Treat your family like friends and your friends like family.– Proverb
I am grateful for the familiar faces of friends and family.
I had a wonderful day yesterday, and I apologize to the rest of Las Vegas, because now when I drive through the streets the reality I create for myself is one of someone important who is accompanied by a motorcade. Believe me it works, in the last month most days I rarely experience a red light, I have in fact driven using only surface streets from one side of the town to the other non-stop on more than one occasion, and today was no exception.
I live on the southwest side of town and I had a job interview on the northwest at 4:30 pm and a dinner engagement on the southeast side of town at 8:15pm, I needed to hit almost all four corners of the west side over the next four hours and forty-five minutes. I left the house around 3:30 and decided to stop at the library to pick up a book that was on hold for me, I left around 4:00 and the funny thing is I was still fifteen minutes early to the interview.
After the interview I stopped off at Best Buy to kill some time, then headed over to Border’s Bookstore for some coffee and to flirt with Mara the cutie working behind the counter when I remembered I needed to go to Home Depot to pick up a few things for the house.
I didn’t know where the nearest home depot was on this side of town so I called Hanna my niece and using the net she a store that was in the general direction of the restaurant we were to meet at later. On the way there I phoned my buddy Jim and he and I got caught up in a long conversation, so long we continued our talk while I sat in the parking lot even after I arrived at Home Depot. After about ten minutes I decided to go ahead and head on inside and talk to him while I did my shopping. I found what I needed and haggled with a clerk over a trash can lid (another topic for another time) and then was on my way.
I still had some time to kill so I figured I would find out where the restaurant was located so I could give the girls the nearest cross street. I was kind of surprised to find out it was quite a distance from where I had expected it to be. Still I had almost two hours before they would arrive, what was going on with the time?
There wasn’t much to investigate near where we planned on eating so I headed back towards the center of town, when an Office Depot caught my eye. Not to go off on a tangent, but I have serious obsession with office supplies. This grateful post almost began with, “Dear Penthouse, I never thought it would happen to me but…” It would then have gone on to describe how I found boxes of ink pens, dry erase boards, and 3 x 5 index cards. Well I just had to go inside and not only did I play around with the lap tops, but I visited their “library” and “read a magazine” while I was in there and then bought some batteries before leaving, I honestly needed the batteries.
Enough! I decided that I was going to the restaurant and would just drink coffee and read my new library book while I waited for the girls, I kid you not when I tell you (all 7 of you now) that when I sat down at my table, I still had over an hour before they would arrive.
This is what happens when I start off my day with being grateful, I expect everything to fall into place the rest of the day and then it does. I asked the waitress if she had ever had such a day, and it saddened me to hear her say, “No, nothing good ever happens to me.” Just a few short weeks ago you would hear me saying the very same thing.
Well the girls arrived on time, and this is where the important part comes in, the familiar faces I was happy to see. I enjoyed my dinner with them *thanks to the kindness of someone special* and it was time to head home, where I happened across another group of girls that are equally important to me.
For a single guy, I have all kinds of wonderful ladies in my life, which makes you understand why I’m so grateful to be me.
