Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  A good part of my day today was on one of my least favorite chores: bookkeeping.  Yuk!  I scanned and entered about a bazillion credit card receipts (from my 11 days on the road), a dozen or so electronic receipts, and reconciled several bank and credit card accounts.  I didn't quite finish the miserable experience, though, so tomorrow I'll have some more to do.  I have to say, however, that even though I really don't enjoy bookkeeping ... the fact that I was doing it at home, in my own house, surrounded by my wife and dogs, made it much better :)

My brother Scott drove down this morning to collect some goodies for his new home.  These were things that we had shipped to us, instead of to his cabin, because we're not sure yet that UPS can get one of their trucks up to his place.  I made a test order that should have been delivered today.  If that works, any new shipments will go straight to him.  Scott got slightly lost on the way down here.  This was his first drive to our house, and he missed one left turn in Wellsville, and that put him out into a part of the county he'd never seen before :)  Anyway, we had a nice, if short, visit with him before he took off to haul his booty back home.

This afternoon I hauled Debbie up to her nail appointment (I won't horrify you with a description of what she paid someone to do to her nails!).  While she was in there, I ran around like crazy shopping for a crazy amount of groceries to support Debbie's cooking habit, to the liquor store to get some Christmas champagne, and to a corner of town where some feral cats hang out to give them some food. 

The liquor store experience was more fun than usual.  I was trying to find a particular champagne that we like (Veuve Clicquot), and it wasn't on their racks anywhere.  I chose a nice alternative, but it was still disappointing.  In my banter with the checkout clerk, I mentioned that I was hoping for the Veuve Clicquot, and she said “Wait a minute!  I saw some of that in back!”  It has a distinctive yellow box, so that was plausible.  She ran off to the back of the store to fetch it for me, leaving the register wide open.  That's now the third time something like that has happened to me here.  People here are just a lot more trusting than I'm used to.  When she brought back the Veuve Clicquot, she started to put it in a paper bag.  I told her that wasn't necessary for just this one purchase, and without missing a beat she looked up at me and said “You aren’t LDS, are you?”  She went on to say that their LDS customers always wanted the paper bag.  Then she told me that I really should take the paper bag, so my neighbors wouldn't get the wrong idea about me.  I took the paper bag, even though I'm pretty sure my neighbors would be completely unsurprised to see me carrying a champagne bottle :)

When we got home, there was a beautiful sunset in progress (the photo at upper right).  Not a bad way to end the day!