Back to work - and believe it or not, I'm glad to be back. The weekend went fairly well. My mother came up Saturday for the special at church. We were onstage for almost an hour straight, got a 15 minute reprieve while Dr. Foster gave a shortened message, then came back out for another ten or so to wrap things up. The watermelon was okay, but just as they were getting ready to start the fireworks, the bottom fell out and it started pouring. We watched from inside the truck. Sunday I was back at the church at 7:00-ish, trying to keep enough energy in reserve for three more services. We did a totally different program on Sunday, almost none of which we'd ever practiced, but we still sounded pretty good. I went home, ate some chips and dip, and passed out for a couple of hours. Around 5:00 Miranda and her boyfriend showed up, we grilled some burgers and hot dogs, then headed downtown around 7:30 for the fireworks. The crowd was overwhelming, but there was a cool breeze. We finally found a spot under a tree to sit and wait. Even from our vantage point the fireworks were spectacular - and LOUD. The worst part of the entire night was having to climb six flights of stairs to the top deck of the parking garage, then waiting almost an hour before we were able to get out.

So my hope was that Monday would be a better day. We were supposed to go to West TN to sign off on a lease-purchase agreement for our house there, but that didn't work out. Our next choice was to head down anyway to see Momma and maybe drive around Jackson to see how much repair they'd done from the tornados last year. Our friend Greg was going to ride with us, since he'd never really seen much of Jackson. We were getting ready to load up the truck when I realized I hadn't taken the trash container to the curb. As I rolled it down the driveway, I saw a garbage truck backing up the hill. As it passed the end of our driveway, I saw that it was BFI, not PDQ, which is the company we have garbage service with. They kept backing, going maybe 25 mph, when the guys on the back started screaming for the driver to stop. He didn't hear them and kept backing - right onto Greg's car.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. His poor little Altima's hood was crushed on one side, radiator tipped back, A/C leaking coolant, headlight reduced to an empty socket. The one guy on the back started swearing about the sacredness of excrement, while the driver, a Jesse Ventura look-a-like, pulled forward, put the truck in park, and got out, then stared at the car like he'd never seen one before. I ran back to house and got Greg. Poor guy. He kept his cool; we called Metro and waited for him and the guy's supervisor. Hell, we even got out the lawn chairs to sit in the shade to wait - and watch ;). An hour or so later, all the paperwork was taken care of, the driver's supervisor had made him drive the truck back down the hill, turn around, and drive up to the top of the hill, where we assume he was also asked to produce a urine sample. The end result was that it was the driver's fault, Greg got a ticket for improper parking (facing the wrong way on the side of the street he was parked on), and we never made it to Jackson. Instead we worked on fine-tuning the wireless, I took another nap, and we hung out at Opry Mills for a couple of hours before going by Greg's apartment to pick up a change of clothes for him so we could drive him in to work this morning. What a weekend....