January 12 & 13 2013

Saturday the 12th was a beautiful sunny day with temperatures the reached the mid to upper seventies here in the Texas hill country.

Being a nice day, we went for a drive.  There are a couple of thrift shops along highway 29 that we have driven past since we moved down here in October.  Today we stopped.  The first one was so crowded with junk/treasures that some isles were to small for me to into them.  (I'm six one and two sixty five ... think bull in china shop)  And to be honest, I couldn't see anything that would compel me to want to venture down the isles.  There was no discernible order to things.  Glassware, books, tools et cetera were mixed on shelves with electronics, car parts and fishing equipment.  The one thing that I realized was that this family lived in the store.  Nothing was marked as "private" or "not for sale" however it was clearly evident that the kitchen was a stocked and working kitchen and the beds were made up as if they'd been slept in.  The only thing that I saw that I might have wanted was the wooden TV trays that a woman was loading into her van as we arrived.

We went down the road to the next shop.  Here the front of the building is nearly hidden by the furniture, appliances, farm and lawn equipment and mysterious assemblages next o the highway.  (most curiously there was a haul-away dumpster with the sign that read, "No Dumping".  On the door was a sigh reading "Beware: Premises pretexted by attack dachshund".  As I opened the door, the odor of urine nearly knocked be over.  Inside was a man of indeterminate age and several small non-dachshund dogs.  The isles were wider here but again there was neither rhyme nor reason to the storage.  We didn't stay long and drove away with the windows down to try and relieve ourselves of the odor.  An hour or so after we were home Ella said, "I don't think I've gotten the stench out of my lungs yet."

I can't say it was a good day ... but it was an interesting day.

Sunday the 13th
I can say that this was a good day.  Sunday school and church followed by a potluck.  Then home for an afternoon nap.