Wednesday's lunch with the Water Lilies was at Vasillio's in Madison where I had the Greek Burger with steamed veggies. It was actually a gyro with lamb, but if they want to call it a burger, I guess that's okay. Our original plan was to eat at the Hilton, but it was full of evacuees from Gustav, so we switched around our September schedule a bit.
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The rest of my afternoon turned into a hunt for the silver lining in every cloud, and I found it. After leaving Vasillio's, I went by Dollar Tree to pick up a couple of items, then went back to my car to discover it would not crank. And I didn't have my cell phone, I'd left it at home on the charger. I went back in Dollar Tree looking for someone with jumper cables and to use their phone. No jumper cables, and no answer on either of Mike's numbers. Great!
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So I headed out toward the Madison Walmart automotive department, just 3 doors down from Dollar Tree. On a whim, I stuck my head in the door of The Game Spot thinking I'd probably find a guy with jumper cables. Instead, I found Jordon, the son of our friends Tony and Terie, who didn't have jumper cables but did call his dad for me (who didn't have his with him either), so then he went with me to Walmart where I purchased a pair. Try as we might, we still couldn't get it to start. He called a tow truck for me whose owner happened to be an old friend of Mike's and a former employee of his father's. He took one look at the battery (the brand new battery we installed on July 4th, remember?), took out his pocket knife, scraped the corrosion off the connector posts, and told us to crank the car. It worked! And he refused to let me pay him.
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In the meantime, Tony showed up to see if we got the car started, and when he heard that the connector posts needed a serious cleaning, he invited me out to his house where he proceeded to clean them and then cleaned the inside of my car. I spent a delightful hour in their kitchen visiting with his wife Terie (she's the brunette to my left in this picture, your right).
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So an afternoon that started out to be a real bummer, turned into an unexpected blessing. The coincidences of everything that happened lead me to believe that it was a "God thing."
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Thank goodness, GOD still takes care of fools and children.