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Pray the Divine Office online or download it daily to your PDA or WAP-enabled phone here. The site looks like a throw-back from the early days of the web minus the BLINK tag but man does not live by cascading style sheets and fancy shmancy graphics alone.

:: Captain Crunch no more!

I have a contract on my boat. As anyone in sales knows it ain’t done until the money is in the bank, so I am cautiously optimistic. John called me “Captain Crunch” for the one time I took the family out on the vessel and gently nudged the dock when we were coming back in. I am now considering buying a kayak to get more exercise and and to get in touch with the side of me that has never fallen into the Potomac River or its tributaries.

I will miss STEEMBOAT, a handsome SeaRay Sundancer, but I’m through frittering all my time away on the river with a light buzz from the beer or the gin or the scotch and bad breath from the cigars. It was good while it lasted but way too decadent and costly. If you meet someone with a power boat, here’s how you get invited back on it after your first trip. Offer to give the Captain some money for gas. If you want boat rides for life fork over some money for gas and give El Capitan a hand cleaning the wessel up.

If any of our growing number of regular readers are considering the purchase of a power boat or sail boat of any kind drop me a line. I will talk you out it unless you have about 10-15K of disposable income you don’t mind disposing of for each year that you own the craft. And if you do have that kind of cake laying around I suggest you make some donations.

Center for Family Development
Phone: (301) 365-0612 Fax: (301) 469-7522
The website isn’t up yet – they have some kind volunteers working on it.

Quick prayer request – that my choir retain what we worked on last night. The Stravinsky Ave Maria sounds great, but the Palestrina is still rough around the edges. My singers work extremely hard and we had a great rehearsal, I just wish we had another 2 hours or so to smooth it out.
Here’s a place to go to find music files if you’d like to hear the tunes we’re talking about. You have to download an app, register, etc. etc. etc. but it’s worth it.

Mother’s Day is almost here and I have two suggestions.
First, go out to your local Mall and buy some Tommy Girl or Cashmere Mist fragrance*. Your mom will be delighted – I promise.
Second, Teresa gave the family an ultimatum: write your mom a thank you letter and we’ll give them to her on Sunday. Teresa said my dad wrote something beautiful.
Here’s mine.

Dear Mom –
I just want you to know that I learned how to be a gentleman from you. In this age, that may seem trite to some people, but you and I both know that it’s honorable and respectable to be a gentleman.
A gentleman is someone who says something kind and gracious when he can, and keeps his mouth shut otherwise (unless he’s around family, which means he can say just about anything)
A gentleman treats everyone with the dignity given to them by God.
A gentleman knows that holding a door open for a lady and letting them pass through first is the right thing to do regardless of how liberated said lady is.
A gentleman knows that kindness and affection are something that every family needs.
A gentleman is polite and respectful to all people, especially their elders. Because I was a gentleman in High School, lots of parents wanted me to date their daughters. Conversly, because the parents wanted me to date their daughers, their daughters did not want to date me. This worked out just fine of course.
A gentleman knows that it’s best to be reverent in Church, and reverance is key to growing in holiness.
Teresa would have only married a gentleman, and our marriage has brought me great joy.
I love you mom. Thanks for everything.
Your son, John

*re: Tommy Girl or Cashmere Mist – They smell great and Mom will be happy.

Poor Box
My wife had an observation as we left choir rehearsal last night – “Why are the poor boxes here so dinky? You can hardly fit a folded dollar bill in the slot. At St. Mary’s in old town, the poor boxes were huge! People were emptying their pockets as they walked out of the church. Our poor boxes look like the brick walls so you can’t even see them.” and she ended with the Lay Person’s Call To Action: “I’m going to write the pastor a letter!”
She’s right. The poor boxes at our church look like little bricks. It’s certainly not a reminder of our responsibility. And it’s particularly fitting the we have options for directed giving that might not necessarily end up applied toward legal fees or court settlements.