July 17, 2020 thought for the day; Follow your heart and your dreams will come true. Traditional Proverb

It has been another interesting and happy Friday. My grocery list was growing again so it was time to make a trip to the store. Sue needed some things to so we left early enough that we would miss some of a larger group of shoppers.

As I was thinking of what I may want to photograph for my shot of the day yesterday Sonja, one of my twin great grand nieces, was getting her scrambled egg and cheese breakfast. So I grabbed the camera and got the theme challenge, “edible”, for the day.

We came home to put the cold and frozen items away and then left again for another errand. I wanted to visit  my great grandson to see his new hair cut and to give him a squeeze or two. Before we left the house, we checked to make sure when his nap time was. It fit the picture best for us to run the errand before we stopped to see William, and his parents, of course. We had some play time and noticed all the things he had learned since the last visit. He is pulling himself up now and even using a “walker toy” to move about. The visit was a boost to the heart.

The only “work” I got done today was a little time on additions to updating the church director. Now I need to get a little watering done.

The word is interest.  Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age, Jonathan Swift.  Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh, Henry David Thoreau. Self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted, Francois de La Rochefoucauld. There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life, Epicurus. The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later, Charles Caleb Colton. There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth, Chanakya. Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them, Lord Chesterfield. A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights, Napoleon Bonaparte. Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest, Charles Baudelaire. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, Abraham Lincoln.

Today’s challenge is “pile”. While I was out and about today I forgot to look around for the theme. When I got home I remembered we had a stack of bricks left from a project Bob had worked on that would fit the theme.

I, like most kids, rode a bike everywhere. Later in life I switched to a moped. Then, still later, my aunt had a three-wheel adult bike that I enjoyed for a while. Somehow it got passed around and it was miss-remembered who got the bike from Aunt Margaret. Recently, I checked and found that it had been sold. It might have been a “trip” to ride it again (at eighty years old). As you can guess the article I picked for today is about bikes and how sales have increased in the pandemic. Maybe that is one of the better things that will come from this offensive journey in history. More people will be riding bikes which will cut down on air pollution from engines. The first sentence in the article mentioned that one boy waited for forty-five minutes as the bike he wanted was built. Another customer went in the store looking for a mountain bike. The owner was just putting the finishing touches on a mountain bike we had got from Goodwill. The article was about a bike shop in Clintonville. They have ten bikes in the store, “some new, some refurbished” where they usually have twice that many. Later the article mentioned that bike shops nationwide are having more trouble keeping bikes in stock than “since the oil crisis in the 1970's”. The need for repair work on bikes found hidden away in garages or found in thrift shops are also up for shop owners. One customer paid $317 to have everything on his older model bike replaced. I learned from the article that new bikes that cost less than $1,000 are scarce. People are wanting to trade old bikes for newer ones but they are selling so fast there aren’t any to trade for.

It’s that time again....an old and well-exercised tradition....pizza on a Friday night.

Joy