The Unexpected

I walked into the men's room at Walmart this morning, did a double take, then walked back out to see if I had gone into the lady's room. The door had a sign that read "MEN" and on to the side of the door was an international symbol of a man, so I went back in. The new decor in the men's room was like the Spanish Inquisition — I didn't expect it!

That was just the start of encountering the unexpected today. I often tell myself I should never be surprised at anything while driving through Corrales and in Albuquerque, but traffic was actually moving on the Interstates this morning until we got to the Louisiana exit on our way to the 8th Air Force Historical Society luncheon; then we stopped, crawled, stopped and crawled slowly through four light cycles before we got in the heavy traffic on Louisiana. I guess people still go to the mall.

The entertainment at the Luncheon was the Dazzle Dolls — a group of four women who sing big band era songs for the elderly. I'm not terribly fond of music from the 30's, and since I passed on the wine, I was a little bored. The head of the Air force ROTC at UNM procured the untouched bottle of red wine on our table. The folks at his table had already gone through two bottles, and they were enjoying the show. Instead of drinking wine, I produced several photos that were in the running for the photo of the day, but Walmart won out. The Dazzle Dolls did a couple of tunes I liked, and they were having so much fun singing that I really enjoyed watching them enjoy themselves.

We encountered more traffic jams in unexpected stretches of road on the way home, and rolled into our driveway around 3:00 PM. Laurie was finishing preparing a stew for her dad's birthday, when she discovered the package of butternut squash we had bought from Costco was bad. It was five and our company were expected at six, so I attempted to make a mad dash to Sunflower to get fresh butternut squash. The dash got thwarted, but I still got mad, because a pickup with a trailer pulled out in front of me shortly after I got on Corrales Road, and drove 20 MPH all the way through Corrales — I finally got around him about 300 yards before I had to turn into Sunflower. 

I got the fresh squash home at 5:30, we prepared it and got it into the stew. Apparently, I had finally filled our quota of unexpected things for the day — our guests arrived shortly after six, and we had a wonderful evening.