Friday, October 06, 2006, 06:37

A Pleasant Surprise

While Charlie and I were taking a walk around the hayfield Thursday morning, the liquid propane truck showed up at the house.

Thursday was another beautiful, sunny, cool, golden October day. I did not think it was necessary to hurry back along the hayfield because I knew that filling the propane tank was going to take a certain amount of time.

But then I remembered that Pixie was out in the yard, and I figured maybe I'd better hurry up, anyway.

Sure enough. When I was halfway back, Pixie discovered there was a truck in the lower driveway.

"Woof-woof," she said. "Woof, woof, woof, woof."

Fortunately, because she was alone in the yard, Pixie decided the propane truck looked dangerous. She never got any closer to it than a few feet from the barn, which meant the propane truck was about 200 feet away.

Once I got up by the barn, Pixie decided it was "safe" to get closer and bark some more.

So, I took Pixie to the house.

By the time I got around to the lower driveway, the propane truck driver was almost finished filling our tank.

It's just about impossible to talk with the truck pumping (it makes lots of noise), so I waited until the driver was finished to say 'hello' and to chit-chat.

A minute later, he climbed into the truck and made out a slip for me.

"Guess what?" he said.

"What," I said.

"Since you bought your prepay, the price of propane has gone down 10 cents!"

He held out the slip. And sure enough. We were charged at $1.49 cents a gallon instead of the $1.59 a gallon I had paid in August.

"Hey!" I said. "You can't beat that."

Actually, I would not have been surprised if I had to still pay the $1.59 since that's the price I prepaid.

But really, though. Who has ever heard of such a thing. The price of something -- anything -- going down?

Of course gas prices are going down now, but we all know that after the elections in November, or after we get through the holiday season (we mustn't put all of the merchants into bankruptcy, you know), or after January 1, 2007 -- gas prices will go right back up again. It's just too sweet a temptation for the oil companies to ignore. Heaven forbid they should take less profit.

A few years back I was aghast when the price of propane was something like a $1.46 per gallon. We paid 99 cents a gallon that year.

And that's the good news. Because if gas prices do go up again, I will still only pay $1.59 for liquid propane.

LeAnn R. Ralph

Thursday, October 05, 2006, 02:40

Wild Weather

On Tuesday evening some wild weather made its way across our part of Wisconsin. We had a church council meeting at the parsonage, and all of a sudden, the siren in town started going off -- which meant, of course, a tornado warning.

The pastor got out his handy-dandy weather radio, and sure enough, our county was under a tornado warning. It was already dark outside so we couldn't see the sky and see how bad the clouds looked. So off to the basement we went. We spent the next hour in the basement. Overhead, we could hear thunder and could see flashes of lightning through the basement windows. And we could hear some torrential rain.

When the meeting was finally over at 10 p.m., Randy and I were not sure what we would find once we got home.

As it turned out, it had only rained hard here for a short while because there was only a little water in Charlie's dog dish.

Charlie, however, was one scared little puppy dog. He must have taken refuge under Randy's truck during the worst of the rain. And he very much wanted to go into the basement and snuggle down in his nice, dry, safe kennel.

After that, more thunderstorms rolled through. And there were more warnings. We never did get much for bad weather here. Just some thunder and lightning and brief periods of torrential rain. In a town south of here, there was quite a bit of hail, and a vehicle belonging to a man Randy works with sustained a fair amount of hail damage.

All in all, I would say we were very lucky.

The weather today was much different. Bright, sparkly sunshine. Cool. Breezy. A lovely fall day. The trees are pretty much all turned (except for some of the oaks up in the hills) -- and the hillsides are blazing with red and scarlet and orange and yellow. It's only a matter of time now until we get a windy, rainy day. Then all of the leaves will probably fall at once, and the hillsides will be bare and brown and drab. Except for the oak trees.

I took the dogs for a walk up the dirt road yesterday afternoon so I could savor all of the fall color. And Randy and I took the dogs for another walk up the dirt road this evening so we could enjoy the fall color some more.

No matter how many times I go for walks so I can soak in the fall colors, when the leaves eventually fall off the trees, it never seems as if I had enough time to enjoy them. I don't know how much would be enough time. But maybe that's the point. Enjoy it even though I know it is fleeting and will be gone soon. After all, I don't know how *soon* will be soon.

LeAnn R. Ralph