March 20, 2015

Thankful For Friday

March 20, 2015

New spot for supper Friday night

Two thirds of the way through March.  The start of Spring.  People across the country are eager to see Winter 2015 make an exit.  It has been a brutal winter for so many parts of the country.  Brutal would be an overstatement for us, but it has been a winter of little sunshine.  In this part of deep South Texas, we are excited about the plans SpaceX has to build a launch site just about 20 miles from our home.  They may be wondering what they were thinking as they saw day after day of rain and clouds this winter.  This was not a typical year for us.

The sun came out and the past rains began to turn to steam today.  It was a steamy, warm, muggy day.  Many of my customers commented on how glad they were to see the sun but how sorry they were for the reminder of what will come this summer with the humid heat that we have in this area.  One customer said he couldn't believe that only a couple of weeks ago he was complaining about how cold it was.

Almost all of my days during the week are spent indoors with air conditioning.  For that, I am very thankful.  I have lots of yard work to be done, but even on the days I do that, I can come in the house and cool off for a bit.  I am thankful for central cooling at home and at work and for central heat those few days each year that we need it. 

My alarm went off at 6:00.  I hit the snooze button.  The next thing I remember was Ron waking me at 8:00 when he was leaving for work.  He says he thought I woke up at 7:00 when he tried to wake me.  I don't remember that.  When he woke me at 8:00, I felt great.  Two extra hours of sleep was a blessed way to start a Friday.  Thankfully he didn't need me at the office too early.  I got there about 10:00.  He was trying to get things ready to leave on a job.

As often happens when Ron tries to leave on a job, customers come in one after the other and delay his departure.  It was at least 11:00 before he got out the door and it was about 4:15 when he returned.  That gave me time to do a little cleaning.  One of the delays had been a customer who wanted a padlock.  One that would have worked for him was in the display case, but there were no keys with it.  How does that happen?  So I cleaned out that showcase to look for the keys and did not find them.  The customer took a different lock.

While cleaning the showcase, I restocked several things and saw that we needed to order a few items.  It felt good to at least get that done.  I had remembered yesterday where I stored the keys for some locks on a large rotating display.  It was out of date, so I removed the locks and wished for one of the grandchildren to be there to remove the hardware from the display - hasps, etc. 

One of our grandsons came by for about 30 minutes in the early afternoon and I asked him to take the hardware off one side of the display and sat down and talked to him as he worked.  He is the second oldest of Jeff's sons.  We talked about his school work.  All of the children in their family are home schooled and so I asked what his favorite classes are and how he is doing.  He told me a lot about the class comparing Creation and Evolution.  He is enjoying that one very much.  Their family hopes to visit the Creation Museum in Ohio soon.

At 2:00 the man from our church who works with the boys on Friday afternoons came to pick our grandson up and he had finished the chore I gave him about that time.  It was good to talk to him; it was good to hear how much he likes his studies this year.  In this day and age when many young people spend their time with a computer (and this grandson loves those things) it was good to see he knows how to use a screwdriver and other tools. 

My hearing was a little strange during the day and later I remembered I had tried a different setting the previous evening.  I was able to hear all the customers but it was just a little different.  The setting was one that takes the background noises down more and that made for a quiet day while Ron was out.

I did some bookkeeping, waited on lots of customers and in the late afternoon cut out a few pieces of fabric to play with a new quilt pattern.  Friday afternoons often get rather quiet since a few places around town cut way back on maintenance work on Friday afternoon and many of our customers are maintenance men.  Several of them were in during the morning, but only one or two in the afternoon.  Others were still coming and going during the afternoon, but Friday afternoons are usually rather slow for us.

Ron left the office again a little after 4:30 to go on another job and we just met at the house after work to go to supper in one car instead of two.  Our friends had tried a new Mexican restaurant out on the road to the port and wanted us to try it.  It was very quiet.  They do most of their business at lunch and suppertime is slow for them.  That works well for me.  I had the best enchiladas I had eaten in a long time.  My order was enchiladas, rice, beans, and a salad.  The rice is not the type I like but the beans were perfect.  We will go back and the fact that they are very reasonable in their prices helps.

Apparently, my aol.com account was hacked - AGAIN.  I don't know why I am being picked on.  I changed the password again, making it longer and more complex each time.  Several friends alerted me to the fact that I had been hacked and each said they knew those things weren't from me.  It was interesting that each seemed to get a different letter.  

Once we got home, I spent a little time on the computer and after a snack, I fell asleep in the recliner reading.  It is now about 3:30 Saturday morning, and I am doing Friday's blog.  It was a good day.  I felt great all day.  I got several things done, and I had a little time to experiment with a new quilt pattern.  Not bad for a Friday!