My friend Darlene

I had such a good time today.  I got my hair done first thing this morning and then ran 4 errands before going to lunch with a couple friends.  It was a loooooong lunch too. . . from noon till 2:30, but what the heck, we're all unemployed now.  It was a fun lunch and then off to another friend's house (Darlene) where I helped her out with some software issues she was having.  Then we both made a trip to Calloways (a local nursery) to get the results of the soil analysis she had them run for her, as well as a couple of geranium plants for pots on her patio.  This all took up the entire rest of the afternoon.  Darlene had the brilliant idea to go back to my house and pick up a couple DVD's which we took back over to her house.  We watched "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" after we returned from having supper at SONIC . . . well, not really supper . . . more like a hot fudge sundae.  All in all, a pretty non stressful and thoroughly wonderful day.  And to top it all off, I played a game of Scrabble with Alice tonight over the internet and I won . . . I won.  I can tell you that doesn't happen very often. 

Well, what an interesting day.  I made a run to the dump this morning and got a bunch of the junk thrown away, and I also took a load of packed boxes off to the storage facility.  I then went to a movie with a friend.  This afternoon the house was supposed to show three different times, but the one from 3:00 to 5:00 was I no-show, and the 6:15 didn't show up until 7:15 . . . but at least it's showing again. I only had ONE showing during spring break week.  

I'm am flabergasted!  We're DONE going through all the boxes that were in the attic.  I threw a lot of stuff out and have marked an awful lot of it with rediculously low prices for a garage sale.  I have to remind myself that this garage sale is all about getting rid of stuff and not about making money.  I had told the mover that of the 42 boxes of Christmas stuff in the attic (there were 51 . . . not 42) that I would pare it down and keep only 8 to 10 boxes.  Well, I have it down to 19 boxes of stuff that I'm keeping, but to be fair not all 51 boxes were Christmas stuff. . . . but probably 48 of them were.   I'll go through the 19 boxes one more time in an attempt to use every inch of space and get it down to fewer boxes to be moved. 

UNBELIEVABLE!!!  My good friends Butch and Linda came down to Dallas today to go to lunch with me and for Butch to try on some of Mike's suits.  They came from Ardmore, which is 2 hours north of here. I talked Linda into staying overnight while Butch went home with Todd, their son.  Linda and I tackled the "mountain" of boxes in the garage and I believe we're about half done.  I would never have believed we could get that much done in one day.  We're finishing up tomorrow and then I'll drive half way back to Ardmore and Butch will meet us and pick her up.  Friends are WONDERFUL.  Who else would agree to go through a garage full of boxes??? 

With the Oldsmobile now sold and out of my garage, I was able to have the neighbor boy (a senior in high school) and a friend of his go up in the attic and bring EVERYTHING down.  The wall of rubbermaid tubs you see in the picture is two tubs thick.  There's a little bit more than I thought there would be, but that gives me a good "project" to work on for the next couple weeks, while I'm not-so-patiently waiting for the house to sell.  I'm going to separate everything into four categories.  1-Keep it,  2-Sell it , 3-Give it away,  and 4-Pitch it. 

Hyacinth, I believe

I thought my cell phone was a gonner today.  When I unplugged it this morning it said "Check SIM".  Then when I opened it up, it said "Emergency Calls Only".  I thought it was toast.  I went to the Cingular store as soon as I could make it today (10:30 am) and was mentally preparing myself for having to buy a new phone, but all the guy did was turn it off, take out the battery, take out the SIM card, put the SIM card back in, put the battery back in and turn the phone back on . . . and VOILA, it worked.  When I asked him what had been wrong with it, he said that sometimes phones are like computers . . . when all else fails, REBOOT.

Azaleas in my front yard.

What a frustrating day today.  I stayed at the house all day because a lady from Houston was supposed to come by and look at some very old books that my husband had bought in England to see if she wanted to buy them.  She never showed.  Around supper time I got a voice mail message on my cell phone that she wouldn't be able to come to Plano until this Friday.   So, we'll be sticking close to the house on Friday as well.  But it will be worth it if she buys the books. 

I got an idea from my son's minister the last time I visited San Antonio.  He preached a sermon on building your life around Christ and he had three people up on the stage with him and they wrote the main points of the sermon on studs and then nailed them into a wall frame while the minister when on with his next point.  And VOILA!!!  I thought . . . I could do that with my new house.  So if any of you would like to send me your favorite scripture (book, chapter and verse) I can write those Scripture verses on the studs as my new house gets built. 

OH, HAPPY DAY!!!!!  I finally got the title to the Oldsmobile in the mail today.  So now my neighbor can buy the car.  YEAH!!!  He's only been waiting since the week after Christmas.  What a patient man.  We took the title to his credit union and they said they could have a check for him by tomorrow.  He'll give me the check, and I'll give him the car, the title, and the keys.  Wonderful.   

Arbor Hills Nature Preserve

This park is about 4 miles from my house and a friend and I went there today for a long walk.  What we love about the park is that for the most part it's left natural.  They have two kinds of trails . . . cement trails for the bikers and dirt trails for the hikers.  You can see which we prefer.  There are a couple of pavilions where you can picnic, but other than that the land has just been left as is.  It's like taking a hike in the wilderness rather than a park.  We spent about 2 hours there today, and we both considered it as good exercise.

The color is beginning to show and it really stands out from the brown dead leaves.

There is a wonderful creek that runs through the park and our path criss-crossed over it several times.