Surprises

Life is full of surprises. This seems to have been particularly true of my life over the past couples of days – Of course it was also full of a lot of predictable things too but that’s not as much fun to write about.

If you have been reading (Is anyone reading – I wouldn’t mind some comments – even if you hate what I’m saying? For a while I could display the location of visitors and that at least gave me some idea but I have had to remove that because the person providing the software could no longer do it. I have tried to make it easy to comment by allowing anyone to comment but I would ask that you NOT use the anonymous option – I like to know who’s “out there” – Well enough whining about what I want and lets get back to the surprises. )

If you have been reading , you may know that Linda & I have been working on this project to redecorate several classrooms in the church building along with several other people.

Surprise 1: We were there working Tuesday morning when our friend Russ Ward showed up to work at installing trim. He was expecting Mark Seeler to be there and he was surprised when Mark wasn’t there. He went ahead anyhow and finished off several runs of molding around the ceiling – with a little help from Linda & I.

Surprise 2: We were there putting up a wallpaper border in one room – a surprise to me. I’m a project manager in a former life and I know that nailing down scope and preventing scope creep is critical to getting things done on time and within budget. Linda is very creative and she isn’t done until it looks right – which means we ended up painting a lot of things I hadn’t counted on and doing things like borders and curtains that she didn’t know were needed when we started. That’s OK because my job was to help her get the rooms done to her satisfaction so “scope creep” wasn’t a major priority (although I do grumble about it a little).

Surprise 3: Another in this series of surprises came Tuesday evening when we dropped by to put up some window decorations and discovered that Mark Seeler was there working wondering what had happened to Russ. Obviously they had communicated well on the day but somehow missed on the time, So again Linda & I helped a little between doing the things we were there to do.

Surprise 4: Roger & Sandra are doing the painting and other decorations in one of the rooms. . We had pre-painted the trim before it was installed leaving only a small amount of touch-up to do later. Since we were nearly out of paint Roger had gotten another quart to paint some bulletin board frames. He used that quart to do touch up on the baseboard in “their” room – and he got an unpleasant surprise. It turned out that the tint was off and the touchup stood out like the proverbial “sore thumb”. This morning I went back to the paint store to get that remedied. (since I was the one who had originally made the purchases). (They admitted that the color was off and replaced it with the correct tint) and Sandra re-did the touch-up this evening after Bible Study. – so the baseboard is now 100% complete.

Well – building projects are always full of suprises so not much new here – a couple of other unrelated surprises – one good – one not so good”

Wedding photos – 15 years later. Linda had discovered a film a few months ago that had “exposed” written on the outside. We had put it aside intending to take it to be developed but for whatever reason hadn’t done it. This week she had another film to get developed and we happened to remember the “mystery” film so we took it as well. I went to pick them up this morning and you might imagine my surprise when I discovered it was pictures of Chris & Tammye’s wedding taken in November 1991. As best we can tell it must have been from Tammye’s camera and was accidentally left in a drawer here in the rush they had getting ready to leave for the Dominican republic – No not on their honeymoon. They were married on November 9 and left November 11 for a 2 year assignment as house parents in a residential school for trouble (North American) teens. There was a picture of Linda’s Dad who had passed away in 1995 and Tammye’s Dad who passed away several years ago. Quite a nostalgia trip ---

Vehicles that break: I wasn’t to pleased with the fact that I had a gas smell and a warning light (Check engine) on the car. I took it in yesterday and it appears that there is a problem with the gasoline "evaporation" system. This is supposed to a closed systems that maintains a vacuum to avoid fumes from escaping into the atmosphere – I have been fighting this problem for over 2 years and have had the tank replaced and other work done – and spent a fortune. Latest work was done last fall and I hoped that was the end of it. It now appears that something else has failed in that same system or that one of the previous repairs didn’t last very long – Makes you want to cry. As if that wasn’t bad enough to-day I had gone to pick up Dad at the store - where he had gone following his Wednesday p.m. bowling and when I was going into his parking lot with the truck I heard a loud “clunk” – When I got back on the street I had a severe “wobble” in the front end. I was able to get home by driving very slowly – There is nothing obviously broken but I suspect that a broken universal joint in the “drive shaft” that transfers power to the front wheel.

I hope there are no more surprises on this front for a while.

A couple of closing notes.

Linda went back to the dentist today to allow them to try (for the 4th time) to fit a replacement dental bridge that has been in progress since January. And it FIT!! –she was relieved about that. The bad news is that they had just sent the metal framework to be sure it was right – they now have to add the ceramic covering and bake it on – hopefully nothing goes wrong in that process.

I have mentioned Mark & Sharon Seeler before (Mark I’ve mentioned above) They sent this note out to-day “Please keep Kurt and Roxy Picker in your prayers at this time. Kurt is the minister at Grace Chapel Church of Christ in Atlanta, GA (which the Seeler’s attended before moving here last fall – CW). He and his wife were seriously injured in a motorcycle accident last night while traveling on their 30th wedding anniversary in the North Carolina area.

God Bless
Charlie & Linda