Back by popular demand

Due to the overwhelming amount of fan feedback in recent days (and particularly Eileen's constant reminders), I have suddenly realized that--Egad!--I haven't posted a blog entry for two whole months! Where did March and April go, anyway??? What on earth have I been doing with all that time???

... well ... uh, let's see ... I know there's a story in here some where ...

Well--we all know that Eileen (thanks to her copious blog entries) has been entertaining herself with several rather cute, trifling little occupations, such as... capturing living, pecking, fast-moving, sharp-beaked birds with her bare hands (easy!)... skinning and stuffing monstrous carrion-devouring buzzards (piece of cake!)... and becoming a medal-holding Triathlete (child's play!)... all in the span of my own mysterious disappearance from the Blogosphere.

And indeed, I'm sure you are all wondering, "What the heck has George been doing that even remotely compares to the awesomeness of Eileen's superhuman accomplishments???" And surely, I tell you that I am ashamed. For I probably played a few too many video games, and perhaps drove to work instead of walking a few too many times when it was only slightly below freezing or only just drizzling.

But I haven't been a complete loaf. Not entirely!

I managed to survive an Episcopal Holy Week, and that's saying something. St. Paul's doesn't mess around when it comes to holy days... no cutting corners like the Methodists! It started with a Maundy Thursday service in the evening, complete with a foot-washing ceremony (from which I gracefully abstained... after all you can't ask the organist to doff his organ shoes mid service). Good Friday saw another evening service, but since there was no music planned, I stayed home and went to bed early in advance of...

EASTER VIGIL on Saturday evening. The reeeeally serious Episcopalians do this one up right by holding the service until midnight. Thankfully, our service only went from 8:30 pm to 11:00 pm. I had never seen an Easter Vigil before, and it was actually a fascinating experience, because the church starts out in complete darkness, and then a sizeable (controlled) blaze is lit in the back of the church, from which candles are gradually lit until everyone in the congregation is holding a small flame in the darkness.

After a solid hour of Old Testament readings by candlelight, I got to fire up the organ and wake everyone up at the moment of the resurrection! And then the typical hour-and-a-half service proceeded complete with communion. It was a long night, especially since I still had to drive 40 minutes back home to Lewisburg.

Easter Sunday was a good service, considering I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before. I pulled out all the stops and played the happy Easter hymns good and loud. Mistakes are always best at their loudest on the organ.

With Easter behind us, I've only been getting about half attendance with the choir, so we're looking forward to Pentecost when the choir takes their summer break.

In Coffe Shop News, I have officially begun managing the front of house at Zelda's. This essentially means that I took it upon myself to start taking care of all the inventory and product ordering, because the owners were only doing it half the time anyway, and I was the only one getting stressed out every time we ran out of Espresso beans.

I will also be in charge of hiring and training when about 90% of our current staff graduates from high school and/or college next month. I'm pretty excited about this, because I've been spending all of my slow days at Zelda's learning how to make deliciously artistic lattes, really honing in on all the nuances of crafting a fine cup of coffee, and I want all the other baristas to do it too, so having the power to make everyone else do latte art will make me very happy. All of the coffee shops around here (including Zelda's) are impostors in comparison to the Seattle standard, so I'm trying to raise the bar and bring some respectability to the coffee scene in Central PA.

You will be happy to hear that all my hard work is not going unnoticed by the boss. Check out the new perks... and the 50% raise: