Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

My apartment is coming together and now looks more like someone lives here. My dad helped get my futon and coffee table together, so now I have a nice sitting area in front of the TV, and a table for my laptop, which is really all I need. I still have a big empty space across from the kitchen, I think once I get my keyboard from St. Louis it’ll become my music area as I really don’t plan on getting a dining room table. We’ll see.

My dad left yesterday, I dropped him off at LAX around noon. We took a detour and drove through his childhood neighborhood, which was pretty cool. This was an area I considered living, but after realizing how ugly the commute would be opted otherwise.

I’ll admit it, when I hugged my dad good-bye some tears fell. First time I had really gotten emotional during this whole move process. My dad is so wonderful and he has been amazing through this whole process and I’m going to miss being close to him and my mom. I knew it would hit me when he left, and it did. But, I’m okay now. It’s natural to cry a bit, I expected it. I would have been a bit concerned if I hadn’t!

On Friday my dad and I went to Hemet and visited my grandma and aunt and uncle. It was great to see them. My grandma is an amazing woman, really and truly. It is going to be so nice to be closer to her, I realized in recent years that there is so much I don’t know about my dad’s side of the family, and my grandma has done extensive research on our ancestry. I hope to spend some time with her learning more about our family history. It will be a great bonding experience for her and me of course, but it would also be nice to learn more about my family.

Last night I went to Holy Saturday mass at St. Charles Borromeo, my new church out in California (the church is walking distance from my apartment, so I really have no excuses!). The service was very nice; they had a LOT of Catechumens who entered the church. It’s a pretty large parish; they have 7 masses on Sundays! One of them is in Spanish of course, but wow.

While the music was beautiful and I really like the pastor of this church, he seems to relate to the parishioners very well, or at least, I could relate to him, I once again find myself missing Sts. John and James. SSJJ, my parish growing up in Ferguson, MO, had the best Easter Vigil service, by far. Singing the Creation Story and the Exodus Reading, I wonder if any church uses these musical pieces. It seemed to me that the Vigil here was not a huge attraction for parishioners. It was mostly the Catechumens and their families.

Maybe that will change once I get involved with the parish musically. We’ll see! I’m going to attend the 5pm Easter Service tonight, it’s the “Contemporary Mass.” I’m interested in seeing if there are a lot of young people at the service and what the music is like. There are obviously many opportunities to get involved; I just want to make sure I choose the right path. I’ve never been particularly fond of choirs, at least not on a regular basis. I enjoy it periodically, but I much prefer smaller groups of people, like a 4-6 person group that can sing harmony but you can do a lot of solo work too. There are so many masses at this parish that I’m sure I can find one that will work for me. Just going to have to go and see what I like!

I start my new job tomorrow, and boy, am I anxious to get going! I don’t think I’d handle not working very well, this past week kept me busy because we had to drive, get into the apartment, go shopping, etc. But now it’s kind of like “okay, now what do I do?” I’m ready to get into the office and get into the swing of things. I clocked the commute today, and it took me 7 minutes to drive from my parking spot to the office. Of course this is Sunday, and not rush hour but I'm thinking worst case scenario it won't take more than 30 minutes. So I'll plan on leaving earlier than I need to tomorrow morning so I'm not late on the first day. But it should be good, because I do not have to take the freeway which is super fantastic!

I will post some apartment photos soon, right now I'm using The Coffee Bean's wifi and apparently it doesn't like uploading photos. More later!