Ups and downs

20 minutes after my victorious post Wednesday celebrating my yarn-based coup, I mucked up my knitting project again. Apparently, knitting during Top Chef is more than I can handle. Good to know.

My brackets were strong on Thursday, and at 4:00 on Friday I was at the top of a list of 30-some people (at $10 a head), already counting my winnings. Then Vanderbilt hosed me, and UConn choked. That money is no longer mine. Apparently picking teams based on how their football team did last year, my emotional connection to them, or the fact that they are the lone representative of the MAC is not the most conducive to winning.

We had gotten to the National Cathedral last night about 30 minutes before the Good Friday service started and I was happily spending the time in quiet thought mixed in with a lot of people watching. There was a family of 3 generations who came in when things were pretty full, and Pop-pop came down the stairs and sat down ahead of everyone while Granny stopped to chat with the usher -- when she came down the stairs she walked right past her husband and sat on the other side of the room, she hadn't seen him. I giggled, as my husband and I did that once in the movies -- it was dark and we thought we were following each other into a row but were actually 5 rows apart. Then a totally fantastic woman came in with her son and sat right in front of me -- her glasses were studded with diamonds, her suit jacket had gold woven through it, her hair was unnaturally red, her shoes were leopard print, and she was carrying a gaudy BCBG gold bag with a chain handle. I loved her immediately.

After the initial greeting and prayer, my head was not at all in it, then there was a swell of Taize chant that was just overwhelming (Jesus, remember me when you come in to your kingdom) and my heart broke and I was boo-hooing. The service is the same every year, and it was kind of like Les Miserables -- the more I hear it the earlier I get weepy. Several other chants later, the same one came back while people were lighting candles, which probably took 20 minutes for everyone who wanted to do it to be able to. The same line was repeated over and over and over again in this 20 minutes, and by the end I was just a notch above asleep from the tremendous sense of peace and comfort, with finally dry eyes.

Happy Easter, friends.