Well, that might be somewhat of an exaggeration, but to get to the root of this post, we need to take a little trip!
I love Greek food! If you've read my posts about Santa Cruz, you know that the first place I head when I go there is to The Greek for lunch. I'll usually eat there at least two times over the weekend and I have been known to go buy Gladware and take it to the restaurant so that I can bring home containers of Vasili's amazing soup to freeze for one of those rotten days when I need some uplifting!
The last time I was there, I had an amazing bean soup but no containers or ice chest to bring any home. So "Google" to the rescue. As I was winding my way through various websites and blogs about Greek food (and printing out lots of other delicious sounding food!), I stumbled across a blog called Adventures of an Orthodox Mom. I figured she would know what she was talking about when it came to food! I checked out her recipe (which sounded good but wasn't quite the one that I was looking for) but I didn't really have a lot of time to cruise her blog since I was on a serious food mission!
So I journeyed back to it the other day, was traipsing around and saw "Troy Polamalu" listed as one of the Categories? Huh? I quickly clicked on it because (drum roll please in preparation for the second thing that you want to know about me!), I am a huge football fan, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are my team! (Before I get to the Steelers, just know that once football season is over this Sunday, I will have waymore time for reading, writing and blogging! Right now my Sundays are filled with football and running to swap the laundry over during commercials! Even Sarah loves to watch football with Mommy! We have a special football tablecloth that we use for eating in the livingroom on Sunday and Monday nights during football season! It's a sickness I just can't seem to shake!)
So the Steelers . . . I have loved them for a very long time. Why? you might wonder. No, I am not from Pittsburgh. Truth is, I thought the coach was cute! That's the reason. I did like football, but I loved Coach Cower. One day when I was watching a game with my dad, I was blabbing on and on about Coach. My dad said, "He looks like Don." Huh? Well, Dad, now that you mention it, he does! (Don, now that's another story in itself! Let's just say I was madly in love with the guy but left him because he didn't want to have kids. Here's the rub: MARRIED WITH CHILDREN now! But so am I, so who cares!)
So back to the Steelers and Troy. He is a great player and fun to watch! But one of Orthodox Mom's blog posts absolutely killed me! It was an article that was from the local paper, discussing Troy's faith (Greek Orthodox) and how he is such a wonderful example of a human being. The article touched on how the Orthodox monastics don't watch TV and so don't root for Troy or the team but do pray for their safety. It then segued into the differences between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church and then had this to say:
The monks of Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, the Catholic monastery on the college campus where the Steelers practice, are unabashed fans. One monk, now deceased, went into earlier playoffs with a gold "7" on his black habit and called himself "Big Ben-edictine." (My note: "Big Ben" Roethlisberger is the Steelers' quarterback.)
For someone who went to Catholic school, attended CCD, sang in the choir at church, worked in the church rectory for 4 years and had extended family dinners where the brothers and priests were always invited, this just cracks me up! I have a hard time imagining a black and gold habit with a football number on the back of it, but I absolutely love this!
But now that I've blogged over 8 paragraphs to get here, I'm not sure anyone else is really going to care! So let's just say that you've learned a bit more about me, and when you traipse around in other people's blogs, you are going to find odd things that impact you in crazy ways!
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