Thursday

Thursday was a spectacular day here, weather-wise. Unfortunately, no so much at work. I’ll explain in a moment.

I went to Time Out for lunch and had some soup and a cheeseburger. Both were excellent. My waitress, Ember, and I had talked before and she had said she was also a singer-songwriter. So, today I asked what kind of songs she wrote. She said she had tried rock, but eventually settled for folk-rock. So, I shared one of my old songs and she gave me her website.

Since it’s supposed to stay nice for the next several days, after eating I went and got the truck washed. I got back to work with plenty of time to check out Ember’s website. Nice site and nice songs!

About 1:00 p.m., our ERP program (PeopleSoft) crapped out and was down most of the afternoon. IT was hit hard (no tickets, no new employees, no purchasing, etc.), but so was everybody else (Accounting, especially). Needless to say, it was a boring, long wait. I twiddled my thumbs and read up on new advancements in networking.

After work, and after driving home, I treated Caley and quickly changed clothes. Then I went out to address the weeds in the English garden.

I’m not sure why, but the mulch I had trucked in has not been as effective at weed prevention as the bagged mulch I used in the past (maybe they sterilize the bagged mulch?) Anyway, I got down and dirty with the weeds, grass and trees growing in the garden.

Then I started loading and dumping wheelbarrows of the remaining mulch on Jake’s patio. It was already starting to compost, BTW. But, I figured it was better than nothing.

It was during one of the dumping session I overheard a woman on a bicycle berating a young man with a dog on a leash. She was telling him he had no business walking a “dangerous” dog down the street where children played. I looked over and he had a beautiful brown pit bull. Oh, this cannot stand!

So, I dropped what I was doing, climbed the ditch and crossed the road. I asked the kid if he minded if I petted his dog. He said, “Um, no…” So, I did, explaining how my son and his wife have a beautiful pit bull that is just the sweetest dog in the world. The lady said, “But, they’re vicious!” I said, “No, they are not unless they are trained to be!” The kid said, “That’s what I was saying.” I petted him (or her) for about 10 minutes and then felt my work there was finished. When I left, the lady said, “I love your garden!” I said thanks and got back to work.

It was getting late and I was getting tired, so I quite just before the peonies I had transplanted from the back (to save them from the Virginia Creeper). One is in full bloom and the one I thought had died came back. Beautiful.

Back inside, I washed up. It was after 8:00 p.m. and I was hungry. So, I cooked a chicken pot pie in the microwave and ate that watching an old western on Turner Classic movies. I fell asleep before it ended.