Epic fail

And I was so assiduous about gathering Giant gas discount points! I challenged a Facebook friend; I used all the "2X" coupons in the circular; I bought five big boxes of tissues, enough to last through the winter, to earn more points.
The upshot was that I racked up seventy cents off per gallon of gas.
And then I forgot to use them: I filled up at another gas station the Thursday before the points expired.
What to do?
I offered them to a friend, who was thrilled at the idea of filling up her behemoth of a truck with discount gas. I loaned her my Giant card on Saturday morning and she headed straight to the Giant gas station in New Garden. Fifteen minutes later I got a call: the place was a mob scene. She said any savings were being offset by the gas she was using idling. She was heading home.
Next time I'm setting an alarm on my phone to remind me of the expiration date.

Seen on Broad Street

I was driving past an attorney's office in downtown Kennett the other day and saw, in the front yard of the office building, a man in a dark business suit (I assume the lawyer) taking a photo of three people (I assume his clients) who looked very happy -- a man and two women. What was going on? I wondered. A property transfer concluded? Some family business settled? A new business getting started? Whatever it was, the occasion was apparently worth preserving for posterity in a photo.

Form vs. function

A friend who made the transition from the corporate world to Unionville farm life said she used to have clearly demarcated wardrobes: work and home. No more. Functionality has taken precedence. She used to berate her husband for comingling "good" clothes and barn clothes in the washer, but there's no need for that anymore: they're just all clothes.
(I take that with a grain of salt: I've seen both her and her husband look very smart when they get duded up. So what if they're still in muck boots?)
I , too, was shuffling my clothes from my winter to my summer closets and found some truly sad specimens, like a faded blue polo shirt with a frayed collar and many holes. I used to save such treasures for gardening and outdoor work, but now most of my clothes seem to be suitable for that: I tossed it out.

Mass transit

The SCCOOT bus service got a positive review from a friend who is transportation-challenged for one more month. He took it from Kennett to West Chester the other day and found the experience "quite pleasant. The drivers are nice. The bus is air-conditioned. You just sit there and you're delivered to your destination."

Nixon Park concerts

We had a great time listening to Alligator Zydeco at the amphitheater in Anson B. Nixon Park in Kennett. The band sounded great, the setting overlooking the lake is beautiful, and we got to say hi to lots of friends.
It was the first of a summer-long series of free Wednesday evening concerts from 7 to 9 p.m. You bring your own chairs, and you can either bring a picnic or buy food from the vendors. This past week Byrsa Bistro was offering a "Mediterranean sampler" of hummus, baba ganoush, cucumbers, stuffed grape leaves and olives with pita bread, along with their wonderful mint iced tea. Philter had coffee and cookies and La Michoacana had popsicles -- which were very welcome because it was a hot evening.
It's a very relaxed and pleasant way to spend an evening -- some excellent people-watching, too. The lineup of bands and vendors is on the park's website.
(By the way, dogs on leashes are welcome to attend the concerts, and there were plenty of them, including one little guy who is lucky enough to be spending the summer with his owner's mother in Kennett rather than with his owner in Manhattan.)

Singular

The Cranky Friend has regained his kidney-stone-free status, but his single status remains unchanged. He was particularly unimpressed with two women who popped up on his online dating service recently.
One stated that she was seeking "the missing link."
"She's likely to find it, if that's what she's looking for," he said.
Another listed as a book she had recently read "an autobiography of Eric Clapton, called `Eric Clapton: An Autobiography'."
"I can't date a tautologist, and she can't date someone who makes less than $100K, so we're perfect not together," he said.

The long way home

I took the longer way home from the Kennett Y today just because it was such a beautiful summer evening. The sun was setting over the peaceful West Marlborough landscape, highlighting in painterly fashion the curving rows of fragrant, just-raked hay (farmers making hay are the busiest people I know this time of year).
Ahead of me I saw a woman walking her dog and stopped just to share my appreciation for the all's-right-with-the-world evening.
She said she'd just been thinking exactly the same thing: She had walked her dog three times that day just to enjoy the view, which, she suggested, and quite correctly, is among the most beautiful on Earth.
We got to chatting; she moved to our township only a year ago and is still adjusting to the fact that it takes 20 minutes to get anywhere. But, she quickly added, that's a small price to pay. I think we could easily have stood by the road for an hour talking; only my hungry tummy put an end to the conversation.
I'm so glad I chose to take "the back way" home. The scenery alone is always enough to lift the spirits, but tonight I got the bonus of welcoming a new-ish neighbor and making a new friend.

The more things change...

This morning the following story from the June 26, 1884, "Daily Local News" appeared on the Chester County Historical Society's Facebook page. My first thought was, "What a great Tilda item that would've been!" I can think of a few 21st-century equivalents of the eccentric Mrs. Elkridge; can you?

Mrs. Eldridge, residing in that vicinity, who has recently attracted public attention by her eccentricities, drove to the residence of her sister, Mrs. Stackhouse, at Hamorton, where she left the team. During her absence two ladies living in the house with Mrs. Stackhouse concluded to drive Mrs. Eldridge’s team to East Marlborough to attend the funeral of Mrs. Edith B. Harry. Shortly after they left Mrs. Eldridge returned, and not finding her team concluded to get one ahead of the ladies. The mail running between Hamorton and the Red Lion was about to start and she took passage with it. On reaching Red Lion she walked to Allen Harvey’s, whence, finding her horse and carriage hitched to the fence, and having divested them of robes and other property not hers, she drove to West Chester, leaving the lades to get home as best they could. The affair has created considerable merriment among those acquainted with the circumstances of the case.

Another chapter in "The Island of Unionville"

I have a friend in Newlin Township who raises chickens, and I collect egg cartons for her from various friends. I was heading to "downtown" Unionville today and thought I might see her at the post office or Hood's, so I brought along my three most recently collected cartons.
No signs of her truck, but I did see a pickup from a local feed mill parked in Hood's lot, loaded with bales of hay and bags of Purina's Layena chicken feed in the back. Bingo! Maybe they could deliver my cartons.
"Hey," I called to the feed mill guys, who had just finished their lunch. "By any chance, are you going over to [Tilda's friend's farm]?"
No, sorry, they said; they'd just been there the day before.
"Every Monday," one of them explained.

Hay fire

Two hay wagons and 250 bales of hay were destroyed in a fire on Route 842 at Byrd Road here in West Marlborough on June 23. When I drove by the next afternoon, all that was left were charred axles (they almost looked like modern sculpture), charred patches of earth and the stench of drenched, burned hay. By Saturday the wreckage had been removed and the burned area was being reseeded.

This informative (and well written!) account of the fire appeared on the Po-Mar-Lin Fire Company's website:
"Po-Mar-Lin Fire Company, Station 36 with Ambulance 23 was dispatched for a Truck fire at the intersection of Byrd Rd./Rt. 842. Ambulance 23 arrived to find two farm trailers with 250 small bales fully involved with a hay rake still attached. The operator had moved the tractor away from the burning trailers. Engine 36 made the response with 6 volunteers and upon arrival utilized the front bumper turret to hold flames back from the hay rake while the crew stretched an 1-3/4" hand line to extinguish the rest of the pile. While crews worked to break up the hay and extinguish the fire, other members of the crew assisted the owner with unhooking the hay rake which was mostly unharmed due the quick work of the Engine crew. PML was assisted by Tanker 24 from the Kennett Fire Company No. 1 and Tanker 23 from the Avondale Fire Company. Avondale Fire Police and West Marlborough Township road crew shut down Rt. 842 while crews worked. 

Thank you to Engine 39 from West Bradford Fire Co. for covering the area while crews were working.
Special thanks to Unionville Lawn Care and Meadow Springs Farms, Hicks Brothers, for the assistance of 2 loaders to break up the hay and move off the road during cleanup."

Collective nouns

I lived in England for a year. Thirty-some years later, I still spout British slang like "half-four" ("four-thirty"), much the annoyance of everyone in the vicinity (eye-rolling in the case of the Young Relative; maniacal rage, in the case of the Cranky Friend). But I can never get used to hearing usage like "Uruguay are fighting back," as I did while watching the World Cup over my grilled cheese and tomato sandwich at Hood's today. It sounded wrong to me back then ("Oliver's army are on their way"), and it still does.

Red Sombrero

There's another Mexican restaurant to try: the Red Sombrero Fresh Mexican Taqueria, next to Starbucks in the Shoppes at Longwood Village (the shopping center on Baltimore Pike with SuperFresh and Staples). We stopped in on Saturday night at 6 p.m., and by the time we left every table was full (they also do take-out orders). You order your food at the counter, pour your own drink, and they bring your meal over to you (very promptly in our case). We picked a chicken burrito ("Pollo Loco") and a steak burrito ("Red Sombrero Burrito"). They were tasty, stuffed full and very fresh--and they didn't stint on the jalapeno peppers! The crunchy chips were very good, too.
The menu is available on the restaurant's website. And yes, it's the same Red Sombrero that's in the Dilworthtown Crossing shopping center on Route 202.