Monday, August 17, 2020

Birthday Dinner

Have a good weekend? I survived mine. Busy Friday at work. Stayed past 5:30 getting things done.
 
Took Ceil to Panera Bread Company for supper. She’d had a bad day so she was glad to get out of the house. The plan was to eat outside of the restaurant, because it was a relatively cool day. C got a Greek salad and corn chowder. I got a sandwich with a little bit of chicken on it. We would up taking the food home. Not the best experience. Watched the Braves, then Ceil put on some drama from Britain.
 
Cleaned upstairs Saturday morning. C cooked me an eggy boy sandwich. Then lots of laundry downstairs. Dishwasher.
 
Black bean quesadillas for lunch. Why do I eat a lot of quesadillas? They’re just as easy to fix as a sandwich, without all that bread. We have a panini press that I plug in, put a quesadilla shell on, then add whatever ingredients we have left over: cheese, meat (ham, turkey, beef, or chicken), and or black beans and or rice. Also some sauce. Flip the shell in half and toast both sides. Easy peasy.
 
Saturday afternoon I dug up the roots of a plant in Ceil’s backyard flower garden. Placed the roots back in the woods so hopefully they will grow there.
 
Saturday morning Matthew went to Inman Park for an interview at Beetlecat, the trendy seafood restaurant. He auditioned for two hours, making doughnuts and lobster rolls for the brunch crowd. Beetlecat is one of Ford Fry’s nicer restaurants, appealing to intown millennials, and older folk trying to act younger (we’ve never been). Anna has been there, as have the Morris’s. I think either Rich or Scott Morris have DJ’d there. Saturday afternoon M got the call – he got the job. Starts on Wednesday. Beetlecat has more of a “real” kitchen than El Rey, which is kinda more fast food like.   

M needed copies of his birth certificate and social security card, so I had to drive to work to get them. Also stopped at Dollar Tree, and RaceTrac for a drink. Spaghetti and meatballs for supper. Watched the Braves and more of that British drama, or maybe it was a Hallmark movie.
 
Sunday morning we worshipped online with the Johnson Ferry service. Sermon was on Martha and Mary. Not my favorite, because Martha gets the short end of the stick, and I’m more Martha than Mary. I understand the lesson, but it was God that made Martha that way. Guess no matter our personality, we all have different struggles to overcome.
 
Lunch was leftover meatballs. Braves, laundry. C went to the grocery. I did several hours of office work, entering orders that I knew I wouldn’t have time to do on Monday. I was right.

Later we drove down to Will and Mary-Clayton’s to celebrate Anna’s birthday. Anna got off from High Country at six. She got a call from Grace Athens Church – Anna had forgotten to send graphics needed for the service that evening – the words for the songs they were singing. Anna had to stop by a friend’s house to get Wi-Fi so she could send them.

W&MC cooked fixings for breakfast burritos: scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese, brisket, grilled peppers, mushrooms, and onions, queso, salsa, and several types of soft shells to put them in. Mary-Clayton made sopapillas from scrap for dessert, the light Mexican dessert. Kind of like a beignet. Delicious.

North Point had services outside on their big lawn both Saturday and Sunday evening. They painted circles on the grass six feet apart to social distance, They took communion. They’re doing it again in September.
Heard John MacArthur’s church in California worshipped inside, despite the state government’s wishes. Supposedly there will be no repercussions.
 
Three tidbits from Denison:
1. God redeems the challenges of our fallen world—by using them to reveal our true spiritual condition to ourselves. 
2. "You do not have, because you do not ask" (James 4:2). 
3. Oswald Chambers notes: "God expects his children to be so confident in him that in any crisis they are the reliable ones." We cannot know if we will be "reliable" in the crisis until it comes: "It is when a crisis arises that we instantly reveal upon who we rely. If we have been learning to worship God and to trust him, the crisis will reveal that we will go to the breaking point and not break in our confidence in him.
 
Last week I had to mail something to Anna, so I made sure to find the most unique return address sticker to put on it. Then another envelope headed to a friend that I used a different return address sticker so it would stand out. Every year Sports Illustrated mails me stickers of all the NFL helmets hoping I’ll resubscribe. I put the helmets in my calendar so I’ll know the Falcons schedule. Also in January for the playoffs and Super Bowl.
 
Many teachers are on edge now that school is starting again, and with good reason. Some are making a huge deal about their sacrifice on social media. I see encouraging yard signs placed outside the houses of teachers. What about the people who’ve been working all along? Factory workers, Grocery stores. Restaurants. Store clerks. Cashiers. Truck drivers. Delivery people. Doctors. Nurses. Policemen. Firemen. Unlike teachers, these are people that don’t have a built in cheering sections. Where’s the parade of gas-guzzling Chevy Suburbans driving past my office building?  

Sold a beloved pair of shoes. Not sure if it was the right thing to do, but I have so many. I want a different pair of black sneakers with white bottoms, so these had to go. At lunch I went to the post office to mail them off. Also by the bank and a quick stop at Kroger. That’s the 4th lunch I’ve taken in the past six work days, an oddity for me.  
 
Stores already have Halloween stuff for sale. Happy August 17.

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