PA. DRIVERS

Yesterday I read more of "Northanger Abbey" & more of the essays & other things in that book about "The Waste Land". This morning I went to the Carmelite meeting in Wilkes_Barre. There were a half dozen of us in attendance. Besides attending to the usual details, we made preparations for upcoming events & decided to send a gift to Sr. Catherine, who is now convalescing in Cincinnati, Ohio. As I was going home on Wyoming Avenue, I was forced to bluff my way through the usual gang of Pa. idiots. A woman drove right in front of me from the southbound lane to get to the opposite side of the street to pull into a parking lot. A guy in a truck drove right into my lane from that lane, into oncoming traffic, for at least a few seconds. We say happy birthday today to Sarah in Michigan. She's cousin Leonard's granddaughter. Tomorrow I shall have to lector at 10:30 Mass. That's usually pretty easy for me.

CONSTRUCTION

I sent messages to some O.L.P.H. classmates on Facebook yesterday. So far only George has sent me an answer. He remembers me well. Uncle Frankie showed up for a while again yesterday. I'm still reading "Northanger Abbey" & "The Waste Land". Tomorrow morning I have to go to Wilkes_Barre for the Carmelite meeting. It's at 9:00 a.m. every third Saturday of the month at the Little Flower Manor on South Meade Street. Last night, fairly late, it started pouring out. I was already in bed by then but I couldn't help hearing all the violent noise. We really needed the rain. I was very surprised to see this morning that there was no construction work going on over in Pittston. Maybe they don't work on Fridays around here. I was very happy to see, in the Citizen's Voice this morning, that Oprah Winfrey will no longer be on TV starting in 2011. It can't possibly be soon enough for me.

LINDENHURST FRIENDS

Uncle Frankie came over for a while. Yesterday I mistakenly said he didn't show up on Tuesday but he did. I must have forgotten. Mark, from my high school class at St. John the Baptist in West Islip, has joined my Facebook friends list. Ordinarily this wouldn't have been terribly newsworthy but I was checking out his friends list & couldn't help noticing that he's in touch with people from our class at O.L.P.H in Lindenhurst. Until now I'd never been able to track down people who were only in my class in O.L.P.H. I went to that school during the seventh & eighth grades. Construction work every day in Pittston is still getting me crazy. It's only bad during the day. Last night I went to the meeting at O.L. Mt. Carmel on William Street. Everyone except Lynn Marie showed up. Oddly I couldn't help overhearing the church's band playing "Kashimir" from Led Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti" album.

WEATHER

Tonight I have to go to another O.L. Mt. Carmel meeting in Pittston. Sometimes it's cancelled but so far I haven't heard anything. We haven't seen Uncle Frankie for a couple of days. He's probably really busy with something. Yesterday I read around fifty pages of "Northanger Abbey". It gets easier each time I read it. Jane Austen's always been a favorite of mine. A couple of days ago I saw another episode of Joseph Pearce's show about Shakespeare. The episode was about "King Lear" & its relevance to today's world. The weather's a bit colder today than it's been lately. There was ice on my windows this morning. I just overheard someone say that it's really nice out now. There's a never ending barrage of construction work all over the place these days. Ths Saturday I shall have to go to another Lay Carmelite meeting.

JANE AUSTEN

Autumn continues to bring us above average temperatures & much nicer weather than I'm used to for November. All this week I shall be going to Pittston for 8:00 a.m. Mass at St. John's. I still don't know anybody who shows up but by now I'm getting used to all the familiar faces. So far nothing much of note has been going on over there. I'm still practicing my guitar. Lately I've been trying to get the hang of the scales in the mixolydian mode. It only seems difficult at first but each scale inevitably follows a set pattern anyway so it's more confusing than physically difficult. I've just started re_reading Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey". I've already read it quite a few times. I'm still reading all those other things too. Gas prices have been going down very slowly lately. At least that's a little bit of temporary good news.

ITALIAN

I made a couple of big mistakes over the weekend. I thought the ziti dinner was at O.L. Mt. Carmel. It was really at St. Anthony's In Exeter. I wasn't really determined to show up anyway. I also thought O.L. Mt. Carmel's blood drive was today. It was yesterday so I missed it. Lately I've been practicing a lot with Acoustic Guitar magazine. It provides me with quite a lot more variety than just a few Beatle & Eric Clapton books. Uncle Frankie visited for a while yesterday. I overheard him & my parents say that Mary Anne & Michael both speak Italian really well. With all my Italian connections I shall have to follow their lead & brush up on my command of the language. On my way home from Pittston this morning I noticed that part of Main Street was blocked off to traffic. It was the part that starts right at the Valero gas station. Today's cousin Luigi's birthday. There are two cousin Luigis on Facebook. They both have my last name.