JURY DUTY AWAITS

Tomorrow I have to be ready for jury duty on an entirely just_in_case basis. That means I can't possibly go to my high school reunion. My father went to the V.A. hospital this morning to find out why he's having such a problem with congestion. His appointment only lasted a fairly short time. I'm supposed to lector at 5:00 p.m. Mass tomorrow with Linnae. I suppose if I have to be available for jury duty, I shall have to ask Rocco to cover for me. I've never really gotten jury duty, & I'm most certainly not looking forward to it. This morning was unusually cold at about 28 degrees. There was only a little bit of ice on my windows & it wasn't foggy. It gets me crazy when there's too much fog & ice. I made sure I spent part of yesterday reading those books. "War & Peace", especially, can get me crazy. The other one's nowhere near as nerve-wracking, though it gets pretty weird in certain spots. From now on, I'll be doing quite a whole lot of grumbling about people who insist on saying "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas". When I say insist, I mean exactly that. They presume to take it for granted that they have the right to make it unavoidably mandatory for all of us to stoop to the likes of this. It's on all the commercials these days & happens constantly with people in general. I can't stand the constant Christmas carols that started at the beginning of this month either, trivializing the whole thing. The Gap(including Old Navy & Banana Republic)have jumped back onto the anti_Christian bandwagon this year. They take every possible advantage of Christmas as a money_making gimmick, but never dare to pronounce the word. Advent starts this Sunday, December 2. >