After a terribly busy week, I am settling in for a lazy weekend and then back into the comfortable routine of classes. Here's to another good semester! Last night we finished the Div orientation week with a cruise on a three-masted schooner, out in Lake Ontario. It was a lovely evening, the view of the city from dusk to night was beautiful, and everyone was happy to be through the very hectic schedule. Sadly, Amy couldn't go. We'd signed her up, and she'd paid for the ticket, but she's in the middle of the Toronto International Film Festival and couldn't get away. It's a huge, ten-day festival and everyone at the concert hall (where they hold the opening galas and where Amy works) has recently shifted jobs...nobody in charge has ever done a Film Festival in their current role. So I was all by my lonesome, and lonesome it was. I'm not all that good at small-talk. I can manage for a few minutes, enough for polite coffee-hour exchanges, but beyond that I tend to say bizarre things or just stare off into space. I tend to make other people uncomfortable, and I certainly make myself so. Parties, you see, are not my thing. To paraphrase Our Lord, wherever more than two or three are gathered together in a party's name, Aaron is awkward in the midst of them. The thing with a cruise is that you can't bug out after a couple hours...unless you're a very capable swimmer and not dressed in a nice new suit. Oh, well. Today I was supposed to lead a Bible study on Ruth (the OT book, not the woman...the only Ruth I know is too small for a group of people to sit on) but nobody showed. Actually they might have, but the building was locked and if they arrived before I did they would have had nowhere to go. Also, the theatre company that rents the parish hall had plastered the doors with signs saying, "Building closed today." By the time the key arrived it was just one o'clock...there were no latecomers, so there was no Bible study. Again...oh, well. And Fr. O, my supervisor at St. Anne's, is doing what many clergy do later in life...he's purging his shelves. Fortunate me, he let me glean (a good Ruth word, there) some treasures from the pile of discards. I picked up a couple books which had been on my list and which would have cost me over $100. Huzzah for Fr. O! |
