Friday, February 17, 2017

February 17 – “eleven o’clock?”

We embarked on a Texas journey yesterday with the knowledge in hand that we will soon be getting a refund.  No, not from the IRS.  I still have to put all that together, and I’m afraid that will result in the opposite of a refund.  This one will be from the electric company since we went off of balanced billing.  The purpose of our Texas Trek?  We decided to get a lawn mower.  We’ve been borrowing Nathan’s for quite some time now, and he hasn’t cut us off or anything.  We just decided it would be much easier to just wheel it out of the shed or garage and get started rather than having to go over to his house, load it on the truck, do the deed, then return it.  And on top of that, Sears was having a big sale.

Ah, Sears.  Times must be difficult for the retail Giant.  Why do I say that?  Did you know they have changed the time they open their doors?  Eleven o’clock.  That’s right.  Forget morning shopping at Sears, folks.  I guess it’s a new company perk for employees – sleep late every morning.  We arrived at around 9:30 to find the doors locked up.  Undeterred, we made our way over to Sam’s and then to the WalMart next door to kill some time.  Wow.  That WalMart sure put ours in Galveston to shame.  Much bigger.  Wider selection of goods.  And the people were actually pleasant.  We must have been greeted six or eight times.  that still wasn’t enough time to get those Sears doors open, though, so we went over to Whataburger to have an early lunch. 

Finally we made our way back to Sears to see if their employees of the day were awake yet.  They were, so we let one of them know what we wanted.  Exactly what we wanted.  I think it surprised her that we were so incredibly knowledgeable.  It wasn’t hard, actually.  Chris did all the inspection work online before we ever left the house.  They happened to have one on sale that fit every single restriction we were demanding.  Front wheel drive.  Larger back wheels.  Side mulching option.  We saw one that kind of made me start for just a second or two.  It had all the options, but it also allowed you to shift gears in the self-propulsion mode.  Several different speeds.  I wonder what that would be like … shifting into high and having to run to keep up?  In the end I decided it would just be something else to break down. 

We had another pleasant surprise when we checked out.  Just for yesterday there was a special of some kind where we got 15% off our purchase.  And then we had some points on a Shop Your Way promotion that knocked off another $8.  All in all, they ended up paying for all of the taxes and then some.  I’ll take that any day.  They loaded it into the car for us and we were on our way home.  The only thing now is … I guess I’ll really have to use it.  But it’s supposed to rain today, isn’t it? …

1 Thessalonians 3:13 says, “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.”


Father, thank you for the ability to get a lawn mower.  It would be helpful to hold off on the rain for a little while this morning, but we’ll receive whatever you send.  Amen.

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