Lent

When I chose to give up coffee for Lent, I didn’t expect it would be easy. Coffee is more than an early-morning wake-up beverage for me. I normally do drink coffee in the morning, two cups. But coffee is also my soothing ritual beverage. A cup of coffee and a place to sit quietly are all I need to calm myself when things are getting stressful. I am missing my coffee, but more I am missing the soothing effect it has on me. Today we went to The Mall, and I was confronted with another situation where I normally drink coffee. Every visit to The Mall I get an iced cafe latte -no-sugar- from one of the coffee stands. Today I got an iced tea. It’s not the same at all. Tea does not do whatever it is that coffee does for me that calms me.

No caffeine withdrawal headache so far, though.

Ash Wednesday Penitence

I thought I was giving up coffee for Lent. Apparently I was mistaken and I was giving up the Internet for Lent. Well, for the first three days of Lent, anyway.

I was excited on Ash Wednesday. Not only was I going to get ashes smudged on my forehead, but my Internet package upgrade to Premier service (2meg/1meg) was going to take effect. I put the new username and password into our router settings, and prepared for blazing speed. I was underwhelmed. It was not only not blazing, but something I wouldn’t even call speed.

We gave it half a day or so, and then I called the Call Center. The Call Center can only be called from a mobile phone. It’s the local equivalent of those *-something numbers in the US. They offer a English language menu option, but unless you press 9 before they finish the sentence telling you what to press (“to continue in English, please press 9″) you get Thai. Your finger had better be on that 9 button before she starts talking. Once you successfully navigate the voice menus, they put you on hold while your mobile phone minutes tick away.

Eventually a nice Call Center lady told me a technician would call me. The technician called on Jim’s mobile instead of the land line. Jim was working on music with his headphones on, because he was not expecting a call. So we missed the technician’s phone call and he never called back. Day 1 with barely useable Internet.

The next day the service had degraded from a 10K upload speed to some unmeasurably low speed. We printed out a copy of the speed test screen and took it in to the TT&T office at The Mall. They called the Call Center and arranged for a technician to come to our house that afternoon. The technicians came. They saw the problem. They made half a dozen phone calls. Then they left, saying that the trouble was with the phone exchange and it would be fixed by 6PM. It wasn’t. I called the Call Center around 7PM, per the instructions from the technicians. They promised to have a technician call me at 10AM the next day. Day 2 with wholly unusable Internet.

Day 3 dawned with a worse download speed than before, and a still unmeasurable upload speed. When no technician had called by 11AM I called the Call Center yet again. There was a bit of confusion on the part of the nice lady, because she could not understand how it was possible that the technicians had come to my house and had not fixed the problem. She then wanted to send a technician out to my house again. What part of “the problem is not at my house” is so hard to understand? I gave up and had Jim call them.

Jim insisted that a technician be sent to the house, after humoring the nice lady by removing the power from the router for 10 minutes. She actually thought that would solve the problem. No technician ever came, but the Internet suddenly started working again. Jim got a phone call an hour after it began working, informing him that a fiber-optic cable somewhere had been repaired.

We really did go get ashes on our forehead. We went to the Thai service, as no English one was scheduled. We got to see the inside of the main church for the first time. We were both amazed by the beauty of the crucifix on the wall behind the altar. I wanted to take a picture, but it didn’t seem like the proper thing to do. It was miserably hot in the church, as it was nearly full, the end of a very warm day, and all the doors were open so the only cooling was a few fans.

I am getting tired of fried fish.

Fish on Friday

We’re not really practicing Catholics, but we do try to avoid eating meat on Friday, year round. During Lent, it’s an obligation. It was easy when we lived in metro Detroit. Metro Detroit is historically a predominantly Catholic area, with a Catholic church every 8 or 10 blocks in the suburbs. It seemed like every other one of them had a fish fry, too, every Friday of Lent! It was fun, it was cheap, and it was an easy way to avoid meat.

Let’s just say that the Catholic population here isn’t even close to the 50% mark it is in the Detroit area.

Apparently God works in mysterious ways, because we have discovered an even easier way to eat fish for dinner on Friday than going to a parish fish fry. We have placed a standing order at the clubhouse restaurant (I’ve mentioned it before) for fish and chips at 7PM every Friday. Delivered to our home. At a total cost of just under $8.

Lent begins in 18 days, and we are ready.