Tragedy in a small town

My small town woke up to some terrible news this morning. A local business/home caught fire in the middle of the night, and only 1 out of the 4 people who lived there made it out alive. This was a couple who were trying to make things happen for them. They opened a Mexican food take out out of their home. They made wonderful breakfast burritos in the morning, plus recently had started making homemade donuts in the morning. They had started this business from scratch and had quite a following. This last year they had purchased our movie theater which had been closed. The movie is about all there is to do for kids in our town. They opened it back up and started showing movies, matinees, and good food.

This couple had a son who was a junior in High School, and the grandma lived their also. The grandma made it out alive.

Our local fire department is volunteer only, these couragous men have full lives, but have to fight fires on their own time without pay. I commend them, they did what they could in the middle of the night in 24 degree temperature with a terrible wind.

What a tragedy!

Tax Sale Day

On Thursday is my annual Tax Sale in my office. It all starts is January, Tax Notices go out, due dates come and go, delinquent notices go out in July. If they still aren't paid in October, I advertise the taxes in our local paper, alpha by name of owner. If they still aren't paid, I sell at the tax sale. It is an auction, and yes, people, I am the auctioneer. Not an auctioneer like you think of talking fast, but there are bidders and they bid against each other until I get a final bidder. I dread this day all year. It goes fast, and everyone says I do a good job. I just get nervous about making a mistake. This ends the year process of collecting taxes, and in Jan. it starts all over again.

It really is nice, though, not being too busy in December, when you have parties and get togethers for Christmas. I already have 3 party invitations, and expect more to come. I have started some Christmas shopping, and will finish the weekend after Thanksgiving. But first, we need to remember to celebrate Thanksgiving, and be thankful for everything we have!

1. Please feel free to sqeeze the Charmaine. Remember that commercial.

2. When I walk by my rose bush when it's in bloom I can't help sniffing it occasionally.

3. My favorite thing to cook is a big batch of home made bread, which I then make into beirox and cinnamon rolls.

4. Laughter is something I can't get enough of.

5. Unconditional love, that's the thing I love most about my dogs.

6. Bad drivers always makes me think to myself, what the heck?

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to maybe going out to eat at a new mexican restaurant in town, tomorrow my plans include painting in my house and Sunday, I want to finish up painting and relax!

We Won!

I said in my Friday Fill-ins that I was planning on dressing up for Halloween and attending a costume party on Friday night. Me and 3 other crazy friends, decided to go as KISS. Now we are all 40-ish, and grew up in the 70's, but do you think any of us even knew any songs they did? Well we did actually know some, just didn't know they did it.
We started getting ready about 6:00 p.m. with drinks, of course. Most of the clothes we just threw together, lots of black, bling, some actual chains (bought at Everitt Moore). We put knee socks over our boots to try and make them look like the platform boots they wore. Me and 1 other girl have shoulder length hair, so we sprayed and ratted and sprayed again, and then dyed with black. The other 2 girls wore black wigs. Then came the face paint. We each picked out who we were, drew the outline with black eyeliner, and then filled with either black or white face paint. We looked awesome.
For the grand entrance, we waited until 9:00 to show up, and had someone get everyone's attention, and yell KISS IS IN THE BUILDING!
It was alot of fun, there were alot of other costumes, some good ones, but when the time came they announced 3rd, 2nd, and then 1st place, which we won. I think we won $100 credit at the bar, so we each have $25. I then started thinking about getting home, I car pooled, and getting in the shower and hoping all the hair paint and face paint came off, before I could go to bed. Thank God it did!