Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday I had resigned myself that it had to be the day I would cut up my wood at work. I was mentally prepared for it. I wasn't looking forward to it though--Mainly because our rain just hasn't really let up at all, and I didn't feel like having to deal with wet wood or tarps. But as I said, I was mentally prepared for it.

I got off work and picked Sarah up as usual, expecting to do 4 things during the course of the evening: Go shopping here in town (specifically to the market that has the good meat deals), go shopping at Winco Foods (the big behemoth store with the great loss leaders), buy a Seattle Times paper (I wanted to make sure I stayed abreast of any ads coming up the day after Thanksgiving), and cut all my pallets into firewood.

What I ended up doing was having a couple of beer and some Cheetos while I caught up on the day's events online. I got up to go to my favorite meat store, and grabbed a movie to take back to the library. On the way I decided to stop by Sarah's house with my previous day's paper (she needed some headline clippings for school) and to see if she had anything to go to the library. Well it turns out that she didn't, but I did get something better: My divorce settlement check! It turns out that I've been officially divorced for some time now (a couple months?) and never really knew it. Anyway, I told them I was going to Winco after a little while and they were welcome to go with me. About an hour later I swung back by. Teresa said that Sarah didn't want to go, so I told her that if she wanted, I'd take her. Funny isn't it? We ended up going grocery shopping together on the day I get my divorce money. The only odd thing was that we kept our groceries in separate halves in the trunk. One thing I should have done differently while I was shopping was to keep track of how much I was spending that night. They had turkeys for 22 cents a pound if you spent $50. Well, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to spend that much, and really didn't go there for the turkey anyway. It turns out that I spent $46. Can you say stupid?

After dropping Teresa off and going home and unloading my groceries, I switched over to my truck and went to work. I got there at about 8pm. I worked my ass off cutting my pallets up, me and everything around me totally covered with sawdust. I was raining cats and dogs so I brought my tarp, but then it occurred to me that all I had to do was stack it on a pallet and wrap it good with that stretch wrap that we use to wrap pallets to be shipped. Then I just fork lifted it into my truck. I ended up with a solid block of cut wood that was 40" x 48" x 24" high. I ended up getting out of there at 5 minutes before midnight. That basically means that I got to sleep at 12:30 and got up at 4am. I left the wrapped pallet in the back of my truck. I never did get anything more to eat than those two beers and the Cheetos...

When I stopped at the bank yesterday after work to deposit my paycheck, I also opened a money market savings account with the 37 thousand Teresa gave me. It's only 4.63% but it's better than nothing. Now I have 37k that I didn't have before and don't know what to do with it.

I ended up getting into the wood in my truck last night. I didn't want to unload it all (still raining) but I was watching a movie with a pizza and I wanted some of that quality hard oak. It made for a nice fire for sure.

I got up this morning, built a big fire, and started my coffee pot. Then I threw some dirty clothes on and jetted out for a newspaper. Wow, that 50 cents sure bought one helluva thick paper this morning! It was very cool to open up my door when I came back home, and be greeted by a roaring fire and the smell of coffee.

Sarah and I are going over to my parents house at about noon, then later on she and her mom will have dinner with her dad and his girlfriend. I sure hope I can get rid of this headache that I woke up with.

Thanksgiving has sure changed...