365 + 3

Wednesday December 1st

Grace in Small Things - Extended version

1) My bro called me from NYC saying he was getting ready to go meet Anne Rice and have her sign her latest book did I want him to have her sign anything for me? Well heck yea! I hope she signed a paperback of "Interview with the Vampire". My all time favorite novel of hers is/was The Mummy and when I she was at a book signing about a hundred years ago at Jo-Beth I asked her when she was going to publish a sequel. She stated that she was working on it. 20 years later.......come on, where is it? I asked my bro to ask her about it. I want answers (and an autograph to add to my collection of her autographed books).

2) Got behind that school bus that picks up the kids that live about 1/4 mile or off the road. One mother drives her kids to the stop, the other walks them up. This time, she ran them up. The little girl made a great run. Took her several minutes to make it. It was cute. I am reminded of the ride each morning when we car pooled to Lex Cath. Every day down US 60. To this day I imagine I can drive that road blindfolded I know it so well. As we approached the airport, there was a farm that every morning, and I mean every single morning, that mother would race the car from the house on the summit, down the hill, down the stretch to meet the bus, who was waiting, at the entrance to the farm. I always wondered if one day the bus driver would grow tired of this game and take off! He never did. He always slowed down and took his time before throwing out the stop sign to wait for her.

3) We received gift cards at the Bucket! I used mine immediately on Christmas tree ornaments and a birthday card.

4) Had to call my mortgage company about our escrow account and if it ever was going to be a lower payment. He was kind of mean, kept reading the screen instead of answering my questions. But, I remembered the words from the Dale Carnegie CD I am listening to at the moment (b/c I still spend a lot of time driving from here to there)and realizing you get no where and no help when you loose your cool. As much as I wanted to scream at him (and I once screamed at an insurance guy over the phone and felt so bad afterwards) but instead I calmed myself down and explained, "Look, what I am trying to get at is that I do not want to have $6,000 sitting in my escrow at the end of the year. Please tell me how to avoid this." and he did! Or rather he reassured me that the over payments (his voice implied that he knew better than me there would be none - according to the formula he was looking at) would be refunded to me or applied to my principal, which ever I wanted. When I got off the phone I was so hot, I knew my face was beet red, but I did keep my cool and found out that Feb 1st my mortgage payment should straighten out.

5) We changed the music on the MUSAK box to reflect that the holiday season is upon us. I flipped on something called, "Holiday Pop" and immediately we received calls about it. I flipped on, what I thought was Classic Holiday music, but in reality it was Holiday Classical (lol). I was grooving in my office listening to Nutcracker and the such when we began receiving calls "Boring music" "too High Class for THIS mall..." etc. etc. etc. For some reason, it made me laugh. I was told to back away form the box - I am hearing Mariah Carey sing "All I want for Christmas" about 100 times a day. I'm thinking of switching to Country Christmas for the week-end? Do you all think I should?