Always Something Going On

When we bought a house and got off the road, and stopped publishing the Gypsy Journal, a lot of people thought that that we were retiring. But that’s not true. We just changed our lifestyle and refocused our energies. But that doesn’t mean we’re sitting around watching the grass grow and listening to our arteries harden. I’m still writing my books and daily blog, Terry still runs the business side of things, logging in sales of the books and keeping track of our expenses; and once in a while we actually find time to play. It seems like there’s always something going on.

I spent most of Tuesday working on my new John Lee Quarrels book and got another 4,000 words done. That’s what I plan on doing again today. I also recently finished reviewing Frank Clem’s narration of the audiobook of Big Lake Honeymoon. When I checked last night, it looked like it had finished the production stage and should be available for purchase on Audible.com anytime now.

Some of you may remember that about a month ago we drove down to the La-Z-Boy store in Cocoa, Florida to buy a new recliner. But they wouldn’t sell it to me because they don’t deliver outside of their county and they wouldn’t let me just purchase it and take it with me because it was a power chair and had to be plugged in. I wrote about in my blog post Business Must Be Very Good.

Since the folks in Cocoa didn’t want our money, we drove to another La-Z-Boy store in Orlando, where I ordered a chair with the fabric and options I wanted. When we ordered the chair, the salesman said it would take somewhere between four and eight weeks to arrive. Tuesday, just over a month after I ordered it, he called to say it was there. So yesterday we drove down and picked it up. It’s smaller than the big leather recliner I have been using, but it has power lumbar support, padding in all the right places, matches our new carpet very well, and is very comfortable. So comfortable that once we had it inside and plugged in, I sat down in it and promptly fell asleep. That’s when you know you’ve got a good chair!

Speaking of the way some companies do business, our local Walmart store has put in a bunch of Scan and Go carousels where you use a phone app to scan all of your items as you put them in the shopping cart, then you stop at the carousel to pay for them and walk out. The idea is that it’s supposed to save you from waiting in those long, frustrating lines to check out. But let’s be honest; the real reason is that it will allow the company to have fewer people working the checkout stands, so they can save money on payroll. Terry and I don’t use those, and we don’t use the self-checkouts either, just as a matter of principle. Automation is fine I guess, but I don’t want to contribute to more people becoming unemployed.

Although I have to admit that on our most recent trip to Walmart I was rethinking that position as the surly woman checking us out moved at the speed of sludge. We didn’t have that many items, but in the time it took her to ring them up we watched a dozen or more people go to the Scan and Go carousel, pay for their purchases, and leave. I told Terry when we finally got out of there that maybe some people should be unemployed.

A lot of you do avoid the hassles of standing in line by by clicking this Amazon link or the Amazon Search box at the top right sidebar of this blog and shopping online. We appreciate that, because when you purchase an item on Amazon any time of the year from one of our links, we earn a small commission, which helps us offset the cost of publishing the blog.

It’s Thursday, and you know what that means. It’s time to kick off a new Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Point Taken, the tenth book in my friend Ben Rehder’s excellent Blanco County mystery series. I’ve read just about all of Ben’s books, and I don’t think he could write a bad story if he tried. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – My girlfriend wanted to make love on the hood of her Honda Civic. I refused. If I have sex, it’s going to be on my own Accord.