Digital Analogue

Galesburg!

Hearty thanks to Lynne, John, David, and Karen for helping me move in! It went nearly as fast as moving out, taking only about an hour and a half, and David and Karen get extra points for managing to figure out how to get the couch in here. When I eventually move out of here, either I'm going to get pro movers (who I can remind that it got in here, so there must be a way to get it out!) or else sell it to my landlord or the next tenant.

My hero is a man in a red pickup truck, though. As I was driving the truck down here, there was a place where construction narrowed traffic to one lane for all of forty feet or so, but it was taking forever to get through there, in large part because of schmucks that were further back darting out into the left lane, up to the merge, and then trying to get back in---possibly a net win for them, but it was causing the rest of us endless difficulties. And this man, he was about twenty cars behind me, he'd gotten fed up and cut off a snappy little sportscar who'd darted into the left lane. And then the pickup truck guy stayed right where he was in the left lane, matching speed with the person who had until recently been in front of him, so that nobody could pass him; and the traffic was through inside of five minutes. I was far enough back that if it weren't for him, it would have taken twenty minutes easy. What a wonderful man.

My church here---Corpus Christi---is an interesting case, too. Really bizarre mix of pre-VII Catholicism and modern stuff. The priest wears vestments that are technically modern but have a lot of the gold thread patterning seen in the older style; but the altar servers were female. Communion was bread only, no wine, but we lined up for it. The altar servers held out the paten underneath the offered host, but we took the hosts in our hands. Weird. Also, I really need to ask where the priest came from; his accent sounded, if anything, Israeli, or maybe eastern European. In any case, it didn't sound like anyplace with a Roman Catholic majority (which might be why they sent him here, I suppose). Finally, tragically, they use Glory and Praise as their hymnal rather than Gather---but it seems to be an updated version with different numbering from the G&P I'm familiar with. And the organist/pianist sounds pretty good, so maybe she can be convinced to play the GIA accompaniments for the songs that are in both. We'll see. :)

Unpacking sucks, though not nearly as much as packing did. It'd be better if I could at least figure out how the big furniture pieces should be laid out....

The trains here in Galesburg are nearly constant, except during the night, when they are merely frequent. I expect I'll get used to it soon enough, just like I did for the Thayer St motorcycle gang and the CVS 4am truck unloading.

Anyway, off (back) to the Dollar General. That store is totally my new favourite---everything ranges from "cheap" to "very cheap", and is all denominated in multiples of $1---the price stickers don't even have a spot for cents. (Well, a couple of things are $1.50, but that's pretty rare.) Now, if only that included tax....

"Hey, if Purina made Bachelor Chow---I'd eat it." --Greg Seidman