Just my opinion, and no, this is not one of the pieces I've been working on

Doctors like modern architecture. Well, most of them do, anyway, if medical buildings here in our happy little burg are anything to go by.  I do not know why this should be, unless the doctors inside the very modern medical building want to convey a sense of being on the cutting edge of modern medicine. This would not be the first nor will it be the last time that someone used a building as a sort of freestanding advertisement for his or her own self-image.  I should point out that I have nothing against this sort of thing—if you have this kind of money and you want to make this sort of architectural statement, then have at it and more power to you, I say. There are worse ways to waste money.  What is interesting to me in all of this, however, is that while doctors are willing to spend all this money putting up fancy medical buildings, they almost inevitably try to save money on the parking lot. Actually, I should not say that I find this economizing interesting, because it is not; it is annoying as hell.

I would guess that most people have had this experience: you have an eleven o’clock appointment to see your doctor at his (or her) fancy medical building and while you have arrived at the doctor’s office on time, you have to spend the first fifteen minutes out in the parking lot circling like a damn vulture over the rotting corpse of a wildebeest because there isn’t enough parking to go around.  Now, I will grant you that missing the first fifteen minutes of a doctor’s appointment is no great loss for anyone. Everyone knows that time slows down in doctors’ offices and so your eleven o’clock appointment is more apt to be an 11:45 appointment in real time, but it is the principle of the thing that counts: you want to be on time, even if the doctor is not (and probably never will be).  I do not know why this is so—after all, no one goes to the movies at the show time listed in the newspaper; that way you can skip the trailers for movies that you have no intention of seeing and the stern warnings about turning off your cell phones that you have no intention of obeying—but hope springs eternal in the human heart, I suppose. 

DAZE OF HEAVEN...NOT REALLY: And so it’s Friday the thirteenth, a day wherein I usually feel as if I should have stayed home in bed, largely because today is one of those days, like, April 15th, when I know that the cosmic powers that be are out to make my life miserable. Birthdays are sometimes like that as well, but a miserable birthday applies only to the supposed celebrant—the rest of us can go on as happy as clams, which is the sort of thing you do when you are caught up in the bivalve lifestyle—whereas Friday the 13th and April 15th are all purpose let’s screw them over days that apply to the populace as a whole. Even Groundhog Day can’t equal the annoyance value of the other two dates; if you live in North Dakota, you know you’re in for six more weeks of snow, ice, sleet, and freezing your ass off whether that stupid rodent saw its shadow or not, and if you live in Miami, then you couldn’t care less one way or the other if the oversized rat saw his shadow: you’re basking in the sunshine one way or the other. The good thing about Friday the 13th and April 15th, of course, is that these are the two dates every year where you are not paranoid. The rest of the year people will think you have some sort of weird persecution complex if you spend your time worrying about what was going to go wrong today, but on those two dates, you and me and everyone else knows that your troubles are not psychological: they really are out to get you.

In any case (and yes, this is a whiplash of a segue, no two ways about it), I am relieved to hear that the State of Connecticut has decided not to take over the Roman Catholic Church. The state legislature was considering a bill that give financial control of Catholic parishes to the parishioners, leaving the bishops and priests with only an advisory role in how the church’s money was spent. The proposal died a swift and painless death after thousands upon thousands of Catholic voters let their elected representatives know that they would not remain their elected representatives if they passed the bill. Faced with the possibility of standing in the snow at an electoral Canossa, the state legislature did what any group of high-minded statesmen intent on serving the commonweal would do in such a situation: they caved in. In fact, the Connecticut state legislature caved in so quickly and so well that they’re thinking of doing an instructional video to show out of state legislators the up to date way to cave in. I’m glad they did cave, although I must admit that the idea of a state takeover of the Church intrigues me. Would such a takeover mean that if the Connecticut state troopers catch me speeding on I-84, and they will someday, I could forego paying the fine and getting the points on my license and just say three Our Fathers and a Hail Mary instead?