One of those days

I haven't had "one of those days" in quite some time, but today...

It started out with disappointment as I opened the Chicago Tribune. The Trib is supposed to be doing an article on Urban Village Church and we thought today was the day that it would run, but nada. Who knows if/when it will be printed? Then I went to my daughter's school where I was teaching her class about prayer; specifically, breath prayer. She goes to a Catholic school but nearly half the students are non-Catholic so when they break off into religion classes, they're grouped into Catholic (called the Moonbeams) and non-Catholic (the Shooting Stars). I offered to come in and do a little teaching with the Shooting Stars so I've been with them three times this week. It went really well (thanks to the "Way of the Child" curriculum), but when I walked out of the building, I quickly saw that my car had been towed.

I've been so proud that I haven't gotten a ticket since moving to Chicago but this was unbelievable. I paid for parking, but had failed to see that there was street cleaning on this particular side of the street on Friday mornings and, of course, it was a tow zone. As I noted on my Facebook page today, I had been teaching about breath prayers to the class, but said something under my breath when the car was missing. And it wasn't a prayer. I finally figured out that the car was at 400 Lower East Wacker Drive, which is in the bowels of the city. $7 cab ride there. $160 to get it out of the tow lot. $50 ticket on top of all that. Lower Wacker Drive (above) is just one depressing place. I'll never figure out how to get around down there and I hope to never be back. They were appropriately surly to me which I actually didn't mind. I didn't want them to be cheery or tell me have a nice day.

Things have gotten better as the day's gone on, though. A hamburger for lunch helped as did reading "Deliberate Simplicity" by Dave Browning. And my sermon is starting to come together which didn't seem possible a couple days ago.

Now to get ready for our daughter's birthday party tomorrow. Our house is being transformed into Hogwarts.