An Ahhhhhh Moment

Well, well, well, it's been busy around here.....a good kind of busy. A family friend was in town, so I spent time with her over at my parents' place. We went to the Steamboat Arabia museum here in KC. It was really interesting. The Arabia was a steamboat headed north from St. Louis up the wide Missouri in the 1850's. As it neared KC, it struck a log and sank. It was not recovered until 1988, some 130 years later. Before the Army Corp of Engineers defined the boundaries of the river, it meandered all over the place, so the ship was actually buried under a man's cornfield. They got permission to dig and found the ship 35 feet below the surface (and under an underground river at that). Amazingly they were able to complete the retrieving over the winter, as the man had stipulated that they needed to be done in time for him to plant his crops in the spring.

The museum was like an old fashioned Walmart or Home Depot. There were shelves and shelves of dishes, buttons, boots, food, tools, hardware, and on and on. In fact they said they have 15 more years worth of stuff to clean and put out on display. It's the largest display of pre-Civil war artifacts in the world, and it's right here in KC! Pretty interesting if you like history.

I spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday with Janay and my folks and Monday was my day off. I feel like I squandered it. Not only did I sleep in, but I also couldn't resist taking a nap. Meanwhile, my house is a mess, the fridge is almost bare, and my mail pile needs attention. Sometimes it does seem like a waste....cleaning that is. I mean I do it every weekend, and it's just messy again. Why not just do it once a month and save 3 weeks worth of work? Or just clean when you're expecting someone? This should be one of the benefits of being single, but I can't enjoy it. It bugs me when the house is a mess. I guess I was so overwhelmed with things I needed to do, wanted to do, and didn't have time to do on Monday, that a nap just seemed like a good solution. Now to my credit, I did work out and get a few crosswords done on Monday, so I exercised both mind and body.

OK, all that talk about cleaning calls for another list......Top 10 things about being single......maybe I'll work on that tomorrow.

Last night I got a call from an old college friend I haven't seen in 15 years. She was in town for a conference and wanted to arrange for us to get together. So tonight, we met at P.F. Chang's on the plaza. It was really good to see her and it turns out we're in similar lines of work. She was with a group of about 12 co-workers, and since I arrived late, they were kind enough to tell me not to order, as there would be enough food. I have to say it was really good, even if it might be a stretch on the old BFL plan. But hey, since when can a single person turn down free food? I will say that they went to Cheesecake Factory afterwards and I was able to abstain. Wow....that was hard, but not too bad. I just appealed to my cheapskate side and told myself $7 for a lousy piece of cheesecake......Who am I kidding? That $7 buys you a piece of heaven. I like my piece of heaven in the Craig's Crazy Carrot Cake or Pumpkin Pecan variety. And then there's the white chocolate selections. MMMMMM.........OK, I'm off to eat a soy nugget protein bar ;-(

As busy as things are, sometimes God just plants something in front of you that makes you slow down and just say, "Ahhhh". For me that was the beautiful sunrise this morning as I drove to work. You know God could have been a God of practicality and function, but I'm so glad He's an artist too. It was so kind of Him to paint the world in brilliant colors and remind us every day in a new way of His love for us.

I took this picture on my camera phone. It does not do it justice at all, but I've decided my blog needs more pictures (I'm definitely a picture book kind of girl, and the same applies to blogs). So here you go....one low quality picture shot out the window with a camera phone while driving at 79 mph. I decided not to post the one of the friendly officer in the passing lane, pointing at me while I took a picture. I don't know why he wasn't smiling. He even turned on his lights, I'm guessing for dramatic effect.