Updates

Hello World,
Jean closed the cafe early last Wednesday because she had an appointment. I stuck around until 4:00 waiting for people to pick up pies that they had ordered.
Wifey and I drove to our son's and daughter-in-law's house Wednesday evening. We had a great visit, enjoyed great food, and enjoyed seeing their beautiful new house.
Thursday, the cafe was closed for Thanksgiving and we were still out of town.
Friday, wifey and I drove back home after breakfast. I got to the cafe at about 11:30. By 12:30 it was becoming obvious that no one was going to come in for lunch. We kept the cafe open until shortly after 1:00 before Jean said, "Everybody must be home eating left-overs. We might as well turn off the grill and go home too."
Saturday and Sunday the cafe was closed for the weekend.
It started snowing Sunday morning. I shoveled our driveway and walks every 2'' (or every 2 hours, whichever came first) until the snow stopped falling, 12 inches and 8 hours later. Surprisingly, a snowplow came through out neighborhood around midnight. Of course, that left boulder-size clumps snow on my clean sidewalk and across the entrance to our driveway, but at least the street was passable! I got up early Monday morning and cleaned up after the snowplow. I'm glad I did because, the wind had already started blowing and the temperature soon dropped into the teens. Before long, any snow that hadn't been shoveled became rock hard and frozen solidly to the ground.
When I finished at our house, I went across the street to brush the snow off Jean's van and shovel a path from her garage door to the street.
All morning, the radio stations issued appeals from the County sheriff for people to stay home due to the large number of accidents and blocked roads.
At 9:00, I called Jean to see if she wanted to open the cafe. She said we could go see how it looked, but not before 10:00 or 11:00.
I picked her up at 10:00 and we drove over to the cafe. The parking lot at the shopping center where her cafe is located as a mess. Whoever was supposed to plow the snow must have been drunk, lazy, or clueless. There were random swaths plowed through the snow. In some places, the driver had plowed next to the curb then, for no apparent reason, veered away from the curb and stopped half-way across the parking lot. The stretch of curb-side parking in front of Jean's cafe had not been plowed and none of the sidewalks had been plowed. The wind was blowing snow off the roof and whipping up swirls of snow across the parking lot. There were about a dozen cars in the entire shopping center.
I said to Jean, "We need to open so you can make some money!" She said, "Ain't nobody gonna to be eating out on a day like this and I can't be fallin' down and breakin' no limbs!"
So we went home.
This morning, nothing has changed driving condition-wise or weather-wise. It is still frigidly cold and the wind is still gusting into the 30 mph range.
I plan to drive over to the cafe by myself at about 8:00 and see what the parking lot looks like. If it's still a mess, I don't think Jean will be any more motivated to open today than she was yesterday. Unfortunately, that will mean another day without any income for her. That's serious.
Her latest plan, by the way, is to close the cafe at the end of December. She has to wait around until January 23rd to cater the wedding she already took (and spent) deposits on. Then she's moving back to Atlanta. She said she gave up on the idea of taking her furniture and restaurant supplies with her. She said she's going to take a suitcase with her on the plane and ship a couple of boxes of personal belongings back. I think that's a good plan.
Now she needs to get busy selling the rest of her stuff so she can pay her January rent and buy her ticket to Atlanta!

FINALLY!

Jean finally got it right. The "miracle" her pastor told her to expect was an offer from Barry to finance the move. Barry doesn't have any money, but his dad does. Apparently, he told the pastor that he could get the money from his dad to finance the new restaurant and keep Jean from going back to Atlanta. Unfortunately, Barry attached so many strings to the loan that Jean said, "Forget it. I'm outta here."
Now Barry can tell all their mutual friends, "I offered to give her the money, but she refused!"
The pastor has already seen through Barry's smoke screen.
She gave Jean her blessing, so this time it's for sure.
Jean told the future landlord that she is not going to be able to sign a lease. He kept her $1,000.00 deposit and told her to get clear her stuff out of the building as soon as possible. In a classic case of counting chickens.. etc. Jean already bought $600 worth of tables and paid to have them delivered to the new cafe. So now, she has to pay for a U-Haul so we can move them to her garage, living room, kitchen, etc. until she finds a way to get rid of them.
Let's try to get a clear understanding of her current situation:
1. She has no money.
2. Her lease on the old cafe is up. She may have to vacate the building at the end of this month or she may be able to continue operations until the end of the year. As of today, she doesn't know which it will be so she's stopped buying bulk quantities of supplies.
3. She has taken two large deposits for catering a wedding reception for 300 people on January 23rd.
4. She has no money.
5. She has a house and storage unit full of furniture and restaurant supplies that she wants to ship to Atlanta.
6. She has no money.
7. She has a Chevy minivan that she wants to ship - not drive - to Atlanta.
8. She has no money.
9. She intends to arrange to buy a bake shop and rent a house in Atlanta BEFORE the end of January.
10. She has no money.
11. She prays from morning to night (and most of the night) for God to help her out.
12. If her prayers are answered, I may need to reconsider my opinion of religion.
13. If her prayers are answered, my opinion of religion will be: You gotta be kidding!
13. She has NO money.

"Tut tut...it looks like rain"

According to NOAA, what happened here yesterday was the coming together of a powerful Gulf of Alaska cold front and the “Pineapple Express” (a.k.a. - a moisture stream that stretches all the way to Hawaii). The result was a meteorological train wreck of 50 mph winds (with 75 mph gusts) and band after band of heavy rain for 16 non-stop hours. It all started at about 2:00 AM. The wind and rain suddenly picked up. Winds of about 30 mph were enough to blow around anything that wasn’t weighted or tied down. By 7:00 AM, the wind/rain combination was strong enough to start breaking small branches off trees. The power went out at 11:30 AM. By 2:00 PM, the radio stations were beginning to report blocked roads, downed power lines, wide-spread power outages, cancellations, and eye-witness reports from people saying things like “I’ve lived here all my life and this is the worst wind storm I’ve ever seen.” One caller said the strong wind blowing across Lake Whatcom was creating so much spray that it looked like the lake was shrouded in fog! A reporter called in to say, “Remember all those pretty rocks that the Port of Bellingham put along the shore of the bay? They’re gone!”
Our entire city lost power, as did most other towns in the northwest corner of Washington and lower British Columbia.
At first, NOAA issued a high wind warning until 2:00 PM. Then they extended the warning until 4:00, then 7:00. The Canadian station was saying the wind speed would drop off dramatically around sunset. The Canadians were right. At about 5:00, the wind slowed dramatically. By 6:00 there was only a light breeze and stars were beginning to show through big holes in the clouds. The power came back on at 6:06 PM.
I’m glad that the storm ended and the power came back. Nonetheless, wifey and I were so enjoying a bottle of wine and sandwiches by candlelight that we wouldn’t have minded if the lights stayed off all night.
Our internet and cable TV service didn't come back for another 24 hours.
NOAA says the next big storm is spooling up to hit on Sunday. Sheesh! Enough already!!

Politics and Foreign Policy

Here's part of an interesting article I found on the Editor's Page of U.S. News and World Report:

Disquiet among Americans over the course of U.S. foreign policy is abundantly shared in Europe. This point was driven home by the magazine's Assistant Editor, Joseph Fromm, who, on returning from a special assignment in Europe, confided: "Never in 35 years of covering the international scene have I found such universal disdain for the competence of an American President or despair over American leadership."
We asked Fromm to explain in a memo what he had found. His personal report follows:

I talked to scores of European policymakers and opinion shapers. There are few who did not express a profound sense of foreboding that in Iran the President may yet stumble into disaster due to ineptitude, naivete' in the use of military power and a false sense of priorities.
Europeans have long had misgivings about what they considered the amateurism and lack of cohesion in the President's conduct of foreign policy. They have been dismayed by the constant zig zags and by what some call "diplomacy by television". A ranking diplomat complained: "Repeatedly we have spend endless hours negotiating with American delegations to work out a common approach to a problem. And then we suddenly hear the President on TV completely upsetting the apple cart."

Have you guessed the punch line to this blog entry?
The article was published 26 years ago, on May 12, 1980. (That was just 6 days before Mount St. Helens erupted, by the way)

Unbelievable... again.

Just when I firmly believed Jean had her head on straight, her pastor managed to convince her that it was on crooked.
Yesterday, the pastor agreed that Jean was doing the right thing by leaving. Last night, the pastor, who Jean believes is a prophet, said "If you stay here, God is going to show you a miracle."
When I called Jean this morning to arrange to go get the rest of her stuff, she said that it wasn't necessary. Her pastor told her to leave it there because, "God is going to make it happen."
Unbelievable.
So the only sound decision Jean has made in the last 2 months lasted less than 14 hours before she drifted back into Lala Land. She said she planned to spend the day praying.
I asked her how long she plans to wait for the miracle to happen. She said, "Not long." Yeah, right.

Kaboom

Well, the iceberg looming in the distance struck Jean's ship of hope today. The money-man refused to offer any more than 1/2 what is needed to open the new cafe. Jean finally saw the writing on the wall.
When I went in this morning she said, "Well, I've made my decision. I'm going back to Atlanta."
I was shocked and happily surprised. I asked, "When?"
She said, "I need to be here to cater the wedding I scheduled for January 23rd. The only way I'm not going to cater that wedding is if I'm dead."
She had already called her son, in Atlanta, and her recent ex-husband, Barry, before I got there. Her son was very excited and happy. Barry was freaking out. Go figure. According to Jean, Barry begged her not to leave and offered to see a marriage counselor. Huh?!! What's the point? They're already divorced! She's convinced that Barry can't handle responsibility so she is done with him. Good for her.
The one person who I think has real power over Jean is her pastor. Fortunately, when her pastor found out about Jean's decision, she said, "My heart will miss you but in my mind I know you made the right decision."
Jean hasn't told the new landlord yet. Lucky for her, she hasn't signed a lease agreement but she did give him a $1,000.00 deposit. She can probably kiss the $1,000.00 goodbye. I told her to get all of her stuff out of the new place before she tells him so he won't have a chance to put chains on the doors and keep her from getting it back. It's too bad that she spent $600 on tables for the place. Now she has no use for the tables and nowhere else to put them. She may try to negotiate with the new landlord to leave them in exchange for part of her deposit or she may try to sell them - assuming the new landlord will let her leave them there. The short term outlook is still pretty grim, but I am happy that she decided to give up on this town and go home to Georgia. I hope she can become a millionaire again in Atlanta.
So, let's see. If she closes the cafe at the end of December and does catering out of her house until the end of January, I'll be out of a hobby in 2 and a half months, or less!

November Fool's Day

Hey, look! Your shoe's untied.... Hahaha! I made ya look! November Fools!
I'll never forget the time my mother baked a thin piece of cloth into my pancake on April Fools Day. She must have poured batter on the griddle, then quickly cut the cloth to the exact size, laid it in the batter and poured more batter on top. However she did it, it worked. I sat there sawing and poking away at my pancake with knife and fork for about 30 seconds before I realized something was amiss. We had a good laugh and I managed to slurp some syrup off the plate before she replaced the fake pancake with a real one.
Speaking of mothers, Jane Wyatt - Mrs. Anderson on TV's "Father Knows Best" - died on October 20th. Billy Gray, who played her son on the series, publicly apologized in the 80's for, "the dialogue, the situations, the characters - they were all totally false. The show did everybody a disservice. The girls were always trained to use their feminine wiles, to pretend to be helpless to attract men. The show contributed to a lot of the problems between men and women that we see today....I think we were all well motivated, but what we did was run a hoax."
I know that many people grew up in harsh and unloving environments, but some of us actually were fortunate enough to grow up in households like the Anderson's or the Cleaver's, or the Nelson's. It's too bad that so many celebrities weren't so fortunate in their real lives. Lauren Chapin, who played the youngest Anderson daughter, is one of those. According to IMDB, "After "Father Knows Best" ended in 1960, young Lauren's life crumbled. Her father, William, had molested her. Her mother, Marguerite, was an alcoholic. At age 16, she married Gerald Jones, an auto mechanic and had the first of 8 miscarriages at age 17. She divorced at age 18 and got hooked on heroin by her new boy friend, who also pushed her into prostitution."
Wow. That's harsh.
I need to get going on putting together my 1962 calendar for next year. The days match up with 2007 so it will be chronologically accurate and I'd rather look at 1962-era ads than dogs or mountains.
Happy November! Hey, look! Your pants are unzipped!