From Alex

Being here is an obligation I've just come to live with. My parents raised me in the church, and my wife still expects me to go. Whenever I skip out for a reason other than deathly illness, I don't hear the end of it until the next week when I put on my tie, and sometimes even that doesn't silence it. It's a routine. Like turning on the coffee pot when I first walk in the kitchen. Listening to the sermon, I take detailed notes. I can pretty much set up the outline exactly like Pastor has it written in his notes without ever having seen them. I know the ways he builds to a climax, three sets of threes buried in there, and the way he slides through a long winded denouement. My notes from a Sunday morning look so similar to my neat, dated, ordered, color-coded college notes that you really can't tell the difference.

God, I am so bored with my life. I am so bored with this routine. Nothing satisfies me anymore. Nothing makes me happy.

From Ms. Leela

Oh Lord, my back is achin', been sitting in this pew too long, wish they'd go ahead and get the new padding they been talking about getting for years. In this church you have to form a committee to discuss the formation of a committee to decide who will be on the committee that elects the committee to make a decision. Whereas, I'm all about lets just get it done, already. Now I see your brains turning, you're already talking about me in your mind, that grumpy old lady, but this attitude, sometimes it's all I've got.

Sometimes I just get so tired of sitting here listening! Sure, Pastor's speaking a great sermon, and then we get to read all about it in Alex's "witty" rendition, but sometimes I think this whole business is just like the committee chain of command. We all expect someone else to start the action. No one wants to start it. Well gal' darn it, I... well, I'm just about fed up with it. I just don't want to be the first one to get up and say something.