I called the auto electric shop.

The lady on the phone told me $95 per hour shop labor and that it usually takes between a half hour to an hour to diagnose a problem. 

I had to call, it was an "urge" - find out what it would cost to at least find out what's wrong with it. 

My son gets paid every Friday, he already offered to help.  He likes driving, obviously.  So, I'll contact him again and tell him what it's going to cost - or hopefully not more than $100 - and at this point, hopefully nothing left serious to go.  But who knows.  

My dad's wife fell in their house the other day and hurt herself.  Bad situation, but nothing that is going to end up costing her life, fortunately.  She is really a great person.  Anyway, she has been in terrible pain - I assume, however, the pain killers are taking care of that problem.  

I'm not a moocher or a beggar.  But I have to say it's become very helpful that my dad has been sending me a check every month for what, almost a year now.  I thought perhaps the end of it had come.  I said nothing.  I never asked for the money to begin with.  I just don't do things like that.  It just didn't arrive on it's normal day, or the day after, or the day after that.  I never count money I don't have until I receive, which put the budget in a bit of a strain.  

I dunno, wasn't going to let that kind of thing get me down.  Yesterday, we were going through all the stuff I scored from the lady moving out of her house that was being foreclosed upon.  No, I didn't ask her for any of it, all this Christmas stuff, I was helping my manager move the stuff he bought from her and she was getting rid of EVERYTHING.  She asked if I needed any Christmas stuff - it was what, July I think?  Yes, I said, I'm always game for Christmas stuff!  She gave me all of it.  She loaded up my car with boxes of Christmas goodies that I hadn't seen and didn't know what was in there.

I'm STILL amazed that she just gave all that stuff away.  I'm estimating at least $500 worth and that would be on Craigslist, not in the stores.  I have my front yard lit up very nicely, including a frosty, a deer with moving head, a full, fake Christmas tree and a lot of other stuff.  I don't care what my financial situation is, I am always going to be in love with Christmas for 2 reasons.  One, I was infatuated with it when I was a kid and that ideal never left me. 2, because it is a celebration of the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Whether it's the ACTUAL date or not, I don't care.  It's what is in my heart.  

So, I put it out of my mind.  I look at what I have, not at what I might be getting. What I had at that point? Definitely not enough.  Umm, well, enough, but scary.  The only way I can say it.  So, I get home today and I find what in the mailbox? Yes, my dad had sent the check.  I chalk it up to the ordeal they are going through with his wife's accident, pain, hospitalization.  Thank you dad.  He wrote me an email today and said Christmas probably isn't going to work out with her in pain and the accident effects.  Yes, well, I doubt it's going to go on THAT long, but I wrote him back and said we could come at another time.

Company Christmas party.  Uhh, our company got a bit of a late start on that scenario.  It's this Saturday. I committed to bringing  a cheese party platter.  It's just that it snuck up on me because the forewarning wasn't given near as far in advance as it normally is.  I mean, it's 4 days away.  Cause for alarm? No, not exactly, I'm just going through the internet to see how I can put together a bit more appealing cheese dish than what I had last year.  Not that it was bad, but a better variety of cheeses is in order.  

I have at least a half full day tomorrow.  It's strange having all these people coming out to our branch to cover the manager's absence.  I was asked to close today because the inside sales associate who was covering asked me to - he wanted to go back to the main branch, get on his computer there that has all of his stuff on it so he could get some work done.  Yeah, no problem.  I have closed many times in the past, no big deal.

I started working out with free weights again today.  I have my own weight set.  It's enough to get me started for now.  I will go 3 to 4 days per week, though I suspect after today's workout, my muscles are going to be sore tomorrow and it might be a few days before I can go again.  My muscle tone has deteriorated quite a lot since this economic turn down.  The reason is we used to be extremely busy - I was working my ass off, every day, all day long.  That ended with the housing bubble and though I still work as much as is afforded, it's a 1/4 at most of what it used to be.  Work has pretty much kept me in shape my entire life because I have always had extremely physical jobs.  I faced the fact that I better start pumping iron again or I'm going to look like a pig with whale proportionments in short order.

That's enough.  I just didn't get to write out a good entry this morning because the guy showing up today showed up - very early.  

G'nite.

ben