I'm Jumpin' on the Hay Wagon

I'm joining the Fall Y'all Bloggy Giveaway, y'all. If you want to know more about it, or see the humongous list of other giveaways, go here.

Here's what I'm offering to the winner:

A BAG OF DOVE CHOCOLATE.





It's a fitting giveaway, I think, because my blog is not named "Chocolate After Supper" for no reason. Dove chocolate (dark, by the way) is my after-supper snack of choice, and I'd like to share the joy.

Here's how you enter the drawing:

1) Leave a comment here, and

2) Tell me which you prefer, milk chocolate or dark chocolate.

3) Leave some way for me to contact you.

That's it. I'll draw a name at random Sunday evening November 4, so you can leave comments till then.

Hypocrites? Or Just Human?

Here we are on Monday morning, just completely wiped out. I can never quite figure out why playing music for twenty to thirty minutes two evenings in a row can turn us into zombies.

We began preparing for the conference Thursday. That is, I spent two hours cleaning the van and taking it to the car wash. Since we were going to be spending significant hours in it I felt it would be nice to have it clean and homey.

Then on Friday morning we started right in with loading up the trailer with all the gear and instruments, running everyone through the shower (ONE shower. We have ONE bathroom and SIX people. Do I get any brownie points for that?) I checked through our music, copied a few more chord sheets, made new transparencies for some of the songs. I made dinner. We ate it and cleaned it up. We were out of here by 1:00 pm.

We arrived at the venue (don't you love that fancy word?) about 3:30 and began setting up. Done by 5:00. Made a quick run to the local music shop to buy more speaker stands, but decided against it when we saw what they were asking for them. I couldn't believe the prices in that store. I looked at violin strings. They sell the brand I like, and they even had a set with rosin designed specifically to be used with those strings. Cool. Until I looked at the price. Now, y'all, I know already that violin strings cost significantly more than, say, guitar strings. GuitarGeek is used to spending about five bucks for a set, while I have to pay about forty. Forty dollars! Ten bucks per string! But that's nuthin'. At this store, they wanted $86.00! Eighty-six! But, be still my beating heart, it was a fantastic bargain, because the set was marked down from $161. Oh heavens. Something is wrong here. As my dad used to say, "That just burns me up!"

Anyway.

Next stop after the music store was some place for a bite to eat. We chose King's Classic, mostly because it was pretty much the first place we came to. It was a package deal with Amigos included. We all ordered, and when DrummerDude's food came I was ticked. It cost $4.69 for an itty bitty cheese tortilla about as big around as a cigar. Well, maybe a little bigger- but not much! It cost way more than our burgers did, and was way less food. Now, I admit, he got pop and "mexi-fries" with it, or what ever they call them fancy tater tots. (I'm using my phony southern accent here for emphasis. If you want to rant, you have to be southern, I'm thinkin'. It just works so well. Y'all.) But that meal was about fifteen years out of date, meaning, it would have been the right amount of food for DrummerDude fifteen years ago when he was four. Y'all-- it just ain't right nor fittin' to charge that much for that little.

So. I was feeling just a little feisty after the price shock at the music store-- plus, the disappointed look on DrummerDude's face cranked up the mommy defense system-- so I marched up to the counter with the offending article of food in hand and complained. I can't believe I did this, because I never used to do this kind of thing. The gal took it into the back and had the cook (can you really call him that?) make a new one, measured perfectly. The new one came exactly the same. I asked for the old one back, because both together would make a reasonable meal for DrummerDude, but she said she said she threw it away. For some reason that just torqued me. She said she was just trying to make us happy, and we said we knew it wasn't her fault that the picture on the board didn't match the product, or that it was ridiculously over-priced, but we still were not going to eat at that particular joint ever again if we could help it. Have a nice day.

And then we drove on the to conference to lead a group of people in music to worship our loving, holy, majestic, patient heavenly Father. Sigh.

More later...

Hurry Hurry!

We lingered a little long over our breakfast tea/coffee this morning and now I realize I have about 30 million things to do and hardly any time to do them in. We are off today to set up to lead worship for the alphabet group, i.e., FGBMFI. That's Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International. The local chapter is having their fall conference this weekend. It starts tonight at seven, but we, having the sound equipment, must be there a lot earlier; plus, it's a two hour drive from here. (how many miles? I don't know. I always think in terms of time.)

So I thought we decided we were leaving at two o'clock this afternoon. But now I'm informed we are leaving at 12:30. And dinner (our noon meal) must be on the table at 11:00. I just got out of the shower, so excuse me while I panic.

Gotta go before Hubby finds me here, wrapped in my towel, typing on the laptop in the bedroom... Pray for me!

Thursday Thirteen: 13 Ways To Be A Kid Again

Thirteen Things from momhuebert This was originally a much longer list that I think has been making the rounds of the email forwards for a while. I've picked out my favorites for my list of Thirteen Ways To Be a Kid Again. 1. Walk barefoot in wet grass. 2. Read the funnies. Throw the rest of the paper away. 3. Change into some play clothes. 4. Try to get someone to trade you a better sandwich. 5. Wear your favorite shirt with your favorite pants even if they don't match. 6. Take a running jump over a big puddle. (or maybe just go through the puddle!) 7. Get someone to buy you something you really don't need. 8. Hide your vegetables under your napkin. 9. Stay up past your bedtime. 10. Eat dessert first. 11. Fuss a little, then take a nap. 12. Make cool screeching noises every time you turn a corner. 13. Giggle a lot for no reason. And one more for good measure: 14. Give yourself a gold star for everything you do today. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)


Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!


The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

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Blast Fat With New Miracle Food!

Does anyone else find this funny?

Is It Worth It?

We did a weird thing. We bought a bottle of wine. That may not sound like a very big deal, but it is for us. We've never had a drop of alcohol in our house beside the rubbing kind and the medicine kind.

One reason is that I was raised in a church that believed drinking is a sin. However, in my own reading of scripture I've come to believe that it's not drinking that's a sin, it's OVER-drinking, so to speak.

Another reaon we've avoided alcohol, is that Hubby's extended family has a strain of alcoholism in it, and he has therefore avoided alcohol like the plague, which it sort of is in his family.

So why did we buy a bottle of wine? Two reasons. One, Hubby has been hearing a lot lately about the spiritual benefits of taking communion often, and he felt it might be nice to have real wine to do it. Two, I thought a nice spoonful of wine at night might relieve the bedtime achiness I get.

We went to a local grocery store on Sunday evening. There were literally no other customers in the store, and the two cashiers were pacing around wishing for something to do.

Hubby and I found our way to the booze aisle. Wow, I had no idea there were so many choices, never having paid any attention before. In fact, I'm not sure I have ever even been down that aisle. After looking for a little while we settled on something called "MD 20/20 Red Grape Wine." It looked very pretty, just like grape juice; and it was cheap-- less than $3. We didn't want to invest very much in this experiment in case it should be a failure.

When we paid, Hubby asked the gal if she needed to see our ID. She looked at Hubby's graying beard and said, "No." Then we put the bottle in our trunk, so as to have no connection between the drink and the driving, and went home.

At home, we decided to be upfront and tell our kids what we had done, in spite of our misgivings. (We really felt like wrapping it in a paper bag and hiding it somewhere, but the thought of one of them finding it hidden in that surreptitious manner gave me pause. I could see them panicking, thinking that mom and dad were, at worst, turning into alcoholics, and at best, being total hypocrites.) We pulled the bottle out of the bag, displaying it with trepidation, and explained our reasons for buying it.

And then our boys said, "Oh, why did you buy THAT kind? Don't you know what that is? That's 'bum wine.'"

I don't know how to describe here my multi-faceted reaction to that. It mostly boiled down to "WHAT?!!" with several inflections.

Somewhere along the line in their many bunny trails around the internet they had stumbled onto a website that describes the many kinds of wine and booze that are favorites with "bums." The popularity of any alcoholic beverage with the bum population is based on two things: its cheapness, and how little you have to drink to get stinkin' drunk. Some kinds of "bum wine" are little better than kerosene, some have formaldehyde in them, just to give it a little extra kick. Some have unknown ingredients that give you psychotic experiences.

At this point, I'm wondering "What have I done....?!" And I'm also wondering where the FDA is in all this.

On the positive side, you usually have to drink a whole bottle of any of these things to get the best effect, and I was only planning to drink a tablespoon or two at a time. Although I still wonder how much antifreeze can you drink before you poison yourself.

At any rate, we passed out tiny sips, and we all coughed and choked and made horrible faces. Our sixteen year old said we could get in trouble giving him a sip since he's underage, and I said a dose of communion wine was acceptable, but if we found he was sneakin' 'round the fridge door he'd be in big trouble. He rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, like, DUH!" Spoken like a true teenager.

By the way, I found that if I sipped the stuff out of a glass it tasted really nasty, but if I put some in a spoon, my thoughts were, "Not too bad for medicine."

I took my first official dose last night, and I'm not sure it did anything besides fry my tastebuds. Aargh. I'm wondering if NyQuil would be a better choice, except for the fact that it's so darn expensive.

I suppose we could try what Hubby's folks did. Hubby's dad was told by his doctor that he should start drinking a glass of wine a day for his health. So they went out and bought a bottle of wine and poured themselves a glass. Blecch! they said. This is awful. So they got out some home-canned grape juice and mixed it in. Still awful. They experimented this way and that with the juice and the wine, and finally got a mixture that was pretty good. And then realized they'd forgotten to put any wine in it!

By the way, I checked the level of the bottle this morning, and it hadn't changed since last night. No bums in the house, thank goodness.

Addendum to the last post

Someone suggested to me that "you can love anyone as long as you know what distance to love them from."

To which Hubby replied, "All people make us happy: some by their coming, and some by their going."