I survived Holy Week! Unfortunately, Pope Francis only barely did-- God rest his soul, please pray for him. As a result of the Pope's passing, the Lazio game today against Genoa got delayed.
About Lazio, I haven't had time to write about their European defeat. The thing to remember about this Lazio team is that they are in year one of a complete rebuild, from the front office, the scouting, and all the way to the players. The team doesn't have a lot of quality yet, but it does at least have a spine which can be built on. Players like Mandas, Gila, Tavares, Guendouzi, Rovella, Belehyane, and Castellanos should all have key roles in the project moving forward. Maybe even Noslin and Tchaouna, although I suspect they will be sold for further capital investment.
Regarding the Bodo Glimt disaster in general: imagine two people fist fighting, and you've got money on the outcome. You cheer "your" fighter on every time he lands a big blow. But after a while, both fighters' noses are broken, their eyes are sealed close, one of them has a broken arm, they can barely walk anymore, there is blood absolutely everywhere-- it's a nightmare. At some juncture, you stop caring about your bet, and the humanistic aspect takes over.
That's how I felt about the second leg. Half of the players on either team could hardly stand anymore. It went back and forth, with 94th minute stoppage time goals, multiple counteracting goals in extra time, the ugliest, worst, lowest-quality penalty shootout I've ever seen, where their captain couldn't even finish it off only to have a one-legged Castellanos also miss... the whole ordeal was so exhausting and brutal, at some point I stopped even caring who won. It was terrible. Either team would get knocked out by Spurs in the next round anyway.
Even in the league, there is every chance Lazio will finish outside of the European spots altogether when all is said and done. I watched Bologna beat Inter at the last second yesterday, so there goes the Champions League money at least. But again, this team had "potential relegation fodder" written all over it going into the season, so I would stick with Marco Baroni for next year and see what he can do if we buy a couple of high quality players.
Back to Holy Week, saying all of those readings at the beautiful Easter Vigil really felt like a gauntlet. I feel like I did really well with them. Then, up bright and early the next day, I really went out with a bang on Easter Sunday. I was altar server for only the third time ever, plus had a little prayer of mine answered that I could try being "the incense guy".
I sort of made a mess of it: I came out and went back at all of the correct times. But when I went to incense the congregation, I just imitated what I'd seen at the Chrism Mass-- I went to the right, incensed over there, then went central and did that, then went left and did over there. Afterwards, Father told me that in a small church, I should have just stood centrally and pivoted my body to incense right, then left, then center.
I also was completely unable to get the motion correct, to get the chain to clank. My spectrum-brain makes mechanical motions super difficult for me to learn as compared to a more "neurotypical" person-- it's been a pattern my whole life. I can do it, but it just takes me like four times the "normal" amount of practice (for example-- I can throw a baseball quite well now, but I had to do it a thousand times to get it down). So I am going to get there early to the church next time I'm a minister, and get that extra practice in with the thurible until I can do it correctly.
This might be a reoccurence of my ego issues. Do I want to do better for the glory of God and to serve the congregation better? Or do I want to do better so I can show everyone how cool I am? I need to do more prayer and introspection about that, to make sure my motives are correct.
I also tried to play some video games yesterday, but got bored really easily. Part of it was just being tired. However, I'm getting fatigued playing older games, because I've already played and mastered all of those genres. And I am not the target demographic for modern games, clearly. I'm curious what the future of the hobby will look like. I know numerous children, and not one of them has any interest in consoles-- so I don't think that's the model going forward.
From what I've seen kids just play Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite on "blue light special" laptops and crusy old iPads. That's all they want or need, probably because there isn't much new which is very exciting. And I've seen statistics where the average age of a PlayStation 5 owner is like 41, that seems like a demographic death spiral to me.