Thursday stuff.

As I type this, it's raining outside.  Haven't had a good rain in a while, and although this isn't exactly a really good rain, at least it's something wet falling out of the sky.  Last time I wrote in here, I was thinking that September was disappearing too quickly.... and here it is, nearly mid-October.  The weeks are flying by.

I've been busy with both Halloween and Christmas......... invitations have gone out for our Halloween party, which has to be on a week-night this year.  Not exactly the most convenient for everyone, but sometimes you just have to go with the flow.  I've found great prizes for the best (and possibly the worst) costumes...... that's always the best part of Halloween--- to see what costumes and crazy outfits our friends can put together.  I heard on the news last week that Halloween is 'growing in popularity' with adults around the country.  My guess is that the person who wrote those words has not been to Texas in late October.  Everyone is Halloween-crazy here, even the stores.  Employees go dressed in costumes on Halloween day, and every shop in probably every town is all decked-out with pumpkins, black cats, witches and scarecrows. So.... Boo to you!  (Or maybe that should be "Boo, Y'all!")

I've been wrapping up Christmas gifts for my cousins and their children..... what started out as a pile of holiday-wrapped presents is now a tall stack of brown-paper-wrapped packing boxes.  The gifts looked more festive in the holiday paper, but the post office needs the brown paper for mailing. Go with the flow.   I will start mailing out the Christmas packages right after Thanksgiving......... and my cousin T in Arizona will be the first one to call me, saying "Will you cut that out! You send Christmas gifts while we still have turkey leftovers in the house!"

The post office gets super-busy after Thanksgiving....... I figure the earlier I can get the packages in the mail, the less chance I have of anything getting lost in the process.  Last month, I sent a birthday package to one of my cousins, and when I checked the tracking number, the computer told me the package had been delivered in Beaumont, Texas.  Now how could that be?  It was addressed to NY.  Surely, there couldn't have been a Beaumont person with the same name and address as my cousin up north.  I called the post office here........ they looked into the problem......... they called Beaumont and they called the NY post office where it was supposed to go.... they all stood by their web-site, which confirmed that the package had been delivered in Beaumont.    Five days later, the package was delivered to my cousin in NY.  Mystery solved, but no one in the Texas post offices knows what happened...... and when I called the post office right here to tell them that the package had been received up in NY, they didn't believe me.  With that experience fresh in my mind, I'm getting the holiday packages to the post office.... you guessed it.... while there's still turkey leftovers in the fridge.

We're still waiting for the carpenter to come and finish the trim-work on the third floor. He was supposed to be here this past Monday.  No one showed up.... my husband was not a happy camper about that one, and neither was I.   When these people say they'll be here, we make sure to BE HERE also.......... don't they realize that?  So now we have another date... they're supposed to be here first thing tomorrow morning.  I'll believe it when I see their truck pulling into the driveway.   When we first started working on the third floor library, I joked with my husband that we'd be lucky to have the work done by Christmas, given the "if not today, it will get done tomorrow" code of Texas workers.  Christmas is just around the corner...... and with a little bit of luck, the library will be right around the other corner.  Jingle bells.....