It Rained Tonight, Hallelujah!

This weekend was very stressful in a couple ways. Saturday I found out I'll be losing my job at the end of the month. I've known it'd happen at some point, but it's still not the easiest thing ever. Good news for the bookstore lovers, though - it's not closing, at least not yet - just reducing store hours and cutting all payroll. So you can still shop there. Please do, in fact, or it might well go out of business despite the belt tightening.

Then the other stressful thing happened yesterday - my car broke down. Not real near my house, either. Well, not super far. But still, why is it that my alternator issues always make themselves known on the long car trips?  Okay, so this time there were a couple signs earlier that could have warned me if I'd been paying attention. Still, it's annoying. Just once, I'd like my battery to die a block from my house. Or a block from Fred's Automotive. Ah, well. No car troubles at all would be preferable, while I'm wishing… 

So now the two cars I've owned in my life have both broken alternators. With very different symptoms, though. I prefer the newer car symptoms. The old Volkswagen needed the car to start before the gas guage would go up and show you how much gas you had, so when the alternator broke I thought I'd run out of gas, much to the inconvenience of some people who tried to help me rectify the problem. Gaah.

Anyway, this time my car was obviously having problems by the time I made it to the wedding (my destination), so I asked my dad to take a look at it before I left, and after charging up my battery he followed me home, then helped me get it towed when it died and gave me a ride. So it could have been much worse.

But at any rate, I didn't mean to talk so much about the stresses. I almost just mentioned that they existed and moved on to the point of the post (But then I had to explain. It's What I Do.), which was the bright spots in the midst of this weekend. Chief among these would be my cousin Keith's wedding. His new wife, Lindsay, is so cute!  Such an expressive face. And I got to sit next to Dr. John Mark Reynolds at the reception, which was another bright spot. And it turns out that a dying car can lead to more Quality Time with your little sister, so that was good. It lead to a couple noteworthy quotes, even. Well, the first one happened at the wedding reception. Something like (feel free to correct this, Melanie): “I just accidentally said, 'I think I was the Holy Spirit.'” Then there's the one I said in the car later (yes, I'm self-quoting - it amused me and I want to share it and I'm willing to admit those facts!), which I'm having more trouble remembering exactly, although I remember the concept. Something like, “Very important, you do NOT want to see an un-pedded xing, believe me. Those xings really like to be pedded.”

At first those were the only bright spots I was going to mention, but then it RAINED!  Even though the hills have grown yellow already!  And that might be the best of all (no offense, Melanie), although… no, remembering Lindsay's face, I guess not. And my bread's out of the breadmaker and tastes so lovely, and I made waffles Friday night and the almond milk substitution worked great so I could eat them without upsetting my allergies, and there are still strawberries in the fridge. Life is good.