Sometimes I sit down to write and I am amazed at the complete overflow of information that is pouring through my brain. However, this isn't one of those weeks.

In fact, there seems to be a near dearth of thought as I sit here typing this and I am frankly surprised that the words keep appearing on the screen.

In looking back on the past week, it seems rather uneventful to me in hindsight.

I spent a great deal of time last week at work trying to get entries ready for the N.C. Press Association's annual contest. The newspaper's staff enters every year and has had success at it in the past, but it always takes several hours of effort to get the entries ready to send off. I won't bore anyone with the details, but it involves filling out forms, preparing folders, clipping newspapers and keeping logs. Yawn.

In the middle of the process, a fellow who used to work for me doing construction work came by the office to say "hello" out of the blue. I hadn't seen him in a good long while. The last time I did see him, he still owed me $24, a debt I've carried for years.

It originally was over $100, but he's whittled it down some. He came in and brought me $10. Needless to say, I was somewhat surprised by his appearance.

However, I really didn't care if he paid me back or not. It was one of those I had already written off to avoid having to worry about such things. Worry will cost you more than money in the long run. I think the debt came about when he called me a few years ago and asked me to pay his electric bill, noting that they were going to switch off his lights the next day. Why is it that whenever someone needs to borrow money, it's always at the last minute? Does that mean they already called everyone else first, or did they just wait until the last possible minute to ask for help? If I get behind on my bills, I'll be calling someone before "the lights will be turned off tomorrow." I'll be calling about a month before that to ask someone to give me a little extra work, but that's just me.

As for him, he was working for me doing some construction-type stuff at the time, so I agreed to help. He gave me part of the money back and took the rest of his pay for that week and didn't show up for work any more. I really wasn't surprised by that, either. It was fairly typical for him to disappear after payday for a few days. However, I didn't hear from him again for a good while, like I said before.

If I let everyone who jilted me out of $24 keep me awake at night, I might never sleep again. In the words of my pastor, "I'm going to sleep eight hours over that."

But I suppose the thought does count in this situation, and the fact that he came in to pay back part of the money should be comforting in my ongoing battle to prevent personal pessimism concerning the overall state of humanity. Winning that fight likely would take more than $10 and a portion of one bad debt, but at least it's a start.

That $10 helped buy the new wiper blades for my truck, which I just had gotten out of the shop. One of the blades was in two pieces, so it was good that I had the cash to buy them.

I got held up in my wood cutting due to a broken brake line. The metal line that runs most of the length of the truck ruptured due to rust damage and caused me to undertake an expensive repair. Well, $90 is expensive enough for me. I couldn't get it fixed until Friday, which pretty much cancelled most of the week's truck-related activities, like going to the dump and cutting firewood. That's about all I use a truck for on a regular basis. So I loaded up the overflowing garbage cans after watching a soccer game Saturday morning and went to the dump.

After that, I loaded up my saws and headed out to the woods to try to get another load cut. While I was out there, I was amazed by how much firewood was still awaiting my attention. It never ceases to amaze me how far off I am when I try to estimate how much wood I have, how much I need, or how much I can haul out of a certain place. I've been doing this for years and still I really can't tell how much I am going to get from a place until I nearly get finished.

Then again, it may be looking like more this year since I have split a good amount of it with the maul and wedges. I worked for a little while splitting more wood Saturday, but not with much conviction. I currently have enough stacked up to keep the home fires burning for at least a month or two and enough on the ground and still in the woods ready to cut to keep a fire burning for a couple of winters.

I'd like to get my stockpile back up to full before the really cold weather sets in, that way I won't have to find anymore to cut for a good while. With the price of oil, it's going to keep getting harder and harder to find. Besides, I'll likely be busy trying to get it all split for at least that long.

I do have a contraption that uses a little bottle jack to bust wood, but I haven't even tried to pull it out. In fact, I don't think I've ever tried to use it. It looks like it might be handy, but a maul and wedges works just fine. I recently stopped by a store that offers stove-related materials and tried to buy a few firebrick, but I was told that they had sold every one they had and wouldn't be getting more any time soon.

People were buying wood stoves, pellet stoves and just about anything else they could get their hands on. Log splitters were also apparently popular, but the $1,500 price tag has kept me far out of the market so far.

Besides, with the bank troubles that we've been facing, we're lucky if our credit cards still work, from what some folks say. But I'm not letting all that mess worry me, after all, we're poor enough to where we really can't tell the difference yet. In the words of The Band's immortal song, "I don't mind chopping wood and I don't care if the money's no good..."

On Sunday night, the church had a benefit dinner and music and I spent the evening there, enjoying a few hours of home-spun entertainment.

Well, after reading back through this, maybe the week wasn't as uneventful as I thought it was. When we look at our own lives, it never seems interesting.
 

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