Yes, I know. It was last Saturday, but I had probs with the comp and I thought I’d send you all belated wishes.

Here’s me winning a hat from a very nice barmaid, for singing and doing a little jig.

Abby and I went down to Chicago for the weekend and hung out with her cousin Angela and her husband Jake.

I know I had a good time because I can’t remember half the bars we went to.

It was with much consternation that I realised that despite all my powersongs, running sensors, ultima replenisher and gel packs, that Marty was able to run his marathon with four cups of water and two mars-bars.

So it is again with going to mass. I need a goal, a thing to get me there. This year, instead of abstaining from Stella, I decided to go to mass again regularly. The last time I did this was when I was at home. I would go with my mother, despite her running commentary of all the hymns she would like played at her funeral.

I have to admit, I’ve noticed a difference. I’ve had some pain in the last three years (99% self-inflicted), and I wonder if I might have had a straighter head about things had I kept the support of my faith.

But I digress. Second week of Lent: I’m going running at an indoor park in Edina, so I find a church on masstimes.org and go there (be a Catholic folks, it’s like the Holiday Inn). I’m dandering up to the door when I see a lady come up with her kid, so I hold it for her. She stops and says “Stevie Kane”. Don’t know her from Adam, and I politely tell her so. “You came to my reading”, she replies.

It was during the homily that I realised that I’d read the main role of her home-alone type script at a reading I was obliged to go to as part of last semester’s classes. So I meet her on the way out and ask how her script is going. She tells me that she’s moved on, and asks if I go to this chapel. I explain my turning of a new leaf. She says “Do you live here?”. “Not even that”, says I, “I looked it up online”.

She explains that she has a somewhat Catholic-themed script that she’d love me to read. I give her my email and she says “Did, I tell you my father was called Stephen Kane?”.

“No, you didn’t”, I said, realising now, how she manged to remember it.

To quote Jostein Gaarder, life is a lottery, where all we see are the winning tickets, and I’m sure there’s been many times that I’ve NOT been stopped by someone, that perchance remembers my name, at the door of a church I’ve never been to.

Still, I thought it was a nice coincidence.

I was secretly (or not so secretly now I suppose) googling people I know tonight, just to see what the web has to say about you all.

For Stevie, the only real mention of him on the world wide web is at his blog or this obscure listing…don’t even know what its for, but its a bit out of date.

Nothing surprising for Brian either. Some Beautiful South stuff, and also a weird amount of Chinese language sites mention the name Brian T Mullan…what have you been getting up to Brian?

But what I did come across was this review of Paschal’s wonderful saxophone skills (look at the entry for the 23rd July).

I think it is time, right here, right now, for each and everyone one of us to apologise for wanting to break Paschal’s instrument each time it turned up to a party all those years ago. Who would have known he would end up so revered?

So my caliper (don’t laugh Gary) seized up the other day, and as my Hyundai Elantra is under warranty, they took it in, fixed it, and gave me this to drive:

Just thought that would make you lot laugh. Pity it’s not summer, as a convertible might have been nice.