Grace Notes
So far, I think I’m batting a thousand on writing the new year correctly when I write the date. Usually I do pretty good at the beginning of a new year because I’m still thinking about it. It will be some random day in February or March when I mess up the date.
It happened while we were driving on I-70... Bob moved the visor to shade out the glaring sun, and the visor slipped and acted as if it had “come undone.” It all looks simple enough, as it looks as though there is a rod that connects to some kind of doohicky inside the headliner of the car. It happened again a second time because, well... it’s just a thing you do when the sun is causing a glare... you move the visor down to block the sun. So a week before Christmas, I stopped in at the Jeep dealer and asked if someone could take a look at the driver’s sun visor to see if it could be “stuck back in.” (That was my technical description of what I thought needed to happen.) The parts guy went out to my car, messed with the visor a bit before he came back in and said he didn’t know what the problem is. Apparently I had not made myself clear because, after I went out to demonstrate the problem and the visor just about fell out completely, he understood. (You know how men are when it comes to vehicles. Unless a woman demonstrates what needs fixing, guys just don’t understand!) So once we were finally communicating, he went back inside to locate the parts we would need, he said, “You’re not going to like this.” What we need is the complete visor assembly with a price of... wait for it... $614.00. For a sun visor. I knew we had a visor with, not only a lighted mirror, but also the garage door openers. But I was not expecting $614. And that was just for the visor. This would need to be installed by them, of course. I'm thinking it's close to a thousand bucks for the visor plus installation. So I told him thanks, but no thanks. That was not what I wanted for Christmas. So now we are treating that visor with all the respect that it deserves, considering the cost of the smartalecky thing!
Just before Christmas there was a story in the news of a dog that had been missing from his owner in Sacramento, Calif., for 14 months. A woman in Miami County, Kansas, about 30 miles straight south of Overland Park, saw a dog running around in her pasture. She went out to see what her own dog was barking at, and noticed the stray dog. She said seeing a stray was not so unusual, but something told her this one was different. She kept the dog overnight and then took it to the Wildcat Vet Clinic in Louisburg the next morning. There they were able to identify the dog, named Zeppelin, through his microchip. It turned out that Zeppelin's home was 1,625 miles away! His owner in California got to see Zeppelin on FaceTime, and then they started making plans on how to get Zeppelin home. But as we all know, social media can be a wonderment in bringing people together. Mary Hastings, a California resident who was visiting her daughter in Ohio, learned of Zeppelin’s story and jumped at the chance to help out. She offered to stop in Kansas on her drive back home to pick up Zeppelin from the clinic and return him to his owner. No one will ever know how Zeppelin got to Kansas, but getting him home was nothing short of a Christmas miracle.
You probably heard, in the early part of December, about the 95 residents of Tampa, Kansas who flew to Tampa, Florida, all expenses paid, for about a week. Their flights, and all meals and hotel costs, were covered by Visit Tampa Bay. So that got me to thinking. You might remember a few years back—2020, to be exact—when I virtually visited 12 other Stocktons in the United States. So now I’m wondering... which of those cities might suddenly offer us an all-expenses-paid trip to visit them? Illinois? or Wisconsin? Maryland? or perhaps California? Actually I would love to do a “for-real” trip and visit them all! Wouldn’t that be fun? I could be a Stockton Ambassador! I guess I need to drop some hints to these cities’ Chamber of Commerce offices. I’ll let you know if I get lucky, and if I do, I will be sure to ask how many people I can bring along when we visit!
Have you noticed the pink petunias blooming ever-so-sweetly in the front window at the Sentinel office?
