A Few Short Stories

I've got a few (hopefully quick) and random stories for you today. Here we go...

My neighbor Jeff is out of town for the week. He went to Virginia to visit his mother as I'm pretty sure her birthday is around this time of year. On Saturday, as is often the case when he goes out of town, he asked me if I would mind picking up his newspapers and putting them in the chair on his front porch. I said it would not be a problem at all. Jeff headed east on Monday morning and presumably took his newspaper with him as it was not in his yard. On Tuesday morning, as I was gathering my things to walk out the door for work, I remembered I needed to pick up his paper before leaving. When I opened the door, one of Jeff's friends was at his house watering his plants and she had picked up his newspaper. The fact that he asks me to pick up his newspaper and another friend to water his flowers and garden always gives me a chuckle - either he doesn't trust me with his vegetation or his other friend really loves to come over and take care of the vegetation, or maybe he knows I hate the heat and wouldn't want to spend a lot of time in the heat watering flowers and such. Whatever the reason, it baffles me because really it would be no problem for me at all to water the flowers and garden and it would probably be no problem for his other friend to pick up the newspaper if she is already going to be there. Maybe he just wants us to both feel loved and appreciated. Another thing that made me laugh about the friend watering Jeff's flowers on Tuesday morning was that it rained pretty much all throughout late Monday night/early Tuesday morning - so what was the point in her watering when God had just taken care of that? Something to think about...

Speaking of the newspaper, I recently cut my subscription back from a Saturday/Sunday delivery to a Sunday only. I never read the Saturday paper unless it was during football season, and now that there won't even be a Saturday paper during football season, I figured, what was the point? It was a waste and it immediately went into the recycle bin. On Monday, a representative of the newspaper called to say they would be providing me with the Wednesday and Friday editions for the next six months at no additional cost. As you may recall from my recent post, the newspaper is only going to be producing a paper on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday beginning in October. So, my assumption is they are trying to get everyone on board with this new three-day schedule and then in six months they will jack up the prices. Remind me six months from now to closely watch my monthly bank draft from the Huntsville Times

Monday afternoon, I was putting some things in car in preparation to leave for Ladies' Night Out. I was apparently in my own little world, arranging things just so when all of a sudden a man rode by on a bicycle and said, "That's a pretty house." My first reaction was a scream, not a blood-curling one, but still a scream. Clearly I wasn't expecting to be spoken to and the man startled me. I said, "Thank you!" and he said, "I didn't mean to scare you, I just wasn't sure if I had the breath to speak." I laughed and said, "no problem, I understand!" All of this took place as the panting man continued to ride down the street. It was a pretty funny moment if I do say so myself and it's always nice to get a compliment on your home.

Friday when Jackie came over to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I modeled my new cycling jersey for her. Needless to say, it gave her a great laugh!

Back tomorrow with a few more of these random snapshots from my life.