So there’s the Pope, dying. I’m sure he’d rather he went quickly than lingered for weeks with the world getting daily updates on the state of his urinary tract infection (and I reckon the world would be happier that way too), so I hope all the people who are praying for him are praying for something sensible rather than the old “Please God make the Pope immortal” request. He’s old. Old people die. It’s nice when they can do so peacefully and privately, and not too slowly or painfully.
Anyway, what would be great, what I’d be absolutely thrilled with is if they’d choose a successor who would make big changes and drag the church into the modern day. Imagine a Catholic church with women priests, one that acknowledged that lots of great people happen to be gay and that’s fine, one that woke up and smelled the contraception. (Ew. I mean, the happy aroma of contraception as being a method of preventing disease and meaning that thousands of children didn’t have to be born and die in grueling poverty because their parents thought they had no choice. Okay, so it’s not exactly an aroma.)
I realize that’s not going to happen. (And hey, Word, I object to you automatically changing my s at the end of realize into a z. Stop it. Realise. There. Hah.) Also, I suppose if all that happened it wouldn’t be the Catholic church any more and we’d all just morph into Episcopalians or something. And from all I’ve heard, the way the Vatican is set up we’ll end up with a new pope even more conservative than this one.
On a lighter note. I’ve been displaced from my office while they take up the carpet and lay tiles instead, so I’m sitting at the spare computer surfing less efficiently than usual because I have to remember URLs instead of using my bookmarks. I’m also a bit worried because there’s glue all over the floor that’s our only path to the kitchen. Luckily, I have my lunch out here. But the microwave and the toaster oven and for that matter the forks that would be useful for putting my tomato and chickpea salad into my pita pockets are all in the kitchen. And I’ve a yogurt in the fridge. So I hope we can figure out an alternative route or they get the tiles all down (but not sealed, because that’ll be sticky stuff too) before lunchtime.
Considering how little I do every day, the weeks are going by at a fair old clip. I was presented with a mug full of candy this week in honour of completing my sixth month in the job and being made permanent. Now I can officially take vacation days. (Instead of unofficially, as I was doing before.)
