When Worlds Collide

   Have you ever had the experience of your worlds colliding?  Like on Seinfeld, when Elaine and Susan (George’s fiancé) start hanging out.  “Relationship George” and Friendship George” were never supposed to meet.  George’s life starts to fall apart.  I suppose that since I bear a resemblance to George Castanza (short, stocky, balding, yada yada yada) my life was bound to imitate his eventually.

   I just got back from a parish council meeting at St. Mike’s that I didn’t want to go to.  It all started today at 4:45pm.  I’m gearing up for the end of the day (and the end of Monday can never come fast enough) when my phone rings.  It’s the president of the credit union.  He says “We want to do a breakfast at area churches to promote the credit union.  Debbie’s working on things at St. Louis, why don’t you talk to Fr. Jed and see about setting this up at St. Michael’s”.  He gave me a few more details and click, hangs up the phone.  So I come home and I mention this to Cat, who says with enthusiasm, “You should come to the parish council meeting tonight, lets check with Jed”.  So she calls him, but no answer.  A bit later he calls back (damn caller id) and I run the idea past him.  He sounds interested but thinks talking to the parish council is a good idea too.  No here’s the problem…I know these people.  Some of them are my friends, others are just acquaintances, but I know them all from church.  So now I have to walk in and be all “Hi, my name is Rob Hardenbergh and I am here representing the U.P. Catholic Credit Union.”  Part of me wants to be relaxed and even a bit silly, part of me wants to be serious and business like.  WORLDS COLLIDE.  I knew from the get go this wasn’t going to be a fast ball hit into a home run.  It was more like a slider that I had to reach for and missed, throwing the bat from my hands toward the pitcher.  (ok, I shouldn’t to sports metaphors)  The initial reaction was positive, but then the one person had to react “I’m trying to be positive about this”, which really means Hell no, what are you thinking.  Then there were questions about how thought out this was (like I’m gonna tell them it came out of thin are three hours ago) and if it had been run past the diocese (which it wasn’t, won’t be, and doesn’t need to be).  I’m just the freakin’ messenger here people.  I come bearing an offer of free food and $250, so the credit union can have two people and some brochures out. 

  Now as a parishioner, I understand the concern.  Where do we draw the line?  Do we let any organization host a coffee social?  Do we only let the ones willing to fork over some dough?  But ultimately, it doesn’t hurt the parish.  It’s free food, and free money.  There would be no speech at announcement time.  There would be no sales pitch.  There would just be free food and some people there to answer questions, if there were any.  It’s pretty no-brainer to me.  Take the money and stuff your belly!

  I didn’t want to stick around for the debate.  I already stayed longer than I wanted too.  So I’ll find out their decision when Cat gets home from the meeting.  All I know is that “Church Rob” and “Work Rob” cannot take much more of this.  Something is bound to blow up in my face and I’m not looking forward to that.

Stormy Weather

When I was a kid I was TERRIFIED of thunderstorms.  I’m not kidding, ask my mom if you don’t believe me.  I would totally panic.  I remember one day in the second grade very clearly.  We were in class and the sky started turning all dark and I started to get really scared.  There was another kid in my class, Danny, and he was just as much of a chicken as I was.  So Ms. Baron let us sit behind this halfwall/bookcase that separated the coat racks from the main classroom.  We got to play checkers and other board games while the rest of the class learned (hmmmm, I hope I didn’t miss anything too important).  I remember another time when I was sent to the principal’s office during a storm.  This really wasn’t a good idea, because they had a weather radio and all I remember hearing was “take cover immediately”, of course the storm wasn’t near us but I didn’t know that!

Why do I write this now?  Because as I type I am sitting on the front porch and a pretty good storm is blowing (literally) through.  I’m not sure when I happened, but I stopped being scared of storms and now I think they are kinda cool.  My stomach still gets a little knotted, but I don’t panic anymore.  I don’t have to run and hide in the basement or curl up in a ball.  This storm probably won’t be that bad.  There is something about the geology and climatology of Marquette that saves us from the “big ones”.  The lake plays a big part in that as to the surrounding “mountains” and hilly terrain.  There really big storms tend to break up just as they get to us. (gotta go in, the rain is getting to hard for the laptop)

Even though I’m not afraid of storms anymore, I still get jumpy sometimes!  You see, where I’m from downstate we have “tornado sirens”.  These are big sirens that go off when there is a severe weather warning.  Apparently the Marquette hasn’t heard of this concept (or they don’t need it because of the funky weather thing I talked about earlier).  They do however have those big sirens.  I remember my freshman year at NMU.  I had only been here a few weeks and I heard the tornado siren go off.  It was a gorgeous day so I thought they were just testing them (they do that downstate).  A few days later I heard it again, but it was rainy that day.  I thought, wow it doesn’t seem like stormy weather but they just tested them, so I guess something’s headed this way!  When I mentioned it to someone in my hall, they just laughed at me.  I didn’t get it.  Up here, they use that siren to alert the volunteer firefighters that there is a fire call.  That way the ones that aren’t on duty can be ready just in case a second call comes in.  CRAZY.  So long story short…that siren goes off a lot, and I usually just ignore it (if I even acknowledge it), but every once in a while it’ll put a knot in my stomach and I’ll have to remind myself that there’s no storm, just a fire somewhere (not sure which one is worse really).

So that’s enough of my Storm Stories, though I have a few more (ask me about the neighbor’s dog/weather detector sometime).

 

p.s. Just checked the radar, the big red blob it about 2 miles from my house, but it shrank and I think it’s going north of us, so I’ll get a good soaking rain (that the lawn really needs) but no thunderstorm, oh well, it could have been fun!