Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  My mom's in the hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia, and of course we're concerned for her.  Send any good thoughts and prayers you can spare her way, please.

It's a beautiful spring morning here in Paradise, Utah.  The photo at right is the view out of my new office's north-facing window just a few minutes ago.  My friend and neighbor Tim D.'s house is buried in those beautiful trees.

Yesterday Debbie made her Amish beef stew, and the photo at left shows what that looked like just before we ladled it out of the pan.  That's might good stuff!  We gorged ourselves on that stew, along with some fresh-baked dinner rolls that Debbie baked in butter.  I was in a food coma for hours afterward :)

Yesterday afternoon we had a brief downpour, and that knocked bazillions of petals off the flowering cherries near my shed and carried them along with the flowing water.  In some places, there was a half-inch of accumulated petals.  In other places, they made interesting patterns on our pavement, as at right.

I worked in my office all day yesterday, laying out ceiling panels (the hardware for which is supposed to arrive today) and installing window shades (three of four are now up).  We also waited around the house all day yesterday for the scheduled delivery of the little refrigerator I bought for my new office.  The delivery service is Pilot, and right now they're on my “I don’t love you any more!” list.  I'm standing by to downgrade them even further.  First of all, they gave me an absurd delivery window: 9 am to 9 pm yesterday.  Then they sent me messages periodically during the day to let me know it was on its way, and to make sure I was there to accept it.  The driver was supposed to call 30 minutes before arriving.  The tracking site said it was on the truck for delivery.  But ... 9 pm rolled by and no truck.  I called their number, was put on hold for 15 minutes and disconnected.  Called again, same result.  Called a third time and finally got connected to a helpful and sympathetic woman who told me ... my refrigerator hadn't been delivered (I knew that!), she had no idea why, the delivery had to be rescheduled, the “agent” was supposed to have called me to tell me this was happening (they didn't), and she'd “make a note” for them to call me this morning.  Surprise: they haven't.  Unless they do something spectacular to turn this around, I'm not going to use Pilot delivery ever again.  What awful service!  And what a contrast with Fedex, UPS, Yellow, OnTrac, etc...