One of my customers is a state agency that provides for the mentally handicapped. I was called to one of the group homes today to make a repair to the fire alarm system. I have a master key to get into all of these homes, and mostly there is no one there during the day. I stop at each of them and test the fire alarm twice a year.

In the basement, there is an area with a couch, coffee table tv and dvd player. Piled all around this are toy fire trucks, fire fighter's helmets and a surprisingly good copy of a fire fighter's bunker coat with the name Ricky on the back of it. Stacked on the coffee table are all of the movies with fire fighters: Backdraft, Ladder 49 and Towering Inferno. At various times the staff at this home have told me that Ricky spends all of his free time in this little corner of the basement wrapped in his fantasy world where he is a fire fighter, bravely rescuing people and putting out fires.

Today, after ten years or so, I finally met Ricky. He is a slightly built, balding man in his mid to late forties.......

Sometimes we do not appreciate the gifts we have.

The snowstorm seems to be over for the moment. I went out a couple of hours ago and cleared the drive. The news last night had a crawl across the bottom of all of the churches that were cancelling services. We decided to just stay in today. I am making beef noodle soup for my older daughter's birthday dinner, and there is nowhere we really need to go.

Another busy week behind and a quiet, lazy Saturday in progress. The weather has been pretty strange. It was raining softly when we went to bed last night. About three am, there was thunder and lightening. It rained real hard for awhile, then stopped. It has been raining on and off all day, and it will soon turn to snow. We may get up to eight inches by tomorrow afternoon. The winds will whip it into drifts, and travel will be horrible.

We paid attention to the forcast and did our grocery shopping Friday night, and we have no real need to go anywhere. We can just sit here, sipping hot chocolate and watching the snow fall.....

Weekends are way to short.

Our sundays are pretty routine. We attend Church with Sunflower's brother, his wife and their kids and we go out to breakfast at the same restaurant. Tony and his family are in Mexico this weekend on vacation. We went to the restaurant and sat in a small booth rather than a table for seven. This put us in the clutches of the oddest waitress in the place. The last time we had her, she brought us a loaf of warm cinnamon raisin bread and a ramikin of whipped butter. "You will really like this!" she said. It was pretty tasty, but strange to get food we didn't order. Today, I orderd an omlet with chorizo, cheese, tomatos, green onions, sour cream and salsa. Sunflower ordered corned beef hash and eggs. Sunflower was just deciding how she would like her eggs, and the waitress said, "I'll just tell them to give you basted eggs." (Sunflower usually likes them over medium) A few minutes later, she dropped off a pitcher of warm syrup. "For your pancakes," she said. (we hadn't ordered any pancakes) A short time later, our food arrived. It was delicious, as always. Sunflower liked the basted eggs with her corned beef hash, and my omlet was wonderful. The waitress brought us each a side order of pancakes a small orange juice.

Next time, we get this waitress, we will just tell her to surprise us.

Good morning friends,

Here it is, Saturday morning and all is as it should be. I am not responsible for emergency calls, I had some extra on my paycheck from overtime and commissions and Tom is going to do the service call that just had to be done this morning. Sunflower is sleeping peacefully in the next room. For now, I can sit here, sip my coffee and surf the net.

Later, we will dress warm and head out to run some errands. This evening we will go out to dinner to celebrate the nice raise Sunflower received yesterday.

I hope all of you have a lovely day.

This evening I made Beef Stroganof for dinner using my mother's old, battered club aluminum dutch oven for the pasta. This is the pot mom used for everything. I learned to cook using it. My sisters used to argue over who would get this pot when mom died, and mom used to joke that she wanted it to be buried with her. I really tried to do this, but my sister Mary would not let me have it when mom died. A few days ago, I met my nephew over at Mary's house. He will be moving in there after he and his sisters figure out what to do with my sister's things. He was more than happy to let me have mom's pot.

Good morning friends,

It has been a busy week. There was a fire in an apartment in one of our largest client's buildings Wednesday. My fire alarm worked properly and everyone got out safe. As the fire progressed it burned through the wiring to the fire alarm and killed it. I spent Thursday installing temporary wiring through the burned area and replacing the alarm control panel so that it was safe to move back into the building. This was a ten hour day in the cold with wet feet from walking through the water left by the fire hoses. My feet feel cold again as I type this.

Yesterday I was called by the service manager of one of our competitors to work with one of his techs on a particular problem they were having renovating an older system. The service manager and, as it turned out, the tech they sent are former employees of ours. I taught both of these guys through their first few years. I was able to solve the problem for them, and I gracefully turned aside the broad hints that I should really be working for their company.

Sunflower and I are looking forward to a lovely Saturday. I hope your weekend is nice too!

Just one more boring post about my test and the results: I received my license in this afternoon's mail along with my test score: 100%. I guess I didn't overthink the questions.

For those of you who are freezing vicariously through the Omaha temperatures, it is three degrees as I type this. The high is projected to be sixteen. Since it is Friday, I have a fairly easy day planned at the University. I have an ongoing remodel project there that I work on whenever the boss lets me, and today is a good day to get at it. The boss is somewhere warm playing golf. The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, and this is the first weekend in a month that I don't have to work. I hope wherever you are, you are getting ready for a great weekend too!