Another Wedding (4 comments)
This was my first Catholic wedding. The church was pretty much as expected, with depressing ornamentation and stained glass apostles staring into my soul, looking for shreds of guilt they can cultivate. I'm pretty sure that the audience response portions of the service are designed to plant subliminal messages in the attendants' minds. My theory is that the people are too busy getting ready to say another "amen" or "and also with you" or whatever to parse what the preacher's saying.
My misunderstanding of Catholicism showed itself when I confused one of the blessings for a Nazi practice. The guests were asked to raise their right hands out over the bride and groom to help bless their union. Looking around, it wasn't far off from this:
For this trip to the greater Chicago metropolitan area, we spent most of our time in the suburbs. Last time, I got to know the city drivers. They're aggressive and hurried, but predictable. I didn't have any trouble spotting a cab that was about to pull out in front of me in the city, but in the suburbs, I was repeatedly surprised by other drivers' actions. Most of the suburban drivers seemed angry and more than pleased to deal with their mood by trying to inconvenience their fellow drivers. But that wouldn't really be a problem if they were better at controlling their vehicles. For instance, on a somewhat major four-lane road (Army Trail, perhaps) in the west suburbs on Saturday afternoon, somebody hit a deer. While that was something that probably could have been avoided, the outstanding show of driving was by a Pontiac Sundance a few cars back. When the driver noticed that the cars ahead of him were stopping, he swerved into the oncoming traffic lanes (which were empty for a stretch). I was at the front of the oncoming traffic and had slowed down, anticipating idiocy, so I had a good view when the car went back and forth and back and forth over about a hundred feet before spinning 270° to the right and skidding sideways to a halt. That was on dry pavement, so I consider it inexcusable. If I were king, that'd be an immediate license revocation, but so then would be the countless overzealous lane changes I saw SUVs taking on during my time on I-290, I-355, and I-88.
In the interest of not whining, I was going to talk about my new shoes, but simpleshoes.com isn't accessible from UIUCNet. If anyone cares, I'm wearing the perforated sneaker in gray and it's comfortable, but less cushioned than I'd expected.