Saturday, October 4, 2014

October 4 – “Can you print this?”

“Wash your hands and say your prayers ‘cause Jesus and germs are everywhere.”

How’s that for a start to the day?  Saw it at one of the antique stores we browsed through yesterday.  Cute, and well, true.  We tried to make the most of our day yesterday by walking around in Old Town Spring.  It reminded us a lot of that city called Groene (pronounced Green) that we saw on our vacation.  Lots of small shops.  Basically a big tourist trap much like the Strand.  We did find one shop, though, that repairs clocks.  They have been around for 40 years or so.  Why such a find?  We have a cuckoo clock that made its way through Hurricane Ike, but has not worked since.  A little problem with rust.  They said the whole inside mechanism probably needs to be replaced.  Gonna cost around $200.  Someday.  They could also work on the antique mantle clock Chris got from her Mom.  Some day. 

From there we returned to the antique store we never finished walking through.  Amazing place.  Over 85,000 square feet.  And the best part about it was that I found several places that had baseball cards from my era.  Apparently the line that designates “really old” has somehow shifted to include the early 1960’s, which is when most of my cards are from.  Once again I am so glad Mom and Dad never tossed my cards when I went to college.  I wonder how much my complete set of Topps 1963 is worth now?  There are some in there that I want to replace with better condition cards, though.  I might evem have done some of that yesterday, but the cubbyholes that had them never had a human being anywhere around to let me into the locked cabinets to look through them.  Apparently you had to walk all the way back up to the front of the store to get someone to bring a key.  Guess I wasn’t all that keen on replacement cards.  Or maybe it had something to do with that required hike.  After all, I was supposed to be relaxing, right?

The night before at the rehearsal I had received some clarification on the bride as to how she wanted to do the sand ceremony portion of the wedding.  Not a problem to change it.  I brought the computer with me, and just had to switch a few words here and there.  The problem came when I called the front desk to see if they could print it for me.  The lady was most accommodating, and assured me that all I had to do was email it to her and she would have it done in mere minutes.  When I walked down to pick it up, however, she couldn’t get the computer to talk to her printer.  She tried every different thing both of us could think of, and nothing seemed to be working.  In the meantime I learned all about her family and about how she had become a Christian about 6 years ago.  Very sweet and engaging lady.  I even met a guy who sells breathing equipment to fire departments and the military.  He came up to have something faxed.  My new friend Dru finally asked when exactly I needed the document.  She was going to call tech support, and that usually took around 30 minutes.  I gave her my cell phone number in case we were out of the room and resigned myself to having to hand-write the entire portion of the ceremony.  Sigh.  How addicted to technology we have become.  Thankfully, we hadn’t left the room yet when she called back and said the document was in hand.  She simply switched computers and called up her email again, and the printer read it just fine.  Whew.  Changes in hand, I cut out what I needed to the right size to fit into my little wedding handbook.  I did still need some tape, though, so we had one extra stop to make at an HEB before I could finally breathe a sigh of completion.  Bring on the wedding.  And what a wedding it was.  More about it next time.

Galatians 5:22-23 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

Father, I’m grateful for emails and faxes and all this technology, but thank you even more for the times when it brings people together.  Take care of Dru as she ministers to people through her contact at the front desk.  Amen.

 

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