My best friend wants to buy a van.  She wants to use it to take crafts she makes to local craft fairs, hoping to make some money off of her favorite hobby.  She wants me to join her in her “weekend” business by helping her load the van at her house and going to the fairs with her, unloading the van at the fair and setting up her display and then help her man her table at the fair.  She’s offered to pay me a percentage of the money that she takes in.  I’m not sure that she will really make any money doing this, but I told her I’d help her for one season.

I’m really concerned that the cost of gas is going so high that she’s not going to be able to drive it out of her driveway!  But, she is pretty insistent, and she is telling me that right now the prices of vans are getting lower because of the gas crisis.  I’ve told her that if she is so insistent on buying a van I will help her try to find the best insurance by doing some Internet research on the coverage and prices that are available from the many different insurance providers.

My family lives in a fairly rural area, which I really like.  We are close enough to the city to go into the city for special occasion shopping trips and special occasion meals, but I would not want to live in such a congested area.

Living in such a rural area, however, can get kind of lonely, and we’ve found ourselves thinking about how to meet new people beyond our neighbors and work on finding friends on our local area. We’ve heard that there is a community center supper next weekend, trying to raise money for the Community Center. I think we should go to it!

Today my DH asked me to go with him to Home Depot to help him bring some sheets of plywood home.  I thought this was going to be a quick trip into town and back again, so I said yes.  Much to my chagrin, the trip was not just to Home Depot, it was also to Auto Advance.  “I’ll only be a couple of minutes, honey, I just need to buy some oil and a filter.”  So I waited in the car, reading the Sunday paper, for forty-five minutes!  Finally I decided I’d better go inside and find him and drag him out of there.  I found him standing in line at the check-out counter, with much more than some oil and a filter in his hands!

The cashier was incredibly slow in processing the order, and I was getting tired and cranky, anxious to get home before even getting to Home Depot!  We headed off to Home Depot, where once inside he met an old friend that he hadn’t seen in months and so he had to chat with him for a half hour before even getting through the door!  So I went into Home Depot and started shopping from the list we had made up, to get things going.

Lesson learned, next time DH says “would you come with me to…….” if I want to get home within the same four hour period of time, the answer should be NO!

Janice and I were walking through the mall yesterday, shopping for a birthday gift for my mother.  I noticed a quarter rolling on its side down the walk-way, and I paused and watched with interest to see where it would go.  Maybe by the time I got to it, it would have stopped rolling and I could pick it up!  I’m not ashamed to admit that I pick up coins from the ground!  Before I got to the coin, however, a teenager kicked it away!  I asked the teenager why he didn’t pick it up, and kicked it away instead.  Would you believe his response was “A lousy quarter isn’t worth bending over for!”  Well, if THAT is the attitude of today’s youth, I think we are in sorry shape!

It seems that when the heat is high outside, my kitchen becomes the hottest room in the house. I will do anything to avoid having to spend an hour in the kitchen cooking with the hot stove and oven making the room heat up. So I’ve become a great fan of cold summer salads.

Do you have a favorite salad?