Fat Wednesday

While paczki are a foreign delight to me, the fish-on-fridays and 40-days-of-resolutions all leading up to chocolate-bunny-day are all very familiar to me and my very Catholic Massachusetts hometown. I met my first Jewish person in high school and was under the impression that Catholics were the vast majority of this country until college. Catholicism and I have since parted ways but I still have a soft spot for the various festivities it offers.

In light of being thankful that Jesus hallucinated in the desert for 40 days without food and water, I offer the following news articles that made my day.

1) Abstinence-only education in Pittsburgh schools has been eliminated. One can only hope that some of the millions that Obama is cutting out in his upcoming budget is the sickening Federal governments grants for nationwide abstinence-only education. Needless to say, I have strong feelings on this issue. This is not one of those fond memories of Catholicism for me.

2) The Mon Wharf re-construction actually begins very shortly. One more piece of the city's bike path puzzle is being worked on, and we are one step closer to having one of the most bad-ass city bike trail in the country.

3) Natural Gas prices have dropped for my local supplier. Every time I attempt to wrap my head around commodity charges and gas cost adjustments and distribution charges, my head hurts and some wonk says that it's all good because Pennsylvania gas companies aren't allowed to make a profit while my gas bill edges higher and natural gas prices plummet. This time it still hurts my head, but I double-checked my gas bill for the month, and my rate did actually drop to relatively close to what it was a year ago.

So today, I'm a content blogger - or at least this morning. Hopefully Luke and Onorato and all their friends and enemies can hold off on stupidity for the rest of the day or till Easter. Perhaps it can be their Lenten resolution? Is that too much to hope? Maybe then I can find something positive to say about Pittsburgh politics every day of Lent.