May 2, 2005

• Christos anesti ek nekron, thanato thanaton patisas, ke ti se tis mni masin zoin kalisamenos!!!

  If you need a translation, ask, dammit. Let’s just say there
  are very few times of year when I feel as overjoyed as I do on Easter.
  Although, let’s just say that you can go back and read my Easter
  entries from last year to find out how it’s been going. Once again, the
  spirit was willing but the flesh was weak, and before I realised it,
  Lent was almost completely over. Now I really dread having to answer
  for this to the Man Upstairs whenever I go to see Him.

  I don’t know if it’s just because I was in a new, taxing, and
  indifferent line of work (railroading doesn’t give you a great deal of
  time to focus on prayer) or if I was flat-out unwilling to keep any
  kind of a fast. It’s going to take a long, long time of soul-searching
  to get that answer, and God only knows if I’ll ever get round to that
  either.

  It could have been a lot worse, though. I was able to make it to most
  of the services during Holy Week, although it really, really ticked me
  off when I had to run a freight train on Good Friday and was only able
  to make it to the Lamentations service.
  (Last time I worked on Good Friday, my life truly went to hell in a
  handbasket for a couple of weeks – although I did work of my own
  volition that time.) At the Lamentations service, though…Ruth and I
  paid as much attention as we could to the incantations, but our efforts
  were frustrated, ironically enough, by a lot of our fellow
  parishioners. The sad part of Easter is, most people in the parish only
  come once a year, and that’s when they do it – so to them, it’s social
  hour. And as such, they get together and shake hands and chit-chat when
  the rest of us are trying to focus on what’s going on at the altar. It
  never happened in such volume at my old church, and I find it extremely
  annoying and disappointing.

  Although not quite as badly as Easter vigil…when the church was
  jam-packed for the reading of the Resurrection Gospel, immediately
  after which two-thirds of the congregation piled out and went home. I
  couldn’t believe it. I wanted to stand up and holler to the back of the
  church, “Where the *%$#!! do you people think YOU’RE going?!” Ah well,
  they’ll have their own transgressions to answer for when their time’s
  up. Ruth and I, along with everybody who stayed to the end at 2:00
  A.M., did get the satisfaction of being commended by our priest for
  sticking around for the entire vigil.

  So here I am, typity-typing away with a train going past
  my window every five minutes…ahh, I’m in hog heaven.
  (Interesting coincidence that “hog” is a slang term for locomotive…)
  Poor little steam engine has apparently gotten the crap beaten out of
  it again, though – its tube sheet is leaking like the FBI, so it had to
  stay indoors for the weekend. So much for my qualifying run. *sigh* In
  case anyone’s wondering, what happened was that somebody or other was
  admitting too much cold air to the firebox, causing the heating tubes
  to contract and leak – and that ain’t good. When I was washing out the
  boiler a couple of months ago, the weld lines on those heating tubes
  were fruitful and multiplying. Can’t say I minded getting the whole
  weekend off, though, after the scads of freight we ran this week -
  switch-o-rama on Thursday and stone train on Friday. Just ONCE, I wish
  those truckers would show up with loads of no more than twenty tons, so
  I don’t have to worry about hauling two or three overweight hoppers
  across the trestle.

  Well, if anything happens, at least now we can blame it on Crash Spill
  Xplode. *muwahahaha* I mean, really, what’s one more derailment on
  their pig-tracked safety record? (You should see what they did to our
  LIRR coaches when they brought those up here…)

  “You’re right, it is a hell of a way to run a railroad.” ~ Unknown
  

  • 8:00 pm
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