I still can't believe what my college did to me.  They freaking gave me a bachelors in business administration!  How??? I hardly feel like I earned it.  Granted, I didn't exactly do great, I think my GPA's about a 2.9, but wow.  I even got an award for service to Students in Free Enterprise, I'm hoping it compensate for the GPA.

Last night was full of jolly good win.  Suffice it to say, I finally got my roommate and his hometown friend, my little brother, my ex and 2 other furry friends of mine to meet, and they all got along great.  Movie, video games, late night diner run and sleepover, and then my parents got to meet them all the following morning, followed by another diner run for breakfast before commencement!

Phew.  No job offers yet (figures...) but i'm still crazy stoked.

Peace 'n wuff ^^

For Easter, neighbors give church a story of good will

The theft smoothed the way for the Rev. Kevin Thompson to write his Easter homily. Or rather, it was what happened after the theft.

A woman taking a shortcut on April 2 spied the broken ground-level windows at St. Francis of Assisi Church and called police. Before long, Father Kevin, as he is known in the Roman Catholic parish, learned thieves had slipped through the smashed windows into the basement, snapped off a handle securing a chain on a freezer door, and stolen about 10 turkeys and eight hams earmarked for the annual Easter dinner the church serves to the needy.

The thieves also broke through two inside basement doors and raided the food pantry before climbing the stairs to steal an amplifier from the choir and rip the sound system from the wall of the sacristy. Along the way, they battered more doors, leaving shattered wood and broken doorknobs in their wake. The only door that survived their blows opened into a closet where the church stored its sacramental wine.

Father Kevin said police suspect the thieves were drug addicts looking for items to sell for their next high.

St. Francis is known in Harrisburg's Allison Hill community as a place where people can turn for help. The church runs a soup kitchen Monday through Saturday where the hungry can eat -- no questions asked. Three times a year, at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, the soup kitchen takes on a more festive feel as volunteers serve holiday meals restaurant-style.

The church also sponsors a Saturday morning food pantry and doles out money for overdue utility bills, prescription medicines and rent with an emergency fund supported by a monthly collection at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Mechanicsburg.

To steal from such a place seemed particularly cruel.

On April 3, WHTM-TV ran a story on the break-in. The telephone began ringing at St. Francis after the 5 p.m. newscast. After the 6 p.m. news, the voice mail storage on the telephone filled.

An overwhelmed Father Kevin called a few members of the parish and asked them to come to the church the next day to deal with a steady stream of people who pulled up with hams, turkeys and monetary donations.

They brought so much, "we had to call parishioners; we ran out of freezer space," Father Kevin said. One room in the church office became a storage facility for Easter baskets brimming with traditional sweet treats, donated by St. Margaret Mary Parish in Penbrook. They were to be distributed Saturday during the dinner, where about 250 guests were expected to dine in fine style on the donated food.

Among the callers were ministers from many denominations offering support, both spiritual and monetary.

"All of the ugliness, the disappointment, the discouragement that I was feeling after the break-in, wow, that just disappeared," Father Kevin said.

Those of us who work in the news business sometimes don't realize the impact our words and pictures can carry. But occasionally a story takes root and grows into something beautiful.

"When you let people know, they want to help," said Dennis Fisher, the news director at Channel 27. Fisher said newscaster Flora Posteraro learned about the break-in and brought the story to the station. But the credit for the response, he said, belongs not with ABC27, but with the community, which, like the rest of the country, is weathering a rocky economic climate.

"The tougher the times, the more they want to give," he said.

The effect of tough times and crime in the Allison Hill neighborhood that is home to St. Francis demands changes. After items were stolen from the food pantry in a burglary a year ago, Father Kevin thought locked windows and padlocks on the interior doors would offer protection from another assault.

This latest burglary has proved him wrong. Now, the Knights of Columbus have come forward with a plan for a security system, and some of the money donated this Holy Week will be used to support their effort to ward off intruders.

But this Easter morning, Father Kevin intends to share a story of love and good will with his parishioners. "To see God working in this way, all my negative feelings have disappeared," he said.

Happy Easter, Folks!