What a heavenly week!

We had a spate of strange heavenly or celestial happenings this past week. 

It all began with a surpise announcement early in the week triggering a process that will, towards the end of March, have us looking at the rooftops in Vatican City for puffs of smoke. Will they at first be black - or white?  That same question may be posed regarding the personage for whom the cry, "Abbiamo un Papa!" will fill the air.

Next, we saw pancakes being tossed into the air - from Olney, England to whatever that place (Liberal, I think it is called) in Kansas, USA that follows suit - on Shrove Tuesday [aka Pancake Day - remember that].

Then, as if by some strange duet of coincidental celestial tardiness, we had events that caused people to look skyward again a couple of days later.

First, there was that overdue asteroid (I thought a steroid was something that would have the strength to overcome lethargy) called '2012 some-thing-or-other' that clearly was misnamed as it made its appearance in 2013. We are forunate that its 17,000 mile 'near hit' was a miss, else we'd have a BIG hole someplace in this planet of ours. Do you realize just how close it came?  The Earth's diameter is about 9,000 miles and the moon is 250,000 miles away. That blydi rock came pretty damned close. The bad news is, it will take another run at us (why not Uranus?) in 100 years or so. 

The same day, strongman Vladimir Putin must have quaked as he pulled on a shirt and thought Ronald Reagan had been resurrected. A 'half-football-field-sized' meteor hurtled to ground with a big bang - injurying a 1,000 or more scared Ruskis. First, why is everything (to Americans) described in terms of 'football field dimensions'?  Could it not have been 'quarter-of-a-Siberian-labor-camp wide'? Next, this was not a Big Bang - like that other one 6 billion years ago - but big enough to set off life-creating actions inside many a Boris or Svetlana's underpants. Finally, in a trifecta of puzzlement, was that NASA expert 'serious' (certainly he was 3 days late with his analogy) when he proclaimed, "It just pancaked and exploded".

And the week is only 6 days old at this time; I think I'll adopt that age-old practice - and rest on this 7th day.