On Sunday I had a light bulb moment, an awakening.  I had spent some space on this web site talking about the most important part of the mass.  I had taken the position that the consecration was the singular most important reason for going to mass.  A good friend pointed out that the "word" was just as important.  He apparently let us agree to disagree perhaps praying for my conversion. It happened this weekend.  Sunday's gospel related the story of the Samaritan lady and her encounter with Jesus at the well.     

              There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
              For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.  The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a
             Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.                

             Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, `Give me a drink,' you would
             have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

            The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water?
           
            Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?"

            Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I
            shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal
            life."

     In his homily  Father made the point that we are sustained by the living water of our Baptism.  He also commented that many parishes, among them Espiritu Santo had the Baptismal Font wrapped in purple as a reminder that the sacrament of Baptism is not performed during Lent.  His point was that particularly during this time we must be sustained by the "Living Water" of the Word  BINGO a light bulb moment. Thanks Don.

     Sunday evening we went to the Eskews  for dinner.  Dave grilled some steak which he cut into bite sized pieces much like they do each week for tailgate parties.  These were then dipped into A1 steak sauce, and much to my surprise, Honey Mustard which I would not have thought would be good.

     Monday night Dirk had another ballgame.  It is wonderful to watch these kids play in their first organized competition and it will be interesting to watch the week to week improvement.  After Dirk's game we stopped at another diamond to watch his cousin Megan (quite the softball pitcher) play.   We watched a few inning and then headed out so Dirk could get cleaned up and get to bed early since it was a school night.

   On Tuesday night the Eskew family came to dinner at the Southern Command.   Mary made a lemon chicken recipe from the repertoire of Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa of the Food Network.  It came out exceptionally well.  While they were with us we cranked up my new RC car and Dirk took it for a spin.  He liked it.  After they left we had a minor bout of  heavy weather.  The news media spent the day running warnings about how serious it could get.  Luckily the most heavy weather was elsewhere. 

    Wednesday, the only thing we got was the "COLD" brought by the cold front.  I know my northern friends are laughing at my use of the term cold.  Temperature is a relative thing.  If the mid fifties, which we woke up to had happened this time of year of north it would be an unseasonable warm up and we would have been stripping winter jackets. Down here, it was a significant drop in temperature and the body reacts accordingly.  We got through the day with our sweatshirt hoodies but switched to jackets when we went to dinner at Applebees  cashing in a Christmas gift card.  The excellent double crunch shrimp was accompanied by a Marguerita for Mary and a Bahama Mama for me.  Mary preceded hers with some very good onion soup.

      Thursday, we arose early so Mary could meet Kathi at her house an Dave could drive everybody Kathi, Dirk and Mary to the airport for a flight to Chicago.  Kathi was on her way to the Midwest Hair Show and Mary decided to go along. A small glitch occurred as Southwest lost (or maybe mislaid) Dirk's booster seat.  They provided  a loaner and after about an hour they were in the cab with our friend Dave and on the way to Orland Park. This afternoon as my friend Don would say, I went foraging for provisions concentrating on easy microwavable "stuff".   On my return Mary called and gave me the details of a message left by the Village and commented that it wasn't too bad with about 4 inches on the ground.

     Friday I read the weekly update of my friend Don.  There is always great anticipation of what he is up to next.  This week he commented that two of his grandsons are coming to Clearwater right down the road from us next week for a baseball tournament.  They are both associated with Robert Morris College and northern teams typically venture to the warm southern sun to get some decent weather for games, thereby getting a head start on the season.