Tonight was the first-of-the-season rosary walk which encompasses our immediate neighborhood. The procession starts in front of the home of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, circles a good 10 blocks around, and finishes up where it started. Our family has dashed out the front door to catch it a few times in years past, but since we have taken up the habit of an evening rosary together in recent months, we made a point to join from the start this evening. It makes me wonder if there is any other neighborhood in the USA or elsewhere for that matter where Catholics come together and pray the rosary out loud while walking down the street. I'm guessing there were 8-10 families represented among the walkers, but potentially there could be about three times as many if every Catholic family whose house is passed joined in.
And then we have Big Garbage Day. That's not officially what it is called; that's a phrase I picked up from my days living in Japan (where we gaijin actually called it "Big Gomi Day", gomi meaning garbage.) (And by the way, did you know the etymology of the word garbage derives from "fowl entrails"? We learned that the other day.) Regardless. Once a year we get to put out big broken things that are too clumsy to throw away at other times. People start setting things out a week in advance. And others start combing the neighborhoods with pickup trucks, and most of the garbage disappears before the official trucks come to take it away. People with serious pack ratting disorders, perhaps?
Our wedding day was actually Big Garbage Day, 1999. It was a little depressing as I recall to drive down to the church through streets overflowing with garbage.
Tomorrow morning I'll have to do a last scouring of the basement to make sure there's nothing I hid in the cold cellar to "remember to throw out in the spring."
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