Finally Friday!!

It's been a long week, especially at work.  It started on Sunday when due to employee absences, I worked all day. For the restaurant rookies among you, that means that I arrived at work at 4:30 A.M. and left work at 10:00 P.M. Yes, that's a long day. It is usually only done by old guys as the young ones don't have the stamina for it.

If I ever appear on Jeopardy and the Final Jeopardy answer is "How many in your party?", I will have the correct question. The correct question is "What's the hardest question for restaurant customers to answer?" On Sunday, as we were short a host, I was helping seat customers. People can either not understand the question or they can't count. For example, I asked a man, "How many in your party?"."Four" I took them to a table for four. As I started to walk away, I realized that only two of them had taken a seat. Yes, the other three were still standing. One man laughed and said, "Well, I guess that we aren't smarter than a fifth grader." I moved them to a table for five. The biggest group of numerically challenged customers seems to be people with small children. Almost everyday, you can ask a family with small children "How many in your party?", and get the wrong answer. I usually ask "Is the child with you?". "OOOHH!!! We forgot."

Wednesday night at Buffalo Church I cooked pork loin, cabbage, corn bread and apples. Yes, it was good. Mary Sue had brought a large birthday cake for our music director, Pam. As I sat eating dinner, I watched people go by with huge chunks of birthday cake. A few minutes later, I went to get a piece of cake and got a sliver of cake. My sliver of cake was not much more than a bite. Don't worry about that cake thing, Mary Sue. Next time that you are at the restaurant, I will adjust your portions accordingly. I may be kidding! HA!!

What has happened at The History Channel? While Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Ice Road Truckers, Swamp People and other shows may be entertaining, do they belong on The "History" Channel? I just saw an ad for a new show on The History Channel, "Hairy Bikers". Are you kidding me??

As I write this Dolly the dog is sleeping. Sleeping through the afternoon enables her to wake me at 1:00 A.M. I am going to stop typing for a minute while I get up and wake her.

Quality sleep is hard to get. The other night I went to bad at 9:00 P.M., which is a little early for me. I woke up later after what I thought was good night's sleep. I got up and looked at the clock. It was 10:49 P.M.! I eventually got up at 2:30 A.M.  It does no good to go to bed early.

I was at Belk in Reidsville a couple of weeks ago and passed through the cosmetics department on my way to the cash register. There was a large display for a new Estee Lauder perfume, Sensuous Nude.  It got my pulse racing and I didn't even catch a whiff of it. Life as a sexist pig isn't easy!

Tomorrow I will be at my surplus store in Reidsville. It is the annual Homegrown Festival or as the brochure for it says Homegroen Festival. Spelling checker???

We changed our display case at the restaurant last week. We have a fall theme in there now. I think that it looks great and a lot of customers agree. Since we started using the case a few months ago, we have heard LOTS of comments on the case. Every time that some customer makes a comment, I want to kick myself in the butt for letting it sit empty the last few years. One of my customers serves as my Marketing Advisor and does the design work on the case. She really has a great talent for this. I would mention her name, but she has a fear of being famous. I guess that she is afraid that one of the four or five people who read this will recognize her. She did accept a batch of business cards that I made for her. We pay her in meals. She's worth every pancake!!!

My only job is to find the unusual items for the case and to actually put everything in there. That's about the limit of my decorating ability. In every case, there is at least one item that people want to buy. It's almost always the unusual items that people want to buy. This time it is the wooden wagon that people want. If you're interested, I want $100 for the wagon. Too rich for your taste? The skeletons in the case are four for a dollar at Dollar Tree!