Saturday, January 24, 2015

January 23, 2015

A Chilly Day
January 23, 2015



Some of you reading this blog live in areas where January is always cold - even snowy and icy.  It can get cold in South Texas.  Ten years ago we even had snow on Christmas Day; the first real snowfall in about 100 years.  We have frost occasionally and even a few severe freezes in my lifetime, but the weather this year has really been strange.  We had an unusually early cold spell in October and many trees lost some of their leaves.  Then it turned very warm and the trees thought spring had arrived and began sprouting new growth.  Fall was filled with budding plants, blooming flowers, and a beautiful green growing season.

Then came January and it has been cold and wet most of the month.  It warmed up for about a day and a half and then a front blew in last night (Thursday night) with strong, cold, northerly winds.  Some trees around town turned autumn colors (which rarely happens here) and for the last week or two we had seen beautiful colors.  Now with the winds, the trees are getting bare and the ground under the trees are covered in leaves.  This is the time when we would normally start pruning the plants for spring growth.

My husband does not deal well with the cold and I don't deal well with the heat.  He is miserable on these cold days and has had more outside jobs the last couple of weeks than when it was warmer in the fall.  Poor guy.

Ron had failed to tell me he accepted a job for 9:00 this morning up the valley!  At 7:45 I asked what was on his schedule for today and he told me about the job at 9:00.  If you remember the old TV comedy series Bewitched where Samantha would speed herself up to get things done in a hurry, well, I could have used that ability this morning.  I still had to shower, wash and dry my hair, etc. and get to the office: in a HURRY!   (Today I would not let my kids watch that show but back then it seemed harmless.) 

Ron was out of the office most of the day on jobs.  My two oldest grandsons came to the office for a couple of hours and helped take down  the Christmas tree, store the bookkeeping records from 2013 in order to put the ones from 2014 where I can access them easily if needed.  One grandson found some boxes of old records that are ready to go through the shredder and started on those.  The other gathered trash and took out several loads.  I enjoyed having them there and treated them to pizza for lunch. They were both heading to San Antonio for a Youth Conference with the church youth group.  They left with a little extra spending money and I greatly appreciated their help and company. 

I had many customers in and out during the day and got a deposit ready late in the afternoon and took it to the bank at the end of the day.  I had done cleaning while the boys were at the office and organizing of catalogs, etc.  By the end of the day, I was tired. 

We met Mom, my brother Gordon and his wife Linda for supper at Luby's.  We had a good visit and relaxing time.  They had run a lot of errands and taken care of several things for Mom.  It was obvious she was tired but delighted to have them visit.  Usually at Luby's we use one of the rooms other than the main one since they are usually quieter.  Last night those two rooms were too cold so we were in a noisier situation, but I did fairly well hearing.  I had managed fine with all the customers at the office.

Oh, I forgot!  While the boys were at the office, one was helping me run off some invoices on a high speed printer I have for just that chore.  It doesn't get frequent use and so the ink cartridges must have dried a little and it was leaving some blank areas.  I worked on it and got that taken care of and then after a bit it started smelling like something in it was burning.  We smelled a smokey odor.  We stopped it and unplugged it but I became concerned that the smell might have come from the a/c unit and not the printer.  I shut that off and of course things like this only happen when Ron is not at the office.  I had my oldest grandson go up on the roof and see if he detected a smell around the a/c unit.  He didn't. 

I am beginning to get a feeling that the mechanical gremlins are loose in my office.  This makes 3 printers, 2 computers, etc. in the last few months at the office!  I am really frustrated.  The unit with the problem yesterday is 7 years old but only gets used about every 6-8 weeks when we run a large stack of the needed forms.  It has been an excellent printer.

Once we got home, it was not long before I was asleep! 

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