Where to start. I'm not sure, so I'll just tell you about my weekend. I decided to go home and see my family since I was missing them an awful lot. Friday I had a major event at the museum I was in charge of and that went off without a hitch AND we got out earlier than I expected so I got to leave early for home (around 3:30). That put me in Arkansas at 10:30. I hit 5 o'clock traffic in Dallas but there were no major wrecks so the traffic was steady but slow, which is fine with me. Now if we hadn't been moving...that's a different story...it drives me crazy, which is ironic because if traffic is at a dead stop, I can't drive anyway! HA!
ANYWAY! I arrived home and knew I was in Arkansas because the locusts where in full symphonic orchestra. I promptly went to bed. Slept good and got an early start. Mom and I went and dropped off some stuff at Salvation Army and then went to Sears to pick up a mini-fridge for her room at school.
Insert tangent here... When we went around the back of Sears to have the mini-fridge put in our car, I walked in with the reciept and looked around for a person. No one, except another customer. All of a sudden I hear: "Welcome to Sears merchandise pick up, please scan your reciept!" Hello? Who is that? Where are you? Oh! It's the computer talking to me. Cool. I walk over and scan the barcode printed on the reciept. Then a voice says: "Please observe the monitor overhead. It will indicate your wait time and who is taking care of your order." Sure enough I'm next "in line", Matt is picking up the order and the timer starts. Average wait time of 2 minutes and 47 seconds. Cool. I sit down and wait with the other person for her merchandise. Then I got to thinking. No wonder we have an employment problem. It cost too much to have people work for us. It's much easier to have a computer do it. It's so much more efficient! People cause too many problems and employers don't have the "time" to deal with it. Time is money and if you can cut out the middleman, then do it. What happened to the human touch? Remember service with a smile? Who does that anymore? You can upload your own pictures to your computer and then order the ones you want and have them mailed to you or print them out yourself. You can check your own groceries out, mail your own packages, check your credit card balance over the phone and online...We are sacrificing humans for a little speed. Have we gotten so cold? Is this the path we are headed for? Are we to be drones who eventually will not have to have any contact with another human being to get anything done? (We won't even have to touch each other to procreate...wait...we don't now!) It won't be the robots or machines that destroy us. It will be our independence from each other.
Back to my weekend...I helped Mom set up her classroom. She still isn't able to lift a lot of weight, so I did all the physical stuff like hanging the solar system and putting things on the top shelf, helping empty the catfish tank, etc... (she's a science teacher by the way...) After that we went over to Roger's who was cooking up some soup (cooking experiment with a pressure cooker and we were the guinea pigs). It was actually quite good. I showed off Hong Kong pictures. We had to go because Mandy and the girls were coming to play at 3:00. YAY!!! We played and I took pictures and all was right with the world. We ate a little BBQ and went up to Dickson street to the Headquarters house during the Civil War for a little bit of ice cream and cake. The annual Ice Cream Social was going on. Fun!!! Good ice cream...
After the girls were packed up in the van and Mom and I were dropped off at the house, I trekked over to Dad's and gave him and Alison a tour of Hong Kong and China until about 11:00pm. Went to sleep...got up and went to Sunday School with Dad and Alsion. Wow! Hadn't done that in awhile. It was good. Went back to Dad's and made a detour to visit Grandma. She's doing real well just doesn't get to get out much. She's on oxygen and it can be a hassle to get out of the house. She calls her oxygen tube her leash. HA HA, only my Grandma! Went back over to Dad's and ate lunch. Went back over to Mom's to finish up China pictures and then left around 3pm. I took a break in McAlester to visit with Jason's Mom at the Western Sizzlin. Good times! Got back on the road and bypassed several storms and made it to Waco at 11pm... WHEW!!! Talk about pressed for time. It was a very short weekend but I needed to go home. Someone told me every moment is precious...and he was right. Take time out and spend it with someone you love, even if it is calling them on the phone and talking to them for a few minutes...we need that human touch.
Oh! I didn't explain the hair reference in the title! Mom has hair! Not much, but enough to not have to wear a wig!! YAY!!!! I told her she would be the coolest teacher with the coolest hair (figuratively and literally).
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