of Wardrobe Management hereby referred to as SBSWM it’s up to Keyron to find clothing I’d be comfortable with. Keyron is happy with what he got as evidenced by all the pictures I’ve uploaded to Flickr as of late.

And I find myself feeling out of place not going to work this week. Weird isn’t it.