So this past Friday one of the local parishes (\u201clocal\u201d meaning \u201cover in Bremerton on the other side of the Sound, an hour ferry ride away\u201d had a conference.\u00a0 Our Lady Star of the Sea is one of my fave rave parishes in Western Washington, pastored by the outstanding Fr. Derek Lappe and full of passionate gung ho Catholics.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spoken there several times and I just love those guys.\u00a0 Anyway, they had this conference and who should they invite but the storied Fr. Dwight Longenecker and the fabulous Katrina Fernandez.\u00a0 So they wrote me and said, \u201cWe\u2019re coming to your town!\u00a0 Let\u2019s get together!\u201d\u00a0 I had another\u00a0 conference to be at on Saturday, so I couldn\u2019t get to Bremerton.<\/p>\n
So we set up a date at Ivar\u2019s, the local seafood spot that is right next to the ferry terminal in downtown Seattle.\u00a0 I arrived about 45 minutes late due to $#$#%#%$ Seattle traffic.\u00a0 A great guy from the parish named Josh Johnson had driven Fr. Dwight and Katrina straight there and they had parked at the terminal and then walked over.\u00a0 They had wisely gone ahead and ordered (since by the time I got there they had about a half hour till the ferry arrived.\u00a0 Josh took the group shot:<\/p>\n
It was a regrettably hurried visit, due to my lateness.\u00a0 We wound up talking a fair amount of shop as writers, with Fr. Dwight suggesting I give a crack at self-publishing (something I am noodling).\u00a0 Katrina and I had an interesting but regrettably brief gab about the phenomenon of readers who hate her for frets about Pope Francis and readers who hate me for not fretting about Pope Francis.\u00a0 (One of the weirder little blog phenomena I\u2019ve noticed are the people who turn up in your comboxes to say, \u201cLet\u2019s you and him (or her) fight\u201d.\u00a0 People used to do that with me and Jimmy Akin too.\u00a0 And when you decline to play that game, they often have a strange notion that your refusal to get roped into an engineered slugfest somehow mean that you and the other blogger belong to some elite and exclusive club that all get together on Saturday nights and knock back beers while gossipping about all the people we don\u2019t let in the club.\u00a0 Such people need to graduate from 7th grade and realize that, for instance, this was the very first time I ever met Katrina and Fr. Dwight and we seldom correspond, much less conspire.)<\/p>\n
Anyway, the conversation was regrettably brief and then they had to\u00a0catch the ferry.\u00a0 So I bade them farewell and finished off my meal alone, looking out over the Sound at the\u00a0gorgeous October sunset and\u00a0feeling generally content with\u00a0pan-fried oysters, a couple of new friends and living in the place I live.\u00a0 I ordered a tasty dessert, paid the bill, and headed for the door\u2013and there they were again!\u00a0 Turned out the boat filled up four cars before\u00a0 they were to drive on, so they now had an hour to kill.<\/p>\n
Excellent!\u00a0 I took them\u00a0down the waterfront, past Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe and various restaurants on the piers.\u00a0 We strolled past\u00a0the\u00a0giant ferris wheel and the Seattle Aquarium and finally came to a pier with an\u00a0unimpeded view of the sun going down over the Olympics.\u00a0 Unbelievably gorgeous.\u00a0 Both\u00a0Fr. Dwight and Katrina were cold, due to their wimpy and thin Southern blood\u00a0that resembles chicken broth\u00a0(Washington blood\u00a0is more like thick and chunky minestrone).\u00a0 Also, you can see the Space Needle from there and there\u2019s pretty much no point in coming to Seattle if you don\u2019t get to ogle the Space Needle.\u00a0 So they feasted their eyes and were gratified.\u00a0 I told them if they ever came back I would take them on the Nickel Tour of Seattle and let them see Pike Place Market, the Science Fiction Museum, Starbuck\u2019s #1, and even Underground Seattle if they liked.\u00a0 Eventually, we ambled back toward the ferry and stopped in at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, where we took a gander at the various oddities such this genuine mummy:<\/p>\n
There are also vampire slayer kits, and shells, and vampire blood incense and all kinds of other things which, if we\u2019d gotten photos of them standing next to them, the enemies of Fr. Dwight and Katrina would have all the evidence they need of their monstrous Professional Catholic Evil.<\/p>\n
Finally, it was time for them to get back to the ferry and ride off into the sunset, so I accompanied them down to the ferry gate and bade them farewell again.\u00a0 A lovely evening.\u00a0 Hope you guys, enjoyed your first trip to Washington!\u00a0 Next time, come in the summer and get the full blast experience of pure Pacific Northwest beauty!\u00a0 Be warned though.\u00a0 You may not want to leave!<\/p>\n
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So this past Friday one of the local parishes (\u201clocal\u201d meaning \u201cover in Bremerton on the other side of the Sound, an hour ferry ride away\u201d had a conference.\u00a0 Our Lady Star of the Sea is one of my fave rave parishes in Western Washington, pastored by the outstanding Fr. Derek Lappe and full of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[197],"class_list":["post-48121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fun-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\n