Fruitless in Portland

Today was delivery day for our citrus fruit. I had ordered only 34 cases though, far less than the minimum of 100 to have it delivered to the place of my choosing. Instead, I asked that it be delivered to Portland, ME, which is the next closest place. It was to be there at 5:00pm.

Jonathan, Beth, and I borrowed my friend Ken’s truck, and we got there a bit before 5:00. The truck was already there. But no one from Portland was. We waited. A friend from Portsmouth (not Portland) showed up a few minutes later. Still no one from Portland though. We waited some more. Beth needed to use a bathroom (it was a three hour drive to get there). Eventually (after some phone calls) someone showed up. The coordinator from Portland had failed to coordinate. No one from there would be coming. So we drove north another 20 minutes to their second drop site in Freeport where they DID have a cadre of volunteers. We ended up getting our order loaded onto Ken’s truck and we left at 6:30. A full hour later than I had intended. But what can I do?

We drove back to Concord, and Jonathan and I unloaded Ken’s truck. I had called Ken and left a message for him saying we would be there at 9:30 (he had my car, and I figured we could swap again after unloading). But Ken wasn’t there. I called his wife, but she wasn’t at the house. I told her I was just going to drive over there so there was no need for Ken to come out – we had already unloaded the truck. Just as I was about to pull out of the church parking lot, Ken called me. His mother is sick (she’s in her 90’s). He suggested that I just drive his truck to my house and we’d swap tomorrow before the Pathfinder meeting.

The Pathfinder meeting will not be a “meeting” meeting though – we’re just going to work on Pinewood Derby cars. My friend Warran will be coming out to help, and I’m hoping he’ll come back to the club to serve as a staff member (he was a staff member for the past 5 years or so, but opted out for a variety of reasons). I could sure use his help again though, so I’m hoping this will become permanent.

Also – I had the sermon at church this morning. I think it went pretty well.

I’m pretty tired now, having driven for six hours and unloading a truck twice. So that’s it for tonight!

 

Knocked One Out

I felt pretty good a quitting time today at work. I was able to resolve on of the emergencies that had been dropped in my plate. I ended up writing a short application to exercise some features of our card, and it really turned out to be a beautiful piece of code. I like it when it starts working and the code hasn’t deteriorated into a messy heap. Sometimes it does, but not this time. So now I’m off for a week. I decided to take vacation days for Monday-Wednesday to make the Thanksgiving break extra long. I can sure use the break, that’s for sure.

Tonight I finished writing up answers to the Home Nursing honor. That was the last unanswered honor in the Health and Science series. I was thinking I’d order a printed copy, but just remembered a few minutes ago that I need to revisit the Brain and Behavior chapter first. Several of the images I used in that one had been removed from the Wikimedia Commons because they did not have an appropriate license. Once I replace them (by finding new images or creating them myself), I may go ahead and order a printed copy.

Tomorrow one of my old Pathfinders will be preaching the sermon. Scott was brought into our church by his now-wife when they were in high school. I am very fond of them both and am looking forward to hearing Scott speak. They are both attending school at Atlantic Union College, and Scott is thinking about entering the chaplain corps in the U.S. Army. His dad has been in the army for almost 30 years, and has spent plenty of time in Iraq (both in the current conflict there, and the first one back in the 90’s). So I think he has a pretty good idea of what he’s getting into. I wish him the best of luck in that.