I don't want to be in St Louis for 2 more months.
If anybody wants to give Becca and I jobs and a house and food until the end of September, give me a call.
It is hot here. I sit in a/c and read bill bryson and listen to jazz and imagine myself on a double decker bus or a rue or a playa with a pivo or a vino mucho cuerpo or a lager in my hand.

Although in Europe I doubt there is much of a chance that we can hitch a ride from a fat, gay, drunk, white dude who is wearing a Skip Shumacker jersey and who is holding a boombox that is blasting rap music, who also is driving a golf cart down a bike trail in the middle of the night having just journeyed through 9 miles of neighborhoods in a densely populated urban environment. Not that we'd want to or anything. But we did meet this guy in Forest Park. He flashed his lights at us. And we did hitch a ride with him. He sounded like a cross between Krusty the Klown and Little Richard. Becca held his boom box and he talked about how you don't want to "be a victim", then swerved off the bike trail and onto a walking path. I asked him where he was coming from and he said the Cardinals game. "Where were your seats?" I asked. "Oh, I wasn't at the game. I just watched it down at Mike Shannon's. Now I'm heading back to Jackson's in Dogtown. The owner lets me park my golf cart there. I'm doing my part to save the environment." This guy had done almost 20 miles round trip through St Louis.
Becca didn't like the experience. Something about the whole victim thing. I;'m still convinced that he didn't have it in him to stab us or anything, but she's not so sure.

This summer we are going to visit some churches around the area. We went to a big one the other day. We figure that we should check a few of the large ones out even thought they are not our cups of tea.
It was in the suburbs. I'm not a fan. If I go to a church located in such an area someday, then ok, but for the most part, they give me the willies.
This church had a big orchestra type thing and choir and handbell group and half a dozen acolytes and a handful of pastors. It was liturgical, which was cool, but the pastor zoomed through the Words of Institution (which is a pet peeve of mine) and there was no silence after the Confession and before the Absolution. I think silence is wonderful in church. Gives you time to think and meditate. It inspires and sense of awe and otherworldliness Often it makes you feel uncomfortable, which is especially helpful in delivering sermons.
This church had 4 services, and it seemed like they were under time constraints of something. It seems to me, and this is mere conjecture, that about 300 people would be a about a big as you want to get in one location, otherwise it seems unmanageable. Church family, community and all that.
Anyway, I am looking forward to having my own parish in a couple, err, 3 years. It will be fun. Seems like a good job.