Thursday, May 24, 2007

A Good Time and I Live To Serve

I went home after a mostly non-eventful day at work (I still have not been able to start training in my new job or to start training my colleague to do my old one) to find a short note from my wife asking me to do a couple of things for her while she was out. Since drying/folding the clothes and feeding/watering/letting the dogs out is not a huge undertaking, I gladly obliged. Once all that was done, I took care of some family financial admin stuff and waited for my wife to come home. It was Care Group night, actually the last (official) one until fall and my wife was cooking the main course, grill salmon with a Caribbean Jerk marinade (my mouth waters even as I type this). The host couple was handling everything else except for dessert, which was handled by "Toni".

The meal and subsequent fellowship was good. We chatted about several different topics, sometimes separated by gender (the gals talking about one subject and Jimmy and I talking about another). We were short a couple of people and it felt odd not having them there, but sometimes things happen for a reason.

We (my wife and I) agreed to watch Collette and Jimmy's "spirited" Retriever while they are out of town and Jimmy agreed to go to a local watering hole with me in July...not to drink, but to watch a UFC match that looks very promising. One of the pluses to Jimmy going is that if there are a lot of drunk ruffians wherever we go, I will be reasonably safe from them...Jimmy is one very tough 50 year old martial artist.

MY wife and I got home and walked our adoring pooches and then watched the episode of "24" that we missed the other night. As usual, we were not disappointed. While it is getting very predictable, it is still entertaining. once "24" was over with, we hit the hay...we were both very tired.

I got up and completed the normal routine, including checking my e-mail from the previous evening. One, from client of mine, I found rather amusing. "Don" is a rather eccentric guy about my age or so who lives in a condo in Dallas. As a matter of fact, I was doing a job for him when my truck got broken into last Christmas. He is a computer neophyte and only has dial-up...no broadband. Any work I do at his place is a lot harder than at most people's homes because of that (and other things), but I kinda feel sorry for the the guy, so I do my best. Anyway, the e-mail from Don was a request for a couple of things. The first was to have 5 CD's burned with a small group of freeware. Most of the things he is looking for are programs I use, so getting those is not problm but one of the items I have not heard of nor can I find a freeware version of. Don is requesting a tag editor for .wmv, wma, and .mov files ... I was not aware the "tags" could be edited and have no experience with them, so I posted a request on my favorite freeware newsgroup, nntp://alt.comp.freeware and hopefully someone there will have a suggestion.

His second request was a bit more exotic. He is asking me to find him all the music used on the TV show, "Hee Haw" in SEQUENTIAL order, burned to CD. Well, I am not going to break the law for anyone so I replied back to him with a link to the DVD's he can buy. What he does with them is his business.

I was a bit surprised that Don wanted 5 CD's made with the exact same thing. While he told me that he would reimburse me the CD's...that is not point. It is my time that I am more concerned with. I also do not think that he understands that I charge him a very low rate for the work I do not to mention all the software I have put on his USB thumb drive for him to use. Well, nonetheless I am going to call him later to let him know what I can and cannot do for him.

Well, my colleague stated he will not be in until later today, if at all. No training for me (or him), I guess.

I just remembered that tonight is the night one of the older teens from church is coming over to help me with our patio door...at least if the weather holds..it looks like a storm is brewing. I think one of the brass wheels on the door has worn out and needs to be replaced. I replaced one of them a couple of years ago while our son was still at home and now it looks like the other is going bad or is broken. The door is dragging at one end and will not close unless you lift it up before you latch it. I cannot replace it myself because of the size and weight of it...not to mention my weak back. I felt blessed that the associate pastor's son offered to help me since our son is not in country at the moment.

On a side note, moving to the side of the building that has the better cell reception has its trade offs. I now have to deal with a lot more hallway conversations than I did on the other side of the building. So many, that I have to keep my office door partially closed more often than not. Oh well, that too will soon change.

One last thing...my wife has been having premonitions lately...something that does not happen often. One of them has already come true. She shared one with me last night and I find it somewhat intriguing. Her premonition was that we would be moving out of Texas, most likely to a southeastern state like Georgia. Interesting.

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