off by one for 2005 April 1 (entry 0)

Fri Apr 01 17:34:16 QAS vs. the bathroom stall doors in Caroline Hall:

This is a strange matchup today folks, but here it is anyway. Blame it on the rain.

I will miss Queen of All Saints Basilica. It is a beautiful basilica on the very northern edge of the city (near Cicero and Devon) in the Sauganash neighborhood. North Park used to have an annual Christmas concert there (a festival of lessons and carols) that was always really special, and baccalaureate has been held there ever since I've been around.

I sang there for three years as a paid musician, which was really good for me in so many ways.

First of all, I met a lot of amazing people. Secondly, I had never actually been to a mass until I started singing them at QAS. It was really a great experience for me to spend such a long time inside the Catholic church. As an "evangelical Protestant," it's easy to be really ignorant of the people, worship and theology of the Catholic Church, and I really valued and appreciated being a part of that community for such a long time. I didn't convert, but I definitely grew to a have a better understanding, appreciation, and respect for the Catholic church. My roommate at the time independently converted to Catholicism, and since we had been talking theology for many years by that time, my having a place inside the Catholic Church helped our conversations (for me at least) and definitely opened and influenced some of the spiritual questions I still find myself grappling with.

It also helped keep my singing and guitar chops in shape!

I will always think of that place, those people, and my experiences there very fondly.

I won't miss the men's room on the 3rd floor of Caroline Hall (where I work). The building was originally a women's dorm and the bathroom used to be twice as big, but one part was cut in half and turned into a kitchen. The space became cramped and so the stalls are so terribly ill-designed that you literally have to slide in next to the toilet to close the door. And the stalls are so old that you have to slam one of them to even get it closed enough to lock. (Naturally, the other door is really loose.)

One plus from the experience is that airplane restrooms now seem genuinely spacious to me.

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