The old saying time flies when you’re having fun is probably why we couldn’t establish if this was the third or fourth year Janice has done this event. But at least she claims she ain’t doing it next spring. Time she retires. Y’know I gotta say I ain’t heartbroken about that.

That’s not to say it isn’t a pleasure for her to roll out of bed around 5:00 AM on a Saturday morning. Shucks, it’s only the weekend and who ever thinks of sleeping in ’til all hours of the morning (y’know, like 8:00)? And there’s the joy of delivering a mid-morning gourmet breakfast from the local golden arches (yum). It don’t get much better than that. Except this year that is. With a little help from Murphy, well at least his silly law, the pickup went into overheat mode. It got back home by adding coolant but there’s definitely a problem. A call to Dave’s West Fargo Tire gave assurance they will be happy to relieve me of massive cash, er-uh I mean locate and repair the problem.

Retiring from rummage/garage sale selling is my way of describing her words. Actually she was adamant about not doing it next year. Anyway her proclamation is on the net and once on the net there is no such thing as plausibly denying it ‘cuz given enough searching the information is supposedly there forever. Damn, that sounds like a long time. Think I’ll check back halfway between now and forever to verify this post can still be found. And if she weakens over the winter and rents a space in the spring, well I’ll just email the link to this post to her. Yeah, that will work.

Oh by the way, she informed me that even after buying a hot dog and soda there was $1.85 profit after space rental and the like. It’s kinda hard to walk away from that sort of obscene profits.

Shortly after we were seated a family of four got seated at a table next to us.  It was hard not to notice the two boys (approximately 5 and 6 years of age) following their parents.  Each boy was far to occupied with their portable game units to pay attention to anything else.  Once seated the gaming continued through the ordering and until their food was place before them.  Mom and dad conversed approximately as much.  With food in front of them, each parent dutifully cut up pancakes and made sure the boys didn’t overflow syrup onto the table. Conversation remained sparse during their entire meal and soon as the boys finished eating their game units were once again activated.

Please don’t misunderstand me here, if I were to get started with one of those game things it would probably be all over but the shouting for some time.  At the same time I look back on my childhood (OK, maybe it was so long ago that memory is seriously fogged) and wonder how mom and dad would have reacted to that sort of lack of interaction at meal time.  Not acceptable comes to mind.

Then there are the pre-teens and beyond that are much too involved with texting to engage in verbal conversation with their parents.  The big question is do the parents give them the cellphone so they don’t have to talk with their kids or what is the deal?  Observing how little some parents and offspring communicate with each other from such early ages really frightens me.

That’s the Newcastle Brown Ale moment for tonight.