another progress report

I miss my childhood church, which is Unitarian Universalist and sort of a hippie creedless religion without any particular requirements about the nature of one's spiritual beliefs but a bit more candle-lighting than the sizeable atheist contingent is ever happy with. The ethical humanists there and the people who want more religion are always in conflict, and I can usually do without any sort of service at all unless it's a history lesson about something interesting, so it's really the community that I miss. Just as I started to get homesick for Europe and annoyed by America already in the Philly airport (one of Dad's attendants, a twenty-year-old who has left AL only for Florida and California, asked me what there could be to dislike about America and I floundered lost for words), I was already feeling a bit of nose-wrinkling distaste when we walked in the door and saw the minister, a self-righteous and somewhat dimwitted bore who even lacks the gift of public speaking. His sermon lived down to expectations by somehow managing to make the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy boring, and I was stopped by a couple of bafflingly idiotic people in the lobby who refused to understand that when I say I am from HERE, I really actually mean HERE, Tuscaloosa, and that it would be difficult for my parents to have a child with a Finnish accent since they have never been to Finland. (One of the dimwits seemed to believe you could simply acquire a non-native accent through a couple of years of exposure, and her husband later told me the reason she thought I would sound like I was Finnish was that she thought I was my parents' German exchange student who also has never been to Finland.)

So I'm already about ready to go back home and see Wax and my dog. I'm not finding the time to write or chat very well here, and besides that it's about a hundred degrees (though it was extra cool the other day and only reached 99) and I'm covered with insect bites. I am sure I will manage to enjoy the coming week, though, especially if I can get some computer time. There's still a few things on the agenda, like dyeing Mom's hair and going out to dinner with my high school piano teacher (whose 16-yo used to be a dead ringer for DanRad, but the resemblance has faded and he's now significantly and somewhat alarmingly hotter. He was such a cute tiny musical prodigy with his pint-sized glasses and business suits and now he's half again as tall as me).