Wednesday again?

Well, Wednesdays seem to be my day for blogging lately. As things happen throughout the week, I often say to myself "I need to blog about this" and then a few days later,I've forgotten it and another week has passed.

Father's Day was nice. We went to church, then took DH out to lunch at "Big Buck's", the restaurant attached to the big Bass Pro Shops near us. It's such a manly place, what with dead deer heads hanging everywhere. The decor is sort of like a mountain retreat: lots of wood, even bent wood chairs, white Texas granite rock columns, small fake pine trees everywhere (they actually look pretty good). The food is fabulous and reasonably priced, and BPS makes their own Root Beer and Cream Soda! It's quite good, and rivals FrosTop in my opinion. If only they had a frozen mug for it.... After lunch, we did a little shopping at BPS with DH's Father's Day gift, a BPS Gift Card. He uses a BPS MasterCard for work travel, so he accrues points that are redeemable at BPS like cash, depending upon how much money is charged on the account. He pays it off monthly, when he gets his expense check, so we pay no interest, but he accrues points for BPS. He does a jig every time a new statement arrives in the mail! It's so cute.

DD has been invited to a movie and lunch birthday party tomorrow. I guess that is what preteens do for parties nowadays: meet at the theater then walk to lunch. The birthday girl is a friend of DD's from school. She and her family moved here from Israel about 2½ years ago. The girl grew up speaking Hebrew, with English as a distant second language. She's fluent now, and is in gifted and advanced placement classes with DD. I found it fascinating to talk to her father when we were both chaperons for a field trip. He had quite a different opinion of what the whole "Middle East crisis" was about than what we hear in the average news media here in the USA. But overall, they seem quite happy to be here. I hope to get to know them better.

DH and I spent the afternoon of Father's Day cleaning off the back patio. Where does all that dog hair come from?! Surely, if the dogs shed that much they'd be bald! We got rid of some old plastic chairs that had been hanging around. We put them out for trash pick-up, knowing they'd be gone by the time trash ran Tuesday. Sure enough, they were. We also got rid of some old rusty crawfish pots and strainers, keeping the stainless steel ones and the wash tubs for purging them. The rusty pots were given a new home before the chairs! DH also put up a new ceiling fan with a 52-inch "wingspan"on the patio that flat moves some air. It's nice to sit out there now, all clean and spruced up. Things that I deem not good enough for donation to a charity's thrift store and not good enough to keep get hauled to the street. I have more fun looking out of my kitchen window, watching to see the pile slowly disappear as drivers-by go "bulk trash shopping." Hey, I've done it, and am still using the wrought iron baker's rack I picked up in our last neighborhood! One man's trash is truly another man's treasure. If you don't believe that, try listing some of your "sort of decent but no one shopping at a thrift store would buy these" items on eBay or Craig's List. The "other man" will even pay shipping to get your stuff to him!