Friends and Cars and Lucky Money

Had a good week with A., my friend from St. Louis. We hung out with the JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCult kids Tuesday night, Wednesday she came to Our Daily Bread with me, Thursday we went out for sushi, Friday we had a scrambled eggs'n'guacamole breakfast and then she drove home.
I had smelled a sort of burning smell one day the previous week when I was driving; with A. in town I figured it'd be a good time to take the car in to get it checked out (as I'd have access to another car). One of the side benefits of the J.F.C.C.C. house is that Our Glorious Leader is knowledgeable about cars (but then, Our Glorious Leader is knowledgeable about EVERYTHING!. So I dropped my car off with him on Wednesday. That afternoon he called. In the call he used the term "living on borrowed time." Seems there's this thing called an "intake seal" except mine wasn't particularly sealed. And coolant and oil were mixing. And this is not a good thing. The good news is it should be all better soon, which is nice 'cause I'm planning a road trip.
Envelopes continue to arrive in response to our appeal. I have appropriated the role of letter-opener for these envelopes. Opening them is easily the high part of my day. It reminds me of Tet--tearing open the red envelopes to find out how much lucky money is inside.
I was just thinking of how nice it is that this job allows me to make use of some of my less desirable traits. It has been remarked before* that I am good at manipulating others for money and hospitality; if I am doing so for the benefit of a non-profit, it's all good. And taking delight in the acquisition of money? It's not greed here, it's a motivational tool.

*I had a letter of defamation written for me by one of my friends (hi Steve) when I was applying for admittance to a Girls Night gathering. The girls had to make sure I was of sufficient moral depravity to be welcomed to a night of eating, drinking and board games; thus a letter of recommendation would never do. The letter of defamation was a piece of fiction hinting at unseemly conduct when drunk and other proofs of wickedness, but whenever my friends read the line in it that said "She manipulates others for money and hospitality, they'd always say, "Whoever wrote this knows you really well!"

What Soup Kitchens Wish For (And What They Don't)

All last week a local sports club took up a collection for Our Daily Bread of canned goods and personal items to coincide with the celebration of their Open House on Saturday. I brought three boxes (big-screen-TV-size) full of testimony to the club guests' generosity to work today. What was particularly gratifying was that the largest percentage of it was usable stuff--travel-size shampoo, cookies, cups, lotion, razors, combs. Sometimes with drives like this you just get people casting off the unappetizing items that have been sitting in the back of the pantry for goodness knows how long--those that perhaps even came with the house. But out of those three big boxes we only found two things that were unsuitable for giving away--a big glass bottle of cod liver oil, and Classico Vodka Sauce. Yeah, there's no actual alcohol content in the latter, of course, but it's still bad form for a soup kitchen to give away anything with the word "vodka" on the label.
But other than those two things, as I said, it was a wonderful collection, particularly since with the recent ice a lot of donations haven't been coming in.
Another Very Good Thing--that mailing that I wrote about earlier? It was an appeal letter; it got sent out late last week. The first replies came in today (we picked up Saturday's mail--no mail on Presidents' Day). It's lovely to see people being so generous. I hope our donors feel a sense of ownership of the place, that they are the reason why we can do what we do.
A very good friend is coming to visit from St. Louis; I'm gonna put her to work volunteering for a day. I'm curious about how the place will look through her eyes.

About Dentists, Among Other Things

Mr. And Mrs. Our Glorious Leader helped me get to and from work today, for which I am very grateful. It rained yesterday, the rain turned to ice overnight, and then about an inch of snow fell on top of that this morning. Yeah. Our Daily Bread closed up shop at about 1 pm yesterday. I went on traffic.com at 4:30 yesterday afternoon, which is when I'm usually heading home, to see what the conditions were like. "Road hazard: downed power lines blocking all lanes," it said for the route I would have taken.
Things I enjoyed about today:

--Being greeted with a cheerful "Happy Valentine's day!" as I walked in to work this morning
--The little noise of glee made by the Coffee Lady when she saw the amount of her paycheck--she had come in to work a special event we had on Saturday, so she got paid extra
--How pretty all the ice-encased trees looked

Now then--about those dentists. A preacherman came in the other day and we got talking about what he sees as the top issues for the homeless/poverty-stricken in our area. He says one of the biggest problems is dental care--our people can't afford to go to the dentist, and there are no programs in place that he knew of that could help.
We've got a podiatrist that comes in to help people with foot issues--this man is a real saint, he goes to places all over and does this for free. Maybe that's what it would take--some dentist to decide to make assisting the homeless part of his mission. So, if there are any dentists reading this--here's a chance to do something great. This isn't just a Cincinnati issue, this type of help is needed all over.
Someone sent us this article recently. The article includes this quote: “Feeding the homeless only encourages more homelessness." I'm not even gonna begin to tell you what I think about that, because anyone using foul language will be asked to leave.

If You Use Foul Language, You Will Be Asked To Leave!

There's a woman who comes in all the time who usually sits at a table and gripes. She's not talking to anyone in particular, at least no one I can see. I can't tell what she says, it sounds like
"mutter mutter &#@@!$ grumble mutter #$%@ murmur @#$%ing @#$%#@% mutter mutter..."
We have signs posted about foul language, but I don't think this lady can really help herself. St. Mary Beth will get up when the volume of the muttering starts to rise, she'll stand in the doorway with her finger to her lips, and that'll take care of it for ten minutes or so.
Mary Beth got talking about the Pink Panther last week, so M. and I rented it on Friday. I'd never seen the original before, but M. says at her house they watched it all the time. Good ol' David Niven's in it, which made me think that I should rent Prisoner of Zenda and make M. watch that. One of the joys of communal living--cultural exchanges.
Saturday night we rented Catch-22, something else I've never seen (though I read, and loved, the book--as much as you can say you "love" anything with so much insanity in it). That movie will never seem out of date, unfortunately.
Sunday I introduced Our Glorious Leader* to his first full-length U2 concert video: ZooTV Live in Sydney. He was a little disturbed by The Edge's bedazzled jeans, I think, but otherwise he enjoyed it. He encouraged me to comment on anything I wanted to in the course of watching it--a dangerous thing to say to someone with as much love of U2 minutiae as I have.
Speaking of U2...In Christology we've been talking about the Redemption, Christ's ontological personhood and the Trinitarian communion. All of these things make my head spin in class. I'll tell you what, though--after one of these sessions I listened to a U2 bootleg on my drive home. Nothing makes the Vertigo sequence of Miss Sarajevo--Pride--Where The Streets Have No Name sound better than having it follow a discussion of the Redemption, Christ's ontological personhood and the Trinitarian communion. I said to myself, "Oh! That's why it's so difficult to put this stuff in words!"
*Our Glorious Leader is what I call the guy who owns the house I'm staying in, to give people who are freaked out about my living in a JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCult House something more to freak out about.

I'm Gonna Bet You...

Finished my Christology paper with about a half hour to go before class. Writing it became much easier when I remembered I'm taking these classes for fun. One of the side benefits of taking classes for fun is that you can end a paper for a Christology class with a quote like this, which I found on the blog meam commemorationem:
"Of necessity, theological language teeters permanently on the brink of nonsense."
Today at work this fella with an incredible mane of hair and only two front teeth came into the office looking for info on soup kitchens and shelters in the area. As I was printing out the info he wanted, he asked us office denizens, "Do you like mysteries?"
"Depends on the mystery," I said.
"What month were you born in?"
"August," I said.
"So you're a Leo? Okay, here's what I'm gonna do for you" --and he smiled to show off his missing teeth. "I'm going to bet you one dollar that I can describe you exactly right." He made the same offer to V., one of my co-workers. We both declined, but he proceeded to give me an analysis of my personality anyhow. The only thing I remember now was something like "Leos only get in trouble over love affairs."
"Is that so?" I said.
He smiled again and chuckled. "You tell me!"
The staff and kitchen workers had their "Christmas party" today (we've been busy, all right?). There were, I think, thirteen of us that went out to a buffet for lunch. Some betting was going on there, too--one of our guys bet another fifty pushups he wouldn't finish everything on his plate. But when the plate was well and truly cleared off, the one who owed the pushups wouldn't do them. He said he'd eaten so much, his stomach would hit the floor first, and then he'd just bounce.

Snow Day

I don't remember "clearing the snow off someone else's car" being on any list of corporal works of mercy, but it sure should be. Thanks again, Steve.
We got a lot of snow yesterday. It started falling thick and fast around one in the afternoon, at which point Mary Beth told us office denizens to go home. That's exactly how she said it, too: "Go home." Up until then I'd been engaged in what one of my old bosses at P&G calls a "project of guaranteed success." I was making copies for a mailing that'll be going out. It was a project of guaranteed success because the goal was to take one piece of paper and turn it into 3276 pieces of paper. You can really feel like you've accomplished something when you're surrounded by boxes and boxes of paper at the end of the day.
Even though I got to go home early, Our Daily Bread stayed open late again. Another soup kitchen opens its doors today at 4:30, so at least our folks will have some place to go.
When I got home yesterday afternoon I took a nap and then worked on the project whose success is not guaranteed--a paper for my Christology class. I have used every possible means of avoiding work on this paper, including writing a paper for my Church History class. But that happy period of procrastination could not last forever. Luckily existentialist mentor* gave me some information for the paper that I think will prove useful.
I didn't go in to work right away because traffic.com showed a "Jam Factor" of 8.2 or above (on a scale of 0 to 10) on any roads I could take. I waited until the Jam Factor was down around 7 and then ventured out. Driving would have been much easier had my windshield wipers worked properly. But I made it.

*Footnote: I was assigned a mentor for the program I'm in at school. At our first meeting we talked about our backgrounds, and she mentioned she majored in philosophy during the sixties. I asked her what her specialty was, and she answered casually, "Existentialism." She's not actually an existentialist. I just call her my existentialist mentor because it's fun to say, and one should never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Hot Cocoa

It's freakishly cold in Cincinnati. I went to an ice-skating party yesterday at Fountain Square, but only stayed for a half-hour or so (maybe ten minutes of actual skating) because I lost feeling in my toes. The best part was that you could skate to one side of the rink and then just stand there; the wind would push you across without your having to exert any effort.
There was a five-gallon Igloo container full of hot cocoa there. By strange coincidence there is a five-gallon Igloo container full of hot cocoa today at Our Daily Bread. We made an executive decision to stay open later in the afternoon because, well, it's freakishly cold. So we put out the cocoa (I'm sipping a cup for quality control purposes; very high cocoa-to-hot water ratio) and put on a movie (The Mask of Zorro).
A woman asked me today if I would be her mother. I turned her down.

Mafia priests

I'm taking classes at The Athenaeum of Ohio on Wednesday and Thursday nights this quarter. My Church History prof is a great storyteller. We got on the subject of people who are not given a funeral Mass--for instance, Mafia dons--because it would be scandalous. So then he told us about a priest who was in an area with a large Mafia population. This priest went on vacation and told his replacement "If someone dies, no matter who it is, bury him." It seems that he had recently refused to say a funeral Mass. Shortly afterward, he'd heard a noise at his front door, went to see what it was and saw someone had left the tabernacle and the statue of Mary from church on his front porch. Then the church blew up. "They have great faith," our prof said, then skipped a beat. "They need to work on their love, but they have great faith."
There was another priest he knew, a Jesuit (our prof is a Jesuit; for some reason most of the protagonists in his stories are Jesuits as well) who was known as "the Mafia priest." He would get a call: "Meet us at the corner of 6th and Market", he'd go, a car would drive by and toss out someone half-dead to whom he would then give last rites. Or this priest would be picked up and hear the confession of the fellow in the back seat who was about to be fitted for cement shoes. "And that's if they liked the guy they were gonna off," our prof said. "If they didn't like him, they'd wait until he had an adulterous night with his girlfriend and then kill him so he'd go straight to hell."

Imtau the Centaur

Normally I'm against electronic devices acting (or being) smarter than I am, but there is one feature I'd like to suggest to any cellphone manufacturers out there: can you put in a little sensor that can tell when someone has tried to set up the Alarm Clock even though her ringer is turned off? Can you have a message pop up saying something like "You might want to turn your ringer on, YOU IDIOT?"
Thanks.
Speaking of oversleeping, I had a dream about a centaur the other night--no doubt because I had just seen Pan's Labyrinth. In this dream I was working in a bookstore/art gallery on a small Mediterranean island, and in the shop I met a centaur whose name was something like Imtau. He didn't look like your standard centaur--he was standing on two legs, and his arms were a little shorter than a human's would be, but they ended in horse's hoofs. He had a very Russian cast to his features. He was resting his front hoofs on one of those high round tables you see people setting their drinks on at art gallery openings. I greeted him and engaged him in conversation. In the course of it I made some innocent remark about cars, and he let me know politely that I might want to be careful about mentioning such things around centaurs--so many horses lost their jobs because of cars, so they're a pretty sore subject.
I then asked him to tell me what other sort of creatures inhabited this island, since I was so unused to seeing centaurs. "We have some insurance agents here," Imtau said. No, I said, I meant the sort of creatures who weren't found anyplace else--unicorns, for example. "Oh, but unicorns can be found anywhere--they're all over the world." Then I woke up.

Accordion Caterpillar Pencils And More

One of our regulars came into the office today, as he generally does several times a day. This morning he sang a song to my co-worker Val and me--it was a blues song, made up on the spot, featuring air guitar, about not wanting to go to jail. But then he got to a part he said would give him nightmares, so he had to stop and walk out.
I had to go to a meeting this afternoon. As I left, the Guy Who Laughs At Shoes was sitting by the front door, and sure enough, he laughed at my shoes. "I know, I know," I said, and he gave me a high five.
Yesterday the Wednesday Craft Lady came to work in the Kids Cafe. She brought in a caterpillar pencil for me--that afternoon's craft. You take a line of circles on card stock like this, except that all the circles are connected:
OOOOO
and you punch a hole the thickness of a pencil in the center of each circle. You put "antenna" on one end and draw a caterpillar face on that circle. Then you color the rest of the line, fold it accordion-style, and stick a pencil through so the eraser becomes the nose of the caterpillar.
We took a quick field trip at break time this afternoon to Findlay Market next door. St. Mary Beth got Coco a ham bone from Kroeger (famous for their sausage), and a peach cobbler at Aunt Flora's (featured on Martha Stewart).