Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The 10 Commandments of Motorists

Drivers' "Ten Commandments"

61. In any case, with the request for motorists to exercise virtue, we have drawn up a special "decalogue" for them, in analogy with the Lord's Ten Commandments. These are stated here below, as indications, considering that they may also be formulated differently.

I. You shall not kill.

II. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

III. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

IV. Be charitable and help your neighbour in need, especially victims of accidents.

V. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.

VI. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

VII. Support the families of accident victims.

VIII. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

IX. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

X. Feel responsible towards others.

http://www.zenit.org/article-19915?l=english

Friday, June 01, 2007

And the Rain, Rain, Rain came Down, Down, Down...

Around 11:30pm on Tuesday night, James heard a strange noise coming from our kitchen. He was not thrilled to discover periodic dripping coming from the wall behind our cabinets onto the counter that extends into our dining room. He woke me and we cleared off the counter. Fortunately nothing was damaged as we had papers and a few books there. We called emergency maintenance and around 12:15am he came and, as no one was living upstairs, he turned off the water to the apartment above us. Within a half hour the water had stopped and James and I were asleep.

We got up around 7am Wednesday morning (rather nice as Cecilia let us sleep in an hour) only to discover a constant drip in the walkway between our living room and dining room. Fortunately it was near the middle such that the only thing getting wet was the carpet and nothing was damaged, but we did relocate my computer, some of Cecilia's toys, etc. to prevent damage. In order to figure out what was wrong, the maintenance man had to rip two large holes in the ceiling. (see picture below.) It turned out it was leftover runnoff from the previous leak that had settled over that spot at the seam of the drywall.



Fortunately the man came to repair the drywall and we no longer have a holey ceiling! Geez. Ugh.