The road to Abilene

Today after church, we took the road to Abilene. No, not actually the road to Abilene. Wm. always used "the road to Abilene" as a lesson for our kids and for his employees back when he worked for the USPS. If you have never heard the lesson I will tell you the story. It is about a family who wants to go somewhere but because no one speaks up, they end up going to Abilene. No one actually wanted to go to Abilene but because everyone thought that was what the others wanted to do, no one said anything and they ended up on the "road to Abilene". When we got home from church, Wm. said what do you want to do. I said lets go somewhere. Neither of us made our desire known and we ended up at that Outlet Mall in Waterloo. I wanted to go to the Outlet Mall, just not today. Today I wanted to go to the Amish Market over in the same general vicinity. No not an authentic Amish market as it was open on Sunday (we know that would not happen). Another dead giveaway was the winery in one of the bldgs. This place had Amish quilts, furniture, sheds, etc. that they purchased from the Amish to sell to the public at their Market, which they have open 7 days a week. Now the drive there was gorgeous, along Cayuga Lake, but the market itself was rather disappointing. There were 4 pole barns full of furniture, etc. and tons of sheds etc. outside. There was also a lot of Adirondak chairs painted pink and turquoise and stenciled with "It's 5 o'clock somewhere". Will wondered how many Amish stenciled that on their furniture after painting it electric pink and turquoise :-)


Matt was here when we got back. They stopped to drop off a pair of pants I am taking in for Susan.(she lost more than 40# and she looks great, but she loves these pants) She will be in CT. this week and I am on vacation. Matt's other grandma will have him.

We have 5 pumpkins, too many green tomatoes to count, green beans and only one cucumber the size of a pickle. Maybe with more sun this week, the garden will ripen up some of its bounty. We can always hope, eh? My neighbor John shared more of his cucumbers yesterday.

Thank you all for your prayers for Jon Christian. He told me that he just found out he can collect unemployment for an entire year once his severance pays stops because they sent his job overseas. No, he is not looking to do that instead of working, but he is not finding anything that is a good fit for him. He is toying with the idea of starting a website company at home. He has done some of this from time to time while working for the paper.