Melkite Rite Easter Vigil

I hope all my readers had a great Easter holiday. I took Good Friday off of work, as is my wont, to sing at our church’s midday service. Later in the evening one of my bandmates had a surprise birthday party, and fortunately her children got all vegetarian food and salmon, so I could indulge. Not that indulging is generally associated with Good Friday… I was thinking of going to the Lutheran church’s evening service, but Richard Bonomo and I had to do some work on my old condo. I’m hoping to get it on the market by Wednesday…

Holy Saturday my band had a gig at the McKenzie Center’s Maple Syrup Days pancake breakfast, and Travalon came along to listen and eat pancakes. Only this year the breakfast was so well attended that the line was ridiculous, so he waited until noon to get pancakes. Then we took Rodney to the dog park to enjoy the beautiful weather. I really wanted to see the Badgers in the Final Four, but I also wanted to go to Milwaukee to attend a Byzantine Rite Easter Vigil with Cecil Markovitch and the Single B-Boy, so Travalon said he could tape it for me. Cecil, the B-Boy, and I went to a ludicrously expensive and snobby Italian restaurant (but to be fair, the food was excellent), and we managed to run up a bill over $200 for just the three of us. The liturgy was very beautiful, Melkite Rite but mostly chanted in English (some Arabic), and the chant tunes were very Mideastern sounding. The priest kissed each of us on the cheeks, so it was a good thing the congregation was not too big, or we would have been there all night. Afterwards we each got a red hard-boiled egg, then we found out the Badgers had won!!! They beat heretofore undefeated Kentucky by seven points!! Since the liturgy was shorter than we expected, we got back to town about 1:30 and were surprised to see Rich biking home. We said, “How can the Vigil Mass he went to have run so late?” and he thought, “How can they be back in town so early?”

Yesterday I managed to get up for 9 am Mass despite my late night, and then we went to brunch as usual afterwards. Travalon and I brought Rodney when we went to visit his mother, and we went for a walk outside that must have been comical to anyone watching, because her Jazzy (motorized wheelchair) goes much faster than we can walk, so I was running to keep up with her. Travalon, meanwhile, was walking at a relaxed pace with Rodney, who is too little and old to even try to keep up with the Jazzy. In the evening we went to Rich’s house, as we usually do for major holidays, and there was a big crowd as usual for Rich’s roasted lamb and one guest’s lemon chiffon and chocolate chess pies. After coming home, I watched the Badger game. Today I have had some bad luck, and hopefully it doesn’t rub off on them as they play for their first championship title since 1941. GO BADGERS!!!

Famous Hat