still more bitter than sweet

January 8, 2009
My feet hurt. I wore heels all day today and my feet are rebelling. I worked on some work stuff this morning and then this afternoon headed out to do some shopping for my trip. I was determined to get the largest carry on bag allowed by United airlines because…
1. I don’t want to pay the $15.00 check baggage fee
2. I fly out at 5:45 in the morning so I want to save time. I hate mornings.
3. I may have to carry my stuff around in the city.

Wow, I have not bought more than a duffle bag or backpack since I was in high school. Luggage is shockingly expensive. I started at an actual luggage store and quickly realized that was way out of my league. I did however use their expertise to educate myself on what I needed and headed to the bargain stores. It was still expensive! I ended up finding one that is not the biggest allowed but should be adequate and I got a great deal on it. It was on sale for 60% off and it was the last one left and there was about an inch gash in the front pocket that went all the way through so they gave me another 40% off. I know it is crazy to buy a brand new suitcase with a gash in it but with the way prices were going it was looking like I was going to end up at the thrift store to find a bag.
I actually did go to the thrift store later and checked out there luggage selection- I am even more pleased with my purchase. I went to the thrift store in search of a Hawaiian shirt. One of our advisory council members was retiring as the chief of police and we were asked to wear Hawaiian shirts to the party. Since I don’t have one and will likely never wear it again I headed to the thrift store to find the perfect one. I found one- not the perfect one- I seriously doubt that exists. I like them on men but they usually seem funny on women.
Carla’s party was a lot of fun. It was a bit odd though as it was at a brand new Ale House in town. It sits on the piece of property that used to be our church. So while there I kept thinking this area would have been the chapel, or this area would have been Marcia’s office.
We (The Salvation Army) have some not so pleasant history with the developers and owners of the restaurant so it was a little bittersweet. It is a long story but I do want to share the abridged version. We sold them our property with an agreement that we could lease back the buildings for $100 a month for two years. After the sale of the building they informed us that they would like us to move out right away and they would give us forty thousand dollars as a donation so that we would move. We thought about it but had to turn them down because we would have to rent another location and to get something that just met our basic needs we were looking at 6-10 thousand dollars a month rent. We knew we would need at least 18 months before our new building would be done. So if you do the math it is obvious that 40 thousand would not last long and we could not afford it. So we declined there offer. 2 weeks latter we received a legal summons that our building was being condemned and we had 30 days to vacate the building. Our leaders decided to not challenge the evictions and we proceeded to try to find somewhere to take us. Long story short we really got screwed. Fortunately the thrift store was relocating but not for a couple of weeks after we had to be out of our building and the Ale House owners would not extend our time. So we had to move all of our church belongings and family services food, freezers the whole shebang to several different storage locations for a couple of weeks. This began a long chain of problems the most significant being we had budgeted and only had money for $100 a month for rent and now had to pay $3000.00 a month. –Which was really a bargain but it was hard to feel excited about it. Wow I guess I am still pretty bitter about it need to get to bittersweet.
Enough said about that, I could go on, and on, and on but I am done. I got home late and spent a bit of time hanging out with the family and some friends. Tonight is our last night with Amanda she goes back to London in the morning. We are going to miss her greatly.

I have to leave the house at 6:30 tomorrow morning for a meeting so I am going to bed.