It has exciting here recently. Two weeks ago I attended the Ukrainian Orthodox League Convention; then the next week I went to Florida with my family. Now I am almost caught up with the things that accumulated in my Inbox over that time.
The Ukrainian Orthodox League convention was awesome. We (my oldest son, a friend/parishioner, and I) left Rhode Island for Johnson City, NY on Wednesday, after our weekly prayer service (Moleban). The next three days were jam-packed with corporal prayer, meetings, banquets, and lots of fellowship with old and new friends. I even got to spend some time with our bishops – always a great blessing and pleasure.
We got back from the convention at about 3AM Sunday morning – just in time for a couple of hours sleep before getting up to prepare for and serve Divine Liturgy. Monday morning, the whole Perkins clan headed down to my father’s house in Cooper City, Florida. That was a real blast – so many siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. came by that it was a real family reunion. The highlight there may have been the family golf outing. None of us played particularly well, but a good time was had by all.
We got back from Florida Saturday afternoon in time for Vespers. After Divine Liturgy the next morning, we (John, a friend/parishioner) headed down to Hartford for a BBQ at Fr. Stephen’s house (Fr. Stephen is the dean of the New England deanery). The menu (meat, meat, and more meat) was excellent, as was the company. Bishop Daniel (the picture above is of him blessing Fr. Stephen’s new house) had brought two of our seminarians up from New Jersey so they could get some “on the job training”, one (Michael) with Fr. Stephen, and the other (Andrew) with me. We hosted a seminarian over Christmas break last year and it went well, and were happy to volunteer to do it again. We are doing our best to keep Andrew busy without overwhelming him. We have also starting taking him to our local haunts (e.g. Moonlights, a wiener joint) and using him as an excuse to take fun day trips (John and Mark also used him as an excuse to go see The Dark Night again… Andrew had seen it, but was really impressed with the IMAX theater).
For the past few days I have been trying to get caught up and am almost there.
One last thing:
Earlier, I wrote about some fun technology that has really worked out. Let me briefly warn you of one that didn’t: the automatic cat box. The idea is great: the thing senses when your cats have come and gone, then automatically rakes the mess into a disposable tray. Every couple of weeks you empty the tray. Too easy, right? Unfortunately, it is a real mess. First off, you have to change the tray every couple of days, not every couple of weeks. Secondly, if you don’t you will end up with a wet floor (and I’m not talking about water): the disposable tray the thing rests on is cardboard which gets soaked and nasty after just three days. Disgusting. We tried to make it work, but it just isn’t worth the effort. You couldn’t pay me enough to keep using this thing.
