"The sweetest of all sounds is praise." - Xenophon

Every time I ask Pam "What's for dinner?" the answer is "Leftovers"?
How does she do that?


Remember that 1957 Ford Vanette with a Gerstenslager bookmobile body I had my eye on?

The auction ended this afternoon. I was watching just in case this "no resserve" auction stayed in the <$2,000 range that would seriously tempt my self discipline and stress my marriage.
Turns out I didn't need to worry.

In case you have trouble reading that, it says the final bid was $9,000. Yeah, this one left temptation in the dust a long time ago. 

Frankly, I think that's too much money. Figure what it will cost for all the known work - interior, exterior, drive train - and then all the unknowns that always pop up (e.g. suspension, brakes, steering, etc.) and this quickly becomes a $15k vehicle in the most basic configuration. Turning it into a nice RV could double that. 

So we'll stick to tent camping and I'll get to work on Sally. 

We're doing some new things at our Wednesday morning staff meetings. Today at the end of the meeting we paired off to pray with one other person. (Hence, "paired." Doh) Brett decided we should pair off like tournament seedings which in this case meant the oldest and youngest, next oldest with next youngest, etc. 

Yep. I'm the oldest. But Molly is a very sweet and very competent newlywed. We work together on several of my projects so I was glad to be paired with her.

At the last staff meeting of 2018 we each took a piece of paper from a hat that had one of three things on it: 

- Get organized

- Get moving

- Get cooking

We were to come to today's meeting with our plan for fulfilling the mandate on our piece of paper.

I got a "Get cooking" slip and reported that my goal is to learn how to make petit fours. Half of them didn't know what those were.

It was also announced at that December meeting that on the second Wednesday of each month we'll have b'fast together at our staff meeting and that the "Get cooking" foursome would provide breakfast for next Wednesday. 

When I got home I talked with Pam about what I'd contribute and we decided on a b'fast dish mom made a few times and for which Pam has the recipe. It's a little like a casserole  with French Toast made out of French bread as the base ingredient. It also includes eggs, cream, and - wait for it! - Grand Marnier. Yeah, that's what makes it almost sinfully delicious. You layer all those ingredients in a 9x13 pan with the liquids poured over the top, let it marinate in the fridge overnight, and then bake it. So the crust on the French bread gets soft and the Grand Marnier soaks into everything. 

(If you've never had Grand Marnierin in anything your life is not complete. I first had it in a souffle' that may have been the best thing I'd ever tasted in my life.)

Oregon is one of the states where liquor (excepting beer and wine) is only sold in state authorized liquor stores. There's one just down the street from the church offices so tomorrow I'll go get some Gran Marnier. 

I'll work on my disguise tonight. 

This could be rec'd much better than petit fours. Unless I put booze in the ganache.