My Life as a Sanctuary Rat

In case the relative silence on my part hasn't been a give-away, things have been a bit on the busy side around here. The team is gradually shrinking at work as people decide to "work from home" until the break, and since I price consumer electronics, the work has remained fairly heavy. We also seem to find ourselves at the church, at least briefly, just about every day.

The fault for this is pretty well split between MrsDarwin and myself. I got a Liturgy of the Hours group off the ground about two months ago, saying Vespers on Monday and Wednesday nights. Now we're up to four nights, Monday through Thursday, and although we're starting to build a decent and loyal attendance, it's not solid enough I feel like I can skip. Plus, I've been typing up sheets for each night for those who haven't bought books yet. This would involve four weeks of work to get the cycle done, except that as soon as we got through a four week cycle, Advent started, with all sorts of Advent-specific stuff, so there's usually some change or other I have to make and reprint for each evening's Vespers.

Meanwhile, the chant schola which MrsDarwin helped start has taken over the 7:30 mass (once a month to start with), and did a Lessons and Carols last week, and has to sing for the penance service this week, and has the 10:30 on Christmas. So she's at practice 2-3 nights a week.

So as you can imagine, Advent has been quite penitential indeed and we're very much looking forward to some quiet sailing during the Christmas season.

This is somewhat familiar ground for MrsDarwin, whose family was always deeply involved in church related activities, but the sanctuary rat routine has been quite new to me, as my family was never involved in "parish stuff".

Thus goes life around here. One way or another things should be calming down soon.

Upcoming priorities:

• Finish getting Christmas presents before they all become Epiphany presents.
• Get walls up on the playhouse.
• Finish reading Duffy's Stripping of the Altars and Waugh's Decline and Fall. (There's a good contrast for you.)
• Buy a kitten. (We've decided that the cat needs a hobby.)
• Finish my bottle of Macallan 12-Year.
• Conduct the annual viewing of George C. Scott's A Christmas Carol (because there's only one that good).
• Oh, and write some substantive posts...