A two-pipe night

Argh.

I didn't make an album post yesterday because I had those other two posts and there's no sense in using up all my material at once. Yesterday was a long day because of that dog seminar; I didn't get home until the ungodly hour of 5 P.M.

Today was much, much worse. I got rained on non-stop from 8 A.M. to about 2 P.M., didn't actually finish the route until about 3:30, didn't get home until almost 5 P.M. again. I hope tomorrow is better. Only 30% chance of rain tomorrow; maybe I won't get so soaked. I breathed a prayer of thanks when I checked my voice mail to find that Boy Scouts had been canceled tonight because of the weather; Girl Scouts was still a go but my daughter got a ride with another Scout from just down the road.

Rain always makes me tired; today it was probably because by 10 A.M. my pants weighed about 20 pounds from being so wet. I'm really starting to feel it now but pipe-smoking helps perk me up a little and keeps me awake. I don't want to go to bed until my daughter gets home.

I had a nice little mascot today: a fuzzy little terrier-mix dog that followed me around almost all day. I got a real kick out of his antics. While waiting on someone's porch in a futile attempt to wait out the rain, I sang a snatch of the old country-gospel song "Angel Band." From the quizzical expression on his face, he must have never heard anyone sing before. It cracked me up.

The waterproofing on my boots officially wore out today. Working with wet feet is just unspeakably bad.

One more bit of goodish news is that my truck is ready. Final bill is $2,200 and some change. I was afraid it would be much worse than that after labor. So that's a bad bill but I am actually relieved that it isn't more. Although I am very grateful to my step-mom for loaning me her car, I am really ready to get my truck back. Getting in and out of that little Corolla was making my left knee hurt, and working the clutch in traffic was making my bad left ankle hurt. Nice car, though, gets 36 mpg and has a real back seat that the kids liked a lot better than the extended cab on the Ranger.