A SILVER JUBILEE GIFT TAKES ME FROM LAPTOP TO I-PAD............

From 1990, when I learned to use a desktop computer / wordprocesser, to 2007, when I finally bought a laptop, and began to expand my daily use of a pc, enjoying the portability, accessibility, and convenience, of having and traveling with a computer wherever I may be, I have often wondered why I waited so long to embrace laptops.  For the past year or longer I I have been encouraged by others to transition to an i-pad, especially when traveling.  Thanks to the gift for my 25th anniversary of Priesthood, from the Pennington-Shepherd Family, in OLOL Parish, I now have an I-Pad.  Mary Lou and Jack Pennington came by to see me this morning and helped me set up and begin to use the i-pad, which is going to be an exciting new horizon in blogging, interneting, social networking.  The convenience and portability of traveling with an i-pad has been underscored for me in the past four weeks and the journey from Sacramento to San Francisco, Monterey/Carmel, South Lake Tahoe/Reno, Napa Valley, Newark, NJ, and New York City, and back, I made with my Irish friends.  Carrying and getting it through airport security, which as an amputee is already extra challenging; and using my pc inflight, will also be easier with an i-pad than it has been with a standard laptop.  I am ptofoundly grateful to the Pennington-Shepherd Family for their gift.  They are one family among many, whose unconditional love and support for me as a priest, pastor, and friend, solidifies my good faith in others during this most challenging and frustrating time in my life and priestly vocation.  Learning to i-pad is the next chapter of success in my personal book of life of facing physical and technological challenges, which in the immediate future includes independently walking and driving with my prosthetic right leg............Fr.  Troy